Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - The Emotional Health of My Don Johnson

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Conan talks to Chris from Wilmette, IL about working as a North Pole expedition guide and whether Conan could handle life in the Arctic. Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: TeamCoco.com/CallConan

Hey there, Chris. Please meet Conan and Sona. Hey, Chris. How are you? I'm great. How are you guys? We're great. Where are you coming from, Chris? Where are you? I mean, just, I don't mean, you know, in the world. I mean, what's your attitude, man? Yeah, man. Where are you coming from? Coming from, man.

I'm super psyched to hang out with you guys. That's where I'm coming from. No, we're seriously, where are you from? Where are you right now? I'm just outside of Chicago, a little town called Wilmet. Oh, OK. I know Wilmet. Yeah, I've done my Chicago time back in the day. So I love Chicago.

That's a great place to eat. People are friendly, best comedy audiences in the world. They're fantastic. That's great to hear. Best in the world. Well, I don't know. I haven't been anywhere. I've only been to Chicago. So really, take that with a grain of salt. No, they're they're absolutely lovely.

And it's nice to talk to you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Chris. What makes you such a fascinating man? And I know that you are. So I just intuitively know you are. I'm a North Pole Expedition Guide. I take people camping and skiing and dogs letting to the North Pole.

Wait a minute. That's fantastic. You take people on tours to the North Pole. And I don't even know how one begins doing this. Did you did this start out accidentally? Did you crash land there and then started realizing I'm pretty good at giving a tour or what? How did this happen? You have to get permission from Santa.

Yeah, you know, and that's that can really be a bear. Yeah, I understand Santa is very litigious that he is constantly suing people for getting anywhere within eight miles of his castle. He's a real prick. His castle. Yeah, he's a castle. Does he really? I just thought he had like a room behind the workshop. That's true. But never mind.

No, no, he is quite into himself. He's, oh yeah, he's like a rapper that hit it big. He's got a massive place. He's got like Liberace's house. He has a lot of bling. But listen, I'm going to try and get this interview back on course, Chris. Chris, I'm fascinated by this.

You give tours of the North Pole on a dog sled. How long, let's say, for example, let's say I signed up. Where would I meet you? Is there where on the North Pole do I meet you to join the tour? Yeah, so you'd actually meet me in a little town called Longierbyn, Norway, in a group of islands called Svalbard. It's way up in the Arctic Circle. I went to a strip club.

Wait, is that real? Yeah, I was the only person there and I was the stripper. Okay, I can't believe I believe the things that you say. Really? Are you there? No, I went to the Arctic Circle when I visited Finland, so I got pretty far up north and actually met the real Santa and did a segment with him. You should check out my old works on its good stuff.

There's work before I started working for you? Certainly, that's the good stuff. It's all been downhill since you stumbled along. But and I did ride a dog sled while I was there at the Arctic Circle, which was a great experience. You can look that up online, he said, and right now I can sense no one's doing that. But Chris, so you meet in this small town and then how long

is the trip? Is the tour a couple of hours? Is it a day? What is it? Yeah, so our most common one is about seven to ten days long. So once we're in Longierbyn, we'll hop on a flight. A charter air company flies from a normal airport in Longierbyn directly onto the floating ice cap. You know, there's no land up there. It's just a big mass of ice.

Wait, you land. The plane lands on floating ice. Yeah, yeah, about about nine feet thick of ice. I hope so. Full blown, full blown plane landing on the ice. And can you feel the ice moving around? Yeah, yeah. So it's not, you know, it's it's not just one big piece of ice.

It's a mosaic of millions and millions of little plates of ice that smash into each other and create many mountain ranges. They're like little tectonic plates. And then they crack apart, too. And then you just see the liquid arctic ocean right there. Sometimes we've had cracks open up when we've been camping, you know, cracks not far from our tents where we're trying to sleep.

So because we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit, you land on moving ice. You get off the plane. Then you get into you get on dog sleds. Yeah, well, usually you go to the first camping spot. Is that right? Yeah, we'll get on. We'll get off the plane. We'll get our gear onto a helicopter.

And then a helicopter takes us to 89 degrees north. That seems pretty temperate. Yeah, exactly. Factor sunscreen. You're all wearing Bermuda shorts. I never realized. I knew global warming was bad, but I didn't realize the north pole was 89 degrees.

So OK, it's a plane to a plane, then a plane to a helicopter, then a helicopter. At some point, the dog sleds have to come in. Or is there then like a mini sub? There's a mini sub. And I mean, I'm just curious how this works. Yeah. What happens after you at the helicopter?

