Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Kumail Nanjiani

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

Comedian, actor, and writer Kumail Nanjiani feels apologetic about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.Kumail sits down with Conan to discuss his recent absence on the television program, coming from a h...ardworking family, having incredible balance, hating Ferris Bueller, and the best way to reward oneself. Plus, Conan responds to a listener voicemail about being a godfather.Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (323) 451-2821.For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.This episode is sponsored by Mizzen+Main (www.comfortable.af code: CONAN), Clif Bar (www.clifbar.com/CONAN), Zinus (www.zinus.com/CONAN), State Farm (1-800-STATE-FARM), Ben & Jerry's (www.benjerry.com), ZipRecruiter (www.ziprecruiter.com/CONAN), and Hair Club (www.hairclub.com/CONAN).

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, my name is Kamel Nanjiani and I feel apologetic about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Well hello and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. This is the penultimate episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend of the season. Not the show. Not the show. We are coming back the penultimate episode. Not the final. I love using that word. I don't get to use it much. Do you ever use antipenultimate? No, what is antipenultimate? That's like third to last. Third to last? Yeah. You'd think it'd be the opposite. I know. That doesn't make sense. So the third from last is the antipenultimate. Yeah. That's stupid. Remind me never to take a long road trip with you. I think I'd strangle you. There's no danger of that. Just you and I, there's 80 miles of desert and you and I
Starting point is 00:01:15 driving and then you're like... They would just find my body and dusty body on the side of a road. No, no, no, trust me, gorely, they would not find your body. Jesus. They'd find a coyote years later wearing your glasses. Let me, this is our second to last, second to last episode. Something's a little bit different today, which is no sonom obsesion. Yeah, it feels off. Yeah, it feels, it's not quite the same because there isn't someone here with a ton of hair, just a massive giant pile of dark hair who's laughing, which always adds something to the podcast, and also periodically jumping in to shit all over me. I'm uncomfortable without her here. Just talking to you one-on-one makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Why are you uncomfortable? I don't know, you just... Those eyes
Starting point is 00:02:07 that have such keen intelligence staring at you? No, it's the look of a madman. Some say madman, some say look of keen intelligence, tomato-tomato. Okay. We do have, sitting in for us is Jack of All Trades, Jen Samples. Hey, Jen. Hi. How are you? Good, how are you? Describe what you do at the show, and I just mean that for the viewers and also because I don't know. The viewers? Well, I basically researched the guests. I know. You do a lot of research on the guests. Yes. Well, you do a great job. Oh, thank you. I do have a complaint to Lodge. Okay. Let me talk about this. I have my defense right here. I get this sheet that is just some facts about the guests, and I have to say I rarely look down at the sheet because most of the people I'm talking to, I'm a fan, I have things that
Starting point is 00:02:56 naturally pop up. The font. Now, I know this is a podcast and you can't picture it, but imagine the smallest type you've ever seen. In the Guinness Book of World Records, someone once put the entire New Testament on the head of a pin using like a sophisticated laser, and so if you look through a powerful electronic microscope, you can read it. That's the font that I have in front of me. This is not Jen's fault. I was going to say I was immediately going to throw gorelly under the bus here. Wait, wait. Okay. Well, this is tough because first of all, the font is not the font size. The font is Cambria, and I don't think you've got any complaints with that. It's a beautiful font. The size. I have to fit all of this under one page. Can we keep a baseball bat in here? I don't mean
Starting point is 00:03:41 a big bat, like a stickball bat. More of a dowel, a heavy dowel that's long, and when you start saying, well, first of all, not the font, and you wouldn't even get to the minute you said Cambria, it would be a series of high-arching wax, sort of like when medieval puppets, one hits the other puppet. Punch and Judy. Punch and Judy. Yeah, I know. I'm setting you up. I know what I'm in for. I don't give a damn anymore. Okay, but I sent to gorelly. He changes the font, and I would like to point out on this sheet there is still space, so he could have made it a little bigger. Yeah. There's a whole sheet of... Jen really are throwing me under the bus. I know. First of all, I am stunned because Jen seems like a very sweet person. Yeah, I've got different thoughts. Get me on a
Starting point is 00:04:27 mic and... And that was intense, Jen. I mean, first of all, your first time on mic and you completely reach across the table like a rabid animal and attack gorelly. I do support his decision for Cambria font. I think that's a great choice. Yeah, really good choice. A lot of collars calling in right now, and we're getting a lot of support for Cambria. A lot of support in the Midwest. Let's go to the board. Let's go to the board. Cambria's ahead. Palatino with a close second. Yeah. But let me say something that that's an 11-size font because when I go to 12, it knocks it into two pages and you requested one page. I'm not sure I ever did. You keep saying that I requested one page. Why would I make that up? I don't know. You're a strange man. This is the second to last
Starting point is 00:05:09 episode. Second to last penultimate episode. Penultimate episode to freedom. Anyway, but you know, gorelly, and if I might call you gorelly. No. I think we have an interesting dynamic here on the podcast. And it's interesting to notice it when Sony isn't here, but we can talk about her because she's not here. But as you noted, the BBC did a story on the podcast and they said that they cast you while this person gave a very thoughtful analysis of our podcast. And what did they say, gorelly? They said that you are the... I remember correctly, he thought at first you were kind of like the paternal figure. And we were the children, but the more they listened, they realized I was the father, Sonya was the mother, and you were like the wayward child.
