My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 156 - Mr. Cool & Nice - The Conan O'Brien Episode

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

Karen and Georgia sit down with Conan O'Brien to discuss his obsession with true crime.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C, it's truly criminal. And begin. Hello.

Hi. Welcome to our podcast. Welcome to our podcast. Our podcast. Right? Yeah. I don't know when it's okay for me to speak. I feel like now.

Now is a good time. So ladies and gentlemen, this is the first ever combo podcast of my favorite murder combined with Conan O'Brien has no friends. Yes. That's not the title. That's not really the title. That's not the title. Sorry.

That's Conan O'Brien needs a friend. Karen, Karen, Karen, right? I was just- You just accidentally said, Conan O'Brien has no friends. What I wanted to imply with my title was I have a lot of friends, but I'd like some more. You need a couple more. What you intuited was Conan O'Brien has no friends, which is shockingly close to the

truth. I'm sorry, let me try it again. This is take two. This is the first- Oh no, we're keeping that. Are you sure? That was really good. Because my take two is this is the first dual episode of my favorite murder combined

with Conan O'Brien is shut down Irish Catholic and emotionally stunted. Yes. Wow. Right? That should have been the title. You please consult with me on these things. So you can probably tell that I am a thin-lipped, very uptight Irish Catholic. Yes.

There's a lot, but you know what's interesting? There's a lot brailing inside of me, and I didn't say boiling. I said brailing. Brailing. It's mostly from the top. We're not broasted. Remember broasted. It's unbroasted.

Inside, there's a lot broasting. We're not an Irish Catholic right here, too, so- That's right. I think you said craftless. I think I did, too. I didn't realize we all drink beforehand, which is fine by me. I am more than happy to get loaded with you ladies. This is one of the more high stakes conversations, and we are, when it's the lowest of stakes,

we fuck up constantly. So the fact that it's now high stakes, it's like we don't pronounce things correctly when it's the chillest version of podcasting. So now we feel like we've been kicked up into the A circle. I said Worcester instead of Worcester on the show. It's Worcester. Oh, everyone let me know. You just said Worcester.

I totally did. And you thought that was the correct version. Say it like you spell it, bro. Like, come on. Wait a minute. You guys have been in the podcast game for a while, and you've got a killer podcast, so I'm the newbie. So you should act like two Fonzies to my Richie.

I refuse. I mean- I am Ralph Malf. If only we could, if only we could kick that proverbial. Well, I guess I am that leather jacket wearing Jewish motorcycle riding Fonzie style person to begin with. Oh, you're claiming to be the Fonz. Yeah.

Okay. You sort of, your hair, you could comb that into the Fonzie hair, you have a very beautiful hair. Thank you. I went to Jewish camp with his daughter. Really? Really? Yeah.

He's a lovely man. He was so nice. He's one of the nicest men. He really is. Truly. Anywhere's great sweat. Only one of us could think of his name. Keep covering.

Keep covering. It's Henry Winkler. It's obviously Henry Winkler. Of course it is. Everyone knows that. It's Henry Blinkler. Welcome. Okay.

So- There's no transition here. No. No. We should actually have no transition so we can take that part out if we want to. The whole beginning. You don't have to edit. I don't edit anything out anymore.

I think let people hear everything. Really? Yeah. Let people hear how flawed we are. Yeah. Because I'm tired of people thinking I'm some kind of Christ figure. It must be exhausting. Let them know that when you cut me, I do bleed.

I do resurrect when I do bleed. He does it all. Yeah. Welcome to the podcasting world. It's fun. Thank you. Yeah. You made a splash.

Yeah. It's been a lot of fun. I think after 25 years of having to talk to people in very constrained circumstances, and I loved that. I grew up watching that, but seven minutes and then you have to go to commercial break and then you have to start it up again and being in a room with people and having a very intimate conversation and letting the part of your brain go that works in a writer's room that's part of the creative process and let it go unfiltered has been a real joy.

We've only, I don't know, we've released five or, I think we've released five and they've been really fun to do. That's been the biggest surprise is how much it doesn't feel like work to me. It's not, right? Yeah. It's just chatting and riffing. And yet we're making tens of dollars. Oh my God.

The hundreds that are rolling in monthly. Yes. But more about me undies, the underwear. It's underwear. Oh no. Yeah, it's really fun. And I think for you, it's good too because whenever you're interviewing people or talking to someone, it's about their career and what they've got going on in whatever, yeah, whatever

stupid movie that is coming out. Yeah, what they're promoting. Did you say stupid? Yeah. Oh no, everyone's movie is amazing. It is amazing. Paramount put a chip in my brain about 15 years ago. So all movies are amazing.

Great. I have a hard time watching. I love talk shows, I love your talk show. The interview part always makes me really nervous in the same way that like watching an award show, the like speeches make me so uncomfortable and cringe. You're worried for, I hope, I'm worried for these people. Right. Yeah.

Well, I feel like when you're sitting in that seat, you have to do a thing. You have to pull off natural conversation that's entirely planned and you have to be a good enough actor to make it seem real. You have to stay in the moment, so you have to have a little bit of improv awareness and you can't drive it too hard. I've seen people that I know that have gone on there and just like really try to drive it themselves, which is always bad. Doesn't work.

No. There's so many ways for it to go bad that I think there's a stress because it's just not a regular conversation. One of the things I find out a long time ago about doing one of these late night talk shows or probably any talk show is the trick, you know, people used to say you've got to figure it out, you've got to figure out who you are and I used to think, well, that's not the case. The trick is to figure out who you were all along, be completely yourself, but in the

most unnatural environment you can imagine because I know you've worked for Ellen and it's lights and it's cameras and audience and you have to get out in six minutes and it has to be on a laugh, then you get back into it again and what I have found is that it took me a while to figure out how to be Conan in that situation where that didn't feel weird and then get to the point where I started hunting for, I don't want to hear the prepared story. The prepared story is really good, great, but I'm always on the hunt for the accident or someone sort of mispronounces something and I'll say, wait, what was that?

