Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Robert Caro

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

Author Robert Caro is cautiously optimistic about being Conan O Brien’s friend.Robert and Conan discuss his biographical works on Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, getting into the shoes of his subjects, his new book “Working,” searching for the man who helped steal a Senate election, and the parallels we can draw to today’s events. Plus, Conan responds to a listener voicemail about the size of his skull. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].This episode is sponsored by VRBO, Twix, State Farm (1-800-STATE-FARM), Huly's Ramy, and Fracture (www.fractureme.com/CONAN).

Hi, my name is Robert Carrow and I'm really cautiously optimistic about being old Conor and O'Brien's friend. Hello there and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs Friend. This is the show where I very desperately use the podcast format to make people be friendly to me for an hour at a time and they usually get away. I'm joined by my assistant Sonoma of Sesson. You're my assistant in real life, aren't you? I am your assistant in real life. Do you feel like you assist me? Why do you always ask me these questions? Yes, I assist you. I'm the only assistant. You have things happen and they happen because I assist you.

Yes, okay. Take it easy. No, you do this all the time. You're shouting into a very sensitive microphone. I'm sorry. If you're driving right now, I apologize for Sonoma's shriek. It's always like, hey, I'm here with my assistant Sonoma, she sucks at her job. You do not. And then there's Matt. He's got a beard. I could do your intro for you. I didn't get to Matt. Yes, Matt Gorley, if that's even a real name. How are you, Matt? Good to see you. Good to see you. Oh, come on. Show a little enthusiasm. I haven't gone after you yet. Well, I feel like you're about to. No, I'm not.

I've got my guard up. I've got my shield up. No. I've never seen, it's impressive. I've never seen headphones that are tweed before. He has tweed headphones. Oh my God. Pretty funny. Score one for Conan. It is pretty good. I'll give you that one. That's pretty good. Sonoma. I thought you'd be on your best behavior today. You know what? You'd think I would be on my best behavior because this is a very, very, very special episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I've been pursuing my next guest for years, years and years and years. That sounds threatening.

The New York Times referred to this man as the white whale to my Ahab, which means he'll end up killing me. He is considered by many, many people to be one of the greatest biographers of all time for his groundbreaking work on Robert Moses and his many books on Lyndon Johnson. Well, the impossible has happened. He is here sitting right across from me. He can't escape, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Robert Carroll. You know the story that I've been trying to hunt you down to get an interview with you for years and I don't think you even knew that. No. My publisher arranges things and I never even heard that. Yeah. Your publisher apparently really hates my guts. And probably for good reason.

But I'm just going to back up here. I'm sure I have many listeners who are very familiar with your work and I'm sure I also have many listeners who are very young who haven't read your work, aren't familiar with your work. And I want to stop for just a second and say, for God's sake, do yourself a favor. Sometimes I think people freeze up when they hear historical biography or historic work. They think, well, this is going to be dry. This is going to be homework. And what Robert Carroll has done is he has figured out a way to write history in a way where you read it and you feel like you're reading a gripping novel. All of it's true. He's a stickler for the facts, but it's so well written that your heart is in your mouth at times

when you're reading these accounts. You've written about a guy named Robert Moses who intrigued you because you found out that he was probably the most powerful man in the history of New York, but he had never been elected to anything. Nobody really knew how he had this power. But this is the man that if you are in New York City, you cannot probably walk 15 feet without running into something that Robert Carroll built. What did Robert Carroll build? Hey, Robert Moses. I'm sorry. Sorry, Robert Moses. What did you ever do, Robert Carroll? You can tell I really didn't do my research. I thought it was you that built all the bridges.

But I'm sorry, Robert Moses, literally he built everything you can imagine in New York City. He built 627 miles of expressways and parkways. If you're driving on a highway in or around New York City or at suburbs, you are driving on a road built by one man, Robert Moses. If you're on a modern bridge, the Verrazano, the tribe or et cetera, you're driving on a bridge he built. If you're in a park, you're in a park that he either created or reshaped. He built so much in New York that when he was with the New York City Public Housing Authority, he didn't even include what he had done there in his resume. But in fact, he built apartments for 148,000 people. So that city is shaped by this one man who, as you say, was never elected to anything.

That is a book called The Power Broker. This book is absolutely riveting. It's beautifully told. And what I'm doing right now is I'm going back and I'm listening to the audio book. Have you ever listened to the audio book of any of your? Actually, I haven't. You know what? They got someone very good to read. So I understand. Yeah, he's very good. And so here in Los Angeles, you have to drive everywhere and it takes forever. And I put on The Power Broker a few weeks ago and I listened to it when I'm driving around.

And it reminds me how well the book is written, how great the story is. And I also know that it will never run out. I can listen to this for 20 years. It's a really long one, but it's fantastic. They apparently have a very good reader with a little British accent. You hear my accent, right? Yes, I hear your accent. So I said to my agent once, can I read this one? And she said, then the price will go down.

It got a pretty thick New York accent there. So they didn't want you reading it. So yeah, you also, you have just one world acclaim for your writings about Lyndon Johnson, starting with the first book, Path to Power. Again, I know I sound like a schoolteacher, but I would implore people who are listening, go out and get this book or get it on your Kindle or get the book on tape. Get The Power Broker and get started and listen to the story of this young guy, Lyndon Johnson. And it's absolutely, and it will floor you because what you've managed to do is write, as I said, you write history in a way that puts you there.

