Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Malcolm Gladwell

Episode Date: December 23, 2019

Author and journalist Malcolm Gladwell feels pressured into being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Malcolm and Conan sit down to talk about Malcolm’s new book Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, conversations about gardening, tabloid inventions, tales from the IRA, and Conan’s own special cult of personality. Plus, Conan and his assistant Sona engage in a struggle for power. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].

My name is Malcolm and I feel pressured and I've crossed out about, I don't know why you guys have about there, I feel pressured into being Conan O'Brien's friend. Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. This is Conan O'Brien, just making that clear in case it wasn't. I don't know how identifiable my voice is. It's very identifiable. Yes, I suppose. Reached a certain level of fame. Oh, God. Anyway, well, I'm a one-name celebrity. Beyonce. Wow.

Manson. Nope. You say Conan and people think, right? I don't think Conan the Barbarian anymore. I mean, I hate saying this, but I think you're right. Yes, okay. I don't want to. Thank you. And by the way, let me introduce, that's Sonamov Sessian, my assistant. Yes.

Who hates giving me my props, just hates it. You hate giving me my props. Well, there are no very few props to give. Oh. No, no, I opened the box of props. There's not a lot of props in there for Sonamov. I'm not going to do a one-sided props. I'm not going to do that. Okay. I'm not going to give you props if you don't give me any props.

I give you a prop, but you have to give me props. You're, what? Yeah. That doesn't make any sense. Oh, for God's sake. Let's just both say we deserve some props. And Sona, thank you for being here. You're a great help to me on the podcast. You really are. That's nice. More so than as my assistant in real life.

Come on, dude. Don't you think that's true? Why don't you stop after a nice thing? Why don't you just stop? I could see. So you're saying when I hit the nice thing, just stop there. Yeah. You know what? That's a good idea and I thank you for it. Okay. I wish you had more ideas like that.

Okay. You know what? Okay. No, no, I'm not giving you anything. I'm not giving you anything. Also by my side is Matt Gorely. Hi. I think I'm saying that correctly, right? I always have. Yeah.

Okay. Just wanting to check. It's not a name that rolls up. Gorely. Look who's talking. Conan O'Brien is very easy to say. You hear it once and you've got it forever. No. Matt Gorely. Is it Gorely? Gorely. And I remember when you came on the scene, my family called you Conan for years.

But not. So every time he interviewed me, it would be like, now Conan. Yeah. And I'd say, okay, Regis. I showed him, right? That's his name. Regis. No, but I would go Regis. I put the, didn't I get him? Wasn't that a good burn? No, it wasn't. Yeah. He didn't seem to think it was either.

Yeah. He didn't even notice it. Yeah. And Sona, that's not even your real name. What? Oh, you're right. It's not. It's not. No. Yeah. I was like, what do you mean? Yeah.

But you're right. It's not. My real name is Tallene. Oh, that's pretty. And your middle name is Sona Tallene. So my parents called me Tallene for a month of my life. But why did they switch then? Because Sona is my grandma's name and they wanted to pay respects to my grandma. I don't

know why they named me Tallene. It's ruined my life. No, for months as a child, out of respect for my grandmother, I was called Maddie. Really screwed me up. But you have sisters. I know. I don't know what that was going on. They called me Maddie. All right. And they would say things like, and even as a young boy, they would say, can we help

you, Maddie? Okay. And do you, you know, they would help me up the stairs and things like that. They would help you up the stairs. Yeah. When I was 14 years old, Maddie, are you okay? Remember to take your pills. They didn't treat me like my grandma. They just called. I know. My parents really went to show respect to my grandmother. While my grandmother was alive, they still called me my grandmother's name and made me take her medication.

And this explains a lot. Help me up the stairs. All out of respect for my grandmother, which I thought was weird. Yeah, that is really weird. Who are you named after, Matt? I'm named after Marshall Matt Dillon from Gunslinger. Are you really? Yeah. Wow. That was a big show back in the day.

And a big leap from Matt Dillon to me, too. No, no. You are in the podcast world, you are quite the Gunslinger, quite the lawman. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said. You are. You're in the podcast world, the world I do not understand. You carry a lot of weight. People really like your work. You're well respected and well regarded. That's what I've, that's what I picked up. I don't see it myself.

I'm sorry, I just let it roll. I wasn't even going to respond. I can't stop. Wait long enough. I tried to try. Could you try? I tried to just compliment, like Aaron's here in the room. Just give him a compliment and then, and then leave it at that. Just as an experiment. Just stop.

Please don't. Let's see. Oh my God. I don't know what to compliment. I don't know how to compliment. His nose just started bleeding. It's a long wait for a compliment. It's hard to compliment.

You are, I've known you a long time, Aaron. That's a fact. That's just a statement. How about an object? Let's start with an object like that pen. Okay. It's sharpie. I'm almost tempted to just leave it at that. Like it's sharpie. No, it's a sharpie pen and it says sharpie find point permanent marker. And these really are permanent.

Once you use them, it's very difficult to remove the mark that they leave. Okay. These are just copy points. Yeah. They're annoying actually because you write on your hand or something and it just doesn't come off. So these things are the bane of my existence. You can't even compliment a sharpie. I can't even compliment a sharpie. So many times I've, because I doodle a lot and I'll doodle something on my hand or something.

And the next thing you know, it's, it's there. You know, where I'll write myself a little message, like be more positive with people. Try to be more complimentary and then it doesn't come off. So that's why the shoppy or the bane of my existence, but I think we should move on. Yeah. We've all discussed our names. And we've learned a lot about each other. Tallinn.