And then we go down a rabbit hole and that's where the joy is. And so if you can do that in that weird situation, that takes a couple of years to get to where you have that confidence, but the nice thing about this format and I listen to a lot of podcasts and I really enjoy, there's this ancient thing where someone tells you a story or people are talking and you fill in the rest and we're so digitally obsessed that we think you have to see everything while it's happening. But I now listen to podcasts while I'm lying in bed and it reminds me when I was a kid and my mom, there were six kids in our family and we were all in different rooms.

I was in one of, I was in a room with my two brothers, there were three of us and my mom would put on records and she would put on like a Bob Newhart record. We would listen to comedy records and we would fall asleep and it was someone telling a story and so just having that in your ear, having something in your ear and you're filling it in is lovely. Yeah. Well, and we get that all the time people saying, you know, you don't know me, but I feel like you guys are my best friends and it's because people obviously listen to podcasts

when they're working or doing stuff they don't want to do or when they're alone. So they are having this experience that like whatever the actual experience we had when we were recording it, they're having this then third party experience. It's kind of like filling up a part of their day that either they used to dread, like it's a commute or it's work where it's making work better and it's like, we get all this credit. You know, when people like it so much and it's also like, you've made my commute go by so fast or whatever, it's like, we're just benefiting from the byproduct of people being able to be in their head and it's not a visual medium.

Well, I also think that you're making connections with people and I'm sure you've seen this, I'm sure you've done live shows and you see when you do a live show, people come and they have this connection to you too, which is might flip you out, but they've been building that connection because it's extremely intimate when someone's talking to you and they're listening to you sometimes in intimate situations, like people are lying in bed or in their car alone and I do think that there's a reason why podcasts, they may not, more people may watch the Grammys, but their connection to it is not that deep, whereas people that connect to what you're doing and how you're talking and what you're talking about, it's this

mind shaft that goes really deep, much deeper than other kinds of entertainment. I think that's what's really cool about this. Yeah. Yeah, I think that when they say, I feel like I know you or you're my best friend, it's like, if we're doing it right, then you totally know us, you know everything about me. Well, when I listen to you, I feel like I know both of you and I'm very angry at you. That makes sense. You're two very good friends who've betrayed me.

Who will not let you talk, no matter what you say. I keep talking, when I listen to you guys, I keep talking and you're not talking back. You're rude. And then I become enraged. Sure. Which is what we're like in real life. Yeah. I actually used to have that where I was, there's a couple podcasts I was obsessed with in the

beginning and I would fall asleep listening to them and then have dreams where I was standing at a party and the people who hosted the podcast would be talking and I keep going, yeah, but like literally trying to break into a conversation for the entire dream. That's when you're like, I need a podcast. Did you, here's what I happen when I listen to podcasts, when I fall asleep, when I wake up, I realize I fell asleep during the podcast, which is fine because you want to go to sleep, but then I have to go back and find out around where I lost consciousness. Yes, exactly.

And that's really hard because I'm like, wait a minute, I think I remember this part. I got to go further back. It's all slightly familiar. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sleep timer, man. That sleep timer function. Oh.

Because then you know, you went a half hour back. Let me give you some technical. Yeah. Let me tell you guys real quick. This is where the tips part rolls out. You're like the Spock at this enterprise. Bad Insomnia, so I sleep with, yeah, always podcasts in my ear constantly, yeah. Nice murder stories.

Murder stories. Well, yeah. That's my jam. Let's hear it. That's crazy. Lifelong fan. Well, okay. Let me tell you something about, I have had a, and everyone knows this about me.

When I told friends that I was coming on this podcast, they laughed because not derisively, they just laughed that it's the perfect place for me to go. Because my entire life, I'd been fascinated with murder and very morbid. It started with the Lincoln assassination and I was four. You were there? I was there. Yes. I know I'm older than you ladies, but yes.

That play was amazing. I was born in 1858. I was a child usher at Ford's Theater, but yeah, I was, I was, I remember we took a child, my dad got us all to pile into the station wagon and we drove to Washington DC and he wanted us to see all the sites and I would have been, I think six maybe, and we visited Ford's Theater and I was just, I couldn't believe that someone got shot there, let alone the president of the United States. And then we went downstairs and they showed, you could see the gun and they have the bullet

at the basement of Ford's Theater and then we went across the street to the Peterson house where they have the bed and I was transfixed and just read books about the Lincoln assassination as a child over and over and over again. And then in my family, they make fun of me. My brothers make fun of me because I always like my, we visited Hawaii and the big island and there was some big battle that took place there and they, I was not paying attention and we're up on a mountain and I'm not paying attention on the guide said, some say to this day, if you look closely enough, you can see the bleached bones of the Hawaiian warriors

and I ran and leapt and leaned way over the railing and my dad had to catch my belt so I didn't fall like 500 feet. My brother Luke was there and he was just, he, so everyone's always known that I've been an incredible freak for murder and I was embarrassed about it for a while because I know so much about so many different murders and people start to talk casually about a murder I know something about and I start to say, well, it was, the knife had a copper hilt, come on. And it's interesting, the blood type was B, you know, whatever and they, it's gone to

the point where I just finished a tour, an 18 city tour and in every city, if you look hard enough at the right time of night, you will find forensic files. Oh yeah. Yes. And what I loved is that forensic files and what I loved is that I was in one hotel where they had a channel that was just yoga and it was this beautiful woman wearing super tight Lululemon doing yoga and I was like, uh-huh, where's forensic files? And then I find forensic files and they always pretty much tell you who the creep is who

did it but then he has a quote alibi and then he, and then they basically, they tail him for a while and they get his DNA and then they, they, they, they trap him and then it's him at the end crying. And that voiceover guy is the most, we, I used to know his name off hand, but. The worst though is that like, it's so dated, which I love dated crime shows because there's so many of those, you know, forensic, you know, the, the shit they used back then. Let's watch the language. Excuse me.