You really feel like I understand this kid, Lyndon Johnson. I understand what it's like to live in the Hill Country in Texas at that time. You have a lot of empathy for these people that you write about. We talked a little bit about that last night, but your sense of place in order to write about Lyndon Johnson, you moved, you decided, I can't write about this guy unless I move to the Hill Country in Texas and live there. And your wife who's with us today, Ina, who's also does the research and is such a powerful force in your creative life. She said, okay, let's do it.

She didn't quite say that. She said, why can't you do a biography of Napoleon? But then, of course, being Ina, she said, sure. Sure, okay. Yeah, it would be nice. Why can't you pick? Why can't you pick? Why couldn't you have picked a historic figure who lived mostly in the South of France

and ate a lot of delicious pastries? And to really understand him, Robert Carrow and Ina had to eat all those pastries. He lived in a castle and I need to live in a castle, but no, you had to write about someone who lived in the Hill Country. And you didn't set out to go into this kind of detail. But one of the things that just was so remarkable in that first book is that you went back to the Hill Country and you wanted to really understand how hard it was for people to live. There was no electricity in the Hill Country when Lyndon Johnson was born and grew up.

He was the one that brought the electricity there. You spent a lot of time really figuring out what a day was like for someone who lived. And it's really the story of poverty. Yes, and loneliness. The loneliness out there was something that I couldn't understand because I grew up in New York City. Lyndon Johnson lived out on the Johnson Ranch, which is really in the middle of nowhere. One corner of that ranch came down to what they call the Austin-Fredericksburg Highway, but it was an unpaved, rutted road between Austin and Fredericksburg.

And Lyndon Johnson's little brother used to tell me how he and Lyndon would go down and sit on the corner of that fence closest to the road in the hope that one new rider or carriage would come by and have one new person to talk to. I couldn't even understand that loneliness, or as you say, the poverty. There was no cash there. You could get a dime if you sold a dozen eggs, but you had to sell them in a place called Marble Falls, which was 23 miles from Johnson City. So a friend of Lyndon Johnson's, a guy named Ben Cryter, told me how every Saturday, market day,

he'd ride those 23 miles carrying a dozen eggs in a box in front of him, holding the box in both hands so that they wouldn't break. I'd said, I'm not understanding these people, and I'm not understanding Lyndon Johnson. You're just going to have to move there and try to learn what it was like to live there. So you move there with Ina, and you uproot yourself from New York. You're living in the Hill Country. One of the effects this had because you lived there and you stayed there is that the people started to get to know you.

Yes, exactly. And then you went from being that guy from New York with the glasses. He was asking a lot of questions about Lyndon Johnson. You transform over time into, oh, there's Bob. There's Bob Carroll. I know him. Or there's Ina, because the women, there were a lot of widows in the Hill Country. They wouldn't really be frank, you know, talk to me about their personal

lives, what it was like without electricity. We had three fig trees on our property. So Ina learned how to make fig preserves, and she'd go first with the gift of fig preserves, which, and suddenly people got friendly to me. Ina continued to make fig preserves? And should we market those? No. Okay, no, okay.

Oh, okay. Clearly not a fan. They were okay, but not up to your standards of fig preserves. There's a scene in the book, in the first book that you wrote on Lyndon Johnson, where the pivotal point in his life was his father. He looked up to his father, idolized his father. Lyndon Johnson idolized his father. And then like so many sort of almost Greek tragedies, his father makes a mistake.

His father invests in this ranch. The soil wasn't good in the ranch. And suddenly they're broke. And one of the things you were able to do when you got out there is actually see why that ranch failed. Yes. And it's a great story. Well, then I'll tell it to you.

That's how this works. So Lyndon Johnson idolized his father. He was a legislator in the Texas Legislature. And he passed a lot of progressive legislation. And Lyndon said, you know, the happiest days of my life were when I would go out campaigning from farm to farm with my father. See how everyone respected him and all. Then his father made, as you just said it, one mistake.

The Johnson Ranch was covered. What we came to Johnson Ranch was covered with beautiful grass. It's so beautiful when you drive out there today. So one of Lyndon's cousin, his favorite cousin, Ava said, well, I want to show you something about Sam Johnson and what it means to make a mistake. So she drove me to a hill at the edge of the ranch. She said, now get out of the car. I got out of the car.

And she said, now kneel down or kneel down. She said, now stick your fingers into the soil, this beautiful soil covered with beautiful grass. And you stuck your fingers in. You couldn't even get the whole finger in because it was so little grass there. That it looked beautiful. But if you try to make a living from it, either plant cotton, then the grass washed away or graze cattle or the cattle laid it down. You couldn't do anything with it.