If I call, if I yell Tallinn on a busy street, would you turn your head? I wouldn't. No, I don't even remember being called a Sona. I mean Tallinn. I don't remember it. But you just admitted earlier that I have a very distinctive voice. So if you heard my voice yell Tallinn, you wouldn't turn your head. No, you can't do that.

Yes, I can. Cause we're not talking about your voice. We're talking about whether or not I respond to Tallinn. I don't. I think you would turn your head. Come on. You would. I'm already looking at you.

Exactly. I win. I know how much that infuriates me when you say I win. I win. I hate that. I absolutely hate that so much. Where's my trophy? Nope.

Nope. Stop it. Wait, I'm being handed a trophy right now. No, you're not. You can't see this. Yes, I am. And a suitcase of cash. No, this is, this is.

Whoa, a plaque. Conan wins again. I hate this so much. Matt, you have no idea what this taps into for me. I'm getting a sense of it. Oh my God. Well, anyway. No, not anyway.

That's stupid. You didn't win anything. Nope. You didn't win anything. You're so stupid. Here we go. That's dumb. You didn't win.

You didn't win. Winner. Nope. Nothing. I love that we're about to segue into Malcolm Gladwell's book on seeing the other side of people and their arguments. Yes. Malcolm Gladwell may be one of the most intelligent writers on the human mind and psychology and

what makes us tick. And I'm introducing him right now following just the most infantile babble between two adults. Yeah. You, because you, you want to. Let it go. Sorry. You just have to let it go.

Yeah. Just go into the intro. Learn to be a good loser. Here we go. Just. My guest today. Nope. I'm seriously.

I'm introducing Malcolm Gladwell. I know you are. It's okay. Okay. Hold on. And go. My guest today. Okay.

I win. My guest today. I got it. I did it. My guest today. Oh, fuck. My guest today is an author. I won.

My guest today is an author and journalist who's had five books on the New York Times best seller list. He also hosts the hit podcast for visionist history. His latest book is talking to strangers. I won. And talking to strangers is great, but you know what's really amazing is the audio book. I just want to mention this because I read talking to strangers and it's this terrific book that talks about how we think we know people, assumptions that we make, how we don't

really know sometimes who we're talking to, that our assumptions are incorrect. It's this wonderful book, but when you listen to the audio book and the reason I'm bringing this up is that you hear the voices of the different people he interviewed in court transcripts, come to life. It really adds a whole other dimension to the book. It's available, by the way, unaudible. Anyway, glad I won. And now to get into it, the brilliant Malcolm Gladwell is with us.

And maybe he'll explain what's wrong with me and some of them. Seriously, very good to have you here, sir. How often do you go back to the old country and kind of like go to the pub that your great-great-great-great-grandfather owned? Well... That's what they all do, right? No, that's not what they all do, Malcolm. I'm surprised.

Here you are. I think this very erudite, learned man, and you just reduced me to the lucky terms, leprechaun, and said, I'm going to go back to the pub and see the old country. I've been back several times, but no, I don't go to the pub, and we have no idea. There's not good genealogical records on our people, because I think we... There's not many of them. Thank you. I married into a very, I'll say it, a Waspie family, and so my wife has oil portraits of

ancestors. Going back to like 1680, when they lived near Plymouth Rock, and we found, I think, a wanted poster for one of my people, because he stole a horse's hoof. Did he just take the whole horse? After I did... Actually, I'm now going to try and curry favor with you. After I did my podcast episodes this season on the Jesuits, and someone wrote some article about them, and they said, Malcolm Glaubel is fond of unpopular things, and he listed

like a series of unpopular causes that I had been fond of, and then one of them was the Catholic Church. And I thought, wait a minute, that's really unfair. The Catholic Church is now becoming unpopular cause. There's like a billion people are Catholics. Yes. That's like the furthest thing from an unpopular cause. They have...

I saw it somewhere. Maybe it was in a movie or a TV show, but someone referred to them as having... They've had branding issues. Yeah. They've had some bad branding. No, no, but if I might be serious for a moment. It's entirely unclear to me. There are two ways of making sense of the Catholic Church's branding issues.

One is that there's something uniquely wrong with the Catholic Church, and that they deserve our disparagement and whatever. The other is that all major institutions have similar kinds of problems, and the Catholics are the first to publicly own up to it. My suspicion is it's the latter, not the former, and that really what they are is that there are lots of other skeletons in lots of other closets that are hidden away, and the Catholics have had the guts. They've gone through a very public, very painful, and ultimately, it took a while, but ultimately

very honest accounting of where they have gone wrong. I think there's a long list of people who should do the same thing, and to be very careful about where they throw stones right now, because a lot of glass houses on this particular problem. Yeah. I think that's fair. What you've just said. I think there'd be some people that would say they wish that the Catholic Church hadn't

been forced to confront it because it was hidden, but that's the way of humans. That's the way of humans. One of the things that comes up a lot in your work, and it's one of the things I wanted to touch on, is that humans are flawed, and especially your latest book, Talking to Strangers. One of the reasons I love that book so much is that you pretty much reveal that we don't know what other people are thinking. We're not able to judge other people. You give many great examples of it, and I think, yeah, what I always like to default

to is humans are flawed, the humility of saying I am flawed, and working off the assumption that I'm flawed. That's a good way to go. Assume that we're flawed. Is that, am I on the right track here? Yeah. I think at the end of this book, I talk about how we need to be a lot more cautious and humble in our assessments of people, and actually, I begin the book.