Starting point is 00:05:56 Right. Yeah. That's not the way I see it. Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate, I think. You think I'm the child? Yeah, I do. But a child, like a Twilight Zone child who has powers who can control the parents with his mind. We should get to this show. You think we should get to the show? Yeah, I think it's time to get to the show. Do we have enough good stuff that we can use that we can get to the show now? Yeah. You think so? Wow, you've got a low bar. Well, you should see what I'm dealing with. Oh my God. You're going to miss me. When this thing takes its hiatus, you're going to miss me. This is our last recording session, even though it's not the last episode, and you and I will
Starting point is 00:06:36 say goodbye for a couple months. The way Let It Be was the final album, but not the last one. Abbey Road. Abbey Road. See, look at, God, you'd almost think we had something in common. Nope, we don't. My guest today is a very funny comedian, actor, and writer. He co-wrote and produced the Oscar-nominated film The Big Sick, currently stars in the hit HBO series Silicon Valley. You can also see him in the brand new movie, Stuber. We are very excited. He's here with us. I'm a huge fan. Kumeil. Non-Gioni, welcome. We should bring anyone up to date who doesn't know. Kumeil was, you were booked to be on my show
Starting point is 00:07:24 Thursday, this last Thursday, and I would say about, I think they came to me, I was in the makeup chair, and 25 minutes before the show, which never happens, Jeff Ross just came in and said, Kumeil's not gonna be able to be here. And you are, I'm gonna get this out of the way right away, you are famously a very nice guy. You are extremely hardworking. You are punctual. This is not your MO at all. This was something that was out of your control. Yes, it was completely out of my control. I was shooting Silicon Valley. They said they'd have me out at a certain time. The details are there's a scene we were shooting. I was gonna be just in the last bit of the scene. They said, we'll shoot you a bit of the scene
Starting point is 00:08:08 then you'll get out. And as soon as we rehearsed, they were like, even though you're only in the last page, you're not gonna be able to leave just because of the way it's set up. Right. And they were right. Right, right. There was no way that they could really get me out. So soon as I found that out, I called my people and I was like, hey, what's gonna happen? And they were like, you have to get there. And I was like, well, then talk to Silicon Valley. And it just wasn't gonna happen. I
Starting point is 00:08:32 actually texted friends to get as a replacement and Martin Starr agreed to do it because he was not in that scene. Right. But by then you guys had decided to sort of... We decided, you know, we were scrambling and what happened was they come in, they say, well, Coomail's not here and, you know, Jeff Ross said, I think it's drugs and we all, you know, nodded and said, well, that's probably, that's Coomail's MO. He's probably wasted. No, we immediately was thinking, what do we do? And then I was saying, you know what,
Starting point is 00:09:08 instead of just finding someone else, let's just have fun with the fact that we only have a guest on our show and the guest didn't come. And I'll talk to Sona, my trusty assistant. And so we ended up doing that. And so it just became a little bit of a happening. And people really liked the show. It was everywhere. Yeah. To my... I was... And the headlines were like, you know, Hollywood Reporter would be like, Conan forced to improvise show after Coomail Nanjiani bailed on him last minute. Like they
Starting point is 00:09:39 were all like that. All these people on Twitter are like, I'm unfollowing you. How dare you to Conan? I know, I know. And that's why I want to help get the word out that we are friends and I'm a longtime fan of yours and a big admirer of yours. And this had nothing to do with you. So, you know, I'm a little like Beyonce in that I have a beehive. Anyone with me on this? Not in any way. Okay. Isn't it a beehive?
Starting point is 00:10:05 Yes. That's what I meant to say. But I'm from New England. And when we say beehive, it comes out as be. Okay. All right. Some people say aunt and we say aunt. Okay. That's my excuse for not knowing the correct... So you're like Beyonce. I'm like Beyoncé. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:10:22 And I'm like her in a lot of other ways too. I'm an incredibly... Name three. Singing, dancing. I think my impact on culture, American culture in the late 20th, early 21st century, in all of those ways, I'm exactly like... I will say, obviously, singing, dancing. No, but I do think your impact genuinely on pop culture has been massive. Oh, that's right. And maybe in ways that you don't even... Like I've told you this before, I started comedy
Starting point is 00:10:57 because of you. And so that's why I was like, when I saw, started watching your monologue when I wasn't there. Yeah. I was like, oh, every other word, I would love this. The only problem is, it's fucking about me. And it was such a great show. And I was like, the best Conan I did was the one I didn't do. Exactly. Well, no, in a way, and I'm going to thank you, it ended up being a really great show and probably got you more press than...
Starting point is 00:11:32 And think about it. Not certainly. Absolutely. Everyone was like, it was all trending. And so it's the old, all publicity is good publicity. Yeah. So in a way, you were part of making this really cool show. And so I do thank you. Well, you're being very, very kind. I'll tell you this. So while the show was taping, I was texting with your writer, a friend of mine, Todd Levin, and he was sort of telling me
Starting point is 00:11:57 what was going on. He told me about the Lion King thing. And I was like, well, this sounds great. And then I got down with work. I went right to sleep because I had to be up at 5am the next day and I woke up and it was everywhere. It was everywhere. And people were like, did you watch it? It's great. Did you watch it? I was like, I cannot wait to watch. So I was in my trailer after rehearsal and I started watching it. And 90 seconds in, I started sweating. Oh, no. I really, really had such like a physical reaction to it. I felt so bad.
Starting point is 00:12:26 Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. I had to stop watching. So I will watch the whole thing at some point, but probably not for a little while. Well, okay. I know what you mean because I'm the same way when it comes to anything that involves me. It's hard for me to watch it as an observer. And I was talking to JP Buck who works on my show and he handles a lot of the comedy. And we were just talking the other day about how he saw you really early on doing stand up. And he said, what I remember about Kumel is how his jokes were so smart and so carefully crafted and his take on things
Starting point is 00:13:06 was so intelligent. And you've always been that way. You've taken this very, very seriously because you come from serious people. Yeah. I come from a very serious, did JP tell you then why he didn't put me in the show that he auditioned me for? Did that come up? I think he said he knew that one day you would, you would flake in that show. And so he wanted to punish you. No, who knows, you know, probably limited, you know, No, no, no, it's totally fine.
Starting point is 00:13:35 It was very, very early on. I just started stand up. I do come from very serious people like I it is interesting. We both are obviously comedians, but we both take a job very seriously. Right. And I'm not like a guy who's always goofing around. Right. I take pride in taking my work seriously and really working on it. My dad is like the hardest working person I've ever met. Let's talk about him. He's the sense of humor, your dad.
Starting point is 00:14:02 Very funny. Yeah. Very funny, but an incredibly hard worker and a serious worker. Very serious. He's a doctor. Yes. I remember when I was like 13 or so, he, we were in Pakistan and they wanted to move to America. So he started studying for the USMLE, which is basically, you know, the doctor certification exam. You do it when you're like 28. He was much older than that. And he would like work, work and then study all night. And I was like, this is unbelievable. I really, I've never, I've never seen anyone work that hard.
Starting point is 00:14:33 I think we, okay, we have that in common because my dad's a doctor research and I grew up watching my dad get up in the morning, go to work. Then he would come home at night and have dinner and then go back to the lab. And I just thought that that's what everyone's dad did. Right. And then I would talk to other kids and they would say, what, what are you talking about? My dad loves me. Yeah. You can't see, but when I was laughing and crying and my mom also just an incredibly hard worker.
Starting point is 00:15:12 And so that's what I grew up seeing. And it's really interesting because there's this, there's this image out there of people that work in comedy as where cut ups that just giggle at everything and, and life's a blast. And I think, well, that's really interesting because it, it is true that I love to try and make people laugh just in my everyday life. I like to laugh. I like to have fun, but I am serious as a heart attack about getting it right. Right. And that to the degree that I shouldn't probably admit this, but my head writer, my old head writer, Mike Sweeney, he went to see there will be blood when it came out. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:00 And the character that Daniel Day Lewis plays. Plane view. Yeah. Daniel Plane view. He saw the movie and I hadn't seen it yet. And he went, I just saw the most amazing movie there will be blood and I said, yeah, yeah, I want to go see that. I'm going to see it tonight. And he went, you're going to love it.
Starting point is 00:16:14 It's about you. And I hadn't seen it yet. And I thought, oh, wow, cool. It's probably about a really fun loving. And I went and saw the movie. And of course, then I was horribly hurt because he's this beat someone to death at the end. Yeah. He beat someone to death at the end and he's an abusive alcoholic to his deaf son.
