Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - The Double-Billed QuixlQuaxl in Honor of Aadu (Re-Release)

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Conan pays tribute to our friend Aadu. Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, Conan O'Brien here, and we are going to re-air a Conan O'Brien needs a fan. This is a segment that aired originally not too long ago, February. We're re-airing it for a very sad reason. I just found out moments ago that this fan, Adu Prakash, has passed away, and it's very upsetting because we had a very nice, I mean, for a million reasons, but I'm thinking of him because we had a lovely conversation. He talked to us about his love of birding. He's a birder, and that fascinated me because my dad,

who I lost in December, was a lifelong birder, fascinated with birds, and always going out to check out birds and identify them, and I would go with him as a kid. So I could bond with Adu about this, and he was really sweet, very funny, as you'll see in the segment, and we had a lovely chat. He came up with birds that we looked like. He had a really good sense of humor.

And it is the, just, it's very strange to be kind of shocked by the passing of someone who we just spoke to over a Zoom. And we had a connection. But a connection is a connection. It's a real, he reached out to us, and we shared time with him and had a lovely experience. And he even invited me to his wedding. And I said I wasn't able to go because I was getting ready for the Oscars at the time. I'm not sure I would have been able to go anyway, but still, it's just very unsettling.

My thoughts and all our thoughts are with Adu's family and his friends and people who really know him. And we just wanted to re-air this conversation because it was just lovely getting to chat with him. And so this is our way of honoring his passing. So let's air this segment with Adu Prakash, and we are very sorry, very sorry to everyone who knew and loved him. Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit team cocoa.com slash call Conan.

Okay, let's get started. Hi, Adu. Welcome to Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Hi, guys. I'm really excited to be here. Hello, Adu. How are you? Fantastic.

How are you, Conan? I'm doing well. I have to compliment you on your voice. You have a terrific... And your sweater. Well, you know, I'm thinking it's mostly a vocal audio medium, but sure. I like the whole vibe. Yeah, the whole vibe is great.

You have an incredible beard. You have a true Irishman's sweater, Adu. and uh and it's actually from ireland so oh i could tell yes that's the one thing i know it's got i can tell by the various coded messages in it right now it says oh for sure says by guinness um but uh and you've got the amazing beard but i've got to say that you're the tone of your voice is very calming fantastic i appreciate that i mean i brought my mic from home just so that you can hear it like the rich fullness of it all yeah yeah we've not found a Mike in the universe that will give me a rich fullness. I've put Eduardo on that task. I'm still searching.

Yeah. It doesn't exist. Yeah. We're going through the, the Barry White estate to see what we can get. Adu, tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do? What are you all about? Where are you coming from? Wow. That's a huge question. Yes, it is. Right now, I am a research engineer for the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. So I live in Seattle. Oh, wow. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a very cool job.

I do R&D for the Argo Float program. So Argo floats are these autonomous drifters that we've put out in the world's oceans that sample various things in the ocean. Temperature, pressure, slinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, basically kind of giving us a comprehensive look on how our oceans are doing and how our atmosphere is doing. And it's all climate change related, conservation related. And it's a cool gig. Wait a minute. I'm not an oceanographer. Are you one of those people that believes in science?

Oh, boo. Why don't you take your mumbo jumbo and witchcraft somewhere else? Right. Let's pack up and go, guys. I'm sorry. Three cheers. If I don't understand it, I don't like it. Exactly.

Yeah. I don't like science. Now I'm going to go get in my car and drive around. Yeah. That sounds like really good work. I'm hoping you can tell me something optimistic because these are perilous times. It can feel for a lot of us. What do you?

Oh, you want it optimistic? No, no, no. It doesn't have to be optimistic. I just want to get your take your, it sounds like you're devoting your career and your incredible mind and hard work to trying to figure out the oceans, I'm guessing, are warming. that is happening? Yes, they are. Okay.

