{"id":280,"date":"2026-06-29T12:41:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T12:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=280"},"modified":"2026-06-29T12:41:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T12:41:22","slug":"adam-friedland-is-not-trying-to-show-the-world-his-butthole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=280","title":{"rendered":"Adam Friedland Is Not Trying to Show the World His Butthole"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n<\/span>dam Friedland is visibly concerned. I\u2019ve just told him about reconnecting with an old romantic partner, and with the grave tenderness of a Jewish mother, he cautions me not to get too ahead of myself. It\u2019s a sunny Friday evening, and we\u2019re at the Chelsea Piers driving range with Thomas Eisenman and Zach Galsky, two members of the small crew behind Friedland\u2019s weekly YouTube series, The Adam Friedland Show.<\/em> Friedland, a comedian and former co-host of the podcast Cum Town,<\/em> launched the show in 2022 as an absurdist riff on late-night television. What began as a joke about turning the once-awkward sidekick into a digital-age Dick Cavett has since become one of the internet\u2019s more rarefied interview rooms, drawing comedians, rappers, and politicians into Friedland\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

Read more How One Journalist Got ICE Agents to Open Up \u2014 And Confess the Agency\u2019s Greatest Sins<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tNow entering its third season, the show\u2019s roughly hourlong interviews keep producing clips that cut through the sludge oozing across our feeds, not because they feel more polished, but because they feel weirdly human. The usual carousel of famous people making the podcast rounds \u2014 Kamala Harris on Call Her Daddy,<\/em> Tyrese on Joe Budden,<\/em> the endless stream of tiny heads floating in front of screenshots of articles \u2014 is interrupted by something startlingly familiar.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn June, Spotify announced that The Adam Friedland Show<\/em> would launch its third season through a partnership covering ad sales and distribution across podcast platforms. As part of the deal, Friedland also teamed with Spotify\u2019s The Ringer on The Adam Friedland Show Presents: The Beautiful Pod<\/em>, a limited World Cup series with Ringer personality Chris Ryan. For a show built on the joke of turning the least obvious person in the room into a talk-show host, the move gave the bit a strangely traditional media shape, almost as if Friedland had backed into the very kind of institution his show was designed to parody.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe way Adult Swim\u2019s slate of low-fi, off-kilter programming managed to interrupt the monotony of 2000s cable TV, Friedland\u2019s show follows a familiar format while subtly contorting it. Vaguely a video podcast centered around a long-form interview with a zeitgeist-y guest, it also has the uncanny quality of a student film. The set, a callback to 1960s talk shows, is disarmingly absurd. Friedland\u2019s guests, doe-eyed and bewildered, lit just warmly enough to eviscerate any sense of celebrity glamour, are almost as surprised to be there as he is.<\/p>\n

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\n\tGolf is a recent pastime for Friedland, who told me he struggled to find a suitable activity for us to do. Having to set something up for this interview made him realize how little of his life currently happens outside of the set where they tape the show. \u201cI literally go to the studio [and] the apartment,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the only way that I\u2019ve found I can maintain productivity.\u201d Golf, then, is more like something to do so he doesn\u2019t go completely insane.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve never golfed before, so Friedland is also trying to coach me on my swing, which is funny mostly because he doesn\u2019t seem fully convinced he should be explaining anything to anyone. His advice comes in the same register as his comedy: observant, sincere, and oddly endearing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGolf is all about touch,\u201d he says, sounding philosophical and serious as he watches one of us try to hit a ball. A few minutes later, more technical advice: Keep your elbows locked, use your hips. \u201cThere we go,\u201d he says after a decent hit. \u201cDude, that sounded so good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe advice keeps slipping from golf into life. Specifically, my love life. \u201cSo she said, \u2018What\u2019s up?\u2019 And you didn\u2019t play it like, \u2018I\u2019m great,\u2019\u201d he inquires, like a coach reviewing tape. When I explain that I may have come in too hot the first time, he repeats it back with alarm: \u201cYou came in hot!?\u201d Then, with the wariness of someone who has seen enough romantic disasters to respect the danger, he says, \u201cNervous for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI liked [interviewing], and I wanted to get better at it. It was the joke that became the real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n\tThis is Friedland\u2019s gift as a person, but also as a host: He makes anxiety social. Around him, discomfort simply diffuses and becomes part of the mood. It\u2019s particularly striking when his guests come from the world of politics. A few days prior, I sat in on a taping of the show featuring Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who arrived with the boisterous energy of a politician in the heat of campaigning (he\u2019s up for reelection in November). The pairing is at once baffling and organic. There\u2019s an easy chemistry between the two, almost like when Barack Obama showed up on Zach Galifianakis\u2019 web series Between Two Ferns.