Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Stephen Colbert

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Comedian, writer, and television host Stephen Colbert feels cool about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.Stephen and Conan sit down this week to chat about bonding like brothers, growing a sustainable farm, silliness as a religion, the healing power of connecting with an audience, and hiding from their producers. Plus, Conan gives a history lesson as he and his staff pick a new subject for another drawing contest. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.This episode is sponsored by Mercari (www.mercari.com), State Farm (www.statefarm.com), Mizzen+Main (www.comfortable.af code: CONAN), Simple Contacts (www.simplecontacts.com/CONAN code: CONAN), Fracture (www.fractureme.com/CONAN), HotelTonight (www.hoteltonight.com), and Away (www.awaytravel.com/conan20 code: CONAN20).

Hi, my name is Stephen Colbert and I feel cool about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Hey, you're listening to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend and this is a special episode. I've been very fortunate so far in this podcast. I've had the opportunity to speak to a lot of amazing people. And of course, there's some people I hardly ever get to talk to, people I admire, but they live on the other side of the country and they're busy. And so what I've done is I jumped on a red eye and I have flown to New York City because I really want to sit down and talk to Stephen Colbert.

He's really busy. He's got a show to do today, but for some reason he agreed. I think it was as someone who has to do a show every day, I would never do this. I don't know why he agreed, but he agreed to sit with me and have a conversation. I am sitting in the basement of his offices and his studio at the Ed Sullivan Theater. I am really excited to open up his head and look at this brain that fascinates me. And as always, I am aided by the trustee Matt Gorley. Hello, Gorley.

Hi. And Sona Mobsesian. Hi. And Sona, just quickly, we're about to talk to Stephen, but I'm still your favorite late-night host, right? Uh, yes. Okay, let's just... You're the one that pays me.

So yes, sir, you are my favorite. I feel so hollow now. Let's get into this. Mr. Stephen Colbert. We don't really know each other that well, but we... We know each other a little bit. Yeah. I kind of got to know you without ever meeting you through Allison Silverman, who was my

executive producer. Yes. Who was one of your writers. One of my writers back in the late... with the late-night days, back at Rockefeller Center. Exactly, exactly. And she thought the world of you and told all these stories about you. So I got curious about what you were like as a person. And Robert Smigel used to talk about you all the time.

Yeah. So before I ever met you, I was like, God, I wonder what it'd be like to know Conan. And then we didn't really get to know each other until the writer strike of 2007. That's right. When we started playing back and forth between your show, my show, and the daily show about who made Huckabee. Yes. You claimed that you had made Huckabee, given him the Huckabee bump, I think.

The Colbert bump. The Colbert bump, yes. And I forget what happened, but we made up a fake feud because we were all making up our shows and the writer strike. Right. We couldn't write anything, and yet we still had to fill all the time. Fill time. And I remember very clearly working with you and feeling an immediate kinship as if you

were my long lost brother. Because we taped a bit. We were, I think it was John, myself, and you were supposed to be having a long fight, a fist fight. Yeah. A long prolonged multi-room, multi-weapon fight. Yeah. And obviously there was something where you and I clicked the way brothers separated at

birth would click because we had to start fighting and you immediately went into the old style boxing stance that people had. The Marcos de Queensborough rules. Marcos de Queensborough rules. And you put your fists out and you were dancing around like a cartoon character. And I had this immediate visceral reaction of, I just want to go to a playground and play with this guy for like four hours because that's the bullshit that I do with certain people, namely my real brothers.

How many brothers do you have? I am one of six kids, so I'm one of four brothers. I have three brothers. Yeah. I have a lot of brothers too. I'm one of eight boys. Three girls, eight boys. Yeah.

Well, that's, boy, that really makes me happy. We never really discussed that before. We had really, I know we had a good time. I actually have the Leroy Neiman. Yes. I sent you a copy, right? Yes. You sent me a copy.

We made a Leroy Neiman of the last punch we all throw each other. The three of us, it was sort of like a parody of, we were all fighting each other, battling each other, and it was a long knock down drag out fight. And then it ended with sort of a parody of that, I think it's the Rocky III. Might be Rocky II ending. Is it Rocky II? No. Two is the rematch, isn't it?

And then Rocky III, Rocky wins in Rocky II, Rocky III, he defeats Mr. T, and then they decide to fight each other just for fun, which no two professional heavyweights have ever done. Ding, ding. Yeah, and they hit each other at the exact same time, and it freezes and becomes a Leroy Neiman painting, which is why it's so heartbreaking when he is beaten to death by Ivan Drago and Rocky IV. That's just the setup.

