Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Introducing Dads: The Podcast with Rory Scovel

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

You may know the hilarious comedian Rory Scovel from his many appearances on CONAN, or maybe you even saw him live on tour with Conan & Friends. If you’ve ever wondered what he’d sound like as the host of his very own Team Coco podcast, wonder no more! Rory has a brand new show called “Dads: The Podcast.” Each week he and co-host Ruthie Wyatt are joined by their hilarious celebrity friends to unpack the mysteries of fatherhood, parenting, and the weirdos who raised us. Conan can’t wait to play some of it for you—but not before revealing the special first guest (hint: himself). If you like what you hear, go listen to the whole thing and subscribe!

Hello there, friends. It's me, Conan O'Brien, and I'm dropping into your feed to tell you about the newest podcast from Team Coco. It's called Dads, the podcast. It's hosted by the extremely funny, very talented comedian Rory Scoville. I'm a huge fan of Rory's. And even though the show is called Dads, I promise you it doesn't matter if you're a dad or not, this show is for everybody. Each week, Rory and his co-host Ruthie Wyatt are joined by a special guest to talk parenting, fatherhood, and the ways our families made us the absolute freaks we are today. People like David Cross, John Leguizamo, Sabrina Jalisse, and yes, even me. That's right, the very first episode is with me, old Papa Conan, as I'm known in children's books. I'm a dad, if

you didn't know. I've got two kids, and no kidding, I really do bear my soul and ask the big questions like, why can't I seem to impress my own son? So I'm going to play some of it for you right now, if you like it. Head on over to Dads the Podcast to hear the whole thing and subscribe. And now, here's Rory Scoville talking with me on the first episode of Dads the Podcast. Did your other siblings also realize the reward of making your dad laugh? Did that become competitive, where it was like, who could be the funniest, who could get his attention in that way? I think it's Bill Murray who said that, or his education in comedy, a lot of it was around the table, the kitchen table. And my parents still with us and still living in Brooklyn, Massachusetts,

and they sit at that same table. And I see it every time I go home. And they still serve food to the places of their kids. Yes. And the kids aren't there. Yeah, but it's like baseball now, they've just put up cardboard images of us. And food just going bad in front of these. Yeah. And they ladle oatmeal under the old cruddy cardboard cutouts that are rotting with stinking food. Oh, man. And the food just dribbles down the front. And then they have arguments with us, you know, why can't you do better in math? And but anyway, yeah, I go and I sit at that table and I think, yeah, I used to, I know exactly where I used to sit. And each one of us would try and get on a roll and try and get something going. And that's where it started.

That's where it started for me. Yeah. Is your dad funny? Yeah, he's funny. It's so funny to talk about my dad this way. But I'm talking about him now like a comedian, meaning I'm like, you know, he's funny, but sometimes his delivery is too slow. He winds it up too much. And it's a little too precious. And I'm like, well, if he's a scientist, he's too analytical about it. He's too analytical about it. He's not a musician about it. You know, he'll tell you a story and they go like, but then, but then now remember, remember what I told you earlier, he'll remind you of the part that's really, no, no, no, I got that part. Yeah. And I'd be like, dad, speed it up. Yeah. And give me, we're going to rewrite it and you're not going to mention the setup seven times. Yeah, exactly.

I get it. I get it. We all get it. What are you, a fucking scientist or a comedian? And he's like, I'm a scientist. I'm sorry. I'm the funniest scientist at work. And I work alone. I have cardboard cutouts of other scientists in the lab. But I'm funnier than my microscope. I work in a lighthouse off the shore. And I'm the funniest one there. I think that's probably true of all of us. I mean, I don't know what was your experience, when did you, Rory, you're, I'm going to say it. I'm just going to say it. You're one of the funnier people I know. And I don't know a lot of people. You know me. I know you. And your dad. And I know the secretary of defense. And I think you're the funniest of those two. But you're a very,

very incessantly funny person in a very unique way. And it's just thinking like, you had to have known that early that you had that superpower. You had to know. One, I appreciate you saying that very much. I agree that I think with Bill Moran, what you just said is that it starts at such a young age. It also started for me realizing how much my dad and like his siblings, how you could get their attention if you did something funny, because they would all try to be funny. I think to make their dad laugh. And as like the grandchild of that, I got to witness that process and then try to figure out how to fit into it, which is funny because I don't think any of my other siblings do that at all. I had no competition of anyone else trying to be funny. All of my other siblings

were like, no, we're like making straight A's and becoming doctors. And that's what's impressing dad. And I'm like, well, I'm choosing a career that doesn't pay anything for a solid decade. So who's winning now? So who's winning because he'll smirk sometimes at my comments. But I remember my dad very clearly. I think it was on AMC back when AMC was actually played classic movies. And it was like, or it was maybe Turner classic movies, but Mark's brother's horse feathers came on and my dad made me watch it. And I remember that kind of the lightbulb went off that adults can be silly. And then I was like, Oh, I like this. I thought adults, you know, could make jokes, but then it never occurred to me, you could make a career out of

it. So I agree, I'm willing to bet that there's a lot of comedians who do have, you know, influence of either parent, but for some reason, and I think that's kind of where this podcast just generates from is that mystery of dads and fathers and why, why was it that when your dad laughed at a joke that meant so much to you? And I bet you there's so many dads who were like tough, it was tough to get them to laugh or it meant something. It's one of the best connections you can have with somebody because there's a kind of making someone laugh. It's something even kind of strange that's uniquely you is a way of almost having a secret handshake. Like you know, you know that they really understand you. It's such a, it's such an intimate thing. And so, you know,

obviously, Freud explained it a million times, but we're afraid of our dads, but we also, there are heroes, you know, part of us wants to murder them. The other part thinks we'll know I'll get I'll get caught. I can't kill him. I'll do time in jail. But it could look like an accident. Then you go down that hole. I'm still a minor. So maybe this is the time to do it. Do it now before I turn 16. But I'm always putting stuff off with which Freud also says. Yes, exactly. And you know, he doesn't have a set schedule. He goes to the lab at different times. So it's hard to position myself with the rifle in the right place. I don't know when the car is going to come by. And you know, the right rifle, I ordered it through the mail, which was Oswald's mistake.

Don't do that. You want to make sure it's not connected to you. Anyway, we've all had those thoughts. And that sums up all of our thoughts about fathers. But if you can make your father laugh, it's magical. It's just this magical like, oh, he gets me. And I just reduced him to this shaking red face defying pile. And you're like, that's fantastic. So of course that would you then want to double down on that. Okay, that was me talking with Roy Scoville on the very first episode of Dad's The Podcast. I know what you're thinking. That was very profound and wise. Conan has depths. We didn't know he had. God, is there anything Conan can't do? Okay, I'm getting a sense that none of you are thinking that. Here's the point. Head on over to Dad's The Podcast, listen

to the whole thing. And more important, if you like it, rate it and subscribe. You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you're listening to this right now. Thanks for bearing with me and I'll talk to you soon.