<\/em> Moore knows it\u2019s not a totally serious program in the vein of CNN, but also that Friedland, an ardent student of history, isn\u2019t merely a comedian. Still, there\u2019s a certain awkwardness in how badly it seems Moore wants Friedland, and by extension his audience, to see how in on the joke he is. As Democrats search for a so-called \u201cJoe Rogan of the left,\u201d shows like Friedland\u2019s can become opportunistic vehicles to tap into a younger, perhaps more politically cynical audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot that Friedland is overtly positioning his show as a platform for politicians. \u201cThat\u2019s why they think they lost,\u201d he says incredulously. \u201cAnd so I think it\u2019s kind of by default, if anything.\u201d For his part, Friedland doesn\u2019t want to push the show too far in that direction. \u201cI have my own opinions, but I\u2019m not doing the show to achieve a political project,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to make a funny show. And I want to see people vibing and getting a chance to see people that are well-known for who they are naturally. And a lot of the time, it turns out that someone\u2019s awesome, but you had no idea. And a lot of times, it\u2019s the opposite and it\u2019s interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tI ask whether he worries that politicians and public figures are using his show to launder their images. \u201cI don\u2019t know. It\u2019s not so deliberate,\u201d he says. \u201cI think, yeah, it\u2019s laundering or \u2026 what\u2019s that? I put it through a front business.\u201d Then the ball flies, and the thought dissolves into applause. \u201cOh, that was our golf shot!\u201d Friedland exclaims. \u201cThat was a great golf shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\tSearching for New Heroes\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s not as if Friedland usually gets into policy debates with his more political guests. In fact, the appeal of the show is in how mundane the interviews are. In conversation, Friedland is rapaciously curious, if slightly disorganized, prone to tangents that lead to a candidness that can verge on cringe or awkward. He has drawn Chet Hanks into a discussion about Kobe Bryant, niche porn, and Jamaican patois; asked Jadakiss about New York rap, Drake, and white boys talking like rappers; pressed former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on AOC, mayoral politics, and family lore about the Mob; and sat across from Clavicular, a looksmaxxing figure whose episode moved through attraction, drug use, internet fame, and the self-improvement nihilism of young men online.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven so, the show has pushed against the membrane of Friedland\u2019s own comedic shield. His conversation with Rep. Ritchie Torres, the Bronx Democrat and staunch Israel supporter, became one of Friedland\u2019s most widely discussed political clips. The interview, released in August, was supposed to follow the show\u2019s usual strange logic, but instead the exchange hardened around Gaza, antisemitism, with Friedland growing visibly emotional as Torres remained largely unmoved.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I ask Friedland about it, he still sounds uneasy. \u201cThat was the one time it felt like I fucked it up like a brick in the room,\u201d he says. He had planned to start with Torres\u2019 biography: His Puerto Rican heritage, being an openly gay politician, surviving a suicide attempt, and making it to Congress from one of the poorest districts in the country. \u201cYou could spin that into a heartwarming movie of the week,\u201d Friedland says. \u201cBut then why has he become\u2026 the AIPAC guy?\u201d He wanted to understand, he says, \u201cHow do you get to this place?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat made the episode uncomfortable, for Friedland, was not only that Torres was difficult to move off-script. It was that the subject pulled Friedland into a kind of earnestness he usually tries to avoid. Watching the edit back, he says, was miserable. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, God, I don\u2019t want to put this out.\u2019\u201d But he decided the discomfort was part of the point. \u201cIt\u2019s important that Jews express solidarity for Palestine,\u201d he says. Friedland is careful not to recast himself as an expert. His usual rule, he says, is not to pretend that interview prep gives him authority over \u201csome fucking specific omnibus pork barrel legend.\u201d But Palestine was different. \u201cI grew up a Zionist,\u201d he says. \u201cI studied Middle Eastern politics in college. I lived in Israel. It\u2019s a topic that has mattered to me for 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tAnother recent political guest was Rep. Ilhan Omar. The first thing he tells me about their meeting is how shaken he was by the number of people who want her dead. \u201cThere are multiple people incarcerated for plotting her assassination,\u201d he says matter-of-factly. \u201cThe president of the United States is fixated on her, her community.\u201d The way Friedland talks about Omar is noticeably different from the way he talks about the broader political circus.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat struck him about her story was the language people use when referring to refugees. On the right, the rhetoric is obvious in its ugliness. \u201cIt\u2019s the xenophobia,\u201d he says. \u201cThe Trump thing.