Yes. It is just all just backstory to him being beaten to death. Also he might not have been beaten to death by Drago had he not had a knock down drag out fight that nobody saw with Rocky backstage for no abs, for absolutely no reason. With no ref to break up any fights, no payday, nothing, stupidest thing that's ever been depicted in a sports movie, hey, let's just you and I have a knock down drag out for fun when no one's looking. Here's one reason why it's so gratifying, which I've told you before on your show and

I've mentioned when you've been on my show, why so gratifying that you, and I don't even know how to respond to how happy it is that you call me a brother, even a comedy brother, is because people may not know out there that when your show first began, Robert Smigel, who I didn't really know very well. Robert Smigel, for anyone who doesn't know, a really good friend of mine and head writer and sort of one of the co-creating forces behind the late night show back in 1993. He had scouted me for SNL and he liked me more than Lauren, I guess, I never even got called to New York, but he wanted me to meet you and I wrote some packets and I'd never

stopped writing packets, I think he stopped showing them to you, but you were like, no, maybe not. So I thought, oh, Conan doesn't like me, I thought, I don't meet Conan standard, even after I had gone and done other shows and had somewhat of a successful career, I still thought like, yeah, but I'm never going to be up to Conan standards. Oh, that's a terrible, terrible, well, first of all, you're not up to my standards. That is gratifying. Yeah.

Because I'm not up to my standards and I'd hate to think your standards are lower. I don't know, and I'm not up to my standards. No, that's a terrible misconception, but you know why someone would feel that way. They would, but you know, what happens is when packets come in, it depends on when they come in. Had I met you when we were first putting the show together, I think you would have been an immediate hire along with all these other people. You would have been in tons of whom I knew in Chicago.

You would have been an immediate hire. What happens once we got up and going and I believe your packet had some great left brain ideas. I remembered you had an idea in one of your packets that was about me growing a sustainable farm in the background. Was that you? Right. That people, there's always a question of what people do behind them in the little

tableau or the little scene behind their desk. What is back there? Right. And Dave of course had his bridges and various other things. Every late night house has a little tableau, it's all like there. And Robert had just said the words like, well, we want it to be funny and, but also real. We want it to be real. And I don't know what that meant.

And I don't know if that was even an accurate description. It isn't an accurate description. I watched the show, I watched the show later and I went, that has no bearing on what this show became. But I thought, what can you do that's comedy that's also strangely real? So I thought, we'll get some grow lamps that you can't see, plant some corn. And as the season go on, every so often Conan checks in with his crop of corn, which you can grow behind you, sustainable farm, sustainable farm behind you.

And then at a certain point in the year, let's say you launch in October, yeah, something like that. September. Yeah. September. Perfect. So all winter long, you check in on the corn. You have to hire like every so often like you weeded or something like that.

And then in come spring, I don't know what's 90 days for corn. Yeah. So Christmas, first of the year that you would drive up to Connecticut and get some college kids and smuggle them in like a coyote. Right. And then your migrant workers do harvest the corn right behind your desk. Right. I, I see why perhaps that did not make the cut.

Yes. But that is one of the things I, I pitched. Yeah. First of all, I didn't want to deal with government subsidies. Sure. There's a lot of when you start a farm, the tax, the tax implications are incredible. Yes. The tax.

The tax is incredible. A lot of paperwork. Yeah. And my brother has a place in Wyoming. Yeah. 100 acres. He grows certified grass. He's officially a rancher.

Oh my God. Okay. See, I didn't want to buy into all that. I loved your packet, but when you brought corn into it and sustainable farming, I was out. Here's something I'm going to tell you, Steven, that I believe sincerely, it would have been the worst thing in your life to be hired by me because you, and I, I believe this 100% I very much my biggest, biggest dream in 1985 was to be a writer for David Letterman on

his late night show. And I thought that my entire destiny depended on whether or not I got that gig. I sent in a packet. I really liked. Apparently they really liked it and it came down between me and one other guy and they went with the other guy. And when I got that phone call from Steve O'Donnell, I thought my life was, I really did think my comedy life is over.

Sure. I now realize that had I worked for Dave, I wouldn't have gone to SNL. Lauren wouldn't have seen me. I wouldn't have been plucked foolishly to replace Letterman in 93 and my improbable career never would have happened. If the thing that I wanted most had happened at that point, I wouldn't be where I am. And I really do believe that it's not getting the thing that you want that leads to you going on and daily show Colbert rapport, you know, and then this show not working for me

is the greatest thing that ever happened to you. Yeah. Yeah, I see that now. Yeah. And in fact, I've always suspected it. Yeah. But to hear it from the horse's mouth. Yeah.

Yeah. What a bullet I dodged. You dodged a bullet. Good Lord. And also I'm a monster. I'm a genuine monster. And so the reason it's cool for me is that I've always thought of you as a destructively funny person whose flavor of comedy was always surprising to me.

Like I wasn't, I never saw where things were going with your work. And I always thought I, well, I'll do my own thing. I'll never like be up to that standard. But then when I had so much fun with you doing that thing, after that we just in very small ways just kind of kept up with each other in small ways. Maybe once a year, just an email or a message or I'd maybe come on your show or something like that. Yes.

Just a little something. Rented to other skiing. That was a pivotal moment for me because I took my family. We didn't know this, but we each took our family to a ski mountain. We didn't know it. Deer Valley. Deer Valley. And it's a large mountain.

And no snowboarders. No snowboarders. That's the key part. That's the key part. No snowboarders. And the turkey chili is. Yeah. No one's vaping in line.

And I am skiing for about 10 minutes when people, I mean easily recognized because of my height, freakish cheekbones, long legs. When I ski, I'm not anonymous because it looks like Big Bird from Sesame Street has just put on goggles and people are like, Hey, it's Big Bird. People were flagging me down and saying, Stephen Colbert is on the mountain. No. You didn't tell me that. No, no, no.