So in an incident, as you just put it, they were broke from about the age of 13. The father became the laughing stock of town. And they lived in a little house in Johnson City that every month Lyndon was afraid the bank was going to take away. And they often didn't even have food in the house because the mother was also orphaned sick. So neighbors had to bring covered dishes there. And his feelings toward his father changed to one of absolute conflict the rest of his boyhood. Yeah. There's a great scene you talk about in the book that you got out of Lyndon Johnson's brother

where the father and Lyndon are fighting bitterly at the table and the father is demeaning Lyndon saying, you're not college material, you're not college material and you're going to be a failure. Yeah. And Lyndon snaps back and what do you, you're just a bus inspector. Yes. And you read that exchange and it's like you're reading a classic play. It's Willie Lohman, it's Death of a Salesman. It's just, it hits you right in the gut.

This terrible disappointment that the father, that the son has for the father and the resentment the father has for the son, that he maybe gets another chance. Yes. That's a terrific way of summing it up and that's really what happened. You know, there's another thing that just talking to anyone out there who's listening who might think, well, I haven't read these books, but why Lyndon Johnson, what's the significance of Lyndon Johnson? I know he was a president. I know he was president during Vietnam, but what, what's the real significance there?

One of the things that stands out in one of your book, one of your books, Master of the Senate, is that up until Lyndon Johnson, the Senate didn't function and then he becomes. The majority leader. He becomes the majority leader and then when he's done being majority leader and he becomes the vice president, eventually the president, but the minute he stops that job, it has never really worked since. What is it that Lyndon Johnson had that enabled him to make the Senate work that no one else has been able to crack in the history of our country? You know, that's the nature of political genius. To me, if you're interested, you're interested in self and how government works.

You're looking at a genius and he comes to be majority leader. Johnson comes in, he wants to pay us civil rights legislation and voting rights legislation and you watch him vote by vote, turn that Senate around and you really say, could anyone else have done this at that? I sometimes think, I do think, we wouldn't have that voting rights legislation today if Lyndon Johnson hadn't had this genius for it then. When John Kennedy is assassinated on that day, he's proposed this wonderful civil rights bill in a wonderful speech, but that bill wasn't going nowhere.

It was absolutely dead. Right, the South was not going to, they were not going to let that happen. No, it wasn't going to happen. So four days after Johnson becomes president, he has to give his first address to Congress, a joint session of Congress. He's not even in the Oval Office then, he's still in his private home. Downstairs at the kitchen table, three or four of his speech writers are gathered around trying to write this speech and he comes down after a while and they ask how they're doing

and they say, well, the only thing we can agree on is don't make civil rights a priority. You do that, you're going to antagonize the Southern Committee Chairman, they're going to do to you what they did to Kennedy and you're going to stop your whole legislative program. You know what Johnson, and they say, you know, it's a noble cause, but it's a lost cause. Right, don't fight for it. And you know what Johnson says? He says, well, what the hell is the presidency for then?

And his speech, he says to them, they're all sitting in front of him, the whole, all the Southern City Chairman. And he says, our first priority is going to pay us Jack Kennedy's civil rights bill and you watch him do that and you say, I say, I never knew you could do this. I never knew you could do that. It's a form of real genius. Yeah, obviously we have leaders that can inspire. You mentioned Kennedy and we have leaders like Obama that can inspire.

And then there's the workings, the gears and the levers of government that no one seems to be able to figure out anymore. And Lyndon Johnson may have been the last person who saw how it all worked. You called him, well, you found out that he was the best vote counter. He could figure out who was with him, who was not with him. And he could keep a tally in his head at all times. And he made that system hum unlike anyone else. Yes. And you know, part of it was people were afraid of him and he made them afraid of him.

And he was also, Lyndon Johnson was six, four and he, all these famous pictures, a bunch of them in your books, but they're everywhere of him getting, when he wanted to talk you into something, he, you know, today, we have this, this concept of personal space. There's a whole movement about personal space and you don't invade someone's personal space. And he would get chest to chest with people and lean over them and put his finger into their and you look at it now and you think, well, that, there's lawsuits left and right here. Men suing Lyndon Johnson for, it looks like he's physically assaulting them,

but he's just leaning in and covering them like a blanket. No, never thought about that way, but that's certainly, certainly the case. You're a victim of your own success, which is you have so enthralled people with these books about Lyndon Johnson and now people are waiting for this installment that I think takes us from 64 to, I'm guessing his death, it's 1973, does he die? And people want that book and when is that book coming? And you've made it clear that there's a lot of research you need to do to really write this, including you believe you need to go to Vietnam and spend some time there to understand that

war and see it from the Vietnamese perspective. Is that right? And see it for the perspective of American boys who for the first time had to fight in jungles, what that was like. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we dropped on Germany in World War II. What you're talking about doing is going there and really living it, seeing it from that perspective. And when you do something like that, I'm assuming Ein is going to go with you on this one too? Well, unless she wants to go to Paris. There were peace talks in Vietnam in Paris, so I know you could go and you could work on, you could say, look, I'll cover Paris for the Parisian perspective on Paris and you can do that and stay at the Hotel George Sank.

I think that would be, I think maybe that's where Kissinger stayed and you can be in the jungle. It's interesting to me, it's fascinating to me in how much of your work you've had to kind of be a detective and not even kind of be a detective, you've had to be a detective, you've had to track people down. There is a great part in this new book working. There's this myth that Lyndon Johnson, when he was in a high school and college, was very popular and people just, they sound like broken records and they're just saying, oh yeah, good old Lyndon, good old Lyndon, but you suspect that there might be more to the story than that and you keep asking and people keep saying, there's this one guy who really knew Lyndon, is it Vernon Whiteside? Yes.