This is a primarily a show for children. My young, my young daughter's listening to this. Oh no. Shit. Fuck. She listens to everything. God damn it. Painless.

Vagina. They aren't bad words. They're not bad words, but they're not words used in my house. Oh, okay. Got it. They're bad to the Catholics. You guys are unix. No one's allowed to identify their genitalia in my house.

Please don't. I mean, what more is more fun than identifying your genitalia though around your house? There it is. Yeah. Oh, everything's dated. Hair, you know, hair samples and all this bullshit. It's already dated. Fiber, fiber stuff.

All the stuff that doesn't hold up in the court anymore. Yeah. Right. All the stuff that they find and always it's an acid wash jacket. Yeah. His flock of seagulls, acid wash jacket, left a trace. So yes, it's very late 80s, sometimes early 90s, but... Also those repetitive, if they can get a reenactment where a young woman is wearing a red bra, they'll

show that thing four times. It's just like, oh no. And it's like someone trying to fend off a knife. They don't really do that anymore. They've gotten, everyone's gotten a little more hip to how disgusting that is. Yeah. Exploitative. I do think one of my all time favorite shows, it was Autopsy on HBO.

And my only problem with that show is that they didn't make enough of them. They clearly started to run out. So when I had the late night show on NBC, I was so obsessed with that show that I got the forensic pathologist from that show, Bodin. I got him on the show and all he did was tell jokes the whole time. I mean, I got him there because I'm a huge fan of, I love that show. And it was so graphic and it showed you the autopsies and the photos and explained how it happened.

So I got him on the show and he told autopsy jokes. No. Like forensic jokes the whole time and they were really dirty forensic jokes. No. They weren't like forensic dad jokes or anything like that. Well, one of them, I actually remember you can edit it out if it's too much, but he was talking about, they were doing an autopsy once a forensic pathologist was doing an autopsy on a man.

He was wearing his sheet and the man, the body had a giant penis and he said to this female assistant, well, that penis reminds, looks reminds me of mine. And she said, the female pathologist said, wait, it reminds you of yours? Is yours that big? And he said, no, but it's dead and lifeless. And, and I was just like, then you burst into tears. No, no, I was just like, no, I'm here to find out about murder, not to hear, but he clearly thought, well, I'm on Conan.

I better load up the old pathology dick jokes. I better do the thing I'm not good at on TV and ignore the thing that I am. That's a great show though. Yeah. That's amazing. It's really graphic though. And you don't like that. You don't like the crime scene photos and the graphic stuff.

Me? Right? Yeah. Well, I don't like, I'll watch a TV show of it because I can just kind of turn away and then when I turn back other stuff is happening, but I won't look up a crime scene photo just to stare at mangled bodies. Yeah, I can understand that. It just kind of sticks in my head.

So I don't like it. I don't know, but I fucking can't help myself. Again, with the language base. You're just going to have to keep saying it because that's how she does it. This is my podcast. Part of my deal is that all of these air on Nickelodeon the next day. Oh. Yeah.

You know you're not allowed to have a podcast if you don't curse in it. I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All of them. Can be very clean. Oprah.

All of us. Super Soul Sunday is filthy. Yeah. Super fucking Soul Sunday was the original. Time for a better cooking routine with meal planning, shopping and prepping handled. Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year.

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Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of Wanderer's podcast, Even The Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston, Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched, but her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people

led her down a dark path. Follow Even The Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. It is funny how what I've said to my people, this is how much I'm into it. My wife found a company recently. We have this door that's always blowing open that leads to our backyard. And so she went to get, you know, we had a doorstop that wasn't very good. She just happened upon a company that makes big wooden blocks that hold the door in place

and you can print anything you want. Now she's my wife of 16 years, so you'd think it'd be like, I love you or Conan rules or something like that. For me, for my birthday, it says murder because she knows I'm obsessed with murder. And so people come in, my head writer for the first time, he's been to the house before but he hasn't seen this block and he just held it up and went, what the fuck is that? It says murder. And that's one of my obsessions.

I just feel like when you, you know, knock on wood someday, die, she's going to be suspected based on that brick alone. Well, the other thing I've always said is I love murder so much that my goal is to either murder or be murdered. Great. And people, people, I've said that to people and they're like, don't say that. I'm like, no, no, I really either want to murder or I wish to be a murder victim, but I'm so into it that being a murder victim would feel like, oh, I'm part of this whole

cool thing. Well, yeah, you've studied so long and you've put, you've put so much work into it. I would know how to lie on my, on my shag carpet just the right way. Oh, okay. I've really put a lot of thought into it. Yeah. Shag carpet? Yeah.

Nice. Well, just because of all murders happen on shag carpet. Yeah, that's right. You have to be wearing a red bra too, that helps. Trust me. Don't even. I'm wearing a red bra now. Yeah.

Don't ask about the panties, but I, yeah, I just have always been fascinated with it. Well, we brought you here tonight too. It's the game we play on the show now called. Kill us and then we'll kill you. Kill or be killed. Do you think growing up in Boston had anything to do with that with your whitey bulgers and the people that were around in that culture? I'll tell you, whitey bulger did not influence me at all.

