Adam Carolla Show
Michael Chiklis: How Going Bald Shaped His Career + Ian Frisch Exposes Cartel Secrets
30 Sep 2025
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
In this episode, Michael Chiklis. Yeah, the guy's done all the movies and all TV shows. Great conversation with him. Ian Frisch also joins us later to talk about the cartels and teach you a lot more than you thought you knew about the cartels. We'll do all that right after this.
Adam Carolla returns to New York City Thursday, October 9th at Rodney Dangerfield's Comedy Club with Kat Timp and Matt Friend. Two shows, October 9th. And then don't miss The Ace Man in Pottstown, Pennsylvania on Friday, October 10th and Saturday, October 11th at Soul Joel's.
Adam returns to Flappers in Burbank on October 29th. Get tickets for these and every show at adamcarolla.com. BetOnline. Hey, it's Adam Carolla from the Adam Carolla Show. Football season is in full swing, and there's no better place to get in on the action than BetOnline, your number one source for all things football.
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Hello, what's up? Why is my yard covered in snow? Well, I had to test snowmobiles and all these new mountaineering equipment. And I thought that you guys would like ice cream. Is there a coffee shop at the top? Well, just hot cocoa and a little macaroon.
You're probably wondering how I can do this in one night. Well, in fact. In fact, you can find useful equipment from Viltema. It was a question of your own or a friend's project.
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From Corolla One Studios in Glendale, California, this is The Adam Corolla Show. Adam's guest today, from the new Angel Studios movie, The Senior, Michael Chiklis. And the co-author of Inside the Cartel, Ian Frisch. Plus the news and trending topics with Jason Mayhem Miller. And now, a little disappointed he didn't get raptured.
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Chapter 2: What insights does Michael Chiklis share about his new film?
Yeah, she's single. And then he goes over and goes, hey, can I buy you a drink? And he goes, no, I'm good. And then he goes, you're single?
I'm confronted. Yeah.
Yeah. All right, we're good. That's a little bit of a leap, but yeah, I guess. He'd walk out going, all right, wait, I got to try it.
Yeah, let me figure this out.
I got to figure this out. Something's not computing over here, right? And there's probably a hot chick walking up to him. He's going, skedaddle. I got to figure this out. Because I think these guys all felt like they needed it. They couldn't master it, and it drove them nuts.
Well, it's unmasterable. Chi Chi Rodriguez once said to me, you don't own this game, man. You rent it. And that's it. Sometimes you rent it and sometimes you don't.
Right. But I would you'd have to think and also Jordan works so hard at his craft of basketball. It was so relentless that he probably thought he could will himself.
He hits a lot of balls too. He plays a lot of golf and that's what's confounding about that freaking sport. You just can't One day you're hitting the drive beautifully, but your irons are off. And then there's the reverse. And then everything's working for a minute, but you can't putt. It's a confounding bitch of a sport.
Well, Ted Williams and Michael Jordan couldn't figure it out. So that's all you need to know.
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Chapter 3: How did Michael Chiklis's baldness impact his career?
And he's he's dead. And rattles. Yeah. And we wanted to.
his son got hold of me and you know dad jeff was always loved you and we were trying to get a thing together and then because of covid it was just like you couldn't it was like he's gone like we never did a thing there was never a thing i'm thankful that my dad passed when he did because if he one week later i wouldn't have been able to go to boston to bury him right i wouldn't have been able to do it just popped into my head the other day it's like ah jeff
cats like oh so sad waves and later on oftentimes like you know especially when you get to our age you know uh you know people pass and they get sick and they pass away and you know i lost my best friend five years ago not to covid it was just before i i've lost a lot of people in my life i hate fucking cancer you know just so many different things
And it's particularly shocking when someone has like a widow maker and just, you know, suddenly dies. It's stunning, especially my wife had one of her best friends pass away, a female, unbelievable shape. Why are we getting really we're getting dark here, man.
Where I had happy sandwich dog and now we're going into grim reaper.
Grim reaper. Well, she passed away swimming in her pool and she was like an Olympic level athlete. If you put all of our friends in a list, she would have been at the very bottom of people who we thought would pass away.
Right.
Like vital, full of life. It was just one of her aorta totally clogged. Didn't know it.
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Michael Chiklis share about his high school experiences?
Yeah. So you have to have someone go like, 10, time, that's it. You know, get out.
Oh, you wouldn't have to tell me. I'd be one Mississippi, two Mississippi. Because, you know, three minutes is fine and four minutes is long. So 10 is, that's a long.
But you know what? The benefit of it is insane because it really gets you cold to your core.
We had a cold plunge that was in our high school locker room. That's insane.
So Terry was your guy, huh? He was your teacher. Did you play for him?
He was one of my—I never played varsity. He was one of my coaches on JV. He was the athletic director.