Vernon Whiteside, you say, as a Vernon Whiteside, they say, if you could get to, you know, Vernon Whiteside, boy, he'd tell you some stories and a lot of people just told you, but that's too bad because he's dead. Yes, everyone thought he was dead because he had had this ranch and he was gone, but I'm trying to interview all the classmates anyway. They were all saying, I heard over and over again, oh, Whiteside, he did. Whiteside, he did, he did, he did, yeah. That's how I was trying to go around. I'll do all your voices from now on. Let me take over on the voices. But people convinced you he's dead. Now, to me, if I was a, thank God, I'm not a reporter or a biographer, I would have said, well, he's dead, so nothing we can do about

that. Let's move on. So one day I was calling another, I tried to interview every one of his classmates who were still alive and I called this guy and it was Harris Richards and I said, I wanted to drive down and see him. He lived near Galveston and he said, well, I don't know the inside of some of these stories, but there's one guy who did old Vernon Whiteside and I said, yeah, but old Whiteside, he did. The guy probably thought you were making fun of him. And he said, hell no, he ain't dead. He was here visiting me yesterday. So it turned out they thought he was dead because he had sold his ranch, bought a mobile home and taken his wife for a 15-month tour all the way up to Alaska of the entire United States. And I said, well, where is he going?

He said, well, you know, they were going to have a permanent mobile home some place in Florida. He said, the only thing I remember was north of Miami and it had beach in its name. I remember today you have a national telephone directory on your computer. You can find anybody. Then you didn't. Every little town had its own phone book. So the New York Public Library used to have hundreds and hundreds of these little phone books. And I remember Iner and I sitting on the floor in this little room where they were looking at every town that had beach in its name north of Florida. Which has to be hundreds of them. Well, it's an awful lot of them and we just divided them up and started calling. And interestingly, if I had started at the other end of my list,

I wouldn't have found them because I suddenly was talking to someone in Harlan Beach. I was calling all the mobile home places. And she said, oh yes, the Whitesides pulled in here a couple of hours ago. So if I called a couple of hours sooner, I wouldn't have found them. I didn't want to give them a chance to say no to me that he wouldn't talk to me. So I jumped on a plane and went there and knocked on the door. And this big gentleman, as I recall in another shirt, you know, came to you and I said, I'm Bob Kerr, I'm writing by Arthur Fieland and Johnson. And he said, oh, then you want to know about the stolen elections in college. He said, come on in. And he just... What a dream come true. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you want to know about the time he's stolen election in

college. Come on in. Yeah. That's gold. Yeah. And I just sat there and he filled in old and confirmed, you know, all the stories. But there was one other thing that I thought you were going to mention. I know you know about this. So I'm calling this one woman and she says, I don't know why you keep asking these questions to me, Mr. Cairo or Mr. Cairo as they call it. It's all there in black and white. I said, all there in black and white, where? She said, in the yearbook, it's all there. What we called him about the stolen elections, that we called them Bull Johnson. And I'll use the word. His name was Bull Johnson for Bullshit. People just thought he was full of it. Yeah. That was his nickname at college, Bullshit Johnson. The man who later became... coined the

credibility gap because no one could believe him on Vietnam. So I said, what pages are you talking about? And she got her yearbook and she named five pages. So I've been through that yearbook several times without ever seeing this. And I looked and those pages were gone. And then you could see someone had cut them out, you know, at the very spine of the book, something very sharp, like a razor blade. And I said, boy, someone cut the... I looked, I found several other copies of the yearbook. The pages were missing. I finally found one that the pages were in and all this documentation was there. And I remember thinking, what am I dealing with here? You know, I'm dealing with a human being who at the age of 21 was so concerned about his reputation, or you could say

his place to come in history, that he has cut out of hundreds of copies of his college yearbook pages that were derogatory. They were making fun of him. More than fun, chronicling things that he did that made them not trust him. Yeah. And also, who steals a college election? I mean, that is, that tells you so much about Lyndon Johnson and just that sentence. I stole an election in college. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason that he did it tells a lot about Lyndon Johnson, because he had this all right as he laid a hat in the Senate for what gives you power. You know, it's interesting because he learned early, if you really need to win an election, and it's crucial you win an election, you do what you have to do. And you talk about this in one of your books.

He has a chance to run for Senate, and he realizes, I have just got to win, and it's going to be a very, very close election, but he doesn't take any chances. And it was always, always rumored that he has stolen it, but there was no proof. And people said, you're never going to find proof, because this is a guy that never put anything in writing. You're never going to find it. You're never going to find the proof. And this is the part where, you know, if you're listening and you are a fan of the show Breaking Bad, this is the level of drama we're talking about. You track down, there's a legendary guy, is it Luis Salas? Yeah. Luis Salas is this legendary almost, some people just call him Indio, which made me think of this show Breaking Bad. But he's this character