People were stopping me and saying Stephen Colbert is here. And they were saying it as if, but of course, you know that because all you guys are aware of each other's movements. And so they were like, you know, of course, Stephen's here, but you know that. And I'm like, I don't know that. I don't know that. And people, it was important that people on the ski mountain know that I know that you were there.

So how did we actually get together? And then I think you heard the same thing. Someone told you. Yeah. I think we texted each other. I think at the top of Silver Strike. Oh, yeah. Silver Strike.

The Empire Palace. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a triple blue. It is extra medium. Yeah. Extra medium.

It was us and I think seven little children tied together following a ski instructor. And we were, we started skiing together and then we're on a, we're taking chair lifts together. And when you take a chair lift with another man, I think it's the most intimate way two men can get to know each other. That steam room or chair lift. And I will put chair lift above steam room. Okay.

Because it's not as uncomfortable. It's not as uncomfortable. There's no temptation that I will, you know, my eyes will drop. I won't be distracted. And my son was there too. Your son was there. It was me and my son, Peter. Yeah.

And the two of you, he had no idea who you were. And you guys started talking about an officer in a movie on the History Channel with Blue Diamond Phillips. Yes. Yes. I forget. We connected. And I just thought, then I hung out with you and your family.

And here's the things that just reaffirmed all these nice things that I wanted to think were true about Stephen Colbert. And then they all came true, which is, oh, this guy really loves his family. This guy is who he is. Even when you're on a ski lift with him, you're not pretending to be somebody. Even though famously you did pretend to be somebody. That makes it easy. Yeah, exactly.

You walk off stage. You can be yourself. Yeah. But I was, I just had a blast. And I remembered, and then we went out to, we went out to like a Bavarian restaurant. Very, very, yeah, very, very sausage and melted cheesy place. Yes. Melted cheeses and you would stick a sausage, put a sausage on a stick, dip it in some molten

cheese. Really? Like, I don't think, I think this is actually a dish that they serve. And guys in leather shorts would come by and say, oh, do you like more rough-sit cheese? And it was, it was, I don't like to try. Would you like the half of ice and, is this table large enough for you to like some libs loud? What I remember from that dinner is after, it's like a three hour dinner or something

like that. And I had known from Robert for many years, however, however successful you were, however your style of comedy sort of changed what people expected from how silly it could be in late night. Again, really, I think you changed what was sort of, what was acceptably dumb, which is the highest compliment I could give you. Robert always said, Smigal always said, God, I just wish you could get along with him because he's the funniest guy you'll ever meet in your life.

That's nice. And, and if you could just put a camera on him, just being with someone, that would, it would just be 10 times, but people don't even know what it's capable, how much fun it could be with Conan. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you talked for three hours. And it was not that long after you left The Tonight Show. And you explained it in the, for three hours with earth-shattering laughter around the table for three hours.

And everybody said, what was that dinner like? And I said, it's the funniest. It's the, it's the most enjoyable dinner I've ever had with anyone. And I, and, and I don't know how to say this, it doesn't sound like a knock and it's not a knock. And it's that I don't know if I said 10 words, but it doesn't matter. It didn't feel like he was hogging the conversation. It felt like he was giving a gift of like, let me tell you, let me tell you my story.

You told us your story. And I, I walked away going, I know exactly what Robert means now and, and you can't capture it. Well, you know, that's the thing. Much better than this conversation right now. This right now, the evidence of this helps in no way, does not support it in any way, but it's like the observed molecule. This is the, the, the double window test or whatever.

The mics go away. This man is amazing. Uh, listen, uh, first of all, we're not really recording. This is not, this will never air. So, uh, don't worry about that. And so that's why it's going to be fantastic. It's going to be really funny. Uh, I think one of the things that was interesting to me, and I, I, I recognize this sort of

right away. I don't know what it is, but it's something about, oh, I think this guy likes to rough house. This guy, silly as a religion for this man. And silly as my religion. Do you know what I mean? It's a, um, I've seen you shirtless in a, in a hula skirt, but in your dreams.

No, the photo online. If you look at Colonel Brian, if you look at Colonel Brian Young, there's a picture of you shirtless in college from the, from the lampoon. From the lampoon. Yeah. And it's, it's so funny because I don't know what your path was. My path was comedy saved me from being an incredibly uptight, unhappy person. Without a doubt.

Without a doubt. And I was thinking when I met you, I thought, I wonder, he feels like a kindred spirit, like comedy saved you. Is that, is that true? Without, without a doubt, I mean, sort of work backwards in, in that, in, in that story, I was saved by Paul DeNello and Amy Starris, who had, were my companions, you know, there were my loved ones when I first started out, because when I first started out, when I first got out of college, I was a theater major at Northwestern University and I had been

a philosophy major at a small all-male college in Virginia and then I figured if I'm just going to look at my navel all the time, I might as well, I might as well do something with it and be an actor. And that's kind of what I'd always secretly wanted to do, but couldn't get the courage to go try to do it. And I really wanted to be an actor-actor, you know, I really, you know, the thing I've sort of said repeatedly about it over the years is that I didn't want to play Hamlet. I wanted to be Hamlet.