I don't remember. I've given the book with that story about my dad, and as a joke I used to when my parents came to New York, I would put them up in the Mercer, the celebrity haven, because they were people who never had a TV, they couldn't have identified any celebrity on Nerdy Strickman Stands. It was inherently funny to put them in a place where they would be surrounded by celebrities, and sure enough, one day my dad, I asked him what he had done that day, and he said, well, I spent the afternoon in the lobby of the Mercer having a delightful conversation with

a man about gardening, but the only problem was people kept coming up to him and to the man I was talking to, and asking to take pictures and have him sign pieces of paper. So it was clearly some, he had a map. Incredibly famous. Incredibly, because in the lobby, you can't go, this is not the public place, you had to be a guest, so other celebrities were come to this person asking for autographs, and my father had no clue. They talked for 45 minutes or an hour about gardening, and he had no clue who he was.

Did you ever figure out who it was? No, so one of the projects of this book is to find out who it was. I had some guesses. Well, so no, okay, this is fantastic, because I would like you to help me. I tried to ask my father some basic, my father sadly has passed, but I tried to ask him some basic kind of grounding questions, because he was completely in the dark. It was, I think, a fellow Englishman, my dad was English, so because he's going to do, he would only really chat up another English person, and it was someone generally of his

age range who was born in the 1930s, and he is into gardening, right? Those are our three clues. We have to work with that, so Mick Jagger, possibility, but what's Mick doing at the Mercer? Mick's not staying at hotels. Also, Mick's not a gardener, Mick's not, he's not a gardener. I have a theory. Yeah, okay, let's hear.

George Harrison. George Harrison, now, not born in the 30s, born in the 40s, but an avid gardener, an Englishman. What year was this? I'm going to say 2004. Oh, I think he would have passed by that. He would have passed by that. Someone else suggested it. A ghost of George Harrison was talking to your father, because the ghost of George Harrison

does hang out at the Mercer. That's a fact. That's a fact. Someone else suggested Michael Cain. Could be Michael Cain, but I've talked to Michael Cain. He doesn't talk about gardening. He talks about suntan lotions. He does talk, he's very interested, and he's a guy that, he's an Englishman who made it

big and then spent most of his time near the equator. He knows every single kind of sun oil and possible. I was told he was a big gardener. There's no chance, Graham Gladwell is talking about suntan lotions, but he would have talked about, you know, Delphiniums. Did he ever mention if the man smelled like sandalwood and coconut, because that would be Michael Cain. I've memorized his scent.

I've been around him three times, and I've memorized his scent, because I licked his wrist when he wasn't looking. But here's my point. Here's my point. My father, who in that moment had a meaningful interaction with someone without trying to get to the heart of who they were, what they did, what they were like, he was content to have a delightful conversation about gardening. He met the person on a, and we would most of us would say, well, that's a very superficial

conversation. Graham Gladwell would have said, it's not superficial. Gardening is something I feel very passionately about. And so did this mystery person. And why can't we be content to meet someone in a place where there is no possibility for misunderstanding? So to make it, this comes in very seriously, in my book, he's organized around the death of Sandra Bland.

Right. The whole problem with that encounter is the police officer pulls over this young African American woman, and he is not content to meet her where she is. He wants to jump to all kinds of conclusions and try and figure out what's in her heart. Is she dangerous, and he constructs this bizarre paranoid fantasy that she's some kind of criminal, and he ends up arresting her. She ends up committing suicide three days later in the cell, and it's a tragic story. And again, I've since, after I read your book, I went back, and I'd seen it before,

but I watched the dash cam footage of the policeman pulling her over and the confrontation beginning, and him saying, put out your cigarette, and she's saying, I don't have to put out my cigarette. And the whole time that I was watching it at year, I think we all do this when we see that tape, which is so tragic. We just want the policeman to back off. I've been thinking about this a lot. The whole precipitating incident is she lights the cigarette, and he says, put that out,

and she says, I don't have to put it out. And he says, you have to find a direct order, and then he tries to drag her out of the car. He lights the cigarette to calm herself down. It's so weird that we're now so removed from smoking. I mean, it used to be so essential. We've forgotten the tropes of smoking, and the reasons why one of the main reasons people would light a cigarette is when they needed to calm their nerves, right? If it's 1950, and you've just been through a heroin experience, the first thing you

do is you take out a pack of Marlboro's and you light up. In her own mind, I think she's signaling to him, I would like to calm down. I'm trying to de-escalate. I'm trying to bring myself back under control because I got very upset. I'm just going to have a cigarette. And he doesn't understand even that most basic of gesture. And you can't, I mean, this sort of goes to this question of what it takes to be an effective police officer.

And you realize, to be an effective police officer, you have to be a student of people. You have to understand the meaning of these kinds of small gestures and body languages and things. He is being required by the kind of absurd demands of his job to reach a conclusion about a woman he has never met in 30 seconds. Yeah. Right? And he can't, of course, can't do it.

Can't do it. There's a similar, I have a chapter on Amanda Knox and the Italian police and the British tabloid media who can concoct this absurd fantasy that she's a murderous on the basis of zero evidence. They also concoct this whole thing that Amanda Knox, visiting Italy, it's her roommate's murdered. I'm just recapping anyone who doesn't know this story, but I think it's fairly well known. Her roommate is murdered while she's out of the apartment.