that wears a gun on his hip, and the barrel is so long, it goes down to his knee, and he's a big, tough guy. And people said, well, no, he's gone, you'll never find him. He was rumored to be the one who probably helped steal the election. You found him. You found him, he was alive. And when you found him, he was no longer the giant, you know, imposing guy named Indio, who is mysterious. You found a very different guy, because it was much later in life. Yeah, well, it took a long time, because he had killed a man in a barroom brawl and derango. Well, we've all done that. Mr. Kara, we've all done that. That's how I had to get into television. But he was down in Mexico someplace. People kept telling me he was alive,

but they don't know where he was. They used to say, Luis moves around a lot. Let me, people ask why my books take long. Let me tell you, trying to find a Mexican who moves around a lot? Yes. That's not a matter of hours. Right, right, right. And when you kill a man in derango, you move around a lot. Yeah. But I finally found he was actually back in Texas. He was living in a mobile home in the backyard of his daughter, Grace, in Houston. So I, again, I'm not going to give him a chance to say, no, you won't talk to me. So I knock on the door. It was very funny. I expect, just like you said, that to be looking up at the six, four inch bruiser and this 84-year-old frail little old man opens the door. I'm looking down at him. But he wasn't just willing to talk

to me. He was anxious to talk to me. And I hadn't been talking to him very long. You see, he was on the stand. There was a federal investigation into this election. He's on the stand. And the judge has just said something like, my memory has been not bad on this, but approximately, now we're going to open the ballot box that where you certified the votes. He was the election. Right. He's the key to the whole thing. Yeah. He was the key to the whole thing. At that moment, it's such a dramatic thing. You always think when you're writing that you're exaggerating. A man runs into the courtroom with a piece of paper and he says, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black has ordered this investigation stopped. And in fact, it was never reopened again.

So what was Louis Salas going to say when they opened this box? And they asked about the 200 votes that were added to Johnson's total. And he says, you know, Robert, I have written it all down. And he goes over to this large brass bow and trump in the corner. And he pulls out a 94-page manuscript that he has written. He's very bad on grammar. Well, but he says he wrote this for history. It's called box 13. The name of this precinct is box. They call them boxes in Texas. It's box 13. And it says exactly how he did it. So after I found that, I said, you know, I'm never going to have to write the same sentence that is in all these other books that nobody will ever really know if Johnson stole it. I said, I can write the sentence.

He stole it. Wow. And there's the person telling you I did it. In writing. In writing. Telling me in writing. So I said, no. I said, well, what if he dies? What if he didn't die as this? So I asked him this question. Your heart is in your throat. And I said, would you mind if we made a copy of this for me? And he says, sure. And we went to a neighborhood convenience store and we stood there while we copied it. I have it in my in a drawer in my desk to this day. So he's the dream. He's the dream find. Not only is he going to tell you, yes, I was there. I knew Lyndon Johnson and I'm the one that stole the election form. And there's a Kinko's down the street. We can make copies. You summed up one of the great moments.

There's a moment where you're trying to understand what it was like for Lyndon Johnson when he first came to Washington, D.C. And you really wanted to understand it. So he retraced how he would have walked to the Capitol building or to his office that was near the Capitol building. And you figured out what time of day he'd be walking there. And you wanted to see where the sun was so that you could really understand that feeling that he would have and exactly what it looked like to him. You're very methodical about the facts, but it's also key for you in a novelistic sense almost to put yourself there as a human being and see and feel what it's like. Well, you're very complimentary. I'm not sure I deserve all that, but what do you do?

Well, you do. But it's nice that you don't think you do, but you do. But the incident you're talking about was really a fascinating example of what can come out of doing that. So Lyndon Johnson then lived in a little shabby hotel down near Union Station, and he'd walk up the hill to Capitol Hill, his office, and then he'd walk along the whole east front of the Capitol, which you know is as long as two and a half foot walkways. It's 750 feet long. I found the woman who worked in the office with him. He's then whatever, 22 years old. She's also a ranch girl, like he's a ranch boy. So they're getting up early in the morning, and she says she's coming from the other direction. And she says, you know,

the thing that got me, he'd walk up the hill, and as soon as he got in front of the Capitol, he'd start running as if he was very excited with his arms flopping. He would run the length of the Capitol every morning. She said at first it was winter, and he was very poor, so I knew he didn't have a coat. So I thought he was running because he was cold. But then she said to me, you know, then it turned warm in spring, and he was still running. So I said, I want to see it. Is there something that excited him, that made him run every morning? So I can't tell you how many times I walked that same road. I didn't see anything in particular that would excite him. Then I thought of something, you know, Bob, you never did it. He did it very

early in the morning because they arranged kids, so they get up with the sun. He did it at 5.30 or 6 o'clock in the morning. You've never done it then. I did it at some hour like that, and all of a sudden I felt I understood it because what happens is this is the east front of the Capitol, the Capitol front that faces the east. The sun comes up, let's say, at 5.30. So it's at full force. It's level rays hit this entire, you long mass of white marble and with its columns and its heroic figures above, and it's lit up like some gigantic blazing white movie sets. And he said, of course he got excited. He's coming from this land of little log-door-grown cabins, and all of a sudden he's seeing this is where I can attain. This is the power of a sovereign state

or whatever you want to say. I can have this if I succeed up here. Of course he got excited. Yeah, it's cinematic. All that marble glowing, exciting this poor kid from the hill country. It excites, and it's sort of thrilling to me to see it. Well, yeah, and you've captured that in the books. You have all these people that, you know, are always anxious for the next book. Whenever you finish a book and they love it and it's taken you nine, 10 years, of course this is the nature of human beings immediately. They want the next one. What have you done for me lately? You know, hey, Carol, that's great. I just finished it. It was 1200 pages and it was beautiful. Where's the next one? And you must encounter fans and people in