Then do we get to the dogs? Then we get to the dogs. Yeah, then we get to the dogs, the helicopter leaves, and we hook up the dogs to the sled. And then a skier skis out in front and shows the dogs where to go. It's not just flat. There's tons of obstacles that you need to go around. And so there's a skier in, I didn't, I've never heard of this.

There's a skier in front of the dogs. And does he have a hot dog on a fishing rod? No. No. It depends how attentive the dogs are, yeah. All the dogs and my brother, Neil, are running after the guy with the hot dog. Your brother, Neil?

Yeah, I don't know. He just heard there was a hot dog on a string, and he got involved. Did he like hot dogs, especially, or something? He really does love a hot dog. He's a love, tripper hot dog. Hey, if it's a good hot dog, you make the sacrifice. So I'm just fascinated. So this is amazing.

How long does the skier have to be skiing ahead of the dogs? Well, it'll be about two hours at a stretch. We like to go, and then we'll take a break and get something, get a candy bar or something to eat, and then. Oh, with the nearest vending machine? Exactly. OK. The helicopter's just dropping vending machines on parachutes.

No, we order it. The whole North Pole is littered with vending machines. Wait, so a skier has to be, the skier is working as hard as the dogs. Yeah, the dogs are pulling 800 pounds, but the skier is moving at their same pace. Yeah, the dogs have four legs. The skier has two.

Fair enough, yeah. I'm just saying, it just seems crazy. I never knew that someone had to ski in front of the dogs and show them the way. Yeah, I know. Why can't the dogs read a map? Yeah. I'm sorry.

The dogs. Well, I'm just saying, I know dogs. People get all defensive, and they're so popular, but come on. Well, you know, we're so popular. Learn to read ways, dog. Where it really comes into play sometimes is when we're crossing what we call an open water lead, which

is just one of those cracks in the ice. And most of the dogs are reasonably afraid of water, so if we need to get across a crack, we'll send a skier across, and then the dogs chase him. And they actually jump over the open water and pull the sled across. The runners on the sled span the gap in the ice, and you make it to the other side.

If you've watched how the Grinch stole Christmas, the Grinch has this giant sled, and it's being pulled by a little dog. And he's leaping over massive gorges, so I know from that cartoon that this can be done. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

And doesn't the Grinch also put a little food on a stick or something? I think he actually whips the dog. Oh, you're right. I knew there was a stick in a string. But you're right. That is good evidence that it can be done. No, no.

You're right. You're right. Listen, if I see it in a Warner Brothers cartoon or any holiday cartoon from my childhood, to me, that's all the physical proof you need. And so you camp at night. That's right. And how do people bathe during this trip?

You can know. Know is the short answer. Those little handy wipes come in super crucial. Yeah, exactly. A horse bath. A horse bath. Nobody says that anymore. Why can't?

Why? Yeah, I thought they did. You say a sex worker's bath. Thank you. And by the way, God bless them. You have to have. I'm very pro-sex. Isn't that what we're supposed to be?

We're I'm sex-positive. Oh my god. No, we're supposed to be sex-positive. We are. I'm sex-positive. Yeah, no, it's just the way you said it. Yeah, so don't say the horse bath. It's an old term that I still, I didn't realize it's not cool anymore.

Can I break in with a quick true story, which is my mother, who, as you know, my mother is very proper. So I was like, no, Conan, you stop that. Stop fooling around, Conan. You behave yourself. She was always like the straight woman in a Marx Brothers cartoon. Now that's enough of that.

Now you stop it. And she, we'll get back to you in just a minute, Chris. But you're going to like that. Chris, take it easy. Just chill. Relax. Chill, Chris. So my mother once, we were in a restaurant.

And this is almost like 20 years ago. And I say, I'll have the puttanesca, I'll have the pasta with the puttanesca sauce. And she said, now, what does puttanesca mean? And I said, well, it's from, puttad actually means the horse sauce. It was like thought of as a very common sauce. So I said, it means the horse sauce.

And she said, you stop that right now. I don't like that kind of talk. Now tell me what puttanesca means. And I said, it means the horse sauce. And she said, if you're going to talk that way, we're not even going to have this discussion anymore. And I'm like, I'm telling you, mom, that's what puttanesca means.

That's it. That's it. I'm out. And she practically left the table. Oh my god. So anyway, but back to you, Chris. I just want you to know what I was dealing with back in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Chris, do you have a horse story? Did you say whore or horror? Don't worry about it. I'm still not sure which one it is, but I do have a whore roar with two O's. Matt, I love how you're here to help. But now I see that you're just one of those guys who loves to derail the tracks just ahead of the train.