Okay. I was not really that aware growing up in the late sixties and seventies. I wasn't that aware of whitey bulger. I was very aware of the Boston strangler and I heard a lot about the Boston strangler. And one of the detectives who worked the case apparently lived sort of in our neighborhood down the street and my mom would talk about him working on the case. And all I knew about that case, because obviously it was not a case that was appropriate for a kid to be reading about, but I was always interested in it and I always felt intuitively

dissatisfied with the result of that case. And then later on, when I read about the case, it does not have the resolution that gives you satisfaction. And so it's always in my mind and all of those murders happened around the time, maybe shortly before I'm born, I'm born in April of 63 in Boston. But they all happen in the areas where my family's, my mother and father are living in Belmont and then they moved to Brookline. But it's all very close to where we were.

And the ones that intrigued me are always the ones where I think, you know what, I don't know what the answer is. I really don't. And I think there was a little bit of a sense in Boston like, well, we arrested somebody, they stopped, he dies in prison. So we're done. Yeah. So if that would hold up today with today's forensic pathology, I don't know.

They found DNA on that match him on, eventually on one of the victims, but you know, there's however many eight other victims that don't have a DNA match. I think you can't just blame all of them on him. Well, and also I feel like definitely back then there was so little oversight that any cop could go put any DNA anywhere they wanted because I think that was one of those things of like, like comic book style of like, we got to close this case. The pressure is mounting. You know what I mean?

Like in those, those murders, especially were so graphically horrible and like even to hearing a little bit about the details of those cases, just like old women splayed and it's disgusting and horrifying. And it's like, end it. And we're not talking about it. I think the other thing too is now there's this sophistication about, you know, crimes that involve only women. There's this sophistication about male rage, male inadequacy and how it manifests itself

with women. And there were certain things that whoever the Boston Strangler was, was doing to these victims, which was meant to humiliate them as women. And so clearly you're dealing with someone who's got incredible gender stuff they're dealing with. I don't think there'd be much more sophisticated about it. But if you look at black and white photos, you know, of, I mean, so many crimes back then. You see these sort of big, heavy working class guys in heavy coats with gunstrap to their

hips and they're nine to five guys. And this is freaky. This is not, this is way above what anyone can imagine. Well, they're still human beings. So like, no matter how grizzled a detective you are, you know, a lot of those cases that are like the really high profile ones, like Richard Speck or whatever, whereas like the guys, they immediately call in the guys that have the most experience and people are walking into the, that apartment building in Chicago, walking out and vomiting.

And they're just coming in and out, like, as if they're being told to do it. Because it's that there are levels and limits to even what a experienced detective has experienced. And they were, those people were saying things they'd never seen. I just feel like in the modern era, they've broken it down so that science, literally scientists go in and they're looking at things, they're not looking at the whole picture. They're just there to see, I'm here just to look at, you know, what DNA evidence is on the scene. I'm here to look at what the gun splatter is, what the blood splatter is, you know, and

I'm here to look at, and so because they've been able to break it up into different categories, it might be more tolerable for people. I mean, I don't know when there's that a school shooting, like Sandy Hook, and then you think human beings had to go in there and I don't know how they can, I don't know how you can do that. And my, I have incredible respect for people that could do that. I just think it's absolutely, and how do you do that? And I would, if I had to do that, I would retire immediately afterwards, you know, I

would just say, okay, I saw that and now I'm no longer able to do this for a living. Because those are also the, like those cases are the extremes of the business, you know what I mean? And God, those aren't as common, I mean, that's becoming less and less true, but I think especially for the, I mean, some of those cases from the 60s or whatever, the cops went in with members of the press, like there was not only no taped off crime scene and please be careful where you walk, it was everybody come on through and take a look and let's just see what happens. Like the more recent advancement of all this forensic stuff is like it basically is kind

of, it's opening all those doors. And then at the same time, it's kind of like making people realize how wrong it's been. Like it used to be, if a guy went in and was there at the crime scene for the Boston Strangler, he would see something horrible and be like, no one's talking about this, do not take pictures. Like he would be making decisions as a human being that were very bad for crime solving, you know what I mean? And thinking he was doing the right thing, because this is a human being and you know what I mean, like he was doing what he thought was best and only now we know with like the

advancement of technology that like, no, no, no, nobody comes in, but we have to talk about it and it has to be brought to the light of day because people need to know that this is a possibility. I mean, I think that's why, especially these days, true crime is more and more people are going, yes, I am interested in this because I felt like I was a ghoul before when nobody seemed to be interested in it. Even now I can say it now that it's like quote unquote a trend. I think there's a thing where it is comforting to know that there are just people that are

interested in this. What makes somebody, as someone who was raised Catholic and I think with a really good moral compass, I've always been fascinated by why would someone do the worst thing that you could possibly do? So surprising. Why would someone do that? And then I found myself just getting immersed in, you know, McDonald, like the Green Beret, like what really happened there, what made him, what made him, I don't see it.

When someone quote snaps and it was just in the news recently where someone kills his pregnant wife and I suppose it was three children and two children and, you know, you can't help, I can't help but think as a dad, I don't understand what gets you there. I don't understand, I've been annoyed, but I don't understand what gets you there. That's beyond, and we're used to thinking, well, we're pretty smart. We can understand things, but what, it's why of all the murder cases and I've read, I think I've read about so many murder cases, the one, I've got a few that I'm really fascinated with, one I've never understood is the Jean Benet Ramsey.

I don't understand it. I've read a lot about it. No explanation makes sense to me. Even the one I've, the answer I've settled on that I think a lot of us have, you know. What is your answer? An accidental, you know, fatal blow by the brother and the parents helped cover it up to not tarnish his entire life, their own name, all this bullshit. Even that is like kind of, it's so far-fetched and like so far out there that a parent,

that parents would do something like that to their kid. But also I thought she was, listen, she's. She might have been sexually assaulted before. Before. History of it. Yeah. So that. I mean, nothing makes sense in that one.