And because she's not behaving immediately the way people are supposed to behave when someone's been murdered. She's very young. She's kind of making out with her boyfriend soon afterwards. She fits the mode of femme fatale. And then the tabloid press deems her foxy noxie. It turns out that that name, and they make up how she's just very this sexual libertine who's constantly experimenting and a voracious sexual appetite, and she's like, no, no, no.

She was called foxy noxie because she was a clever soccer player. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's staggering. They are observing what they believe to be discrepancies in her behavior, jumping to all kinds of absurd conclusions, just as the cop did in the Sandra Bland case, and not listening to her. Not even stopping to realize, oh, I'm talking to an 18-year-old, an immature 18-year-old

from another culture who expresses her grief in different ways. In retrospect, that case is so weird to go back and read about it in retrospect. They were legit large portions of the Western citizenry who were convinced that she was some kind of crazed, blood-sucking murderous. Yeah. And there's no evidence that she did it, plus there's tons of evidence that this other person did it. Yeah.

I mean, it was, and she spent years in Italian prison, and there's a very good documentary about it is that you watch it, and when you're done, you think, oh, my God, I need to make sure that I behave in the proper socially acceptable way if the police ever show up. And this all goes to the point of your book, which I want to reemphasize is all these different examples about how we like to think of ourselves. To me, this reminded me a little bit of moneyball, that sort of Billy Bean theory of baseball, which is that no one was bothered with statistics. I just, he has a good swing.

I like the look of his swing. What's interesting there is that, and it's a theme I pick up in my book, but I always think that we could do far more with it. In the moneyball book, essentially what the thesis boils down to is that observing a baseball player play baseball is not just irrelevant to the task of figuring out how good they are at baseball, but may actually impair your judgment. Yes. Well, you talk about this in your book.

With judges. You talk about this with judges, there are judges who've said, I would be a better judge if literally we put a bucket over, you don't see this, but if they put a bucket over the defendant's head and you couldn't see their expressions, but you just could hear their testimony and look at their criminal record. Look at their criminal record. You would make much better decisions, much more accurate decisions. And we're always taking these cues, which is you might be reticent when you first show

up here at the podcast, and I'll think you're a little shy when you first meet people or when you first come into a situation and you're quieter and you're not a big loudmouth like me. So you. Not Irish. Not. You know what I mean? I find this, this is going to be my next book, Malcolm Gladwell, horrible caricaturist

of. Of the Irish. Of the Irish. No, I was out very late in the pub last night, so you'll excuse me, having trouble stringing thoughts together. I'm going to hear about that, I'm sure, like to the end of my days. So I just hired a new assistant and every time I get a new one every two years and every time I do, I try and use whatever things I've been thinking about and apply them to the

hiring process. So my first thought was, let's remove all of the information from that encounter, because when you sit down with your assistant for the job interview, the candidate, you are talking to a stranger. Yes. Yeah. So what's irrelevant about, so we know from, in Billy, in the case of the judges I talk about in my book, they would do better if they just looked at the statistics.

In the case of, so you take away information, the looking at the prison face to face, and they do a better job of making the right choice. So my first thought was, okay, what should they take off their resume? That seems useful, but actually isn't. So I make them all redact the name of their college and high school. I don't want to know. How does it possibly help, right? Does it really make, help me make a better judgment if the person in front, if I know

the person in front of me went to, you know, BU as opposed to Caltech. Yeah. I'd just like to point out that I went to Harvard. Oh my God. Oh my God. I got a magnum, wrote a very good thesis, but I don't want you to know that. I just thought that you were asking me. I was wondering why you had a large H tattoo on your chest.

Is that, is that at all related to where you were at school? No, I'm a Hogwarts fan. I'm a really big Harry Potter guy, and that's my Hogwarts tattoo. So, so, okay. So I take that as a thing. So I would, if you were interviewing for my job of assistant. Well, you would see an Irish guy, you would say there's no way he went to Harvard. It doesn't happen.

He probably, yeah. They don't let the Irish in. And I'm sure he helps his father out at the pub, and then it's off for, for a, for a bowl of Lucky Charms. And then to bed. I got one of those Nina signs in front of me. Yeah. Yeah.

I, I can make that joke because I'm a black person and I'm allowed. You can do whatever you want. But yeah, no, so the second question was, well, why am I, why am I meeting them? Why am I meeting them face to face? So in the face to face encounter, what am I finding out? I'm finding out whether they're tall or short, whether their hair is dark or, you know, not how well they dress. None of this is of any relevance whatsoever, right?

None. They're, to be my assistant, basically they don't even, I don't work with them. They work at a coffee shops. They email me stuff. They have to be, they have to reply instantly. They have to be super organized, they have to be nice, good, honest people. I'm so glad you brought up this topic because you are in the room with my assistant. And I hired my assistant 10 years ago and I will tell you that I met her.

She seemed responsible, prompt, courteous, professional, and it affirms everything you've said. I was completely hornswaggled, a word that's never used much. I was dreading this. The second you talked about hiring an assistant, I was like, please don't say anything. But I will say, I will say that I, did you need, wait, what information did you gather from the face-to-face in here? You know, it's funny.

I was completely duped, and it's not sound as fault, but it was, I needed to hire an assistant. I was coming here to Los Angeles. My New York assistant did not want to move, she had a family. So I was hiring a brand new assistant. I met with, I think, 10 candidates in one day in some office in Burbank. And the stuff that you'd think I could take away like, is she tall? Is she short?