Well, if you play JV for that team, I mean, that's insane because that was the best team in the country.
He was my sophomore religion teacher and day one of religious studies at a Catholic school. He comes in and he says, all right, guys, Adam and Eve never happened. Noah's Ark never happened. There are some great lessons and some great stories to learn, and we're going to explore that. But they are stories.
And then the last thing he says is, now, don't go home and run and tell your parents that your religion teacher just told you the Bible is fake. Wow.
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Chapter 5: How does the movie 'The Senior' reflect on personal growth and second chances?
But all of our football coaches were religion teachers at that high school.
Mine were religious. They weren't religion teachers. I didn't go to a Catholic school, but they were devoutly religious. They were really religious. I mean, we prayed before every game, before every practice. But I will say, you know, four of the greatest men I've ever known, I have to say they were wonderful, great mentors, great teachers. You know, religion is an interesting question.
That's a whole other podcast.
It is, and we can do it later. I didn't know if you were local or not, so you can come back and we'll do religion. Yeah, local. So, boss, the movie When the Game Stands Tall is about the end of a 151 game-winning streak from 1992 to 2004. Guess whose senior year ended the first streak, which went about six years? This big streak went about 12, 13 years ago. That was your senior year, huh?
We watched Pittsburgh beat us at the Oakland Coliseum in late 1991. I think it was the end of November, early December is when high school football ended. And I could only imagine how bad those kids felt for not losing a game for seven years. Now it's on you. Then it goes again, and...
And the movie When the Game Stands Tall is how the team comes back together after this soul-crushing end to the streak.
Well, let me segue into this football movie because I'm really, really proud of this one. The Senior is about a guy named Mike Flint. He's the oldest college football player in the history of college football. And this happened. It's a true story, yeah. Some movies say this is based on— Played for New Mexico?
Yeah.
No, West Texas, Sol Ross State University, which is a Division II.
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Chapter 6: What are the key themes in Ian Frisch's book 'Inside the Cartel'?
It's Division III now. The aforementioned Mike August told me New Mexico.
Yeah, well, close enough. They're very close. But, you know, some movies say this is based on a true story. This one says this is a true story because Mike was right off camera the whole time we shot it.
Really?
Yeah. And this guy, when he was a senior in college, he was the captain of his football team. And they were supposed to go undefeated. You know, they were a great defensive team. He was the captain of the Odessa Permian team that Friday Night Lights is based on. He was the captain of that team. And then he, you know, they were a big feeder of Sol Ross, which was a big-time Division II.
Now they're Division III. But when Mike played there and when he made his comeback, they were Division II. And it's West Texas. It's religion. You know, I mean, talk about religion. Football's religion there, right? So when he was a senior, his first week, there was a freshman out of the dorms, told the kid to get in, you know, that he shouldn't have been out.
And the kid said, go jump off a bridge. They jumped on each other. He broke the kid's nose. The next day, he was not only thrown off the team, he was thrown out of school.
Mm-hmm.
He left in shame. 37 years later, he gets an invite to a reunion and he thinks he's received it in error. He says to his wife, this has to be a mistake. I didn't even graduate.
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Chapter 7: How do drug cartels adapt to changing political landscapes?
And his wife's like, no, the boys in the team were looking for you. They want to see you. They've thought of you all these years. Go down there and get this monkey off your back. This is something that's Driven you crazy for all these years. It's your one big regret. Go and say you're sorry. And that's why he went down to Texas. He was in Tennessee at that time.
He went down to Texas to say, I'm sorry, you guys. I blew your senior year. I'm so sorry for, you know, because I was a hotheaded idiot. And I, you know, and they, you know, they were like, dude. We're 59. That was then. We just want to see you, brother. And they embraced him. It was like no time had passed. And they said, hey, man, you look strapping. You look like you could run with him still.
And he's a strength trainer at Texas A&M. And he goes, well, I probably could. And they were like, well, you're eligible. And he's like, I'm what? And he went, holy shit. And he got it in his head. Well, if I was to try out for this team and make it, maybe I could. I can't change my past, but I can change the meaning of the past.
I can make it take on a new meaning and I can sort of exorcise these demons and get it out of my guts. And that's what he did. And it really is a remarkable story. And it's one of those movies, I know it's a trope, but you'll laugh out loud, you'll cry, and then you'll leave the theater feeling like a human. Rob Corddry's hilarious. He's great. He's so good, man.
Smart, funny, talented, but such pathos in his performance that he's a really fine actor. I think some of the best scenes in this movie are between Rob and I.
We should get him back in here because it's been a minute. All right. If I may, one more thing. My favorite role you ever played, Detective Vic Mackey. The greatest crime drama ever produced has a button on the end of it. The first episode blows you away. You're amazing in it. And people talk about the wire and others. Dude, the shield hands down. Best of all time.
Thank you.
All right.
That was a fun one.
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