I'm like the Joker. I'm an agent of K for an agent of K. Yeah. That's on me, though, because I brought up whore's bath. So I think I'm going to take the responsibility for that. Wow. Never seen you take responsibility for it. Oh, OK. Chris.

Apologize for a while. Back to Chris. Chris, you have a fascinating life. And I did ask you, so people bring handy wipes because they can't clean themselves adequately. So no one's taking a bath while they're there. And certainly, you can't get in the water, right? You can, but it's not.

Do people go in the water ever? On purpose, not very often. But it's possible to go in by accident. And some people do go in on purpose if they've already made it to the North Pole and they don't have to worry about being ready for the next day or anything. What happens?

Let's say I'm on your trip running around being an ass, as I tend to do, and joking around and trying to make the dogs laugh. And then a crack opens up and I fall into the water. Am I dead? No, no. So this is something that we train for before we go on any expedition.

We'll cut holes in the ice so that, in that situation, you go into the ice or you go into the water. And the first thing you'll do is crawl out of the water and roll around in the snow. The snow. That seems like, wait a minute. That seems like the opposite of what I should do. It does.

It seems like the opposite, but the snow is very dry and it absorbs a lot of that water. So you actually dry off by rolling in the snow. And then you get into some fresh clothes and the best way to keep warm after that is to ski or start moving again. OK, OK. Fascinating.

So this is good. I do like it when our podcast inadvertently provides valuable information. So should anybody here fall into arctic water? Yeah. Get out immediately and roll in the snow. Do you take all your clothes off first? Or do you leave your clothes on?

Well, if you've been fully soaked, then yeah, you take off. You take off as much as is fully soaked. I've fallen in the water a couple times up there. But I have gotten out quickly enough that just my outer layers were wet and I didn't need to take anything off because it freezes so quickly, you can just kind of flake off the ice as you go. Chris, this is a little graphic and I probably shouldn't ask.

But I do have to ask you, if a man falls into arctic water and then jumps out, does the penis completely disappear up inside the body? It can. It can. And you know, there have been scientific expeditions to find this out. How do you coax it out?

With a candy bar. The hot dog. Yeah, you got a Playboy magazine from 1971. Come on out, little guy. Not coming out. Never coming out again. No, come on. It's fine.

This is a true story, though, that on a particularly windy and frigidly cold day, you know, you're wearing so many layers. You got gloves on. One of our clients had to stop and take a piss and he had to ask the other guy. And he said, hey, can you make sure that my dick is out because he didn't want it to be inside your clothes, of course, and just wetting your pants?

So that's. You can't feel it so you don't know if it's out of your pants? You know, because you've got nine gloves on. You're wearing 30 pairs of pants. And so I could understand. I mean, first of all, I'd like to say, I've been in restrooms all across the country and said out loud, hey, guys, can you tell me if it's out?

No, no. I have. No. But you shouldn't. It's the first time I worked there. He did that to me. Yeah, but maybe we don't do that anymore. I call it, I call it an icebreaker, a conversation starter.

And they say, yes, it is. And it looks like it's been, it's had a rough time. Oh, no. Yeah, it's been through some stuff, more emotionally than physically. Why do you do that to yourself? Well, I don't know. I've got to learn from my mistakes.

Wait, are you, hold on. I don't mean to derail this again. I have a question. So it's been through some tough times emotionally because you've been giving it trouble. Oh, for God's sake, that's the avenue you're going to pursue. You let those things go, Matt. We're here to talk to Chris.

We're here to elevate Chris and tell his stories. Not. Feels like for science, we should know that. No, no, it's not. We'll get to that in another podcast. And so that encourages the listener to keep listening because everyone wants to know about the emotional health of my Don Johnson.

Anyway. Oh, Jesus Christ. So Chris, this sounds fascinating. Are there ever, this is another question I have to ask, a lot of times when, say, a couple signs up for a tour, things can get a little frisky if it's a seven day tour. But that doesn't happen on an arctic dog sled, Mike, does it? You know, the hygiene is an issue.

So I'm not sure there's a super high chance for romance on one of these, but. Because everyone stinks. Everyone stinks. It does happen, though. But I don't think that firsthand experience with that. You'd have to all climb into the same pair of long johns, both people, and just go at it.

You know what I mean? That's the only way it's going to happen. That's true. That's true. I have had a couple of dogs have the northernmost conception in the world, to my knowledge. Wait a minute. So there are male and female dogs.

Male and female dogs. And they work together pulling the sled. They do. Yeah, teams of six for us typically. And we were out on a two week dog sled trip and about five days in, one of the female dogs went into heat. And now every single male dog wants nothing more than to get

up on her and fight every other male dog in the area. And I don't care what the skier is doing ahead of the dogs, or what food he's holding. It's not going to distract these dogs, these guy dogs, from wanting to have some ultimate experience. He should put that female dog up there with him. Right, he should ski holding the female dog in heat. Is that what he did?

