Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Pen Pals

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Rory Scovel and Daniel Van Kirk join Conan to talk about their podcast Pen Pals and to answer a listener question on how to fall asleep fast. Listen to Pen Pals here. Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: TeamCoco.com/CallConan

We have two very special guests, Daniel Van Kirk and Rory Scovel, the hosts of the very funny Pen Pals with Daniel and Rory podcast. Pen Pals just joined the Team Coco family, so welcome to the family, fellas. Guys, tell us a little bit about the show. What goes on here? People send us letters about anything going on in their life. It could be their, like, fractured relationship with their grandma to how much they love banana cream pie.

Literally can be anything. And then we respond via the podcast. That's how we write them back. We always say it's your podcast. We just talk about it. And the great thing about the show is, as Rory will attest, it really goes everywhere, not just in terms of, like, content, but we hope it's inherently funny, but it's also can be very, like, heartfelt and touching.

Rory, anything I'm missing on this? Yeah, I feel like we have some very funny and genuine conversations. Our replies, by the way, we take all the letters very seriously. When people write us, we're very respectful of the topic, because sometimes it can be very serious. And we're always respectful of it, and we just give our genuine take as to people who are definitely not doctors or professionals in any field at all whatsoever. Just two guys who won a radio call in and got to have a podcast, and that's where we're

coming from. Yeah, it's interesting, because I don't know Daniel as well, but Rory, I've toured with you, and you're not someone who I know as a sincere fellow. You're very funny. But what I've learned through the podcast, because I did an episode of Penn Pals with you guys, and it got really serious. It got very serious. Someone wrote in with serious mental health issues, and I was impressed, Rory, I saw your

humanity for the first and maybe last time. And I only brought it out because you were such a huge guest for us. We said, we have to be humans with him. We have to play the role of human around him. We walked out of your studio, Conan, and Rory collapsed. Rory collapsed. Yeah, I collapsed. It was the most I've ever concentrated.

You know, I'm curious, do you guys find that you're becoming better people or you're learning through these letters? These people write in and they present their problems. Do you find that you're becoming more human or learning more and growing as you do the podcast? I will say in all seriousness, I do genuinely feel that way because when people write us letters about various topics, a lot of times it's the first time you're sort of talking about something out loud, and you're sort of hearing your own opinion out loud for the

first time about things that maybe you've thought about, but opinions you've never had to openly express. And so I would say, yes, I think it's changed me for the better. Me personally, I feel like I'm changed for the better and have a better outlook of other people's experiences. And then I think it's interesting what we find out about each other as friends, like different perspectives that we've had in life or maybe how we feel. We tend to feel very similar.

That's the reason why we're very good friends, but it's great. I love that it can be as silly and weird as Rory and I can get. And then like you said, Conan, with your episode, it can get very honest and sincere. The one thing I've learned listening to the podcast is that clearly Rory can't read because I've noticed, Daniel, you often read the letters and the times when Rory's supposed to read them, Rory goes, hmm, this letter is real interesting. Yep, sure is. Oops, I didn't put my drops in.

Why don't you take this one, Daniel? And that's happened like 15 times. And usually Rory's holding the letter upside down. Now, Rory, is it true? You don't read. You can't read. I don't read. It isn't that I can't.

I refuse to. You feel like it's my right to not have to learn. Right. This is what he says. You're an anti-vaxxer when it comes to reading. Yes, but that's the thing. That's just the term. I love vaccines, even when we truly don't actually need them, but I'm the anti-vaxxer

of reading. When I say something, when I toured with Rory, he was constantly saying, let's run out and grab, this is long before COVID. He was constantly saying, let's go get some boosters. He'd want a polio booster. He'd want a smallpox booster. He was constantly saying, let's go get some more vaccines and loved them. Just absolutely loved them.

Did you know you can always get a tetanus shot? All you have to do is go in, say you got scratched because when they go, well, when was your last tetanus shot? You just say, I don't remember. They don't ever care to check. They just give you a new one. Even if they gave you one a week ago, you could be like, I fell on a nail. They don't know that you just...