Yes. And they are getting hotter and hotter. They're just taking in all the heat that we're producing. Yeah. And part of this program is to study how the heat content of the ocean is changing over time. And a large part of that also is how much carbon is taking in. So oceans are very good carbon sinks for all the, you know, carbon that we as humans produce. And some studies are actually.

showing that there are some regions that are actually sources of carbon now. So it's not just sinks, but there's a flux between the ocean and the atmosphere. I don't know if I have any positive gems for you, Conan, but I think one cool thing. So I'm very new to oceanography. I was a conservation-based person for 25 years and an engineer, and I kind of combined those things and landed in this sector. But I think I've just been learning how cool and complex our oceans are and how many different subsystems are, you know, in there. And what's cool is that oceans are like space to us in that they're just criminally undersampled. Right.

So we don't know much about the oceans at all because we don't have like an array of sensors in there for like, you know, last 100 years or so. But that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to put as much technology out there and like kind of sample as much as we can. It's very cool. So that we can better understand. Well, it's also as understanding how rising temperatures are going to affect current, winds, you know, we've all noticed that things are getting more severe. We're noticing that here in Los Angeles, obviously, lately that. And I think across the globe people are noticing that extremes are becoming more extreme.

And so, and. And climate change doesn't always mean one thing. It can, the influences can be very complex. And so we don't really know sometimes what to expect. Sometimes it means, and we're all figuring that out together. So, and I think my work in this area is every bit as important. I was going to say, you're telling him all this. Excuse me.

I do. Excuse me. I'm not done yet. I believe that by various neutron installments, throughout the oceanographic plates and plateaus. There might one day be hegemony. Can we just go back to your sweater? Your sweater looks amazing.

Thank you. Let's just let odd you talk. No, I do appreciate, all foolishness aside, I really do appreciate the work you're doing. And as someone who has children, I really do want us to figure this out and make a better world. So I'm glad you're doing this.

We're doing the best we can, Conan. Well, try harder. You don't look like it. You just called into a podcast to goof around. This is time that could be saving the world. And you're like, I've got to go talk to Conan and goof off. Well, listen, I love Seattle. I'm sort of married into Seattle because my wife is from Seattle and I married there.

And I go back a lot. And I love my in-laws. And I love to prowl around Seattle. It's my second home. Sorry, you said prowl, right? Yeah. You know what, late at night, wearing mostly black. Yeah.

And there have been some sightings. I wear a black cap. Listen, that's not important. My prowling is my own business. Tell us about yourself. What are your hobbies? What do you like to do when you're not studying your sensors? What do you, and I say that with great respect.

No, you don't. Of course. Beep, bloop, bloop. What do you, great respect? What do you like to do in your spare time, I do? What's your hobby? I think, yeah, my two main ones are trail running and bird watching. Oh, bird watching.

And what I found is I hang out with a lot of older folks because that's a very kind of niche subset of activities that I find my communities. It gets me outside. My father was a bird watcher. I loved it. And he used to always try and get one of us to go along with him bird watching. And when I was a kid, I'd notice that no one else was volunteering. And I would feel someone's got to go. And so I would go.

And I would trudge around marshes in the suburbs of Boston or Rhode Island. And not enjoying the smell. And did you enjoy it? I have to say I didn't at the time. The one thing I really did enjoy was there was once a gull that got way off course and kind of made the news called Ross's Goal. And Ross's Goal, I think, usually hangs out in Alaska or Russia. And this thing, I think, lost its connecting flight, got all turned around. And Ross's Goal showed up.

Some birder spotted it. in Boston, and this might be, I'm gonna say, this is 1970, it could be 76, 77, something like that. And I went, my dad was really excited, and he said, we've gotta go, it was like a 40 minute drive. And so we, there was a bunch of, I mean, there was 300, 400 birders there and we found a spot and we, I saw Ross's goal and I remember thinking, wow,

I, you know, and then I tried that line on women for years, It never worked. Never worked. I almost traveled nine hours round trip to see something called a Bicol teal down in Oregon. It was kind of a similar vagrant. You know, got kind of lost and found its way over here. But I'm getting married in two weeks. And I don't think your wife would be.