\u201d But he found something strange in the liberal framing, too, a kind of condescension disguised as compassion. \u201c\u2018Refugees are welcome here,\u2019\u201d he says, trying out the phrase with suspicion. \u201cAlmost like they\u2019re lesser than.\u201d Omar\u2019s story, as he understood it, scrambled that framework entirely. \u201cThe reason she is unafraid is because she\u2019s right,\u201d he says. \u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018I walked to Kenya from Mogadishu to save my life with my family when I was eight.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFriedland sounds almost embarrassed by the size of the thought forming in his head. His instinct is usually to puncture grand language before anyone else can. But Omar seems to defeat the reflex. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of corny to say it,\u201d he says, \u201cbut the concept of a civil rights hero that we\u2019re like, \u2018That\u2019s from the olden days.\u2019 But this is \u2014 it\u2019s like Mandela. It\u2019s like a hero.\u201d He says that while researching her, something kept dawning on him: \u201cNo one discusses her in that light.\u201d Instead, her interns pick up the phone to people threatening to kill her. Politicians talk about executing or expelling her. The most remarkable thing about her, to Friedland, is not that she has endured all of this, but that she appears to have metabolized it into certainty. \u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018Fuck you,\u2019\u2009\u201d he says, with admiration. \u201cIt felt good to me to get her on the show,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tAccidental Podcast Star\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tFor all of the apparent looseness in the show, Friedland insists it\u2019s not the same as randomness. The interview works because it feels like nobody is steering too hard, but in practice, he has already figured it out. \u201cThere\u2019s a plan,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve worked for weeks on researching, and I have a flow of conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tFriedland\u2019s show trades in a kind of intimacy, but he is deeply suspicious of exposure. I ask whether they would ever do more behind-the-scenes material, and Friedland recoils. \u201cI hate behind-the-scenes,\u201d he says. \u201cI would kill myself.\u201d The current podcasting landscape, to him, already mistakes access for art. \u201cEveryone\u2019s just showing the world their butthole,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tFriedland was born in Santa Monica, California, and raised mostly in Las Vegas, with a brief childhood stretch in Cape Town, South Africa, where his parents were from. He went to college in D.C. with plans to become a lawyer, but instead met Nick Mullen and Stavros Halkias, his future podcast co-hosts, and started doing stand-up. Friedland eventually had to tell his parents he was choosing comedy over law \u2014 what he calls having to \u201ccome out of the closet as a clown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn some level, he thought, his parents might understand taking the path of a creative. His father was an architect, his mother studied theater, and his grandmother, a divorced woman in Cape Town\u2019s Jewish community at a time when that was grounds for ostracism, was a self-made art dealer, going on to open one of the city\u2019s more prestigious galleries. Still, his parents were less romantic about comedy as a career. A little while after college, Friedland moved to New York with Mullen and Halkias. The idea was basically \u201cmaybe you have to have a podcast now.\u201d Mullen bought a recorder, Halkias was on the first episode, Friedland joined on the second, and \u201cthat was the crew.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more AI Chatbots Let People Keep Dead Loved Ones Alive. Should They?<\/a><\/p>\n

\nCum Town,<\/em> which started in 2016, initially took off as something of an anti-podcast. The cast were pioneers of the shooting-the-shit format that eventually became dominant in the medium. \u201cI know people loved it, but for us, it was just arguing about lunch pretty much after the episode was over. Stav was like, \u2018We always record in Brooklyn. Can we go to Queens once, where I live?\u2019 It was just that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause they were Bernie Sanders supporters, the crew was thrust into the so-called Dirtbag Left, a diffuse network of comedians and podcasters whose politics leaned progressive. Despite this reputation, \u201cthe show wasn\u2019t political,\u201d Friedland says. \u201cWe were making really cheeky, immature jokes,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was like 11-year-olds at a sleepover.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe show\u2019s vulgarity was part of its armor. Even its name seemed designed to resist professionalization. \u201cWe had the worst name,\u201d Friedland says. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t write it in articles.\u201d When I mention that publications often had to describe it obliquely, he laughs and reaches for the obvious comparison: \u201cLike Voldemort. He who shall not be named.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the people listening, Cum Town<\/em> could feel like a transmission from a more lawless internet, where the jokes moved faster than the self-consciousness around them. For Friedland, though, the memory is less romantic. \u201cWe didn\u2019t think it was good,\u201d he says. \u201cWe thought it sucked.\u201d Only in recent years, out of nostalgia, did he go back and appreciate the show\u2019s irreverent humor. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018It\u2019s amazing. It\u2019s so funny. I had no idea.