Yeah, and you go, I don't remember and the nail was rusty and they go, well, shit, we'll just give you another one. And they say that. They say shit. And you go, this is a cool doctor's office. Okay. If you steal all the people's IDs, you can get the polio vaccine a lot too. But it's a longer process, but you can do it.

Yeah. Right. See, we're all learning. If you want to kill time and you've, you're up to date on all your shots, but you want to get more, you can get tetanus and polio probably for free and no questions asked. And it'll probably hurt your system more than help it, but that's just the way things go. Yeah. Rory and I go way back.

We were in the shit, as comedians say. He learned a lot from me and has called me his comedic mentor. Conan made me call him comedy papa. That's what I have to say. Yeah. He took the stage. Whenever he took the stage, he had to, I would introduce him. Of course I'd do my set, tough to follow that.

And then crowd would be, I'd finish up my set and I'd say now to introduce one of the comedians and the crowd would be shouting, wait, wait, more Conan. I'd say, just settle down, just settle down, give this guy a chance, Rory Scoville. And probably like boo, boo, boo. We've heard him. We've seen him. We prefer you Conan. I'd be like, just take it easy.

And then Rory would come out and I'd hand him the mic and contractually he had to say, thanks for the microphone comedy papa. Yeah. And then like I whipped that crowd into a frenzy and when Conan came back out, they didn't remember. They didn't remember who he was. They forgot that he had already performed. And they said, I'll tell you what, that young upstart has got a real career ahead of him.

Yeah. These people were, these were very articulate hecklers. They were shouting out, I would come back on stage and they would shout out, we have no memory of you, you are but a faded husk, bring back the young dynamo, Rory Scoville. That was a heckle. These were very, very educated people. Yes. And it's hard to deal with a heckler like that.

You know, it's so Shakespearean and that was from the last row. That's how audible a lot of these shows were. Yeah. Yeah. People would say things like, we prefer the first fellow, not the one that ensued. That was a heckle that I got a lot when I would come on stage. Rory, Daniel, I value you both. I think you're good human beings, not great human beings, but good human beings.

Room to grow. That's right. Daniel, do you enjoy working with Rory because I spent, as I said, a couple of months with him and it was pure hell. What's your experience? I think it's pretty good. We figured out a good vibe. I talk, like I'll talk for a little bit and then Rory will talk for a long time and that

gives me plenty of time to think about like how we should respond to the letter. So then I say something and then Rory goes exactly. And then we move on to the next letter. It's like, we've got a formula for it. And just so everyone's clear, the letters Daniel's talking about is our, on our podcast, pen pals, we don't hide behind some sort of celebrity facade, you know, and I'm not, I'm not saying that, that's you Conan, but a lot of people wonder who is the real, who is this real Conan?

And what does he think and also what's he so afraid of? Right. Well, I was the real Conan briefly, 1998, April to June, people didn't like it. And so I went back to this Conan and people far prefer it. So you don't want to see the real Conan, you don't want to know him. Yeah. So you can go back on YouTube and check out Conan April to June, 98 and get a load of a very frightened little girl.

It's a medley. Yeah. Rory, I haven't seen you in a while and you've, you've got a green trucker hat and a big beard. And the whole vibe you have is that there's a squirrel cooking on the stove. What's going on there, Amigo? Lunchtime, lunchtime, squirrel burritos. All right. Well, that wouldn't make a good burrito.

It's kind of crunchy. And I don't cut it up. I cook the squirrel as is and I roll it into a tortilla. The tail of the squirrel is falling out of the tortilla. That's right. That's right. That's handy. That's pretty handy.

Crunchy. It is such a crunchy burrito. Listen, you're a fool. Just the little squirrel bones. Those are squirrel bones you're munching on. Crunchy. Crunchy. Crunchy.