Starting point is 00:16:34 And he's just this, in so many ways, this tortured tumor of a man. And so, and I said, what are you, I came in after I saw the movie and I'm like, well, what the fuck are you talking about? And he said, no, no, no, just certain scenes. And he said there's a scene where he said the scene where he breaks his leg early in the movie and crawls all the way to the assayer's office to check to see how much he said. That's you about when you're committed to something, you will crawl. And he said the other thing is the scene where he's trying to figure out why there's this piece of land in the middle. That's the bandied tract that he doesn't have. And he keeps saying, why don't I own this land?
Starting point is 00:17:15 Right. And I'm that way about this part of the sketch doesn't line up. Right. And people, and sometimes people are like, yeah, but we kind of like, it doesn't work. We need to fix it. And so. I mean, that's exactly, I think the work you put into making something perfect is so much easier to deal with than the regret you feel. Yes.
Starting point is 00:17:37 When it's not exactly the way you want it afterwards, because that's a regret you're going to live with for the rest of your life. Whereas the work you do to make it perfect is a finite amount of work. Right. And it's also hard. Emily says this to me. She's like, you know, you think you're always right. And I was like, I really was like, but I am. And she was like, do you hear yourself?
Starting point is 00:17:59 I was like, yeah, I was kind of a joke, but also I at least know if I think something should be a certain way and then it goes that way. I do it that way. And then it doesn't work. I at least learn something from it. Yes. Because if I don't do that work and I know something's not going to work and then it doesn't work, I don't really learn anything from that. Here's what I've learned to do, which is say if we do it a certain way, it will work. And then if we go ahead and do it that way and it doesn't work, deny that we did it exactly the way I wanted to do it.
Starting point is 00:18:32 Okay, that's good. Yeah. And so I've found to be, I call it being a shape shifting prick. Uh-huh. And it's very helpful. So when it works, you did it. When it doesn't work, it wasn't. I was screwed.
Starting point is 00:18:45 Yeah. I was screwed and betrayed by others around me. This makes me really sad that Sonam of Sessian could not be part of the podcast today. She is with her, they're celebrating her mom's birthday. And I think it involves her and her entire family getting on a boat. I think so, yeah. Yeah, and riding around and so she couldn't be here today, which is too bad because the microphone, her microphone would be on fire right now. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:13 She would be jumping in so much about my passive-aggressive tricks to avoid responsibility. Do you know in six months I can back that? Well, like what kind of stuff are we talking about? Oh, he's a tyrant. Please, please. Oh, yeah. I, Stalin did a lot of good. I like to say.
Starting point is 00:19:30 You like to say that? I like to say that. I really do. The tyrants have accomplished great things. No, I get, I guess the point I'm making, which you can relate to is there's this work and intensity about your work that there's no substitute for. And it's the same in, you know, with our, with, with our dads, it was medicine. And with us, it's making something, trying to make something funny. Right.
Starting point is 00:20:02 And it's not different. It, I mean, yes, one saves lives and the other probably has very little social value, but. Yeah, there's a waste of everyone's time. Waste of everyone's time, but ultimately more lucrative. It really is. Take that, doctors. It really, if you do it right, you can have several boats. Let me ask you this.
Starting point is 00:20:26 Okay. Do you ever feel, so when you do something, like you worked on a sketch, you were like, this part's not working. And then you fix it, fix it, fix it. It airs and it kills and it's perfect. How do you feel at that point? And how long do you feel that way? It, I feel great, but it doesn't last long.
Starting point is 00:20:45 Right. Because then you're on to the next feeling. Right. And that has happened. And so I, I have a very short, very short shelf life for feeling good about things I've accomplished. It goes away very quickly. How about you?
Starting point is 00:21:09 Same. It like barely feels it because then I'm like, all right, did that. What's next? Because, um, yeah, yeah, I never really, I do think it's not, I think sort of dwelling on a success can be bad for you. Yes. I really do think that. And so I do feel satisfaction when something goes great, but really not for very long.
Starting point is 00:21:32 And then it's like, all right, what's, what's the next, I don't know if I told you this, but you know, I obviously love David Letterman and wanted to do a show and, and got to do a show. I got to do stand up on it. I worked on this set for a long time, you know, uh, like for a year with Eddie Brill was the, was the book and, and I finally, I perfected the set. I did it a ton of times. I went on and I did it and it went great.
Starting point is 00:21:57 And I remember as soon as it was over, I was like, okay, how do I do this again? There was no moment of like, man, I just did Letterman. I just remember Letterman coming up shaking my hand. My only reaction to that was, oh, he's got makeup on his face. Yes. You know, it's funny. I don't know if people feel that way about me. It's so pale that when they put makeup on me, I, I, I don't think that's the reaction
Starting point is 00:22:19 I get because the makeup they put on me, uh, just gets me to looking human. So I've never noticed that you had makeup on your face. Right. Right. So, so the times that you've come over and, uh, uh, you know, you've been on my show countless times and, and greeted me, you're just seeing a human being. Right. You don't realize that.
Starting point is 00:22:38 Well, now that I see you now, I'm like, well, I guess he had makeup on his face. Yes. Exactly. You can actually see that I, yeah. Cool. Kumail's looking at me and there's blue veins under my, under my face. I'm kidding. You look great. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:22:51 Wow. Uh, but, um, but yeah, that's the funny thing is the first time I think I was on Letterman was in 93 before I had even started my own late night show and I saw him and he just looked very orange. Yeah. Remember, he had this sort of, I just remember being stunned like he had been, it looked like Cheeto dust. Right.
Starting point is 00:23:15 He looked like he had been, uh, uh, someone had taken like a spray paint pen, spray paint gun and fired Cheeto dust at him. That's what he looked like. Yeah. That's what it was. Cause you're like, you're so, cause I didn't meet him before the show. You're like so nervous and then you do the setting that it's done and they're clapping and you're like, this one great.
Starting point is 00:23:31 And you look over and I was like, Oh, he has makeup on his face. And then he's gone. He just walks out of your life forever again. Right. And that was my only impression. He had a, not many people know this, but he would get into a hot air balloon. Right. And the balloon would open.
Starting point is 00:23:44 Yeah. He would leave the New York studio. I mean, if he could, he would. Yeah. He would get out of there as soon as he could. You know what I loved about the end of his shows, when he was ending his shows was how unsentimental he was about everything. Like you'd have like Norm MacDonald almost crying and he's like, okay, yeah, let's
Starting point is 00:24:00 wrap this up. Yeah. I think, uh, I think, uh, he was uncomfortable with, uh, sentiment, which is kind of refreshing these days. Cause I think there are a lot of people that can lean into sentiment and, uh, I have a big sentimental streak, but I'm also always covering it up with cold ash so that no one can see it. Well, you're going to find the balance.