I even got that wrong because I was, I forget what happened, but I think she came into the room and sat down on this couch and it's a very low couch with soft cushions and she sunk into it. So I had this conversation with you. And I remembered, and your hair was like, all puffed out because of humidity or something. So I thought, seriously, so at the end of the day, I ended up, I ended up hiring her and people said, well, what's she like? And I said, well, she's this very short woman with a big, massive bush of black hair.

And her name's Sona Movesessian, I think, I can't pronounce it. I mean it. I am. Yeah, nice. And then. Thank you. Nice for Armenia. Thank you.

But down with the Irish. Yes. Persecuted people. I mean, I know. Yes. No, I know. You guys have your own story. But can I tell my story?

Yeah, no one ever persecuted the Irish. I love how you just reduced Irish history to, yeah, you guys have your own story. Yeah. Can I tell my favorite? You wouldn't let us have a potato for 800 years. Wait, wait, are you, are you, when you're finished with this story, that's embarrassing your assistant. Yes, we're finished.

I'm done. We're finished. We're finished. She's not, she's very tall and. You're finished. There are several cues wrong, as well as her character. We're finished. We're finished.

We're finished. We're finished. We're finished. Moving on, moving on. I want to tell my all time favorite Irish story. Yes. All right. This is pressure.

I'm not allowed to do this. Yes. I was very, at one point in my life, into the Troubles. The story of the Troubles, the IRA. We call them The Troubles. The Troubles. In a footnote to a truly great book on the IRA, the following story is told, at the end of the Second World War, there was a British informer who was very, very high up in the

IRA, and he was found out. They discovered he was... So they immediately spirited him away to a cottage in the, you know, off in the countryside somewhere. And they interrogated him, and they wrung a confession out of him. And they asked him to write out his confession. Now, I should stop and say, the story is based on a deep affection I have for the Irish people and for their extraordinary literary legacy. As you know, it's some of the greatest literature in the world. Of course, of course. So, he is asked to write his confession. He says, you know, will you give me time?

And they say, yes, absolutely. And so he's... They capture him in, I think, May. My court's going, yeah. And he is finally rescued by the British in November. He's still working on his confession. But it's a beautiful story. So, but imagine this. You're like a hard IRA guy, and you've got this traitor in your midst who you busted. And he's like, every morning he, like, sits down, you know, with his pen and paper, and he's working on another draft, and everyone's fine with it. They're like, I... Writing is a difficult process. At some point, he must have been blocked,

and they were very understanding, because even James Joyce, you know, went through a difficult period. Sure. So, they're all... That's fantastic. It's a supportive literary community, and it goes on for six months. It's just... How can you not love the Irish when you hear that story? The Irish are also so clannish and secretive for no reason. That's my other little thing

about them. Even in my own family, people, there'll be stuff that you don't... Doesn't need to be a secret. Like, we got new... My mother got new throw pillows, you know, for the couch, and they're not even expensive throw, but she's just getting... But no one needs to know. Like, there's this... And so, our head writer, Mike Sweeney, told me this story once that he went, and he looked at a... He was traveling around Ireland, and they said, you've got to see this amazing... Wait, stop. Your head writer is Mike Sweeney? Yeah, he was. He's no longer the head writer. He's been replaced by Matt O'Brien.

I was going to say... And I'm not kidding. You're not kidding? No. Oh, my God. You're a person. You just need to look at their name, and if there's, like, an O, or a... You know, it's... You just hire... Is this at all Irish? She... Sona said that she was Sona Omovsesia, and I was convinced. I just... And she had

dyed her hair red, and she was wearing a paper hat. And I did a jig. She did a jig. Walking into the interview. Yeah. But anyway, he told the story of... He was traveling through Ireland, and there was this place that they said, oh, the tourists have to see, and it's this cave that you can go down in, and it's just incredible, stalactites and crystals, and it's something that you would see in a magical movie, you know, a Lord of the Rings kind of film, just an amazing

tunnel, and then there's a little pamphlet that tells the story of how it was discovered. It was discovered in, like, 1949 by a local farmer who just found it on his property. Like a piece of sod fell in, and he peaked inside and saw this amazing vault with 800-foot ceilings and crazy crystals, and just one of the greatest natural wonders in Ireland. And so he finds it, like, in 1948, and then he... And then it said it was finally introduced to the public in 1979 when he passed away, and you're like, well, wait a minute. He found it. What was going on? And Sweeney was laughing, and I was laughing, because we know the guy found it. There's nothing... It's not like it had gold in it or anything. He found it,

and he was just like, ah, it's no one's fucking business. No one's fucking business. Like, let's not talk about the... We don't talk about the cave. Just keep the cave... You know, oh, it's a pretty nice cave. You should... Ah, it's no one's goddamn business! Like, why keep the cave secret? What's wrong with you? So between that and writing, we're writing incredible people. It's very good. It's very good. You...