Yeah, we put her up in front. And they went really fast for a while. 900 miles an hour. Hey, wait a minute, how did we get to Florida? We went over the top and down, and now we're in Florida. And why are we at this romantic honeymoon hotel? Yeah, and why is one of the two of the dogs are sitting in a heart shaped tub drinking champagne.

So wow. So she did conceive on the, a new pup was conceived on this trip. Yeah, very much against our wishes, you know? I don't know. Wait, why against your wishes? Well, I don't know how much you know about dog sex, Conan, but. Everything, he knows everything.

I mean, I've watched my share of porn, I suppose. I know you've been to heart. I don't know if they cover this. Yeah, I only go on the dog sites. I'm no pervert. I'm not going to watch humans do it. So wait a minute. Yeah, tell me, I honestly don't know what you're talking about.

Why is it a bad thing for dogs to have sex? Well, it's not a bad thing, but you guys should file this away for big dick history is that when dogs have sex, the male dog's penis kind of balloons up and inflates inside of the female. So it's actually called dog locking. Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, I'm just trying to keep anyone from interrupting.

I know Gurley wants to derail this. No, my mouth is just wide open. All right, well, watch it. Tell me more about the canine balloon dick. And so continue describing this to all of our horror. So the male dog's penis inflates inside to the point where you don't want to force the dogs apart. It would cause serious injuries to both of them.

And this process can last about 45 minutes to an hour sometimes. So we're just. What? And this happened. We didn't want it to happen. It happened during a dog fight. It was kind of white out conditions.

And we were maybe a quarter mile from the North Pole at this point. And the dogs got stuck together. Basically, what you're saying is we all have these innocent images of Santa in his castle. But when he looks out the window, he just sees dogs locked together front to back going at it. It's just a horror show.

Santa's a perv. That's why he wants to be up there. He just wants to see dogs going at it. There's no other reason for him to be up there. Many times, they've said, hey, Santa, we could work out of San Diego. That puts us right near the deliveries would be much faster. And he's like, oh, I like it up here in the North Pole.

Why, Santa? Why? Shut up. I'll be at the window if you need me. You got any dogs fucking down there in San Diego? I don't see a lot of dogs. Oh, shut up. Two dogs are going at it.

Santa, please, it's really unbecoming. You're 3,000 years old. Have some dignity. Shut up. Just tell me if Mrs. Claus comes by. Oh, this is fantastic. Give me those binoculars. Anyway, well, hey, Chris, this is Chris's fault.

When you said the dogs, the male member, inflates, I almost thought that they locked in and then they start floating. It would have been weird if it inflated with helium. They started floating together. Locked. Oh, my god, Chris, do you have a question for me before we go?

I do have a question. Conan, you love it. Do you want to know how humans do it? Because I can explain it. Can you explain it, though? I don't think I can. I would love to hear you explain it. My member inflates with helium gas.

It takes up to 45 seconds. Yes, Chris? Well, you love a captive audience. It's well known. And I'm wondering if polar expedition life might be right for you, despite the. I would love to do it. I would love to do it.

I really would. Yeah, I would love to get you. I would love to do it. And I think, I mean, I have been on a dog sled for a brief amount of time, and I absolutely loved it. I thought it was really cool. Eight to 10 days. I think it's a good chance I'm going to perish.

And I think everyone else, including the dogs, will feast on me. I will be eaten. Yeah, maybe there's a better question off, Mike, but what could we give you, Chris, to just kind of lose him up there? Just a little whiteout. I wonder, rather than I find Santa.

Hey, Conan, you want to see something? Come up. Come upstairs. Check out this window. Look at that. Santa, really, this is not. I'm 3,000 years old. It's the only thing that gets me through.

Well, I'm watching you tug on my beard. No, Santa. Come on. That's it. That's it. All right. Well, hey, Chris, I would love to join you. And we don't know.

I know that now that the world is coming back together again, I'm very eager to get back out there. As you know, travel is a big thing for me. And so God willing, I will join you in the Arctic. I'm really up for getting out there and having some adventures. And watching some dogs go at it. It's all gravy, baby.

God, you're a sick man. You're a real sick man. Hey, Chris, it was really nice talking to you. Stay safe up there, OK? Likewise. Thanks so much, guys. All right, take care. Bye-bye.

Bye. Conan O'Brien needs a fan with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joe Anasoloterov, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Music by Jimmy Vivino. Supervising producer, Aaron Blair.

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