I wanted that my own brooding, depressed self to be validated by an occupation and, and, and a wardrobe that matched it. So I wore a lot of black and I had a, what passed for a beard and I was a poet slash jerk and I sort of brooded at people. I was depressed at them and, and it wasn't like I was acting. It was real. I really was. Like, I don't know why I'm getting out in the morning, out of the bed in the morning.

And I, I happened accidentally upon improvisation and I went, oh, something about that seems right to me. A, I'm lazy and I don't want to learn lines, but B, I like the something wonderful right away, the, the, the, the pay attention and, and then try to respond, which of course is part of acting. But I love the, I love the, the sort of the honest, responsive aspect of it and that there are really no wrong answers because being essentially an anxious person, I'm always afraid I'm going to say or do the wrong thing.

Exactly. Several times in this conversation, I already have things I want to be, lying in bed tonight staring at the ceiling, going, what the fuck did you say that? Why did, why did you say that? Yeah. Why'd you tell Conan he was funny? Right. Why'd you tell Conan it was cool to know him.

But anyway, so I met Paul and Amy through improvisation when I got hired at the second city and it was all an accident, man. I was going to be an actor. I was going to be like a serious, trained, you know, have to professionally be attractive person. Right. And those guys broke me. I mean, even when I was doing like second city, even when I was doing comedy for a living,

I still was really serious, never break, never change the script, all 100% professional. And we'd be like, have a scene where for the purposes of the scene, I have to find Amy attractive because it's like a pickup scene. And she would turn around and she have giant icky teeth in. And I would burst out laughing and that actually, that broke me. That's the night that it actually broke me. Or if I had like a pimple on my nose because I'm like a 24 year old man, they would, she had come into the room in the scene that where I'm supposed to be like Dr. Farber should

say, Mr. Beacon, you know, Mr. Lighthouse, whatever, I burst into the laughter when she turned around with the teeth in and after the show was over, I went and hid in the bathroom. I was so angry I could cry that they broke me and they stood outside the door and mocked my anger at them for having made me laugh in a comedy show. And I opened the door to a different person and everything, everything was stripped away. I was totally shattered and it kind of saved my life. That they mocked me so hard for being so serious about their invitation to be silly. Now it's time for the segment, Conan O'Brien pays off the mortgage on his beach house.

I believe in transparency in all my business actions. So I'm doing commercial spots and I'm telling people that I have financial needs, big mortgage, beach house and I'm taking care of business, you know. We're all helping you pay for your beach house. Well, you don't help that much. I grew up an anxious person, very anxious person and struggled with anxiety. And I really thought in a Catholic way that everything, anything good had to come through suffering.

I really believe that you have to be, you have to be miserable. And so I was a grind. I was a grind in school, I was, I took everything so seriously. I was, and what happened was my natural, I had a natural facility for being silly and funny, but that was just for my friends. I didn't put any importance on it at all. And it was only when I stumbled into college and accidentally stumbled into the lampoon, people valued comedy and I realized, wait a minute, this is something I do for fun.

But suddenly people are saying, Hey, you know, you're pretty good at this. And this is a valued skill in the world. And I didn't know that. I think I was 18, 19 years old. I had no idea and I didn't trust it because I could make a whole room full of people laugh and there was no misery beforehand. And everyone was happy. Does that, it feels like you're making faces like you really relate to what I'm saying.

And you're crying, Steven's crying right now. And he's putting mascara on and it's running. This is getting, you're doing a lot of strange things right now. That is a dish that is hitting so many parts of my taste buds right now. That is a bell that is, you know, ringing so many places in my brain because of course, I'm also a Roman Catholic and 11 year alter boy and very devout household and the image of Christ on the cross is the highest aspiration is to be able to take up your cross. And to alchemize suffering into gold.

But you can't have gold without suffering. And you know, to the point where I had a magical thinking, yes, I had a magical thinking about suffering and about forbearance and patience. I'm going to say virtue because I didn't, the other virtues don't mean as much but patience and forbearance of suffering where, you know, my, my father and two of my brothers died when I was 10 years old, as you know, and well, it would require enormous magic for that not to have happened, enormous magic. But what kind of brother or son would I be if I did not at least attempt the magic?

You know, because every young questing hero at first, it's impossible to bring them back. You know, you cannot pass through the tunnel that is just a black circle on a wall until the young hero does. And I did hair shirt behavior in order to achieve the mana necessary for the spell. I would do things like I would put myself in a small closet where the carpet had never been matted down the 1970s shag, which is incredibly scratchy. And I'd put myself behind the boxes and close the door in the summer in Charleston where there was no air conditioning and see how long I could take it.

Because that would be sufficient to prove, not even prove, it's like a gathering of energies. The suffering is a gathering of potency that then you can use in other ways. What that second thing was, I have no idea. What that action would be, I don't know. But it had something to do with crawling underneath the tripwire of reality without touching it so that I could change what is into something else, but I couldn't even name it because to name it would be to hit the tripwire. So what could you do that doesn't happen to make something else be?