Starting point is 00:24:23 Right. Yeah. Yeah. Every now and then, if you're always nice, that doesn't mean anything, but if you're like sincerely nice every now and then, yeah, oh my God. No, no, I, I try and, you know, work it in every now and then when the doctor tells me it's time, um, I got to know a lot about you as I think we all did with the big sick. And what was interesting about that movie is that it doesn't even depict the degree
Starting point is 00:24:50 to which you were raised in a very rigid religious system. Do you know what I mean? The extent of it. I mean, the, and like your relationship with women as, uh, as, uh, as a young man. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was raised in a very, very religious household and, um. Shiite Muslim?
Starting point is 00:25:11 Shiite Muslim in Pakistan, which is a minority in Pakistan. So that was its own thing. You sort of had to hide that you were Shiite at school, you know, and I have a very Shiite first name, uh, but it wasn't so common back then. And so people didn't really know, but you kind of had to hide it. And if you went to the mosque every now and then you'd see another kid from school and you'd be like, Hey, we have, we have a secret. Right.
Starting point is 00:25:32 Sure. Um, is that the kind of thing where if people did find out, they would give you a hard time? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm not generalizing. This was my experience. Right. There were, it was a very, very Muslim country and hence a very Muslim classroom.
Starting point is 00:25:45 So the kids who were Hindu or Christian, there were only a couple of them and they would get bullied about it in school by kids because the Islam thing for us at that time was so important, such a part of being a person. And the thing with girls was interesting because, um, I remember, uh, when I first started having these feelings and hearing that I remember I was at a religious sermon and the guy said, if you, um, look at a girl with a lustful gaze, the sin is equivalent to stabbing the prophet's nephew in the back while he's praying. This is what we were told.
Starting point is 00:26:27 So you were raised more or less Catholic. Yeah. And again, we have a lot of similarities, but yeah, that is intense. That is, that is really, that's a quote of what he said. Yeah. That's what he said. And, you know, when you're like 12 and suddenly you're having these feelings and you're seeing Cindy Crawford in a diet, Pepsi commercial or whatever that was.
Starting point is 00:26:46 And you're like, I'm really stabbing the prophet's nephew right now. It was, it was really, really intense, a lot of guilt about it. What I am lucky didn't happen is I think what can happen in that situation is you can sort of become almost like a woman hater. You can sort of start resenting them for the way they make you feel. And I never had that. I always just really wanted them in your life and in other ways in, in any way I could get at that.
Starting point is 00:27:16 Yeah. I remember being like 15 and I'm being like, I'm never going to have sex. I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get to have sex. I remember thinking that at 35, but then seven years later, my dreams came true. That's funny is, uh, you, you grew up with your parents planning to set you up in an arranged marriage and that is part of a big part of the big sick, but that was going to be the plan, which is still hard for a lot of people who aren't part of a religious system like that to, to believe because it sounds like such a fairy tale situation, you know,
Starting point is 00:27:54 that there's an arranged marriage and you're unhappy, but you must do what your parents wish. Right. But I think the expectations of a marriage and a romantic relationship are different. And so I don't even know, again, I didn't really arrange marriage, you know, I didn't do that. Well, there's two terms, there's arranged marriage and then there's love marriage and love marriage is like, we would say, oh, she had a love marriage or he had a love marriage.
Starting point is 00:28:19 That's like a bad, you know, it's a bad phrase. Is that, is that meant to be a term like of, it's a love marriage? Yes. That's not a great thing. No, it's not a great thing. Love marriage. You know, I have cousins now who are getting arranged married and I don't want to speak for them, but they seem, the expectations are different here, you know, marriage is
Starting point is 00:28:40 about love and this one person with another romantic love, that kind of thing, you know, the one, all that sort of stuff there, it's really sort of a contract between two families, it's two families coming together. So in a way it's more stable, but it's just very different than the way America and most of the West views marriage. It's just different expectations. Right. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:04 All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. And we're back. It was a very quick break. That was a very quick break. Yeah. Well, not, we actually played an ad in there somewhere, so it probably wasn't a quick break.
Starting point is 00:29:20 Yeah. You're buying your beach house? Yes. I'm still trying to save up for that. I made a couple of bad investments recently, invested in a theme park, that was a bad idea. Oh yeah, theme parks are done, dude. I know, I didn't know. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:34 And what was the theme of the park? It was all about cholera, cholera epidemics in the late 19th century. Rollercoasters and all that? Yeah. And just, you know, recreating just standing water that hadn't been so short. Ironically, wasn't there an actual cholera outbreak at the cholera? Was there? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:29:58 Sometimes I joke about things and then it turns out it's true. Yeah. Or I make a joke about it and then it becomes true because I'm a Stephen King character. So that's also possible. You know, we were talking about ways, things that I can relate to about you, and there are so many, but you, we were talking about hard work, we were talking about this ethic that you have, which I can relate to, of wanting to do a good job. There's also, I sense, I'm curious if you have this, it's took me a long time and I'm
Starting point is 00:30:34 still working on it, splurging on anything for myself, you know, having an indulgence. I'm much more comfortable doing that for other people, but when it comes to me, I have some things, it can be difficult for me to do things for myself. Does that make sense? Yes. No, exactly. Actually, that's one thing that Emily had worked on, has worked on me a lot is like, you have to be okay spending.
Starting point is 00:31:04 It's a guilt thing, all right? It's sort of like, I think ultimately you don't deserve it. I have, so I was raised in this religious way that was very, I'm sure similar for you, very mathematical, right? Which is like, if you do good, you get good, you go to heaven, if you do bad, it's the same, you go to hell. It's very mathematical, and so I still, I think those structures are still in my brain, so I really still function the same way, where it's like, if I do enough work, I can play
Starting point is 00:31:29 a video game, and if I don't do it, then I don't deserve it, you know, so like today. Today's sort of my first day off in a very, very long time. Even today, if I went home and played video games, I would feel guilty about it. And so, yeah, I don't really spend- Oh, okay, but why, you worked really hard. You worked really hard yesterday on Silicon Valley, then you busted your ass to get to my show. Didn't do it.
Starting point is 00:31:56 Oh, wait, I'm sorry. You didn't do that. No, no, but what I'm saying is, you work really hard. You've got this movie, Stuber, that you've made open, I mean, this is, this, you should today get to play video games. Yeah, but I'll just be like, I know all the other stuff. I have to do. And so like this morning, I had, I had like, this next movie that I'm going to do, hopefully,
Starting point is 00:32:23 I like met with a director on that and worked on that. And so from that, there's a lot of work to do that's in my head. And I always feel like, I always feel like the best jokes I've ever written are jokes that I could have only written in that moment. I don't think they're like inevitable jokes that I would have come up with later. Sometimes like you write a scene and you're like, oh, I could have only done this today. In this time. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:46 And so every time I'm playing video games, I'm like, oh, I'm missing things that I would only be able to do right now. Yeah. And I don't, although with Emily, I think replenishing yourself is very, very important and caring like that for yourself is very, very important. The other thing that we've, that, that I'm trying to work on is deriving the same sense of satisfaction from my home life and my marriage and, you know, all that stuff. The same satisfaction from that, that I derive from work.