New York. You and I are known people and you're walking around. You're taking your walk in Central Park. You're trying to enjoy your lives and people who wonder, why aren't you working right now? Do you have that effort? Do you have people trying to guilt you into, why are you out right now having an ice cream? I don't think anyone tries to guilt me, but I do get asked an unfortunate number of times every day a week, you know, when is the next one coming? I'll tell you who never asked me. It's my publisher. My publisher's never asked me when is your book going to be done, when are you going to deliver. I've been very lucky that way. Now, was your publisher happy that you took a break to do this book working? No, he was furious. Not my editor. But your

editor. Your editor just wants all things, look, we got this big book on Johnson. You got to finish that and you say, well, I'm working on something else right now. And that must, that you're probably irritates the editor. Yes. Yeah, but editors are fun to irritate sometimes. It's hard to have a conversation with someone like you and not think about what's happening today. And I'm sure you get asked this a lot and none of us can really know because we're living in this moment. None of us really understand this moment, but it has occurred to me that there are incredible similarities between a Donald Trump and a Lyndon Johnson need to win, win at any cost, boastfulness, sometimes, you know, crude behavior, the list goes on and on. Well, you know, I'm so buried in my own work

right now that I'm not paying the kind of attention that I ought to pay. I mean, I read the paper every day, I follow it like everyone else, but I haven't really thought of the answers about what's going on, you know, right now. I think I told you last night, I think the really unfortunate thing from our point of view, my point of view anyway, is that people doubt that there are facts, you know, that there's scientific facts about science. As I said, there is no one truth, but there are facts. And if democracy doesn't have, if people don't have facts that they can make a judgment on, whichever way their judgment is going to be, then what does it amount to that power comes from their casting votes at a ballot box? On what basis are they casting them?

So I think nothing is more serious than that. But the fact is, when we talk about facts, fact is something that you may have heard, but you can prove it by something you find in, let's say, in the Johnson papers. There it is. And that's what an informed electorate is, that they've informed themselves about facts. And that's the way it's been in our history. So now it's not starting to become, it has become something where facts are, as you put it, relative. So then you say, so what is the power of democracy? The power of informed electorate. I think James Madison said something like, if people in a democracy want to have power, they have to know, I know he didn't say it this way, but this is what he meant. They have to have facts to base their, the power of

their vote on. And that seems to me not to be fading, but to have faded. And I don't actually think anything is more truly dangerous to the concept. If you don't have an informed electorate, then what exactly is conferring power in this country? Yeah, that is showing. And this is something we can't know right now, because we're right in the middle of it. But is Trump, there's two ways you can look at it. One is that he is this complete one off. He's an anomaly. Or the other possibility that this is the beginning of a new type of politician. Yes, you wonder, you know, in terms, you could say of Rome, is he an aberration in the lower line of Roman emperors? Or is he the first in a different line of Roman emperors, like Caligula

and Nero? We don't know that right now. I think we're right to be scared about it, to tell you the truth. But the fact is, we don't know. Sorry to use the word fact again. Yeah, yeah. How dare you? But that's your fact, man. That's not my fact. But we don't really, we really don't know the answer now. Yeah. And I'd like to point out to everybody that Caligula is the one who made his horse a senator. That is something that in the current administration sounds possible. I'm waiting to hear where you go for that. I'm just going to say, like, you look at some of the appointees and you think I'd take a horse.

You almost did a spin take. You took some coffee, almost got Robert Carrotta to do a spin take. Now, there are a couple of his appointees who I'd say, could we get a horse in there instead? Maybe Caligula had the right idea. I do worry, you're such a hard worker. And I left this event last night. I left it late. And then we're taping this very early in the morning. You got here before I did. I'm a whippersnapper. You got here before I did. And I thought to myself, they're working this guy too hard. I don't feel tired. You don't feel tired. Okay. Well, you're on something. I'll find out what it is. You know what Sam Rayburn said? He said, never say you're tired because then you start feeling

sorry for yourself. And if you start feeling sorry for yourself, you're finished. Wow. That's fantastic. I feel sorry for myself all the time. I think I just thought of a really good prank for your publisher, which is call your publisher up and say, I'm done with the working tour. And I was going to get back to work on Lyndon Johnson, but I just had a quick inspiration. I'm going to write, I'm just going to spend a year or two on a biography of Conan O'Brien. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm imagining a heart attack. He really seems like a fantastic, interesting character. And I want to go live in Brookline, Massachusetts and talk to people who knew him and find out what kind of ruthless cad this guy was.