No, it doesn't. And then it's so tragic all around because the mom passes away and, you know, you think you know, just to lose a child and then if you're, if someone is being wrongly accused, that's, you know. What if we're inflicting more pain on the two of them? I mean, just, I did that. So, I don't know. I just, so I get into this.

I mean, that one has every piece though because it's just as likely or like, you know, percentage-wise because they had so much money that they could be covering up and the, you know, potentially somebody in that family is like a sociopath. So they don't care. They just want to make sure that their shit is covered and everything, like the decks are clear. So you're not buying that someone came, that you definitely think it was someone in the house.

I mean, statistically. Yes. The statistics would say overwhelmingly it's someone in the house. Yes. Yeah. I mean, let's go searching and he went down and found her first is very weird. Suspects. And the, I mean, this insane ransom note that just has.

But how come they've never been able to match up the handwriting? They matched it to her. They did? I don't think conclusively, but yeah. But the problem is then it's like basically a small police force in, is it Colorado Springs or Boulder? It's Boulder. Yeah.

And it's Christmas day. Right? Yeah. And the most inexperienced people went to be the first people on the scene because everyone else was like, I have time. I'm going to stay home with my family. And they from minute one began to botch it. And then on top of that, there's somebody who potentially now that could be entirely

victims and some weird thing happened and someone broke in. But also it could be that there are people with the money and the resources to begin to cover things up and do things that like, you were, I wouldn't do over when it the ransom notes says, do not call the cops, don't tell anyone. They invite all their friends over, which we know, we know when someone kills someone, they want someone else to find the body, you know, so he's leading them around the house and they're not finding her body where he, where he hit it. Right.

Finally, he stumbles upon it himself. The other thing about murder, which we've learned like a billion times is how money affects it, how much it is about class. Yes. And this is clearly like a legitimate source of anger for, you know, members of the, you know, American population that don't have money or there are, there are a certain race and they feel like no one care, you know, 35 of us could get killed and no one cares. And then a rich white person is murdered.

And what happens is, you know, ironically, many people think it happened in the OJ case where because he was a celebrity, yeah, he's African American, but he's a celebrity. And so because he's a celebrity, they showed him so much deference and they cut the interview off when they finally did get him. And with a little pressure, he might have said more, but they, they clearly cut that interview off. And I think it is very common when people come into a house and a big house and a fancy house and someone who has status is saying being polite to them, they show them deference.

And then you get, you don't get the same result as if, you know, law enforcement was going in and saying, Hey, wait a minute, we're going to assume 95% of homicides that happened in a home, the person was killed by someone in the home. So we're going to treat everybody that way until we get the answer that probably doesn't happen if they're rolling in a rich neighborhood. I think it's an automatic bias, you know, that they have that, that they call them high risk victims, you know, and they, it's almost like when you call them high risk, it's like you deserve it a little more.

And it's, you know, more likely to happen to you. So we're going to care a little less. Right. You brought it on yourself. Right. I mean, we learned that lesson because liking true crime for so long, I never put it together or realized it, but it's like these true crime cases I was interested in are the ones that have been served up.

So it's like you're John Wayne Gacy's and your Ed Geans and your Boston Stranglers and all these ones. But then as you look at it, you're like, Oh, but you can go in and find just as many people like the Grim Sleeper was active in like South Central for over 20 years. He just killed women whenever he wanted, however he wanted people in the neighborhood knew. Everybody knew it's such a huge case that we've never covered it because it would take so much research for a 20-year serial killer when most of them work for like five Macs. And if he's operating in Brentwood, California, or...

And blonde ladies were disappearing. Exactly. It would be a totally different story. But this is like, it's things like that where I had no awareness of it until we start telling these stories and then realizing these are the stories that get brought that the media knows if it's a blonde little girl that gets murdered, people will buy more newspapers or at least that's the story they tell us and themselves. And so that's the way things get prioritized.

And the story of the Grim Sleeper isn't about, it's about police complacency and negligence. It's not about this serial killer, I mean it is, but it's about victims mattering or not mattering. Right. You know, it's funny because this brings up one of the tropes I've noticed most about any murder show, whether it's, you know, it could be forensic files, it could be American justice, it could be a date line. All of these shows begin the same way.

They had the perfect life. And I've noticed this over and over again, they always describe these people as having the perfect life. Then they go on and describe the life. And a lot of times you'll think, well, wait a minute, they had the perfect life. He was, you know, a successful biology teacher, you know, she was a stay at home mom. They had a small lake house. They had it all, you know, but lurking behind the American dream was American tragedy.

And I think they love to set it up as they had it all. And I think Americans and probably this probably is worldwide or it may be unique to America. We love to think that this person quote had it all. And the shorthand for that, I think a lot of times is that, you know, there's this white couple that owned three cars and a boat and they lived in a house with more than three bathrooms in it. They had it all and that shows no understanding of mental illness. Just you know, domestic abuse, a substance abuse.

It shows no understanding of any of that. And so they love to start with that. And someone could literally be almost homeless and these shows will say, they had it all. He had a sternocan and he had a hot dog and he had one shoe. He was living the American dream because he had three cars. Right. Everyone thought he slept in three cars, he didn't own, but then it all went sour when he strangled someone.

Well, okay, you know, it, to me, that is the, that is the trope they keep handing us over and over again and that we seem to love. And I think it's why the Joan Benet case is huge. Why initially, you know, the, there was so much shot and Freud with the Sharon Tate murders at first because everyone thought, well, this beautiful movie star and the wife of this great director, Roman Polanski and, you know, this, this hairstylist to the stars and these rich people are all butchered. So it must be their fault.