Starting point is 00:33:23 Yeah. Which is very hard. Right. Yeah. It, it, I, that's helped me a lot. I mean, my wife lies, it's helped me a lot with that. And also having kids, my, I can't think of their names. I'm going to get it.
Starting point is 00:33:44 I'll get it soon. Now it's gone again. Well, can you give me a letter? It starts. No, I don't have a letter. There's the first one and the second one. That's what I call them. Okay.
Starting point is 00:33:54 All right. That's specific enough for me. I'm not even sure of genders here. No, I have, I have two kids, Nevin Beckett and Beckett, Will, there's just all these things that unfolded naturally, like we love action movies and we love watching the Mission Impossible movies, you know, with Tom Cruise and it started naturally, but I, whenever there's a fight, we watch these movies together in front of the TV at night and it's, it's, he doesn't have school.
Starting point is 00:34:24 He's allowed to watch TV if there's no school the next day. So we're watching a Mission Impossible movie and when an intense fight scene or born identity or one of those movies, any movie like that, when the fight scene breaks out, I attack my son in like a playful way, but I'm, I'm, I'm, uh, attacking him as, and I say, this is to make it an immersive experience and, uh, it's like 4D or whatever it is. Yeah, it's 4D. It's, it's, it's, when I was a kid, there was this movie that earthquake that came out and they put all of these, they said earthquake incense around and what they did is they put
Starting point is 00:34:57 these little things under the seats that made the seat vibrate when the earthquake was happening. Yeah. It was a big marketing gimmick. I want to say this was like, uh, 1977, it was like earthquake incense around. And that was the big deal. I'm doing that for my son. His whole life is a sense around.
Starting point is 00:35:12 Yes. His whole life is anytime we're watching something in a fight breaks out, I start wailing on, on him and he wails on me. And then when the fight's over, we immediately separate and we're ready for dialogue. But that's not something you can't know that before you have kids, but there are all these things now in my life that completely take me out of that world that I didn't know was accessible to me. I was, I didn't know I could, I was capable of that before I had a family.
Starting point is 00:35:40 I was a little worried about him. I just going to be, yeah, am I going to be able to beat up a little kid? Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know that I had the ability to attack someone who's my son who's smaller than me, uh, in the privacy of my own home. And now I'm liberated. I mean, you knew that it was physically possible, but emotionally you didn't know if you could
Starting point is 00:35:58 go there. And I was worried. I knew I could get away with it, but I was worried that at some point I'd be relaxed enough with someone I admire that I'd talk about it on a podcast and that's how I'd get caught. Right. And, uh, you know, we'll see if that comes to pass. Um, do you see how old is Beckett?
Starting point is 00:36:15 He's 13. Do you see yourself in him is like in some ways, in some ways I see myself in him in other ways. He's more chill than I was. I see more of my daughter. My daughter is an extremely hard working. She's very tough on herself. Even when I, we try hard to tell her, take it easy.
Starting point is 00:36:32 How old is she? She is, uh, 15. So she's, but she's been this way. You know, I'll find her studying on a Saturday morning, you know, birds tweeting outside. Right. She should be, and I'll say you should go and have fun and she'll say, fun, fine, there's work to be done. And, uh, and then she becomes, uh, the character and there will be blood.
Starting point is 00:36:55 And so my son is more chill. He's, he loves video games. He's incredibly smart about computers and I don't know anything about that stuff. Right. So when I ask him about his world, he'll start to talk about coding and seconds into it. I'm gone. I don't understand. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:12 Do you understand you? I mean, um, I mean, you play video games, but it doesn't like you, you don't write code. I'm not, you know, I did study computer science in school, but I honestly was never good at it. I felt like I missed a class and then I never like recovered. Like that was a class that was, they were like, this is what you're going to need to know going forward. And I just never got it.
Starting point is 00:37:33 Right. It was a weird thing for me because I was a very, very serious kid. I worked really hard. I studied all the time. I literally would study all day. I got really good grades and I was very proud of my grades because I had nothing else. You know, um, I wasn't popular. I wasn't funny.
Starting point is 00:37:51 I wasn't good looking. I wasn't good at sports. The only thing I had was good grades, which was not valued at school, but I valued it. Even my parents were like, you're going a little hard. Uh, wait, but let me, this is important. You said you weren't funny. You were funny with your friends. Not really.
Starting point is 00:38:09 I didn't realize that was funny until college. Honestly. Oh, okay. Uh, it wasn't, that's cause I could relate to, there's a lot of things there that I could understand, which is I was not the class clown. Right. I was not the guy who was making the whole class laugh. Right.
Starting point is 00:38:22 I was, but I had friends who knew me, who knew that I was funny, and I knew that I had that gear, but I, it's not like I could, uh, I wasn't someone who was showing that to the world. Right. I didn't have the guts to do that. Yeah. And, uh, I was grinding away. Just like you.
Starting point is 00:38:45 You were doing like open mics basically. Um, I, I really was not, I did not think of myself as funny. I had, I realized now looking back when I was like, you know, 12, dude, 19 or 20, like extremely low self-esteem, I really, really thought that I had like nothing of value to give to anybody. Like I truly believe that. And so I wasn't even funny with my friends. I had a few friends and they, I think really liked me, but I always also thought that when
Starting point is 00:39:12 I was hanging out with them that they were doing me some charity or something. It's such a weird thing. I was like, oh, they're hanging out without me right now. Like I would take these things. I haven't told anybody this. I would like call a friend at home. This was landlines and they're like, oh, he's out. So then I would call my other friend to be like, are they hanging out together with that?
Starting point is 00:39:29 And they'll be like, oh, yeah, he's out. And I'm like, oh my God, they're hanging out without me. And then that's a spiral where I'm like calling them like every half hour, like, oh, is that are they back yet? So it wasn't until college and I remember I was like 19 or 20 or something. And I, I remember I was like saying something and people were laughing really, really hard. My friends were, I was making fun of Aladdin or something and they were laughing really hard.
Starting point is 00:39:53 And then a few months later, they were like, you know, like we all have, they were like, you're the funny one of the group. And I was like, whoa. And I remember when I was making people laugh, like it felt so exciting. It was like this new thing that I'd never felt before. And it became like very important to me immediately. I can relate to it. It's origin stories for superheroes.