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, the work barely felt like work. It was \u201corganized in terms of, we set the time to be in Nick\u2019s living room,\u201d he says. He calls it \u201cthe best business model, the $5 Planet Fitness Patreon model,\u201d referencing how, like a cheap gym membership, it wasn\u2019t hard to sell fans on a subscription. \u201cWhat costs $5?\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t get water for that anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was earning a handsome salary for two hours of work, and I grew quite lazy,\u201d Friedland says. \u201cI could bang out three movies a day.\u201d When his girlfriend came home from work, he would feel the need to prove he had done something with his day. \u201cI started taking notes on movies to act like I was thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Halkias\u2019 stand-up career began to take off in 2022, he left the show. Friedland assumed he and Mullen would keep the old format, but Mullen had other plans. \u201cHonestly, it\u2019s credit to Nick,\u201d Friedland says of the creation of his new show. \u201cHe was like, \u2018I have a vision. You got to do The Adam Friedland Show.<\/em>\u2019\u201d Friedland was skeptical. \u201cI was like, \u2018Well, we have this brand that we built, Nicholas.\u2019 And he\u2019s like, \u2018No, you got to trust me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to still be annoying and myself. I\u2019m going to do it my way.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n\tThe joke, at first, was how ill-suited for the gig Friedland was on paper. He had been \u201cthe kind of nebbish\u201d of Cum Town<\/em>: slight, nervous, self-effacing, with round glasses and the wardrobe of a background nerd in an Eighties rom-com. Turning him into what he calls a \u201cGore Vidal-style\u201d host was funny because it seemed like the wrong move. Then he started doing interviews, first with comics already in his orbit, like Shane Gillis and Dan Soder, then with a widening cast of actors, rappers, athletes, media figures, and politicians. By the time Mullen left the show in 2025, leaving Friedland alone to helm it, the premise had become less absurd. \u201cI found that I really liked it, and I wanted to get better at it,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it was a joke that became a real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show gave Friedland something of a renewed lease on life as well. The lax structure of Cum Town<\/em> was beginning to take its toll. Now, he had something he was in charge of. \u201cComing out of that experience, I found that I\u2019m not bad at things,\u201d he says, looking back on how his attitude toward work has changed since starting the new show. \u201cI found that, actually, if I work really hard at something, I can do an OK job. And also, when you think back to it, you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, God, I was just fast-forwarding to being dead.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe team is small, with several guys named Zach, he says, and everyone is working hard. \u201cZach the intern, Zach the part-time, Zach the contractor, Zach the salaried full-time,\u201d he jokes. But the affection behind it is obvious. \u201cI love the lads,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re very driven about \u2026 We want to make a good thing.\u201d Once the infrastructure expands, he says, they can try different formats. \u201cWe\u2019ll do different things.\u201d Adding live music is the first experiment. Friedland doesn\u2019t describe it as a content pivot so much as a nod to the talk-show format \u2014 a place where the guest list could zigzag, where a young underground rapper and an old singer-songwriter might make sense in the same universe because the host\u2019s curiosity was the format. \u201cWe\u2019re doing music,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re starting that. That\u2019s happening right now.\u201d Xaviersobased recently came through. \u201cSuch a nice guy,\u201d Friedland says. \u201cSuch a sweetheart.\u201d He says he showed him Bob Dylan. \u201cHe\u2019d never seen him, and he was like, \u2018This is hard.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tFriedland is far more interested in talking about this version of the show, a sort of callback to the talk shows that would break new bands via live performances. \u201cI liked late-night shows that have bands,\u201d he says. Bruce Hornsby was the next slated musical guest. Friedland wants the show to keep audiences on their toes as opposed to being a predictable parade of cool 19-year-olds, or worse, politicians trying to prove they get the joke. That same instinct, to let the guest list zigzag until unexpected connections appear, is also how Friedland talks off-camera. A conversation about music on the show drifts, almost inevitably, into the pop-cultural trial of Drake and Kendrick Lamar, and the strange identity politics that gathered around \u201cNot Like Us.\u201d Friedland, a tried-and-true Drake fan, was struck less by the beef itself than by how eagerly some white listeners joined the song\u2019s moral chorus. \u201cIt\u2019s also weird that white people, \u2018They not like us, they not like us,\u2019\u201d he says, pantomiming the track. \u201cBut the song\u2019s about how he\u2019s not properly Black. Does no one realize that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat bothered him was the chorus of self-assured commentary that formed around it. \u201cThe way that fat white guys with beards got into it was the worst,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the thing that was really disgusting. It\u2019s like guys that worked at Vice<\/em> and now they\u2019re 42.