That'd be a fun prank. And I would enjoy it. I think I have held you here long enough against your will. I reiterate to anyone listening, do yourself a favor. You can get working. It's out there right now. If you're interested in writing and the writing process, and it's a terrific read, it's working by Robert Caro. And do yourself another favor. If you have not checked out the Lyndon Johnson book, start with Path to Power, and you will be enthralled or the power broker about Robert Moses. And it's just, I think, the best biographical writing of our time or anytime. I really believe that. Thank you. But again, I'm a comedian, so I have no. None of this means anything. I hate to break it to you. Thank you so much for doing this. It's

just one of the great honors of my life. Thank you. It was great to be here. It's time for another segment of voicemails, and I wanted to do this one especially in So In His Defense, because do you remember the voicemails we did where someone called in and said that you were mispronouncing Freddie Mercury? Yes. I remember. And then I talked in and talked about my hard Gs. You have hard Gs. It's not your fault the way you were raised, but your Gs are very hard. Very hard. Anyway. And do you remember he said that he never mispronounces anything? Yes. I really don't. Hey, Will, could you play voicemail number 17? Gorley, how do you not call this out? Conan says, Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live. Not Saturday Night Live. Sunday Night.

Jesus Christ. Well, first of all, I worked there. I guess this guy also worked there. I don't think he did. Oh, you don't think he did? I'm assuming if he's correcting my pronunciation of Saturday Night Live, then... It's true. It's true. He just did it. Yeah. Because I worked on, can I just explain for a second here? All right. Because I'm in the right here. Everyone who works at SNL, when they say it for real, they call it Saturday Night Live. That is a thing that we do. That is like we're in the club. People who are outside the show who have never worked there call it Saturday Night Live. Ask anybody who's ever worked there. Where'd you work? And they'll say Saturday Night Live. I don't buy this. I don't buy this for a second. It's true. And I will tell

you why few people know this, but Lauren Michaels, who created the show, is famously from Toronto, but people don't know that he was born in Louisiana and grew up there as a little child. And so he has a little bit of a Southern Louisiana twang. So when Lauren called me up and asked if I'd like to be a writer there, he said, would you like to come join us on Saturday Night Live? No. Oh, my God. This is an absolutely true story. Now, every time... No, I swear to God. Now, you're not going to hear this a lot. Listen, if you talk to Lauren, it only comes out when he says Saturday Night Live. And sometimes he says, would you like to join me? Because, you know, mostly he talks like this and it's like that. But then whenever he says the name of the show,

he goes, and it's just his old Louisiana roots coming out. But he says, you know, we had a really good time and Chevy Chase was there and it was really good at Saturday Night Live. And no, this is true. And then I'll tell you something else. Every now and then it comes out if he offers you something to drink, he'll say, like, you know, would you like some wine? Or would you like maybe some bourbon? Or would you, you know, would you like a gin and tonic? Or would you like a, would you like a sweet tea? He does. He says sweet tea. So those are, these are all real things. So first of all, that guy can get on his go fuck yourself horse. Well, it's not just that guy. Will, can you play number 23 as well? Oh, I like this.

Oh, and it's Renee calling. And I think you need to talk about the very funny way you pronounce Saturday Night Live. Oh my God. In a way, I can't quite explain, but just listen to it. And then it would be helpful if you would explain that. Sounds more like Saturday night. I can't do it. It's not. She's not from Louisiana. Something else. When can I talk? Because this is a waste of time. I think Dana's Carvey might do it. But anyway, listen to how you say it and help me understand it. When can I talk? When is it stupid? Thank you. Let Renee finish. Let Renee finish. Okay. Well, this is just infuriating because first of all, did you notice that she just said Dana Carvey does it too? Do you know why Dana Carvey does it too?

Because he's in the club. Okay. We are a small society of select individuals who worked on Saturday Night Live. Oh my God. And look. This is so dumb. It is not dumb. So you can play. I don't understand gorelly if I can call you gorelly. It's my name. Well, is it though a name? Oh my God. What is gorelly? I got a case of the gorelly's. It sounds like I have a, I don't know, we can't get into it right now. It's some kind of a rash. Your legs gone gorelly on you. Listen, when challenged, I lash out like any animal. You do. You really do. And when not challenged, when not challenged, I lash out even more like a really sick animal. You can play as many people as you want. I see what you're saying. But it doesn't change the fact that Lorne Michaels

was born in Louisiana and he invented San Elav. And I'm happy to take these questions and give you the answers. But if you guys are then going to sit around and say fake news, I'm going to sit right here and say fake news because I'm on the web and Lorne Michaels was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Yeah. You don't think Lorne has the ability and the power. We're talking about one of the most powerful people in the business. Lorne likes the myth that he came down from the north. Okay. Okay. And he loves this whole concept that he descended from the north. It's, it's very game of thrones. He came from the north. He came down to house, you know, he's in house Lannister and he came, he came down south and winter's coming in the wall.