Starting point is 00:40:14 Right. It's a moment where they realize they can do this thing. And I always think, I think comedians can relate to that because there's that moment. I mean, a lot of comedians have similar DNA, which is we're not great athletes. I'm sure there are some comedians that are amazing athletes, but they're more the exception than the rule. Right. You know, and we're not the ones that are incredibly good looking because if you really
Starting point is 00:40:42 have great comedy chops, it's because all you've done is hyper develop this defense mechanism intensely for 25 years. And then it turns into this laser beam at some point that you can shoot out of your head and it makes people laugh and it has power, but you don't know it has any power until you're in your twenties. You don't know that it, you don't know that you can make money with it or that you can in any way impress women with it. That just doesn't seem, no, like it's, it's not a superpower until later in your life
Starting point is 00:41:19 when you realize, oh, wait a minute, this has some value. Right. I remember being like trying to figure out what I want to do. And I remember thinking when I was like a teenager, I was like, I was like, oh, I have really good balance. Like, you know, I think the kids do, I was like, I never fall over. Yeah. You know that thing that kids do where they're like, either kick you in the back of your
Starting point is 00:41:40 knees to make you fall down or like somebody will like sort of kneel behind you and then someone will push you over. I would never fall down. And so I was like, oh, that's my thing. I got good balance. It's hard to make me fall down. And I remember being like, what can I do with that? What can I do with that?
Starting point is 00:41:56 And then when I was 19, I was doing the Aladdin riff and I was like, oh, this is way better than that other thing. We probably wouldn't know each other if you had staked everything on good balance. I doubt that I'd be here saying, well, you know, I'm as balanced guy. Here he is. Incredible. Yesterday, incredible footage of you. Nine people tried to tip you over yesterday and you didn't go down once again.
Starting point is 00:42:24 Yeah. He hasn't fallen in 732 days. I love that you're such, you grew up such a straight arrow that your take on the Ferris Bueller movie, I read this somewhere and I thought, this is just fantastic. You didn't see the movie Ferris Bueller the way the rest of us saw it. Everyone, we all thought, oh, Ferris Bueller, you know, what a lovable scamp, what an imp, what a charming, that's the way to live life. If only we could all be Ferris Bueller, you had a very different reaction to that film.
Starting point is 00:42:56 Yeah. I hated him. I was like, he's not following any of the rules. He's forcing his friends to do all this stuff. The principle is just like doing his job. Who now he's Jeffrey Jones and a pedophile, so I have changed my opinion on him. That one I was wrong about and I will take that blame. But yeah, I never liked him.
Starting point is 00:43:17 I thought that he was like the bad guy. He's like doing all this stuff that he shouldn't be doing like staying in school and working hard. That's worthwhile. That's a good use of your time. Yeah. You're stealing his friend's car. I mean, he's kind of a sociopath.
Starting point is 00:43:34 It's so funny because I have always, my kids grew up watching all the Harry Potter films and I would watch the Harry Potter films with them and I would say Hogwarts is a terrible school. I mean, these children's lives are in jeopardy all the time, constantly. Can you imagine any institution, a professional school where, yes, three of the children were killed by a rogue spirit or they were blasted into another dimension or there's a challenge where you've got to go underwater and well, we lost one of them. No, shut it down.
Starting point is 00:44:10 Hogwarts, there's no way you could get any kind of insurance company to underwrite it. It is the most dangerous place to send children. The biggest tournament is the Goblet of Fire. Yes. We shouldn't have kids trying to get a Goblet of Fire. And also, the Quidditch is a terrible game. There are no seat belts on those rooms. No.
Starting point is 00:44:36 And they're constantly being knocked off and then saved at the last second and I'm constantly watching it and I'm thinking also, every third professor at Hogwarts later turns out to be, well, they turned out to be a demon. Wait, you put the children in their care. Yes, we know. These things happen at Hogwarts. It's Hogwarts. Have a good summer, everybody.
Starting point is 00:44:56 No. Exactly. They're like, yeah. The upside, you know, the teachers are, some of the lessons are pretty good. Downside, there is a giant murderous snake in the basement. Yeah. Just steer clear of that guy. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:09 So I'm with you. I tend to watch when everyone else is being delighted by the joy of how I can't get past the fact that Mary Poppins is fairly irresponsible. This is so interesting you say this. My whole life, my least favorite genre of movie has been the free spirit comes into the rigid society and teaches them how to dance, like music man, sound of music, Mary Poppins, all this stuff. I always hate it because I think it's so arrogant to think that you're like fun ways
Starting point is 00:45:39 or the ways to do things like you're fucking cutting up curtains and dressing their kids up in them. Yeah. Like that. They've got a system that works. Everybody's pretty happy. Things are going fine. You and I should do movie reviews together where we take this aesthetic, this belief,
Starting point is 00:45:56 this rigid system of beliefs, and we go through all the classic movies, you know, there's a dead poet society. No, you don't stand on a desk. No. What about the curriculum? I'm thinking I'm going to take a standardized test at the end of this. The SATs. Oh, good luck on the SAT.
Starting point is 00:46:15 Yeah. It's the SAT, not the S-T-A-N-D on the desk. Your verbal score is 300 because you just stood on the desk the entire time. You learned nothing. Yeah. Yeah. No wonder one of them kills themselves. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:46:35 And then what is it? Right, that's what happens, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then... Josh Charles? No, Robert Sean Leonard. Okay.
Starting point is 00:46:44 But he is in that. Yeah, he is in that. It's been a while. I haven't seen that in a long time. Yeah. A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down. Yes. But what if it's a medicine for diabetes?
Starting point is 00:46:56 Has anyone thought about that? I'm with you. Everyone's having too much fun. I really think it's the wrong message. A spoon full of sugar with the medicine, then you're expecting a spoon full of sugar with every bad thing you have to do in your life, and that's not the right message. Sometimes stuff just sucks and you have to do it. You can't just, like, eat sugar while you're doing it.
Starting point is 00:47:16 Sugar's not good for you. No. So your reward to yourself, if it's all gone really well, if your day's gone well, is what? Let's say you've had a great day, and, like, for example, today, great, terrific guests on the podcast, plus you've been working really hard. This is your day off. Other than video games, what would you do for yourself? I would love to go and have, like, a very nice dinner with Emily.
Starting point is 00:47:41 I always, you know, hard for me to spend money on myself, but with food, that's okay. Yeah. If we start together somewhere and, like, having a really nice long meal, that's, like, one of my favorite things to do. I like going to, like, I just really like the whole ritual of eating, so whenever there's like a reward, a lot of times it revolves around ordering something in or cooking something or baking something or going to, like, eat a nice long meal. So that's probably, that's what we're going to do.
Starting point is 00:48:09 Emily and I are going to go out and eat. Are you going to go someplace near your home? No. What kind of food? No. Food. No. This is Italian food today.
Starting point is 00:48:20 Right. But I've been on this, like, really crazy diet for four weeks, so is it one of those ones where you don't get to have anything for four weeks or? I can't eat, no processed sugar. Right. I'm doing no gluten. Right. No, it's sort of like a version of paleo.
Starting point is 00:48:40 So it's no gluten, trying to do no carbs, no sugar, and no dairy. Wait, how can you do no carbs? You have to have some carbs. You're trying to really minimize that. Your stool is going to be a white gel. Jesus. Oh my God. But with little sparkles in it, it looks like children's toothpaste.