Does that make any nonsense to you? Yes, it does. Because I grew up, my family is a group of who I love very much, they're magical thinkers, they're beautiful magical thinkers, they're crazy magical thinkers and I'm a crazy magical thinker and that's how I grew up and I, here's the thing, here's the crazy thing. Right, and I know you are talking about, you went through this pain and you went through this process that any normal person would tell you, any therapist, a cognitive therapist would say this suffering is unnecessary and you achieve nothing with this suffering.

And I still wrestle with that to this day because I didn't suffer a tragedy anything a million years close to what you suffered, but I felt like I suffered through other things and they felt very powerful to me and I engaged in magical thinking and put myself through a lot of torture and here's the crazy thing, what happens when you do that and then magical things start to happen for you, you can't see because it's a podcast, but Steven just very meaningfully pointed his finger at me as if to say, you nailed it and it's sad that I have to explain that because this is a podcast, but he just gave me a very meaningful, but isn't that, I mean, look at me, when I said, when I said, when you said, here's the crazy

thing and I said, I know, what I meant was, it works, I know, but you know what, I hate, what I hate, I hate that it fucking works because I don't recommend it. I don't want my children to ever and I don't want to go through it. People out here know want suffering or to even engage in the magical thinking part of the suffering because I think that there are other ways. How about this? Ending up being a comedian or ending up doing what I do or if I can speak what you do is not a, it's not a singular goal that you must achieve.

It's just what happened because we engaged in many things and the magical thinking magically thinks that the magical thinking worked. It's the biggest fight I've had with therapists and friends over the last, I'm fighting the urge just to point at you again. Yeah, biggest fight I've had with everybody, my wife, who I love dearly, my friends who've known me for 30, 40 years, therapists and I've had many have all said, you don't need the suffering and I 80% believe them and 20% I'm like, yeah, what the fuck do you know? Exactly.

Is that, you know why you're saying that? Because you can't do it. Yeah. You know why? Because you don't know how to get underneath the tripwire. I shouldn't even be telling you about the tripwire, what if the tripwire finds out? Yes. Like, you know, the first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club.

Yeah. The first rule of magic is you don't doubt it because the part of the thing is that the hardest part of that magical thinking for me to explain is I used to have these dreams and they happened up until my late 20s. They happened until I got married, actually, and then they stopped. I realized I was a month into being married and I went, oh my God, I don't have the dreams anymore and I never had them again. And I used to have these dreams after a dad and the boys died of, and you can hear in

the way I said that, that I'm echoing how it was described to me because the boys aren't the boys to me. They're Peter and Paul. Yeah. But dad and the boys is what you say. Yeah. Dad and the boys. So after dad and the boys died, I had these dreams, recurring dreams, and in the dreams,

I am being asked to do something that can't be done and actually is beyond impossible. It's not even a request. It is a universal impetus that comes from I know not where. Here's an example. Endless Salvador Dali plane. Yeah. Geometric plane.

No sky, no features. Limitless horizon. Limitless horizon, maybe marble. In the marble, there are three other pieces of stone. One is larger than the other two. And those three pieces of stone are absolutely flush and almost exactly the same color as the rest of it. And they're so well joined that if you ran your finger, you could not feel any difference

between the two stones, but you know they were put there. And they, you know, in retrospect, I know they look just like the way like a bishop looks like his plaque looks like in the floor of the cathedral I served. Okay. Right. Perfectly flush. And they have polarity, a north and a south, like a magnet, each of them. I have to make the north, the south, and the south, the north without doing anything.

Not taking them up. I have to make them exactly the opposite of their nature. With your will. There is no indication about how it should happen. But it must happen or else the worst possible thing you could possibly imagine will happen to you. And what is that? It is never stated, but it is right behind you in the dark area where your peripheral

vision doesn't reach. It's always there, capital I, it's always there, and it is always driving you to do that thing. And there's no request. It just must happen. It's like the air you breathe. It must happen. A sequoia must be a pencil.

So I carve a sequoia in a pencil? Nope. That question was never asked. That question, that statement was never made. It just must be different. Yeah. Now, I actually think there's some relation to that and creating things. Yes.

There wasn't something there and now there is. You know, that's the thing I like to tell young performers who are anxious about their career. I go, you're entirely sufficient to the challenges of what you want to do because the drive all comes from you and the thing you're going to ask yourself to do, you know how to do it. Where there was nothing, you will make something and that thing will be you. You can't ask for more.

I don't think it's any coincidence that you grew up, not just a Tolkien fan, but a fanatic. You were drawn to Dungeons and Dragons and you were drawn to, and I know how well you know you're Tolkien and it's frightening how well you know it. I don't know as well as people think, but better than anyone I know. Yeah. The ghost of Tolkien is stunned that you know that much and is often stumped. He's worried. He's worried.

He's worried. He's like, you know, I had other things in my life. Yeah. Which one was Bilbo? Uh-huh. It's like when Simpsons fans come up to me and they start to talk to me and I'm like, wait, who was, who drove the bus? They're like, Otto drives the bus.