That's all very Lorne. It's already Lorne mythology. House Lannister is not up north. Oh, I see. You didn't read the books. You're going off the TV show. That's fine. But anyway, the point is this, no, no, no, it's all right, girly. We'll do it your way. And if that's even a real name, but my point is, and I want to make this point sincerely, Lorne doesn't want people knowing he's from Louisiana. Do the math. Okay. All right. So I just don't understand why him calling it Saturday Night Live, if this is your explanation. I respect for Lorne. He invented the show. So you just changed the way you pronounce Saturday? Well, I'm going to tell you something. He calls it Saturday Night Live. And you know what? I'm sorry, if so, and if you don't understand

the concept of respecting your boss, but you also are now doing it differently. You're not saying Saturday Night Live. You're saying Saturday Night Live. You're getting really like, I don't know what's happening. You're scatting. I'm saying it exactly the way it should be said, Saturday Night Live. And sometimes I play around with a little bit because I'm a jazz artist. And you know that I'm a big jazz fan and I play a lot of jazz in my spare time. Yeah. So, okay. What's the matter? Never played jazz. You haven't seen me play jazz. I don't know if this, I don't know what's happening, but you can't pronounce Saturday Night Live properly. That's what this is. No. And you are reaching. Guess what? You just proved you can't pronounce Saturday Night Live correctly. I guess

I'm not part of the club. I didn't work there. So, I pronounce it like everybody else would work would pronounce it. You didn't work. Saturday Night Live. I'm sorry, because you were correcting my pronunciation. I'm sorry. I thought you weren't there. Oh, no, no, I was wondering what years you were there. Did you have a character? Oh, that's right. You did French character. Do your French character. I'm not going to do my French character. Do your Valley Girl. I'm sober. Do your Valley Girl. No, I'm completely sober right now. Those come out when I'm... I'm sorry. What the heck was that? That was fascinating. That actually was great. Hey, Will, what was that? Those are the chimes of truth. You were asking me for my character. Will, what was that? Are you having a massage

method? I thought I had you not disturb on this laptop. Oh, wait, so you're the guy that lectures us. Like we're children about to put your phone on airplane mode. That's terrific. You're lashing out at everybody right now. You are so angry that someone called you out for pronouncing a word incorrectly, because you call me out all the time and now you're yelling at Will. You're calling gorely a disease. You're asking me when I worked at Saturday Night Live. I hate to be criticized for being right. I don't like to make you guys feel bad that we're in a special cool club that calls it satin hat live. I appreciate that. And that concludes another episode of Commend a Brian Needs a Friend. You know, you work here at my pleasure. You work here. I work here just May. You know,

if I wanted you gone gorely, it would take maybe 35 phone calls. And then I'm sure there'd be a few months and then there'd be paperwork, but eventually you'd be gone because I absolutely don't know how this podcast works. Can I just put something else out there? And I'm not reaching for pity here. I really not. But if you don't believe, and it is an absolutely true story about Lauren being from Louisiana and it being a secret club and people in the know calling it satin hat live. But if you don't believe that, consider the possibility that I have a neurological ailment. Listen, I know and I want to make something clear here that I grew up in a large family and I developed a little bit of a teasing rough and tumble style with my siblings. But

I don't want it misunderstood. I, you know, Sona, you know that I love you. I think you're fantastic. We've been friends besties for a long time. The second older brother I never wanted. Exactly. And gorelly, you know that I respect you. You do a great job with the podcast. And I'm one day committed to learning your first name. I know that that's a process that takes a while and I'm going to look into it and find out, hunt it down. But I don't want anyone out there listening to think I really don't, you know, I don't like these people or that I want to give them a hard time. I, yeah, that's my way of communicating. And I just want people out there to know how much both of these people mean to me and know that this is all. Yes. What is it, Sona?

I was waiting. Yeah, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for the hammer is going to the thing. Oh, you think a hammer is going to fall? Yeah, I think there's going to be a thing following. There's always the thing following. I was being sincere. But do you think now that we called him out that he was going to drop the hammer? But then once we said that he's going to take the high road and say, no, I was being sincere. Yeah, because every time he compliments, you're like, it sounds sincere and then it's followed by something that is just really just painful. No, I sincerely respect both of you. And I love the work that you do with me here on this podcast. And I think we make a great trio. And that's all there is to say on that subject. And then you'll say like, Sona, the 30%

you give this job is really valued. Well, 30% is a little high. And if it weren't for your beard, Matt, we'd sew and sew. Yeah. Wow, you really, it's a good thing you're not in the business of insulting yourself. Gorgeous. That was pretty lame. Well, it just goes to show that's not my character. I like to build people. You like to build people up by playing. You're on a hunt. You want a constant search? No. Constant search for voicemails of someone who can criticize me. There are very, very few, but oh, you'll find them. Said the kindly, gorely. Will, could you play number five? Hey, Conan. My name's Kyle. I'm sitting here with my friend, Alex. So we're just having a conversation about cavemen and people with abnormally large skulls. And so I mean,

you know what? Let me Google the exact phrase man with big skull. And I don't know how to tell you this, but a picture of you comes up in the image results. And I feel like that's something you might want to know. You have a good day now. I am not offended at all because having a large cranial vault, I'm flattered. And I'll say it again, a large cranial vault is a sign of intelligence. So maybe this is proof that I'm the most highly evolved person of our species. Anyone buying this? Can I get that water? I'm so thirsty. Thank you. Listen, I, uh, I hope we cleared some stuff up today. Let me just quickly recap. It's pronounced satin out laugh. And also I have a large skull. I think that's what we're learning. Yeah, a large skull, but it's proportional to my very large body.

All of my limbs and various parts are quite oversized. Let's get that out there. And what? Can you recap the part where you complimented us? Yeah. No, I think we got it. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Sonam of Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself. 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 Vivino. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and 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, where wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.