Starting point is 00:48:59 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's what's going to, I mean, that's the other thing is, you know, I do worry when people say, I've cut out, I'm doing a no calorie diet, I'm cutting out all calories. How's it going? Well, I have no energy and I was pronounced dead an hour ago. I am miserable. I died with a frown on my face.
Starting point is 00:49:19 You got to have some carbs. It's been hard because I do have such a, I love food so much. And that's one thing that I've also sort of, I have like guilt about eating the wrong thing and I've had it since I was 14, I remember. Again, KFC had just opened in Pakistan with the only other, we had Pizza Hut and then we had, KFC was the next one. And the weird thing about KFC was it was like a fancy restaurant in Pakistan, like it was expensive.
Starting point is 00:49:48 So when it opened, it was like a night out. Right. You put on your tux and go to KFC, a limo pulls up, reservation, then you go stand in line. I remember one specific day, I like got KFC, it was my first time eating it and loving it and I had the mashed potatoes with the gravy and everything and I loved it so much and I ate the whole thing and I remember feeling awful about myself. I was like 14 years old. That's too bad.
Starting point is 00:50:15 So that's another guilt thing is food, eating unhealthy, that's a big thing I have to deal with. Yeah. I think my obsession when I was a kid was my brother Luke would get a comic book and the summers he would get like two comic books every week and I would get a different kind of comic book. They were like weird war and these comic books that are about ghosts and they were less about superheroes.
Starting point is 00:50:44 Is it like sort of like the Tales from the Crypt type thing? Yes. Yes, it's Tales from the Crypt type thing where there's and they're supposed to be kind of scary. Right. Because then there was also like a war version of the Mad Magazine. Yes. That's what I.
Starting point is 00:50:57 EC Comics. Yes. They did Mad Magazine. Yeah. That's what I was into and so my brother would get his comics and he would read them right away. I would get my comics and I had this idea that I will save them up. Right.
Starting point is 00:51:09 I won't read them. So I didn't read any of the entire summer and save them all up to the end of the summer because it was this sort of weird monastic self-hating. I won't have them now. It might be too much pleasure but then that pleasure will be gone so I'll save it till the end of the summer and then it will be one amazing day. And I just remembered one day having like 35 comics and saying now I can read them. This isn't great.
Starting point is 00:51:31 I remember. I fucked up my summer. It's crazy how similar we are. I have the exact same thing. I would get like I loved Astrox. That was. Do you know Astrox? It was like these French comics.
Starting point is 00:51:41 Yes. I know those comics. I didn't read them. I loved them and there were only like 60 of them total so I would like buy one whenever I had money and I would just like save it and not read it. Yes. Yes. Every now and then I would like I could the rule was I could open it and I could look
Starting point is 00:51:56 at the pictures every now and then but I couldn't read any of the words and so I'd be like, oh my God, he's got why does he have a huge wheel of cheese in his head? I guess I'll find out next month. Oh my God. Yes. We are very, very similar. Yeah. We can delay gratification for a very long time but I have found that sexually it comes
Starting point is 00:52:15 in quite useful. Oh yeah. I ruined everything. What do you do when you're like going to reward yourself? What's your like thing to do? You've had a great day. You had a great show. I like me some wine.
Starting point is 00:52:36 Uh-huh. I really do like to have some glass of wine sometimes two, sometimes four and sometimes nine. No, I like to, I like wine, I like to, same thing, like something that tastes good and I really like to read. So if there's a book I'm really into, that would be fun. That just sounds, it doesn't sound exciting to people when you say I, I reward myself by reading.
Starting point is 00:53:08 No, I know. I know what you mean when you're like really like looking forward like I'm going to get into bed an hour early so I can just read for a little bit. Do you guys save up your books for months at a time? I do. I read every other page and then I go back and read every other page. I read one paragraph of the 50 Shades of Grey and then I have to wait. I whip myself.
Starting point is 00:53:29 It's a belt. Well, listen, this has been an absolute delight and Kumail, you are very talented and, and just like I say, I've always admired you. I could always tell that just by the quality of your work, but also in, in just my talking with you that you're the real deal. You're a very hardworking, talented guy who, who, who puts the effort in and God is in the details. I really believe that.
Starting point is 00:54:02 And so I'm, I'm very happy for you that you've had all this success. Thank you. That means so much to me. As I said, I truly, truly would like watch your show every night, even in college. I would like at lunch, I'd be like, so I'm going to watch Conan. If anybody wants to come by my room, I had like a TV with bunny ears and I would watch it every night. Cool.
Starting point is 00:54:22 I remember I recorded the dudes aplenty thing. Oh yeah. And I would show that to my friends over and over. That's one of my favorite sketches. I still haven't memorized. Yeah. There's another one called, I've got bulletproof legs. Yes.
Starting point is 00:54:35 It's called Brian McCann. Yes. A guy who brags that he has bulletproof legs and sings a song about it and then gets shot in the chest. Yeah. Three sketch went. Yeah. There was one where he gets shot in the chest and there's a whole thing where they put a
Starting point is 00:54:46 baboon heart in him, then he gets shot in the chest on stage and then it's a whole thing about his recovery and he, and he finally comes back and that guy is back there and he's like, I'm not going to dance from that guy. And then you're like, no, no, no, he's not going to shoot you this time. He's not going to shoot you this time. Right. He gets up the courage and he goes, I've got bulletproof. And he shoots some of the chest together.
Starting point is 00:55:05 Yes. Yes. I, you know what's so nice is I swear to God it never, there were so many of those sketches where we were amusing ourselves and never occurred to me that people like you were out there seeing it. Oh my God. It's an abstraction to me, I talk to so many young people now that can recite all these sketches to me and I think, oh right, it was on television because it really did feel to
Starting point is 00:55:28 me like we were just making ourselves laugh. No, it was so anarchic. It was like, it was punk rock. It was so, I'd never seen comedy like that. But the things that made me feel like that were your show and when I watched Beavis and Butthead, I was like, oh, I've never seen this. And obviously very fortunate to work with Mike Judge now, but it's been great like doing your show.
Starting point is 00:55:53 Every time I do your show, I get, I'm very excited, but that's also I always feel like no other show. I feel nervous. Your show, I do feel nervous. Oh, well, don't feel nervous next time. Oh, I'm not going to show up. Thanks for being here and let's hang soon. I really do need a friend, so.
Starting point is 00:56:13 Let's do it. All right. All right, let's do some voicemails. These are real, by the way. These are real voicemails, listeners that call in that have questions for you. Some of them want advice. Some of them want to just make a comment. You'd be honest if there was, has anyone been incredibly abusive?
Starting point is 00:56:32 I wouldn't be honest, no, I would not. So it's possible someone's been abusive and you're protecting me from that? I mean, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, he's protecting me. No. I know someone tore me a new one out there. It'd be pretty big of me to protect you at this point. I'm not sure I'm capable of that.