And it must be, they had it all, but of course they were having drug-fueled orgies and a drug dealer paid them back and it's so heartbreaking to watch the footage of Polanski. This is when everyone still believed that long before anyone dotted the eyes and crossed the T's and which led to Charles Manson and his family. They're all, he's there saying that was not Sharon. That was not her. She didn't do drugs. She was pregnant.

She was incredibly good and he's telling them all and you know the press kind of isn't buying it because they're like, well, yeah, you just did Rosemary's baby. You people are sick and this is, and, and it was a refusal to believe in the sad randomness of it all. And also that, sorry, but that doesn't sell enough magazines either. The story as they were trying to sell it is the combination of a celebrity magazine and like pulp horror magazine. It's like, it's the perfect story the way they were telling it in that way.

Whereas like, do you like celebrities that have orgies and do a ton of drugs? Also, are you interested in murder? Well, this has everything instead of like, this is, this is massive human loss. I wonder if there's part of it too with those people who have everything and get it taken away, which is why the stories are so good is that we, you know, kind of love to see those people get everything, you know, we love to see the downfall because it makes us feel better about our not having everything. Well, certainly, you want to say, there's part of people that want, you know, that want

to say, like with a, with a Klaus von Bülow, Sunny von Bülow, okay, I may not have what they have and they have so much, but look what that leads to. So I'm content with, with what I have. And that's why I say it's there's this shout and fright or two, you know, almost, you know, it's, it, I mean, it's ancient, it goes back to one of the most famous murders of all time is Caesar and Caesar's, you know, Caesar is one of the most famous conquerors of all time. And he's stabbed by all of his friends in the Senate and stabbed by one of his best friends and dies and it's like one of the most, it's a very well considering that it

happened almost 2000 years ago, it's such a well documented murder. And it really was, well, look out for, you know, if you fly that high and you try and become too powerful, that's what happens. There's almost a comfort that I think people take from it. Yeah. Then you're sitting on your little plaid couch and you're, you know, like watching a special on it and you're like, I'm fine. I don't want to fly that high.

I'm good. I cannot have a plaid couch. I would never have a plaid couch. It matches your shag carpeting and you know it. If you have a plaid couch out there, I will murder you. I'm coming to murder you. But you're less likely statistically to be murdered if you own a plaid couch. Did you know that?

Is that true? No, but what if it was? That'd be the best. I wonder if there is. Can I say, if I was a celebrity and, you know, an affable, and you are, let's say I'm an affable celebrity. Okay, let's go with that. And I start just murdering on a massive scale.

Does that put me on, that puts me in the books, doesn't it? Some kind of record book? Do you want to be in that record book? No, I don't want to be or do not. Or how many bodies are there? Just like the police are like, they're putting up pictures of me and they're like, this is Conan. We all know who he is.

Just not a joke. He's out there. We think he's headed to Topeka. Nope. He's headed north and I'm just going on a spree. What about, instead of you just start showing up to crime scenes before the cops get there? Let's pretend you have a scanner and it works. Oh, I have a scanner.

Okay, leave some of your hair at the crime scene so they can tie you to it. Trust me. My hair is everywhere. I have a lot of it and I leave it everywhere. You know, I have another theory alongside your shouldn't Freud theory. And mine is, because this is just my personal interest aspect, is I want to see, it's Scooby Doo, I will call it the Scooby Doo theory, is I want to see the monster among us unmasked. So like on those date lines, when it turns out to be the doctor husband, who is there

on date line to tell you he didn't do it with his weird dead eyes and his lack of affect in any way. And you're like, it's clearly him. Like you're getting weird cold chills through the TV because you can tell this person's not right. And they are a sociopath or psychopath. We could debate the term that's supposed to be used, but they clearly don't, they think they're smarter than everybody.

So they know it's fine that they go on this TV show because they're going to dictate reality. And that's the life they've always lived. To me, that's the most fascinating one. And that's sometimes why I am cheering for it to be this person that, oh, that's so sad if he's being maligned. But also it would be amazing if it's him because the double life, leading a double life and the second life being you being a total monster, I think is so fascinating. So for example, Jeffrey McDonald, the Green Beret, you guys are both like, he did that.

I think so. Yeah. He did it in times, different ways that he didn't do it. And I think, no, I don't understand it. I honestly don't understand it. I don't understand what gets you to killing your wife and children like that. I mean, but you see it all the time. It's really simple.

It's these people. It's the thing of like... You think it's just they're too tightly wound and then they snap? No. And I think actually the word, I think that we call it snapping, but it's not fair to the victims who would testify that, no, he was always this narcissist. He was always controlling. It wasn't him snapping.

It was him still having control over people, over his life and he didn't want to be in this marriage anymore. He didn't want these kids anymore. He had other fucking ideas and plans and affairs. It makes me so crazy when so many murders, so many murders are a guy who, yeah, I met this girl at the bank and she's really hot and I've got this wife and kids. And well, only one thing to do. Murder them all.

I think, wait a minute, I have another idea. You go to your wife and you say, we got a problem and you go through a messy divorce and I know that that's terrible for me to say, but guess what? It's so much better than, I'm going to commit murder and 20% chance I get away with this. That's why it's snapping. I don't think it's snapping. I think that person in his entire life has done what he wants and does what he needs to get his way.

So it's the thing that you and I can't believe because we're not like that. I'm pretending not to believe. Right. You're doing great. Oh yeah, that's right, but you're eventually going to reveal. Listen, I am very good at putting on the affect of someone who really understands what you're saying and is appalled. It's the hand gestures that work for me.