My daughter. Rory, I've seen you perform brilliantly. Rory did a stand-up special where he made up the whole thing. How long did you go for? Was it an hour? So we did an hour each night, six nights in a row. And that's out there. That's in the YouTube world.

Yeah. And I watched it and I have to say I really wish you would thought out some stuff in advance. I'm kidding. You're talking about his homework and that can't be bothered with that. It's a fun joke for me to say that, but you were absolutely brilliantly hilarious. People should check out those specials because You Unhinged is a site for sore eyes. And my eyes are very sore.

Nothing to do with missing you just in terrible inflammation around the optic nerve, probably caused by yeast. Gentlemen, let's begin. Do we have some kind of letter we should read? I hate to be the schoolmarm here, but I do think we should proceed with business. Yeah, we have a letter. We have a letter. Our pennies and pallors, as we call our pen pals listeners, they knew that we were going

to be getting to talk to you. So someone wrote us a letter specifically for our time together. I'm going to read it. Ready? Okay. Here we go. Hi, Dan and Rory and Conan. Correct order, if you ask me.

A short letter from Ireland to say hi. Best of luck on Team Coco so far. It's been great. I noticed recently that I have a lot of trouble falling asleep. There are nights when I purposely stay up until 5 a.m. for live shows in the States, such as pen pals and bingo and trivia nights with Dan, which I love doing and don't plan on stopping. However, every other night the pattern is I lie awake until 4 or 5 a.m. and then sleep

for a few hours. Any tips on falling asleep from Sarah Dunn, P.S. I'm from a small town in Ireland. I'm going to do my best here. Carrick on sewer, which is just 35 minutes from where Conan's family came from. Conan, how do you say this? Dungervan? Dunn Garvin. Dunn Garvin.

Barbarian. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Dunn Garvin. Sorry. Don't want to prove. I guess here.

I don't care about the Irish. Yeah. Dunn Garvin. Dunn Garvin. I do. You guys fall asleep. Are we going to pass over that she knows this much about Conan? I mean, that's terrifying.

That's stalker. Well, Conan, didn't you go there? And I'm exactly 35 minutes door-to-door from Conan's family. No. Rory, I think it would be frightening if I weren't such an icon. Seriously, if someone says, oh, hey, Blinken, how's your wife, Mary Todd? You don't go, well, stalker. It's the Lincoln.

That's what I'm saying. And I think I'm the Lincoln of comedy. I'm depressed. I'm six-four. Some find me homely. And I'm trying to unite a nation. So I think in all those ways, I'm Lincoln. Well, a lot of comics say that.

They go, oh, here comes Abe Lincoln, heads up, and then you walk out. Yeah. I think it's mostly because when people see me performing at a theater, they'd like to shoot me. No. That's how the whole Lincoln thing got started. Fair enough. I'd like to put a Derringer bullet in the back of his head.

Anyway, it took a dark turn. Let's move forward, gentlemen. What do you think? Rory, do you have trouble sleeping? And what do you think we should tell Sarah Dunn, who lives with 35 minutes from Dungarvin? Dungarvin. What do you think we should tell her? I'm curious what you would tell her, but I have trouble sleeping as well.

I feel like for the past. I don't know. Maybe two years. I don't know if I'm getting adequate sleep, and I don't know how to know. Don't you ever routine? And before you start, quit yelling at me about these apps, you're going to go, well, you got to download my sleeping app, or sleep app, or sleep, sleepy time app. I don't understand those, and I don't know if I'm getting enough sleep.

But, Rory, what's your routine? Like, what do you, what do you, do you have a system? There's several screens in front of me going throughout the night, so that when I wake up, my emails are right there, and I can check and see if anyone's DM'd to me on Instagram within seconds. Well, I think that's the first thing we're going to address. Obviously, you're making some kind of a, I guess, what your generation would call a joke.