Wait a minute. I do. You buried the lead. This is a huge event. And you're talking about the. double-billed quixel-quaxle. Making fun of his interest. I am not. This is, again, with great respect.

So tell me about this. You're getting married in two weeks and? And basically there's a lot to do because I'm getting married in India. And my fiancé, soon-to-be wife, is from Texas, and her whole family is from Texas. And not a lot of them have visited. Asia or India and I'm basically coordinating a bunch of stuff like clothing, visas, flights, choreographed dances because it's a big kind of soire. I've never been to a true Indian wedding and I've always wanted to go. Is it true that take place over more than a day,

right? It's three or four days, yeah, for ours. And actually in my, when writing to y'all, I actually invited the three of you. So, invitation's still open. It's on the 10th of February. And I know you have the Oscars to host. It'll be really great if I blew off the Oscars. I'll handle the Oscars. You go to the Wag. I love that. There's been a quick program change instead of Conan O'Brien.

Matt Goreley's here. And Best Picture goes to Goldfinger. How is that possible? Every category. James Bond films from the 70 swept tonight. Where in India is the wedding taking place? The southwest side of India, and there are a ton of birds there. You know, I keep like a lifeless of birds. And, you know, I started when I was six years old, and my mom and dad really got me into it because we would go visit India all the time.

And I'd see all these, like, elephants, tigers, and, like, you know, all these cool big mammals. And we'd watch animal plant. And then I'd come back to the Bay Area where, you know, I grew up. and I'd see, you know, a squirrel or like, you know, like a rabbit. And I, and I was really bummed out. And my mom was like, here, take some binoculars, go, go look for birds, you know, what will take you to a park. And I got hooked, right?

It was just kind of like, I want to see everything. They're all so cool. They all act so differently. And, you know, but then I just kind of like wrote them on a piece of paper and then I would throw the piece of paper away, like all the species I was seeing. So you're a literal. until maybe I'm a litterer, that's right. Okay, that's great.

In the ocean. Straight in the ocean. Big problem with climate change is we keep finding these birding notes. The fish are eating them and dying. Rare fish. We're looking for someone named Adu. If you've known anything about him, he's wearing an Irish sweater that he got from Liam Neeson. But I'm, well, so, but this is how you got interested in it.

And so now you're going to go to India and it's a chance to probably see some new birds. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Like, you know, I lost all those lists from before. So there's, you know, I want to say close to a thousand species there. Right. Not specifically in that state, but there's just like so many. And I'm very excited. The venue is actually right next to a bird sanctuary, which I don't know if my fiance knows about, but I'm probably going to sneak away. Oh, that's right to bird. During the ceremony, will your eyes be kind of wandering up and up and? to this guy. Yes.

I said, I do. Do you take this woman, huh? I do. I do. Um, nicely done.

Uh, yeah, you're going to drift away so many times, like when it's time for toast. Where is he? Haka-c-c-c-ca-ca-c-c-c-a! You're there with nine birds on your arm

talking to them, like Dr. You're joking, but that's actually how most of them. I'm not joking. I sum up a human being very quickly. Is your fiancé into birds? She's into large mammals,

and she kind of tolerates my birding. And sometimes I'll find a bird. You know, we went to Peru earlier this year, and I was showing her, oh, look, that one's like a really prehistoric looking bird. And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, like, every once in a while I'll find something that she'll be like, oh, wow, that actually is really cool and beautiful. But I don't know, we got our camps.

We're in the wildlife camp, but, you know, we have our own areas. It's close enough. It's close enough. Yeah. My wife is not adjacent to any of my interests in any way. So where you are sounds, you know, much, much healthier. And I compliment you and I, I weep for myself. I do.

There's a, well, I just think this is wonderful. Sona and I have been to Jaipur. Yeah. And to the, I guess they call it the pink. Is it the pink city? Is it the pink city? It was very pink. It was, I think after, but anyway, we were there together.