Starting point is 00:56:50 You're like someone protecting a president you despise. I know, the secret service man who's been assigned to you. If you see trouble, you might just go the other way. All right. Sam, let's do number four, if you will. Hello, Conan. I was wondering if you were interested in becoming the godfather of my first born child, Leonardo. My name is Brian Raffa, I live in the United States.
Starting point is 00:57:18 Thank you very much for your service, sir. He lives in the United States. That's so strange. He's asking me if I will be the godfather to his first born? Leonardo's first born child. Leonardo, what did he say his name was? Brian. Brian, why did he say I live in the United States?
Starting point is 00:57:36 I don't know, that's so vague and it almost seems like the Lady Doth protest. Yes, yes. I was pretty sure I heard the sounds of Venetian water taxes in the background. Wait, he's on the canals of Venice. Yes, when someone says, and trust me, I'm here in the United States, it means they're anywhere but the United States. I agree. I can't do that.
Starting point is 00:58:00 I cannot be godfather to a child I don't know. And then he says, I'm from the United States. And that makes no sense because you only bring up where you're, it sounds like it's a scam of some kind. Something's not right here. It actually does sound like an email scam, like send me your shipping address and that kind of thing. I will give him my credit card information, that I'm happy to do.
Starting point is 00:58:27 But I cannot be the godfather to Leonardo. I am a godfather in real life. Are you? Yes, to my niece and I take that position very seriously. Wait a minute, linking, actually, no I don't, it just occurred to me, I'm a bad godfather. Are you a godfather? No, I'm not. I'm Irish, but I'm not Catholic.
Starting point is 00:58:53 I'm not anything. Okay. I don't know. I think godfather is not just anybody here, no anything black. Godfather is supposed to be the spiritual kind of mentor slash, you're responsible. As a godfather taking on that responsibility, you are kind of in charge of their spiritual development. See, and I have done, I have done nothing in that regard.
Starting point is 00:59:13 It's actually a pretty big charge in most of them. I feel terrible right now because I have a beautiful niece, my brother Luke and his wife Elsa and I'm godfather to their lovely daughter and I've done, I've provided no spiritual guidance. Well it's not too late. Maybe you can make up for it. No, it's too late. It's too late. I can't do it now.
Starting point is 00:59:40 It's too late. My spiritual soul is set fairly early on. I feel terrible and she worships the occult. I don't know if I, she has a field in the woods. She's made a pentagram apparently and this is a thing that my brother Luke's been talking to me about a lot and I thought, why is Luke telling me this? This isn't my problem and I'm realizing now it's because I'm her godfather. But yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:06 She's a master of the dark arts and you've done nothing. I've done nothing and I just kept saying like, well, I keep telling my wife like Luke called me again. She's like, oh, that's nice. I like Luke. I'm like, yeah, but what's he keeps telling me that your niece, you know, he found out that she has been grinding up goat horns into a powder and then mixing that with the blood of a white dove and then drinking it and she wears ceremonial, you know, robes
Starting point is 01:00:34 and that she goes around saying hail Beelzebub and I keep thinking, why is it my deal? You know what I mean? I got a podcast to run. I got a TV show. There's a dark cloud of flies circling their house and you need to do something. No, I can't do anything. I mean, I'm, first of all, I think this is up to my manager. This is the kind of thing I have a manager for.
Starting point is 01:00:56 Your manager, you're going to outsource your godfathership to your manager. Yes. He's getting a cut of what I make, so I think he should provide spiritual guidance. I'm pretty sure my manager is an atheist. I don't know if he has much of a moral code. So I don't know, but yeah, this is up to Gavin Pallone. He's going to have to handle this one. So Gavin Pallone, if you're listening, I don't have your number anymore because you've
Starting point is 01:01:29 done very little for me. But if you hear this, I want you to contact my brother Luke and make sure that you try and convince my goddaughter to stop worshiping, Beelzebub. You can't throw money at this, that you have to handle this personally, you're failing as a godfather. No, no, no, you can throw money at anything. That's one thing I've learned and this is something that needs to be outsourced to my morally questionable vegan manager.
Starting point is 01:02:02 So he's going to handle this. Hey, where does your manager wear? What does your manager wear? Oh, it's hilarious. Starting about a year ago, my manager, Gavin Pallone, started wearing tracksuits and he just wears tracksuits all the time. And I said this to him the other day, I said, you know, he stays in really good shape. He works out all the time.
Starting point is 01:02:21 He's very tall and lean and I think he's a little younger than I am. I've been with him a long time. We are, you know, good friends, whatever that means in this town. And he wears tracksuits every single day. He wears like these, yeah, these nice tracksuits. They look kind of high end. Yeah, they're very hip. They're very hip.
Starting point is 01:02:42 Like Sopranos kind of thing. No, no, no, it's for, he's very lean and he wears these tracksuits. Maybe he would be a good godfather. Yeah. But I said to him, I said to him the other day, I said, Gavin, you're always dressed like you're prepped for surgery. That's what it looks like. It looks like he's half an hour from having a colonoscopy, you know, he drank the stuff
Starting point is 01:03:01 last night. Oh, not giving surgery, getting surgery. No, getting surgery. Yeah, he's going in. He's going in, he's going in to get surgery. He looks like he's prepped, he spent last night drinking the stuff, his colon's clean and now it's time for him to go in. They're about to give him the Prophofall and he said, I'm going to wear a tracksuit because
Starting point is 01:03:22 I'm going to be out for a while. I should be dressed comfortably. Instead, he's at these really important meetings, like big meetings that we're having and yeah, he looks like he's just about to compete in the Olympics or have a camera shoved up his ass. Don't you think though that's like kind of a power move? I tried that for a bit. I remember when I was starting out in the business early in the late night show, I wanted
Starting point is 01:03:46 to project that I was a genius. So there was about a year where if I went to meetings at NBC, I would wear Fede pajamas with little astronauts on them and a trap door near the ass and I just thought this will project that I'm such a genius and that didn't work at all and also there's no traction in those things. I slid around the floor a lot during meetings and lost their confidence. Well, I think the lesson here is Brian Leonardo has dodged a serious bullet by not having Conan be your godfather.
Starting point is 01:04:18 Yeah and Brian, I don't know what your story is, I don't know where you are in the world. If I had a satellite tracker, I would definitely say not the United States and I don't know what your scam is but I'm on to you and we'll find you. We will find you Brian and make a better choice for Leonardo because I'm only godfather to one child right now and that child worships the dark lord and so clearly I'm not doing my job. Alright, well done. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Sonam of Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself.
Starting point is 01:04:59 Produced by me, Matt Gorely, executive produced by Adam Sacks and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Chris Bannon and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Special thanks to Jack White for the theme song. Incidental music by Jimmy Vavino. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and the show is engineered by Will Bekton. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review featured on a future episode. Got a question for Conan?
Starting point is 01:05:24 Call the Team Coco hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode and if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.

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