What's your problem, man? I thought you worked on the Simpsons. I'm like, ah, I was there for a while and then I wasn't. But when I said that silliness is your religion, I was kind of also talking about myself, which is silliness is my religion. I believe in silliness and I actually believe in the transformative power of comedy. I've seen it happen too many times where you can walk into a situation and there's one kind of energy and then people are just happy because you were able to say something funny

or you were to, and what you come away with is this beautiful. That didn't cost me anything. I lost nothing. Everyone's happy. I'm happy and pleased that I made them happy. That's crazy because nature and physics and everything tells you that if you give, if you... Well, it's like love.

Yes. It's like love. You have two kids? Yes. Two kids. Do you have them at the same time? Are they twins? No.

That's the biggest difference between my daughter and my son. Between our daughter was born first and our first home was born second as that works out. But when our second child was on the way, I remember my wife and I being worried not tremendously but substantially that, well, we have to divide our love between these two children. Now we have to split our love, but it's actually multiplicative. It doubles your love. It doesn't, one's not have two, it's two or has one.

All lose whole find, as Cumming says. You give and receive more than you gave. If it's a good audience, take it away from the realm of the personal. I don't know about you as a professional, but when I go on stage, if the audience is good, I actually have more energy when I leave stage. If the audience is bad and I've had to just absolutely just staple gun the entire audience to my nutsack and drag them for an hour to get, just keep the energy up for that period of time.

I can't do, I can't imagine doing the show another week. Okay. This is, but that has to do with the human connection and love it. This is the fact that it's such a joy to talk to you because there's so few people I can talk to about this, but when I have a good crowd, I feel that if there were an illness in my body, it would be, it's gone after the show. You know, I mean, if, let's say there was a cancer growing in me, I really do feel like if I got in front of a really good crowd in front of a good theater or someplace or taping

my show and they really laughed and we had a great connection that they would test me afterwards. I've run, they'd run me through a CAT scan and that disease would be gone because some, I think it's restorative and it, and I feel, I've often thought about people like George Burns and Bob Hope who are like, they lived into their hundreds and I'm like, is that, do I get that? Yeah. If I do this right, if I literally don't like, don't step in front of a bus or start

doing heroin, is that okay? If I don't drink this all the way, is it could, do I, can I have that? Yeah. I think maybe it's actually helpful. It could be. A lot of comics also die very young, but you could point to a reason, you could point to a reason. Possibly.

I think that that's true what you said, but I'm also telling you what I agree with a billion percent is that when I'm not connected to a crowd, when my needyometer is in the red zone because it's not getting what it needs and I don't feel like I'm connecting with them and I don't feel like I have this great organic thing that's happening. I'm depleted afterwards. I don't want to do it anymore for a living. I come home and I tell my wife, I think maybe I'm done. I've been coming home and telling my wife, I think maybe I'm done the entire time I've

been married, which is about 17 years, occasionally. She always reminds me, yes, I know. You said that three months ago and then you came in two nights later and you said you actually were able to change the course of the planets with your, with your comedy beam tonight. You were so, you know. My wife said the same thing to me. It was, I forgot, damn, I forgot what it was, it was sometime this fall and I had a few

days off and I had a very depressed fall from July till Christmas for reasons that I think I understand but may not be applicable to her. It has to do with work, but maybe we won't get to her, we will, I don't know. I said to her, I need to be in front of the audience because she said, what can I do? How can I help her? I said, you are helping me, honey. I just, I need to be in front of the audience. I need to find someone to say this to and to say it in a way that makes them laugh and

then gets it off my chest and we share that I'm not crazy to think this and all those things. She goes, I want you to remember this, this thing you just said to me the next time you come home and say, I just don't think I can do another week of this. Yeah. You ever sick on stage? You mean sick, not feeling well? Have you ever gone on and not been able to do a show?

No. Same here. I don't think that's ever happened to me and I swear to God, my wife says I'm a Viking, but I had a car full of people roll over my foot a couple of years ago and I think my foot was broken, but I decided it wasn't and I just refused to acknowledge it and I wouldn't go to a doctor and it got better. My wife is, things like that are always happening to me, she's, throughout my life, I will be physically injured and then I just decide, let's just not think about this, let's keep

going. I find the audience extremely, a great palliative if I'm not feeling well or if I'm feeling sick. I've never not done a show. I've gone on quite sick. Yes. And I've just done it. I've not shaken the guest hands or used Purell or whatever, so I don't want to get sick.

I've watched many shows where you seem ill and I think that's the vibe you give off. And there's only so much makeup can do. Oh God. Do you ever wish you had a job that did not require makeup? It's probably my only complaint about the job. My only complaint about the job is the rigidity of the schedule and makeup, that other people can say, you know what, I'm in their jobs, not everybody, but there are a lot of people that you know who can say, I just took a personal day today and you couldn't take a personal

day today. I've got a show to do. We're here in New York. You've got a show to do. I got a little bit right after this. I've got to go into makeup and I'm not, I have only several more minutes, which is a shame. Yeah.

No, I can't. I moved to show taping. Good. You can stay here another hour. I mean, actually the only problem is that my guest is usually the person that I don't want to keep waiting and that's you, so. That's true. I'm your guest tonight.

Sure. And I've brought nothing. I have no plans. I have no anecdotes. I did a full minute with Robert De Niro, with neither of us talking. Because that's awesome. Robert De Niro's interviews. I know.