We've had so many adventures together, but we were there together, I think, around 2010. And that was my one dip into India, and I loved it. I think it's a magical place. I really do. It's fantastic. Yeah, I think the most exciting thing for me outside of, you know, marrying my soon-to-be wife, is showing all these people who are so near and dear to me a culture. that I have kind of taken for granted

all the cool experiences that I've had. I'm allergic to niche interests. I'm sorry. Oh, my God. He was having a nice moment. He's really having a really sweet moment talking about India. I couldn't help it. I sneezed for real and then I had to add a joke

to cover my human moment. I'm sorry, continue. So get it back. My sneeze is over. Well, I'm just excited to kind of show parts of my culture that I took for granted growing up, like being invited to all these weddings, going clothes shopping,

like going up. up into the mountain, staying in a bungalow, you know, seeing elephants. And it's, there's the culture, there's the environment, there's just like the country itself that I'm really excited to show people. And yeah, I'm super stoked. It was a lot of work to get here. Quick question. I know it's a tradition.

Are you going to ride in at one point on a white horse? I am not, but I am going to ride in on a vintage car. Oh, cool. What car? 1987, Buick, Lasaber. I don't think I have a full say on the specific car. It could be a jaguar, hopefully, fingers crossed. But, yeah, I basically growing up for a lot of our weddings that I, like, you know, attended, you know, elephants were used, you know, writing in on elephants.

Writing in on a big animal is a big thing. And I know this because Jack, no other than Jack McBrayer was invited to one of the Jonas Brothers, I think it was Jebediah Jonas, I think. Oh, okay. Who was married in India, and he said that... I might stop saying who actually was. The Jonas brother came in on a white horse. Yeah.

At the, you know, and the horse was like, what's Jack McBrayer doing here? Sorry, I'm taking us far afield. No, it's fine. But elephants are... We don't ride them anymore because we found that it's actually super, you know, harmful to them. And so actually, actually, it's going to...

good that we're kind of moving away from that. Facing that out. A car. Car is nice and my, my fiance is going to be coming in on a boat. Oh, cool. That's nice. Right. Oh, I want to go.

Let's go. So to just come. Can you postpone the wedding till after the Oscars? I think we postpone the Oscars. Okay. Let's do it. You know what I mean? I would love to say the Oscars have been postponed and people would be like,

oh, you know, well, probably because everything is had him in LA and I'd be like no no no not because of that adu is getting married and I need to be there and he's been a good friend of mine for about 11 hours yeah you know sona means gold in Hindi okay no one cares I want to give us time to process it means gold the peanut is neither a pea nor a nut it's a legum did you know that pirates have an eye patch not because they're missing an eye mine was relevant we're talking about India and that my name means gold he kind of forced All right. Well, it's just cool. It's a cool little fact. Can I just say.

Choreograph dancing, though. I would love to see y'all do, like, join in on the choreograph dancing. Yes. And this is an extra bit of enticement. If you come, we will add the string dance to the choreograph dance. I'm out. I'm out, too. Eduardo, book me some flights. I love yelling at us.

This is your engineer. Highly trained sound engineer to book. I know, but you have to be. be jack of all trades in these situations. Eduardo, get me those flights. And a cup of black coffee, see? Book, click, click. He's just pretending.

Book, book, click. Book isn't a sound effect. Book, book, aisle. Well, I do. I'm very happy for you. What is your bride's name? Allison. Allison.

Okay. I'm very happy for you and for Allison. And trust me, if I could find a transporter beam, I would be there. You seem like a very cool guy, and I support. I just love that you're using your mind

to try and help the planet. I love that. I would do that, but my mind's no good. But I'm happy that you and people like you are hard at work on this. I appreciate that, Conan. Thank you. I think we're good, right?

Yeah. I want to thank you so much, Adu, for calling in. And again, very energizing to find out that we have fans out there who are smart and funny and cool and doing good stuff. So and have amazing taste in sweaters. I bow to you, sir.