Well, you... Oh, no, go ahead. Well, no, I was relating back to your book. You talk about Hitler, and you talk about Hitler in the late 30s, and you talk about Neville Chamberlain, who's the famously thought that he could make peace with Hitler and thought that he could read Hitler, and went and met with Hitler a couple of times and said, you know, this Hitler guy, he can be reasoned with. He can be talked to. And then he made a peace plan with Hitler and famously stepped off an airplane and told everybody, we have peace with Hare Hitler. He's... You know, this, we're all good, and everybody cheered, and literally it's a year or two later that

London's being blitzed, and he was completely... Didn't see who Hitler was, and then you make the point now, we see that now, and we think, but it's Hitler. How could you not know? But we know now what we know now. He is the... He's the devil. He is the most evil face in history, and so how could anyone have even been misled? But then you go through your book and you list all these people, all these people at the same time, people who were really good or supposedly good judges of character, who met with him and said, no, no, no. He's okay. We can deal with him. I mean, even the Germans themselves thought, you know, he's... The moustache is a little weird, and he has... He's a little weeds,

and he's odd the way he struts around, but you know what? We can handle him. We can deal with him, and then famously, he ends up almost destroying half the civilized world and killing millions and millions and millions of people. I think we... I was reading a book by a guy who was his sort of PR guy in the early thirties and eventually leaves him. I love that Hitler had a PR guy. He totally did. By the way, a PR guy who... Where did this PR... Where did Hitler's PR guy go to school? Harvard.

Well, I'm not shocked by that. Yes, exactly. He used to come back and still teach when I was there. Yeah. And he writes this like book, and he describes the moment of meeting Hitler for the first time, and he's in some pub in Munich, and Hitler is like giving a speech before a group of rowdy workers, and he's not met this guy before. He's been at Harvard, and he's come back to his native Germany, and he just describes how utterly mesmerizing Hitler was, and that

kind of person is... It's dangerous to meet that kind of person. Hitler has a... He's written a massive book in which he lays out his feelings about things called Mine Camp. Yeah. That is one source of evidence. The other source of evidence is you can meet the guy and you can run the risk of falling under his spell, and that Chamberlain's problem is he chooses B, not A. He should have stayed home and reread if he hadn't read it already, if he hadn't read it already. Mine Camp, that would have given him a better picture of what

Hitler was up to then. It's just... The man's a master conman with incredible personal charisma. Stay away if you want to reach a kind of rational conclusion. What's so interesting is that there are people, and famously, Churchill. Churchill's just not buying it, and there's a period in England's history in the mid to late 30s where he's like the only person. There's one person in England who's saying, no, we need to be making airplanes and guns and battleships right now. They are going to come for us, and we have to be ready. Churchill famously never met Hitler, which surprised me somehow when I was doing...

They were in the same hotel once, apparently. Hitler was upstairs, and they were supposed to have tea, and Hitler blew them off, because the Harvard PR guy, actually... It's true. This is involved. This is in the early 30s. It's not important where he went to college. Do you know what I mean? I think it is. I think it's very important. It's why he's that way. You're very sensitive on this subject, aren't you? I just think that it could have been maybe a Harvard... I think it was Harvard Dental

School. I think he had gone to Harvard Dental School, which we all know those people are creeps. Why would you say that Harvard, that Hitler's PR guy went to school in Cambridge? Very nicely done. That's also, I think, where the architects of the Vietnam War were schooled. It's not a... We've done a lot of good. It's not a good look.

Yeah, not a good look. Now, trust me. I think what amazes me with the college scandal is, don't the numbers seem low to you? You got some person who's got many, many millions of dollars. Oh, 15,000 dollars? Are you kidding me? I mean, you're going to break the law, basically, on behalf of your kid, and I'm only going to ask 15K. Right. I don't understand it at all.

This guy needs some help. He needs his own version of a kind of advisor to pull him aside and say, add a zero for God's sake. No, he needed Hitler's PR guy. That's what he needed. He needed Hitler's PR guy to come in and... He could have had a good business at 100K per student. If you're going to goose SAT scores, you'd better go to six figures. He's wasting his time, this guy. You know, this is the greatest... What I love is, again, this is what you do, but you have

cracked the real story here, which is that the college admissions scandal was a badly run business. Everyone else has been distracted by the moral flaw with it, but no, you have struck to the heart of the matter. It's like, what are these guys doing? Yeah, what are you doing? What are you doing? 15,000 dollars? These are wealthy people. These are very successful people.

You call yourself some kind of expert in this area, like, give me a break. Right. And the tuition 6570K, I mean, they're already on the hook for that much. They're committed to spending 300,000 dollars over the course of their child's education for this. Like, why are you chiseling off some nickel and diming this? I mean, this doesn't make any sense. Very upset about that. I've never seen you. Here's my question, and maybe you can help me on this.

I can. I went to Harvard. What is the moral difference between... So if you walk around the Princeton campus, right, every building has got the name of a rich guy on it, rich white guy, it's all rich white guys. So it's okay if I bribe my kid's way in by building a building. Yes. There's a right way to bribe. There's a right way to bribe.

And I think that's... It's very confusing. You know, this goes to something else that I'm obsessed with. This need we have to put our names on things. Yes. Now, I'm saying this as someone who... And this is not my doing, but right now we're in a building that says Conan on it. And then everywhere you walk in this building, it says Conan.

There's a lot of... There's a lot of Conan branding. No, I did feel that actually. I was like, this is like a cult of personality. Yeah, it is. You're running like... And what's weird is the cult is based around a tall gangly Irish guy. It's not like...

You know what? You are not my friend. You are not my friend. My point is... We're not friends. My point is you can imagine the cult... When you think of people who have cults of personality, we all do respect you. And I am your friend. I've said... We pressured into it. I signed the statement.