I had never interviewed him before, the first time I interviewed him, I heard that he was difficult. I had seen that he was difficult. Yeah. I mean, not purposefully. He's just, you know, it's work a day for him, I think. And he came out and he started, he didn't say much. And I just said, why don't we just sit here?

And we did a solid minute. That's great. And it was one of the most enjoyable. I've never been able to recreate it. I've had other guests who have that vibe and I go to start it, but they get nervous, you know. No, you need both people totally committed. That's the word.

He was 100% committed. One flat, solid minute and neither of us talking. It was wonderful. I do not want to keep you because nobody knows more. Isn't that nice though? For years now, I've just wanted to have a conversation with you and you had to make it professional. So thanks.

I thought we could actually have a moment of human connection. You're getting paid $400. I understand. Conan's got to turn some coin. Actually Conan does. Conan's made some terrible investments, but we'll get into that later. But I really, I've wanted to sit down and talk with you. I mean, Alison, even on the old show and Alison, we stopped working together nine years ago,

much to my heartbreak, but terrific writer. Fantastic. Great line. Just like really so shockingly great 10 years ago now, the 10 years ago this fall. And she used to say, gosh, I wish she could just sit down with Conan because he would understand these things that you're dealing with as a host of a show. And there's so few people you can talk to us about. I had a great conversation, a brief, my only off air conversation with Dave ever was a

week and a half before he ended his show here. I just said, could I just come see you to ask you, just talk to you before you leave. Because I like talking to you while you're still there. And he was like, sure. And or rather his person said, sure. So I came in, we sat down in a little outer office with a couple of balls of water and pleasantries. And then I was like, what can I do for you?

So I asked him questions about like really work a day questions like, how do you, how do you split your focus? Cause you got a balcony. How do you, how do you do that? Where do you stand? Why did you choose that spot? Which, why is your desk on that side? I wanted to ask the mechanical thing so I could come into this space.

And he was answering the questions and thoroughly and with some enjoyment. I like ask questions like, where do you hide from your producers? Like when they need you, where in the theater can you go where you're comfortable, but they don't know you're there. And he was like, oh, and he told me where it was. I'm not going to stay here because it's a nice place to hide. And he goes like, you can even hear them looking for you. You can hear their panic rising in the commercial break where they're looking for you.

And I said, do you mind me asking you these questions? And he goes, Steven, who else would know to ask? Who else would care what the answer was? That's something I envy. I, I, obviously we have very, all of us have very strong, you know, reverential feelings about David Letterman and I, I envy you that I've never, there's a lot of people that assume that I have this connection with him that I don't really have. Cause while you had his old, late night show and yeah, but you guys didn't overlap.

We didn't overlap. And, and I've always thought, oh, I'd love to sit down and talk to him for, for an hour and just experience that mind. But I don't know if that's in the cards ever. And you know, and I, I'm a podcast. And I'm, yeah, but I'm so, also Dave, this was incredibly enjoyable. I know you're listening right now. I'm telling you right now, this was, this was a rare treat.

Yeah. I feel so cool about being called my friend. He wrapped it up so nicely. Let me just say one last thing before we go, which is I have a very powerful feeling when you were talking about your suffering. I just hated that you had that. I, I hated that you had that suffering because you're such a decent and good person and it's so interesting to me.

I don't know if you feel this way, but when people have ever said to me, oh, that sounds like you went through a rough time or you were unhappy as a kid. I dismiss it. I said, no, no, that wasn't no problem. I don't know. That was not, not a problem at all. But when I hear about someone else who is a kindred spirit, having any kind of suffering, I have this feeling of, I want to take that, I want to go back and take that away for you.

Do you know what I mean? Does that sound odd? Um, no, not at all. Okay. And when I was, when I was a kid, you know, a couple of things, Peter and Paul died. I moved into their room. Maybe that would be one way. Oh wow.

Okay. I had their record player. I didn't have a record player, but suddenly a 10, I have a record player and I had all their records. Yeah. Okay. So that's how I got to know James Taylor. I got sweet baby James because that was my brother, Peter's James is a guest on the show

tonight. He's, he's after you. But I also got George Carlin. I got Bill Cosby. I got, um, he did Richard Nixon, a fantasy fry, David Fry, and I listened to those guys over and over again. Every night, even when my mom told me not to, I would hide the speaker under my pillow. I could just listen to those guys and I listened to them every night.

And those people, uh, in some alchemical way, took it away. And in the work that you've done, every time I've watched you in some small way, you have retroactively taken away what of it lives with me to this day. Your comedy is a joy and, and we do that for each other, we do that for each other, which is nice. You're doing that too. I mean, there's nothing you can say about me that you're not doing just as much. And, uh, this was special to me that I got to talk to you and let us without microphones,

find a time and go get some melted cheese, uh, and sausage. So good. So good. God bless you. Thank you. Stephen Colbert. And now it's time for another installment of Conan O'Brien pays off. The mortgage on his beach house.

A few episodes back, I had you guys do a drawing contest, right? And it went online and people voted a 1,118 votes, 71% chose Conan's is the better drawing, 29%. Yeah, it was the better drawing. But Sona, I thought you brought up a valid point that these drawings were named and people knew who they were voting for. Right. Uh, I don't think so.