I bow to you. Thank you. All right. Could I say one last thing? Sure. I, as an exercise, I found birds that I thought reminded me of each one of you. Oh, sure. Yes.

Go. Go for it. That's a quick edit right there. Yeah. This is called the Andean cock of the rock. And I'll repeat that. Cock of the Rock. No, it's not the real name.

I, that is, I mean, it's like looking in a mirror. I'm sorry, I'm not sure who that is. That is my bird. What's it called again? I want to write it down and make sure that they are, you know, don't go extinct. What is it called again? The Andian cock of the rock. Yeah, it's all upper body red with a huge red pompous.

door. Yes. I mean, you can't even tell what's head and what's like mating plumage or whatever that is. You can tell it you can tell it breeds insatiably. It's called the cock of the rock. Yes. No. And it's just got so much sexual energy.

It probably has sex with the rock. Come on. It probably does. So they have like these kind of performance halls. I'm not even joking where all the males just come and kind of unleash all their sexual energy by like bobbing and making like weird dances. And then the female cock of the rocks kind of just watch and see, you know, which one catches their eyes. So it just kind of reminded me of Conan for some. You know what?

I am now cock of the walk. Cock of the rock. Andian cock of the rock. Okay, I'm the Andean cock of the rock. Yeah. I love it. All right, let's move on. What's Sona?

What's Sona? Well, this is Sona. Okay. Nice mustache, son. I know. Look at that. He's got your dad's mustache. Come on, man.

It does. Hey, Gil. I want to preface by saying, I, you know, I love hearing you on, like, you know, the podcast and in all the shorts. And your kind of laughter fills up the room. And I just wanted to shout out to that. This is called the three-wattled bellbird. It's a really cool bird from, like, Central America. And it is one of the loudest birds in existence.

Yes. Nice. It's calls go to, I think, 100 decibels, like a rock concert almost. Oh, my God. You can hear them across, like, the rainforest. Oh, my God. Three wattled? I don't have it.

It's so funny. You say that because we work in this office building, and I'm on the top floor. When Sona enters on the first floor, I hear it as clear. We all do. The whole building shakes because you're one of the loudest people I've ever met. Okay. Yes. You're three waddled.

Three waddled. I'm sorry, Sona. No, no, no. You know what? You're right. And I get it. And I own that about myself. And now let's move on to the fussyest of the birds.

Come on. Of course. Yay! Oh, look at that. I'll take it. This is the burrowing owl. I'll take it. So, Gourley, I've, so I, to all of you, I've been kind of ingesting Conan content for

two decades. And, Gourley, you are, you were on the scene for me, right? But I think you came in and you were kind of this wise presence, right? I always think of you as an owl, like the spectacles and everything. And then you kind of started to emerge as, oh, oh, he's insane as well. And basically the burling owl, super wise. But I mean, look at him. I know.

They're kind of insane. That middle one is crazy. That middle one. That's me. It's very true that Gorley came in and we all thought, well, he's the steady hand. on the tiller. He is, you know, he's clearly the experienced podcaster here. And he very quickly went quite mad.

Definitely not the worst, but pretty terrible. Well, I do. That was a real treat. And we're going to post those because we want our fans to see those. And we should probably wrap it up. But my heartfelt congratulations to you. And I hope our paths cross in person. That would be very cool.

I'd like to shake your hand. I would love that. I would love to do that. I have a very firm, firm hand shake. Congrats, Adu. All right, take care, Adu. Have a great time. Thank you. Take care. Conan O'Brien needs a fan. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gourley.

Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and Nick Leow. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Supervising producer Aaron Blair. Associate Talent Producer Jennifer Samples. Associate producers Sean Doherty and Lisa Burr. Engineering by Eduardo Perez.

You'll get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at SiriusXM.com slash Conan. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Conan O'Brien needs a fan wherever fine podcasts are done.