And I am a longtime fan of yours. I find you absolutely brilliant and delightful. You are not the archetype of the cult of personality. Let's just be honest, right? I believe I am. I believe I have everything Manson had and more. I really do. I think you don't know me well enough, but I have the power to lead a sick and dangerous cult. You just describe yourself as a people, please. You're the people, please, are cult of personality, guys? Yes.

Yeah. That's like... So you're... Okay. That just dismantled me. Where I was going with this was... No, you're too... But this is all professional. This is all... Whatever the professional... I don't want... I'm very clear on this. I don't want like a grave with my name on it. I don't want my name on a building. I don't understand that. I feel... Yeah, it's the

old Ozymandias, behold, look upon ye on my works and despair. I just... I find the whole thing of... It just makes me sadder. It makes me feel less... I would feel less. If you showed me my name on a giant carved into a giant stone mountain, I would feel less than I am. Does that make sense? You don't want the Mount Rushmore thing. Oh, I do want that. Oh. That's not my name. That's my image. Now, my image must be everywhere.

Are we clear? It's the name. I just think Conan O'Brien. It's not a good name, but the face, the face... He's drawn his own face. That's not my face. That's just a generic doodle. That is you. That is you. That is you. He looks a little me. He looks a little bit like you.

Okay. Well, listen. I... How do you get on that? I don't know this whole... I'm a Canadian and this is all very weird to me. Right. The whole... Of all of the weird idolatrous things in American society, Mount Rushmore got to be one of the weirdest, right? It's very strange. It's very, very strange. I don't know whose idea was it. How do you get in there? Was

it just Willie Nilly, the coolest guys in 1910? I think you... Yes. I think what happened was I'm not a... It's newer than you think, Mount Rushmore. It is a... I think I'm pretty sure it's a 20th century phenomenon and they... But you look at it, there's the obvious. Like, well, we got to have Teddy. You got to have... Well, first, you have to have George Washington and you got to have Lincoln. You know you got to have them. Right. And then I think they felt like you got to have Jefferson, you know. So, okay, that's

three. Who else is in there? I think Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt, I know, is on there. Was it during his administration? I think it was during his... That's why. Well, I don't know. No, but the only question I have is, is that it or is there another?

There's this four. I'm pretty sure Gerald Ford is in there. Now, that's the one I have problems with. They predicted it. Yeah. He was in the office for two years and Gerald Ford is in there. Go look at it. He's soft to the side of the mountain. He's not with the others and it's much smaller. He's on the shoulder. Yeah.

Yeah. He sort of looks like a parrot on Jefferson's shoulder. Well, if you make a mistake, like, if you make a mistake, if universities is all the time, somebody endows a building and then they're indicted from outside their trading and then you're, like, very quietly taken down. Yeah. You know, that was my, in one of my podcasts, I was very proud of this, my suggestion, because it was all that controversy about Woodrow Wilson at Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School. And I suggested that they could keep all of, like, the, you know, the signage and the,

and just call it the Owen Wilson. Nice. Like, just take another Wilson. That's right. There's lots of Wilson's. That's Rita. Owen Wilson. There's a Wilson who plays quarterback for the CLC Hawks.

Right. He would be good. Right. He'd be very useful in that context. There's Dennis Femenis' neighbor, Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson. Tom Panks' volleyball. Yeah.

Panks' volleyball is Wilson. There's lots of Wilson. So there was a real kind of shortage of imagination, I thought, with them. They thought they had to get rid of the whole name, and it's just not necessary. You know, I follow most of your trains of thought, and I enjoy most of them. You've lost me here on the whole Owen Wilson thing. I don't agree. What I really, it was one of those things that you do, because what you really want

is for Owen Wilson to send you a text out of the blue and just saying, really appreciate the shot out of the shot out of the blue. It didn't happen. It didn't. It could happen. It was fishing. It was fishing. It was fishing.

And Owen Wilson, if you're out there, please, please send a cool text, I'm glad. This has been, this has been more, no, it's been actually as much fun as I thought it would be. I knew this would be really fun. I've been really looking forward to talking with you, and I would love to do it again. I'd like to do it. I'll do your podcast, unless that, you don't seem thrilled about that, so let's just keep plowing ahead.

Of course, so you could come back here, but this is two great minds, both having written many bestselling books. What? No? No, you have not done that. I've not done any of that. No, you haven't done that. Okay, well, anyway, the point is, we are equals in every way.

Nope. Nope. No. No. No. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. I really enjoyed this and then, and then you keep holding up this piece of paper like, we really got to wrap this up, and I, don't throw me under the bus. I gave you the requested time thing that you asked for.

Yeah. Yeah. This is a weird cult, but ineffectual like, to save us. It's a bad cult. To take us away, yeah. It's a bad cult of personality. Yeah. Yeah.

You think I am incapable of being a cult leader, Well, you're too nice. I don't know about that. Stick around a little bit. Yeah. I think I have a magnetic hold over women. Oh, God. Nope, nope, nope. No, I do not.

In that it's like a polar magnet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's probably a reason why I don't have a cult. I'm trying, but it's just not working out. I'm too, yeah. There aren't many self-deprecating cult leaders. No, that's just another thing.

Yeah, by definition. Yeah, Mao was not like that. You wouldn't want to follow me. I don't know. It's a great leap forward, maybe, but maybe not. I don't know, a lot of, I don't know. I don't know why this is Mao's voice, but I like it. One great leap forward, two steps back.

Yeah, it was one leap forward, two back. I don't know. Don't put me on a banner. It's not, wow, okay, I don't know. That's my, that's my Stalin. That's right, that's right. It's all just across the board. If all the leaders were just across the board.