But, not all of us. What I would say to Sarah Dunn, first of all, is you've got to eliminate all screens. And I think that's the point of Rory's little, I guess it's a quip. I don't know what it qualifies with his generation. Also, my generation is, I'm, I don't know what the lowest one is, but I'm 17 years old, just to catch up, listeners to catch up. With the beard of a Confederate soldier, and apparently the diet, what I'd like to point out is, what I'd like to point out is that sleep is all how you prepare for it.

So, I find, yes, no screens at night, I watch some of my classic bits, and I encourage my children and my wife to watch them too. So we have, I would say from like seven to nine, or 930 is watching Conan classic bits. Perfect. They've seen them before and they're very unhappy about it, but we watch them. No, but no, no screens, no screens. And then if you can, read. I think reading.

Do you do that? Every night? Yeah, I find, if I read, I naturally get sleepy, and I try to read really boring books, really dense, boring books, and that'll put you out. I think reading is good, and they actually studies, Sarah, I'm not kidding, that the eye movement across a page as you scroll across, as your eye darts from left to right, unless you're reading the Torah, hello, as your eye moves from left to right, and then back again, is hypnotic and puts you into a state for sleep.

So reading is a good idea. I'd never heard that. I do. You've never heard. I have a hope. No, I never heard about the eye movement sort of being like a, put you into like a trans like state of. True story.

Yeah. I don't travel with a box fan. I'm not one of, one of those, but I do need like a sound machine, preferably, yes, cold. Like if I, if I can, it's 68 degrees is obviously perfect, but sound machine and like a mundane podcast of like, there used to be like a radio overnight radio show out of Chicago and they would, they would drop their show as a podcast and they would just talk about like general pop culture. And if I could put that on, it was the sound machine and it just kind of takes away my

own thoughts and regrets of what I didn't do today and what I need to do tomorrow. I made a mistake. A bunch of years ago I read that get a sound machine is a good idea or listen to a sound machine as you're falling asleep. And I thought they meant the Miami sound machine was Gloria Stefan. And so I would listen on very big speakers to come on everybody. And it wasn't working. And I thought I'm not listening to it loud enough.

I'm not listening to it enough time. So I kept going louder and more times you definitely, you definitely weren't learning the lyrics. No, no, no, it was more of a, more of a, I blame, well, first of all, I blame the speakers. The speakers were, turns out a very bad quality. So it wasn't that. How'd the rest of us hear? All I could hear was.

So I invested. I thought it was like a pretty good scatting what you did, like as much as it was bad with the lyrics, it was excellent scat. Yes. Yes. Listen, I took what was probably a mildly amusing quip. And what I did is I put all my chips on it. I kept investing in it.

Every chip. And I put, not only that, but I called my business manager and had him put my house on the line, my mortgage, everything. I really invested heavily in that joke. That may have put you to sleep, Sarah. The fact that I went that hard, that deep into what was clearly just a stupid reference to the Miami sound machine with Gloria Stefan. What's your favorite, favorite, besides the Bible, what is your favorite book?

That's hard to have a favorite book. I don't have any one favorite book. I read so many of them. So when you're trying to find a boring book, how do you know what's going to be a boring book? Oh, you can tell right away. You can tell. Okay.

Any biography, let's say you want to read a biography of a great man. And let's say that man is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, okay? If you find what I love is when a biographer, and when I say I love it, it's I hate it. When instead of just starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt being born, what they do is they go back 800 years before then and go, that Delano clan of upper Amsterdam, and then they take you through 17 generations before you even get to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That's a book that will put me right out. They'll say he was a simple printer, and then he married this person who married that person,

and I'm gone. I'm completely out. So make sure it's a biography that starts 600 years before the birth of our hero. I picture you in a study falling asleep under a lamp and a hot tea. The book is on your chest, and your wife is always waking you up. And you are always way too startled. You're always like, ah! Yeah.

Yeah. That's true. And I'm wearing a big, heavy sweater with patches on the shoulder, and my pipe has gone out. I have a little pipe holder on the desk, and then my pipe has gone out. And there's my pet owl, Rasmussen, is next to me on a little stick, and he's also falling asleep. And when my wife says, come on, honey, I go, and Rasmussen, the owl goes, ca-hoo, ca-hoo.