But I am using these hand gestures that show that I'm a creep. Everyone was going to say, we would have never thought. It was a suspected cone and we would have never. Listen, is it possible that I came on this podcast to talk in depth in a sensitive way about murder, to use that as evidence later on when I murder? Yes. And you two will come in and you'll be like, no, no, no. He talked in a very sensitive way about murder.

No. Or did he? Or did he? Your honor, I want to go on the record. I always thought he was a creep. I think he fucking did it. I will testify against you immediately. I'll flip.

As a sociopath, I think you're both in love with me and you won't flip on me. There's a murder case that I became enthralled with and I actually took it to the next level, which was when I was a writer on Senate Live, there was this America's Most Wanted that came out. It was for John List. Yes. And John List. Yes, the best.

John List is this guy who had, I think, probably a problematic marriage. He had all these kids. He was very sort of fundamentalist, orthodox, religious. And he really, he bought this massive mansion in New Jersey and couldn't really afford it, then lost his job. He's having trouble. He's worried that his daughter is becoming sexually active. He's worried about his kids and losing control of his family.

He pretends to go to work every day. This is the part that I, that's so eerie. He gets up every morning, he's lost his job, but he goes to the train station and he eats a sandwich and reads books and then comes home at night after his, quote, long, hard day of work. And the whole time he's doing it, no money's coming in. The debt's rising and he starts to think of this plan. So what he does is he gets a gun and then he starts his morning by getting up, killing

his mother who lived in, I think, on the attic, kills his wife, then waits one by one for his kids to come home and kills them all, shoots them, and then drags all the bodies in the living room, drives to the airport, I think he drives to JFK airport, takes off. This is before there are like digital records of where you're going and you don't need to show an ID. Real casual airport time. This is back, yeah, long in the old days. Good old days when a murderer could really leave space and he leaves and it's such a

creepy story because nobody knows. He had written notes to the school saying, I'm taking the kids out of school. So slowly it's getting closer and closer to Christmas. The lights start to go out in the house because they burn out and people notice it. And then finally, policemen are called, they break in and the eeriest thing is that there was a sound system in this big mansion that was playing sort of like, imagine Bach kind of funerial weird, you know, not weird, but creepy to hear at night, orchestral funerial music and the cops break in and it's dark in there and they hear this music and they

come in and they see all the bodies lined up. He's nowhere to be found. So America's Most Wanted does a, they do like a sculpture of what he would look like today. It turns out to be very accurate. Someone sees it and says, that's my neighbor. They arrest him. He has married again and this is 20 some odd years later, maybe 25 years later.

He married again. He was starting to have trouble with her as they will. They arrest him. They recognize it until they see these identifying scars. So they put him on trial in New Jersey. I'm a writer on Senate Live and I hear about this and I'm just electrified by this story. So in my downtime at SNL, I start driving to the courthouse to what, yes. Are you serious?

There's no downtime at SNL. Yes, there is actually. It's called summer. Wait a second. Were you pretending to have a job at SNL? We'd leave every morning and go to the courthouse and eat your sandwich there. Exactly, and then I would come back and my girlfriend at the time was like, there's no money coming in from SNL and I was like, no, it's over for you.

Then she killed me because I'm stronger. But no, I went to the trial and I was staring at this guy and I was looking at John List and I was staring at this guy and I'm trying to see the evil. You want to see it? I want to see it. And you know what? Completely uninteresting. Yeah.

There was a guy who, I mean, there was no there there. Yeah. There was nothing there that satisfied me and so I watched the trial for a bit and he just sat there and then proceeded to be found, obviously guilty of this multiple murder. There's no death penalty, so he's sentenced to life in prison. He later dies, but he gives a lot of interviews afterwards and he just says, I'll see them in heaven and we'll all talk it out. He thinks he did them a favor too, right?

His rationale was they're going to go to hell if they keep going the way they're going, so I'm doing them a favor by murdering them. But that was just, I mean, and I also drove to the site of the house, which had burned down after the murders. No one, I don't think would live in the house, so it burned down because kids just used to break into it and get high, so it burned down and they built a new house there. So I went to the site of the, and this is before you could Wikipedia stuff. This is before you could use Google Maps and like found where the house was, so I'm a

creep. Yeah. It's not the addendum. Yeah, I was going to say, and this, I think this is the lifeblood of being interested in stuff like this. It's almost like we know these secret dirty stories and there's only a handful of us that want to talk about it, so that when we're talking and just like the entire time it was so hard not to basically sing it along with you because it's like, I did this story on

our podcast. I know every word he's saying. Oh, and you know it's the great O'Henry irony of the podcast. Yeah, that's what I was going to tell you, the Tiffany fucking skylight. So he's in debt. That's it. He's in debt. And there's a, well, I'm doing pretty well.

I mean, you didn't go to the courthouse. Yeah, that's true. Hey, guess what? I didn't see you guys there. Right. But yeah, there was a Tiffany, original Tiffany skylight, which if he had known that, he could have sold it and been out of debt and actually, you know, more than out of debt. He would have had a nice profit.

If that wasn't a script, they'd be like, you have to take that part out. It's too cheesy. It's too simple. What they would do is at the end, they would just have, at the end of the story, they would have everyone's cleaning up the crime scene. That's interesting. What's up, bub? What are you doing?

Oh, that skylight. So what? Big deal. Well, that's a Tiffany. Yeah. What's so what are you saying? That's worth over $140,000. Really?

Well, he owed 20. That's why he killed everyone. Yeah. Real shame. Slow pan out to the ceiling. And then pan out through the skylight. The box song. To heaven.