I'm not sure about it. Well, I've wasted your time and you clearly have things to do. Thank you so much for being here. Seriously, just an absolute delight. Super fun, thank you so much. And let me make sure I also mention that broken record, this is your podcast about music, is the kickoff of third season on October 1st.

Is that right? Yes. Very good. In the intro to this episode, you guys seem pretty concerned with who was going to win the two of you. And you know what? I honestly don't remember.

I don't either. I don't remember. I remember that I insisted that I won, but I don't remember what I was talking about. It's so pathological. I was desperately insisting that I won, but I have no memory of what it is I think I won. We very easily slip into these juvenile tendencies

where we need to have the last word. Yes, we're like two addicts that shouldn't be around each other. Yeah, and then also, sometimes before the show, if I punch you in the arm, you have to somehow just like hit me back. I don't really hit you. I tap you.

Tap me. So let's be honest about that. In moments when you have locked yourself in the bathroom right before you're supposed to go out and do the show because you don't want me to get the last punch. That is true. And that was stupid. That is true and it's insane.

And I will say, we haven't done that in a long time, but literally the band would be playing. The stage director has told me you've got to come out, but because I tapped you and then shut the bathroom door and locked it, you're waiting outside and you know I have to come out to do the show. And it will be a lot of times a show with like a big guest. And I'm not coming out of my dressing room

because I don't want to get tagged. And I am an adult 37 year old man. I'm sorry, how old are you? This is just in case we, I'm trying to get Wikipedia to change it. No, well, you can change it on Wikipedia yourself. Oh, is that how it works? That's how Wikipedia works.

Oh, I thought I just had to keep saying it and then someone else corrects it for me. So I have no blood on my hands. Anyway. No, it's stupid. You make me stupid. Yes. Oh, you don't think you do stupid thing.

You think you didn't act in a stupid way before I came into your life? I did. Yes, I did. I did. You know what it is? We revert back to how we were with our siblings. We are as fair much siblings.

And that is so stupid. I think we are very much siblings. You had an older brother who tormented you. And then you thought that he was a great tormentor. This is your brother, Danny, who's now a successful major golfer. He's a financial advisor. Oh, I thought he was, I don't pay attention.

When you talk, I often don't hear what you said. I thought he was a mountaineer or a golfer. But anyway, no, he's a lovely guy, wonderful guy. But you thought that he was the best. You couldn't imagine anyone who'd be better at getting under your skin than your brother. No. You grew up with who tormented you.

I came along and I'm, you know, it's the end of the matrix suddenly. Do you remember the end? Is it Neo? Yes. Where suddenly Neo can, he can fight so quickly that you can't even see it anymore. It's exquisite.

Yeah, and that's my level of irritability. No, no, not irritability, ability to cause irritation. And I'm the agent that just wants to kill you. And I'm just like, Mr. Anderson. What's Mr. Anderson? That's you, Sony. You're always like missed. And I'm moving so fast and you've got these sunglasses on,

but I can tell you're just astonished by how quickly I move. But I challenge it. I'm good. I'm a good foe. No? Yeah, you're a pretty good foe, but at the end of the movie, I'm light years ahead of you.

You know, I would try to argue with you, but you get you annoy me and get under my skin. I'll like lie awake in bed at night and I'll just think about how angry I am. That you got the last hit or that you said the last word in an argument and it just bothers me. But don't you think that's my way of helping you?

It's therapeutic. No, why can't you be professional? One of us has to be the adult and it makes sense that it would be the older. The person with power. The person in a position of authority. I don't think I have power in this relationship. I really don't.

I honestly don't think I have. I think we have the craziest situation. Many people would say you have the power because you, Blay, Blay is nodding his head 100%. And Zona has the power. And if I ask you to do something and you don't want to do it,

you don't do it and that's it. So don't act like you don't have the power. You have the power. You are a model for how people can take power. Oh, okay. All right, I'm cool with that. Yeah. Sounds like you just said you won.

I won, I won, I won. Wait, you won, I won. No, I got you to admit that I was right. No. You said you don't have the power and I said yes you do. And then you agreed with me, that means I won. No, but you gave her all the power.

No, I said she already had the power, so I won. Oh, that pisses me off. I won. Here's the thing. I won, guys. I won. You did it. I did win.

I have the final edit in this thing. So I get to put the last I win in there. You did it. Yeah, and then go just wait by the mailbox, see if your check shows up. It never has. Yeah, and it never will. Okay, bye.

I won. No, you didn't. I won. No, you admitted, I won. I won. I won. I won, I have the power. I won, I won, I won, I won, I won, I won, I won.

I won, I won, I won, I won, stop it. This is so stupid. I won. You have children, you have children. I'm saying I won so fast that it's just a high-pitched. No, you have children. You have to be the one who says this needs to stop. I win.

You said an infinite number of I won. No, I did infinity times infinity, infinity times. I win so many times more. And then I'm a great God standing on top of that infinity and I just put it in a snow globe. I won. I am the almighty God and I'm, I don't know what the front I'm talking about.

Malcolm Gladwell is listening to this. This is so stupid. Malcolm Gladwell left a long time ago in disgust. And you know what, it's a tough way to win, but I'm glad I won. I won. That's it, bye. I won, bye.

Bye. We have to end this. I won, bye. I won. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Sonamov Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sacks and Jeff Ross at Team Coco

and Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Earwolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. The show is engineered by Will Beckton. 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? 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.