To warn you to protect you. No. Just startled as well. Oh. All right. Yeah. I don't know if we've helped Sarah. Does your-

Your podcast doesn't probably help people too much. There's also- Well, have a little bit of a- I think everything is- she says here, any tips for falling asleep. Eliminating screens, the book thing, maybe that works. Are you getting the impression from Conan's energy that he's getting enough sleep? I'm getting hints of cocaine. I think eliminating screens, knowing when you want to fall asleep, having a schedule,

and just a nice hot tea, maybe, maybe get into some valerian root. Also, make sure that you move and exert yourself during the day, and there's another theory that sleep begets sleep, meaning if you can get a nap, a short nap, sometime earlier in the day, that releases the chemicals that enable you to sleep later on, so that some people think if you take a nap, you won't sleep at night. Actually the opposite is true. Are you guys nappers? So you can nap, don't you?

Yes. So it's possible that if you exert yourself during the day, do a lot, maybe grab a 20-minute nap at some point, you will be sleepy at night. Just a possibility. Well, Rory, you really don't do anything? You don't have a sound machine or anything? I have a sound machine. Here's the thing that's freaking me out about the sound machine, is I think I'm hearing

a voice in it, and I think subliminally that company, no, this is very real, I think that company is putting, I think there's a mind control thing going on with sound machines. I'm not trying to black mirror everybody right now, but it is something worth googling. If we've learned anything from the past year, everyone needs to do their own research. Is it possible that you accidentally bought a radio? That is correct. That is correct. And sometimes the static voice comes through, you hear a part of some sort of dog adoption

convention going on. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And you did get a dog this past year. You bought a radio and you have it tuned between stations. That's what you did, and you think it's a sound machine.

I'm only 17. Cut to Rory in every car that he's ever in, being like, why is there a sleep machine in this car? Yeah. Who thought that would be a good idea? Why does my Dodge Neon have a sound machine in it? The Adventures of Rory will be right back. Come here, squirrel.

Hey, squirrel, come here and get into this burrito pan. Listen, any time you want me to produce the Adventures of Rory, I'll do it, okay? Okay. I'll just tell your stories, mistakenly buying a radio instead of a sound machine, trying to catch a squirrel to get it into a tortilla. Burrito. Yeah, these are just going to be the fun things that we're going to explore on that show.

I hope that we've helped you, Sarah, I really do. We've given you a bunch of advice, and that's the best we can do. Maybe a hot bath, too. I'll throw that into a hot bath. And maybe just a little bit of rum before you go to sleep, just a little taste. A hot bath and some Tibetan sound bowls. Don't be afraid of the Tibetan sound bowls. No, I'm afraid of a Tibetan sound bowl.

Don't be. I'm saying don't be afraid. Yeah, but whenever someone says, don't be afraid of the Tibetan sound bowls, I'm filled with fear and anxiety. That's a therapist. You need a therapist. That's a trust issue. Okay.

All I'm trying to say is just trust with the hidden scrolls on the outside of the Tibetan sound bowl. Don't read those loud. Yeah, I don't ever read those scrolls out loud. Well, Sarah, well, Daniel, you want to close it up? Yes, Sarah, thank you so much for sending this in to myself and Rory and Conan. Clear your thoughts, be active, read a book. I think we did help.

Let us know how it goes. Thanks for sending us a letter. We wish you well. Sincerely, your pen pals, Daniel Van Kirk and Rory Scovel and me, Conan. I'm from Dungarvon. I'm a little leprechaun in that scenario. Obviously. All right.

We'll listen to pen pals with Daniel and Rory on Team Coco, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely, produced by me, Matt Gorely, executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Soloteroff and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson at Earwolf, music by Jimmy Vavino, supervising producer Aaron Blair, associate talent producer Jennifer Samples, associate producers Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm, engineered by Will Beckton. Please rate, review and subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts,

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