\u201d I was experiencing firsthand what Friedland\u2019s guests get when they visit his show: Instead of them being caught in a lie, he was catching himself in a moment of earnestness.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\u2018I Was Like Rip Van Winkle\u2019\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tThere are moments, though, when Friedland\u2019s ironic distance breaks down faster than he seems prepared for. Later at the range, the conversation turns to Kanye West, then to the way prejudices now circulate as memes and content. He doesn\u2019t talk about it with the grand posture of someone trying to claim moral high ground. The contemporary internet, he says, has made certain kinds of racism feel weirdly available again. \u201cI do think it\u2019s peculiar that in general, racism is on the menu,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it\u2019s insane, in fact.\u201d The new race science, the casual antisemitism: To him, it all feels both archaic and newly stupid. \u201cIt\u2019s all going old-fashioned,\u201d he says. \u201cPhrenology is like the 1910s.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tWest, in Friedland\u2019s telling, becomes the perfect example of how the internet turns a person\u2019s visible unraveling into everyone\u2019s entertainment. \u201cPeople took the antisemitism,\u201d he says, and what Friedland saw was \u201cthis guy I liked a lot\u201d who was \u201chaving a tough time.\u201d It bothered him that it became \u201cfodder for Reels or content.\u201d Not that he excuses West\u2019s politics. He notes some of the tweets were \u201cunreal,\u201d and hanging around certain far-right figures is \u201cnot cool.\u201d But beyond the politics, he says, it was also \u201cjust really tragic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFriedland and his crew had just watched Jeen-Yuhs,<\/em> the 2022 West documentary, and what stayed with him was not only the spectacle of West\u2019s rise, but the figure of Donda West, his mother. He talks about the scenes of West and Donda as if he were remembering a family member of his own. She is, in Friedland\u2019s reading, the person who makes West human. \u201cYou can tell that that woman is the one person on the planet that can calm him down,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe conversation has the casually pointed nature of many of Friedland\u2019s interviews. In telling me how much he was moved by the maternal moments in the West documentary, he connects it to his own life. \u201cI lost my mom.\u201d The practical absence of a parent, he says, is something a person can adjust to. But the pain is different. \u201cIt never leaves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFriedland\u2019s mother died in May 2020, around the moment the George Floyd video began to spread. \u201cThe day before she passed away, I saw everyone was posting on Instagram the video of this guy,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018What the fuck? On Instagram?\u2019\u201d Then his mother died, and he went home to Las Vegas to sit Shiva. Friedland describes the ritual with the mixture of reverence and annoyance that marks many of his best observations. \u201cEveryone comes over to the house with food and you\u2019re so annoyed by people spilling and not doing the dishes,\u201d he says. But the point of it, he says, is practical: \u201cYou go home and you\u2019re not alone after your loved one dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time he returned to New York, the country had entered a different fever. He had missed the social media scorekeeping and the transformation of grief and outrage into performance, as well as the subsequent backlash. \u201cI was like Rip Van Winkle,\u201d he says. \u201cI missed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn some ways, he says, he was lucky. Not because his grief was easy, but because it gave him a real problem to deal with while other people were stuck online going insane. \u201cI was more dealing with being with my family during that than lockdown,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople were going crazy at the crib, and they were just looking at their phones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA couple of years later, he remembers talking to his dad after his episode with former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, trying to figure out what the next few years of the show should be like. His worry was that he needed to be selective with politics because, as he puts it, \u201cI\u2019m a comedian. I want to be funny.\u201d His dad\u2019s advice was simply \u201cJust be yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFriedland says that might be \u201cthe second compliment\u201d he\u2019s ever gotten from him. \u201cI\u2019m going to still be annoying and myself,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m going to do it my way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter a few hours at the range, the sun is still out, and Friedland is beaming with joy. He looks around the range, at his crew, at the balls arcing into the evening. \u201cI\u2019m so happy right now,\u201d he says. \u201cGuys, we got to do more fun [stuff].\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018He Didn\u2019t Judge Us\u2019: The Priest Throwing a Lifeline to Men Leaving Prison<\/a><\/p>\n

\nJEFF IHAZA is a special-projects editor for both Rolling Stone<\/em> and VIBE.<\/em> He recently wrote VIBE\u2019<\/em>s cover story on A$AP Rocky.\t<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His talk show trades in intimacy, not exposure. 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