I do think that I had the much better drawing and mine had a joke and it was funny and I think a lot of people would have loved to have taken the starch out of my collar and voted against me because that's the fun thing to do. Oh yeah. Not so fast Conan. We vote for the underdog Sona. So I did. I disagree with you.

Well, there's only one way to find out and that's to do a blind drawing contest with the same paper, same pens. These are two brand new uniballs. Okay. High quality card stock, you're not going to put your name on them this time. These will be up on the Team Coco Twitter profile where you can vote for which drawing is best. Okay.

I've got three subjects and I want you, do you guys want to choose what you want to draw or do you want me to just pick one? Your call Sona. You could pick one. Okay. Freddie Mercury popping out of a giant birthday cake. Well, that's not fair because Sona is a huge Freddie Mercury fan. Not that I don't like him, but she's obsessed with him, so she's probably been drawing

him steadily for 20 years. Okay. Let me go to the second one then. Yes. Just because I like him, I don't draw him. You practically built a religion about Freddie Mercury. I know, but do you draw your, your idols? Yes.

I draw me every day. Okay. Do you want to hear the other options? Sure. Wonder Woman atop a fiery steed. Or a log cabin with a smoking chimney and a lumberjack standing out front. I like the lumberjack and the log cabin. Okay.

Let's do what you want to do. Oh, Sona. Let's do it. Let's do it. It doesn't matter what we draw because I feel good about this. Okay. So this will be a log cabin with a smoking chimney and a lumberjack standing out front. Got it.

Three basic elements and. Got it. I wonder if there's some kind of punishment that the loser has to endure. We're going to be continuing to have to work with the other one. Wow. It's a punishment for both of us. I won't tell you anything specific about their drawings because I don't want to give it away, but right now they're both very heavily concentrating on the logs.

You know, you're the expert here, Gourley. Yeah. But having people quietly draw on audio would, to the novice, seem like an incredibly stupid thing to do. That's why we're moving the goalposts of podcasting. This gets edited, music is thrown down, pencil sounds, it becomes like a sonic environment. And it's multi-media and interactive. It brings people to the social media.

Do you guys want to talk at all about your process? Yeah. Not what you're drawing, but what you use, like how do you tap into your creativity? Okay. Well, I'm having a really hard time drawing logs. Oh my God, those look, don't borderline obscene. It looks like a dildo cabin. You made a cabin.

You know, the early pioneers, and this is a true story that you should appreciate because Sona is a student of history, the early pioneers sometimes would settle in areas where there was not natural wood stock. And fortunately, those settlers brought with them 14 foot long dildos. And they often had to use those. This is, I'm talking about places like Arizona, New Mexico, where there was not a lot of old growth trees. So you can still, to this day, occasionally, if you're driving around, see in the dildo-rich

environments. Yeah. Yeah. Well, fortunately, they brought them from the old world. Oh. And that's what really made a difference. I'm worried that the dildos will give away who's is who's, but I think it's an interpretation. They're not literal.

Yeah. God, I didn't even think I'd be that great at this. And then, it's like another thing I'm good at? The hell? It's crazy. It's like enough already with the being good at stuff going on. And I'm like, I know. I wonder if there's any points to be given for speed because Sona's almost done.

I am almost done. Yeah. She does things quickly and badly as her motto. Quickly and badly. Isn't that true when you say that's your motto? You want me to admit that my motto is I do things quickly and badly. Yeah. No, I disagree with you completely.

I think that I am very thorough at everything I do. You keep looking over at my drawing. Yeah, he is. Well, it's an obscenity. It's a dildo house. Just the concept of a dildo cabin alone is going to bring so many people running to this pole. Come see the dildo cabin.

Off Route 66, America's greatest treasure, the 1869 dildo cabin. Okay. All right, you're done. Times up. No landscaping, please. Come on. You're gilding the lily. Yeah.

You better put some landscaping on us. You know what? I'm on the lily guild. My member. Okay. You guys are done. Hand these in, please. Pencils down, all right, I'm looking at two masterworks here.

You can go to the team. Please say. Go to the team. Cocoa Twitter and take the pole. This is going to be interesting. This is going to be close. We'll finally figure out who's got the chops. All right, any final words?

Do you want to defend your work at all before we wrap up? I think mine tells more of a story. And if I was going to be friends with one of the lumberjacks, I would be friends with mine. My lumberjack is a complicated person. And I want to put it out there that that axe may not be for chop and wood. He may have just done something horrible in the cabin and he's outside gloating. It's sort of a creepy thing going on here.

So you've got the murder cabin and the dildo cabin. Yeah. Okay. One is for pleasure. The other is pain. There you have it. Okay. Check it out.

Vote now. That'll be up for a few days. And then we'll cover the results somewhere in the future. Good job, everybody. Well done. Thank you, arts and crafts teacher. Okay, everybody, wash up. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Sonamov Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself.

Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sax and Jeff Ross at Team Cocoa and Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Earwolf. Special thanks to Jack White and the White Stripes for the theme song. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. 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 Cocoa 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. From Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Cocoa Production in association with Earwolf.