This is what I love, though, about, he was this boring guy who you couldn't see the eel in him, which I love, I'll be at a grocery store or like a party and lean to my husband, who is not into murder at all and be like, who here do you think killed someone? Because chances are, from a room of 100 people, someone fucking killed someone once. Which random person that looks totally normal, do you think it is? And it's just like, I don't know, it's like electrifying to me that that's what, that's really what humanity looks like. What if that person is your husband?

He's the last person anyone would suspect to. Which means he did it. Murderer, cool and nice. Yeah. Murderer. That's the way I would play it. Casual hands. I'm just saying.

Serious casual hands. Who won't kill Lincoln? One of the most acclaimed actors of our day, John Wilkes Booth. Let him into the box. He'll be okay. That's like if George Clooney shot the president and then ran away. So I mean, I think it's terrifying to us that these people can seem so normal. And then later on, you're looking for this reason.

Everyone's looking for this chip and they never get it. No, but what's the ingredient? And there isn't one. There's no one little thing that you can identify that shows up on a CAT scan. Yep. You got that. You're a murderer. There's not.

Except if you hit your head as a kid a lot. Then maybe. It's very common. Yeah. Well, then Jerry Lewis would have been a murderer. We don't know he wasn't. We don't know. I trailed him for a while in the seventies.

I did see some suspicious activity. Before us, no. Now do you know if this might, whether or not it's of interest to you, I'm not sure. But people who listen to our podcast have decided to call themselves murderinos, which is actually a word that was taken from the Simpsons. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes. As somebody saw it in, I think it's a Halloween episode of The Simpsons, Ned Flanders comes

over and he's like, how do we have it? I was going to say it has to be Ned Flanders because he adds enos to everything. Yes. Yeah. And so they call themselves that. They're just saying it seems to be fateful. That's true. That you are actually one.

There would be, of the Simpsons writers that I knew back in the day, I haven't written there in a long time, there would be a number of them that would be murderophiles. Just, you know, and when you're in a writer's room, you're constantly, as you know, you're constantly looking for, can we talk about something other than the script we're supposed to be breaking? Yes. Can we please, so if someone brings up a murder and people have theories that will take precedence over, how do we get Bart out of this ice cream shop?

It's way, way more interesting to talk about. All I want to talk about is theory. All I want to talk about is cold cases and theories. And I don't, I want to hear everyone's theory. I don't think I'm right ever. It's just the most fun conversation to me, especially because nobody wants to have it with you except a few of your select friends and people you know. There was a good, I mean, I was obsessed with the JFK assassination as long as a kid.

And then this book was written called Case Closed. And I'll think of the author in a second, but it came out in 1993 and it did me such a favor because I read it and it, it's so logical. And when you read it, and this is going to get people angry because you cannot reason with conspiracy theories, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you read it and it shows you Case Closed, oh, there could only be one answer. There is one answer, which is Lee Harvey Oswald. He worked in the book depository before there was even a plan to go to Texas, before there

was any itinerary and conspiracy theorists would say, well, that's because 800 people in the Pentagon got him into the, no they didn't. They didn't. He's a violent person. He buys a rifle. He had a history of trying to kill a right wing political leader and he has a history of being this erratic troubled person and A goes to B goes to C. And it's not super hard shooting as everyone says it is, and so that's going to get a lot of people saying,

well, wait a minute, you've been fooled by the establishment and everything, but I don't know. Posen, I think his name is Posen, just wrote this great book called Case Closed and if you read it and he says in the beginning, I wanted to crack this and find the murder because then I'd be really rich and famous. And the conclusion I came to against what I wanted to find was that there's no other explanation. What do you think is like, is scarier or more like earth shattering to you that it's just

this one fucking little bitch was able to change the trajectory of our entire fucking lives for generations and generations. We don't want that to be true. Right. It'd be so much better if there was this insane background, you know, this insane conspiracy because we just don't want to think that this fucking asshole was able to do this. History always turns on the slightest little flap of a butterfly's wing, you know, and I think that's something we are very uncomfortable with, very uncomfortable with the idea that

Lee Harvey Oswald with that really crappy rifle, no real assassin would buy that rifle with a bad telescopic sight, you know, and happens to work that building and oh, the president's going by. I don't even think there's no evidence he had animosity towards Kennedy. It was just an opportunity. Well, what's also crazy is there's so many, it makes you realize that say if that author is right or if that really is the ultimate truth, we'll never know, but because there are so many conspiracy theories because if you analyze anything, there's always the lady

in the polka dot dress somewhere. There's always not just a red herring, but like an entirely feasible theory that's standing there waiting that anyone can develop. Yes. You know, I have a theory that if you put enough attention on any small event, you can start to, let me say tonight, for example, I was eating at a restaurant nearby, thought I was much closer than I was and I'm always on time, I'm a punctual person, very punctual and I'm doing your podcast, I don't want to be rude, but I'm in this restaurant and

I'm with two friends of mine who work at the show and I thought we were right next door to where we tape the podcast because I've been here before and we leave and then we're, but we're late. And so let's say something of historic significance happened right now with the three of us. It is. Yeah, exactly. Wow, sociopath. But if you start to break it down, I think you killed Karen.

Yeah. But no, if you start to break it down and be like, wait a minute, conspiracy theorists would say like, Conan was 10 minutes late. He said he was, you know, didn't, he was late because he didn't realize how far away ear wolf studios was. Conan's taped at ear wolf many times. And we know historically he's always on time and he's, you know, and like he's on time, but wait a minute, he's been at ear wolf.

So then that's the thing. And then it's, wait a minute, you know, isn't that weird that, and then you start to break it down like pick 15 random things. Why did he bring his head writer and his digital guy that night? You wouldn't need them for the podcast. What was going on? And then you start to go more into it, which is why were you wearing that watch? You were a lot of, but why that one tonight?

You can start to tease apart anything and that is what humans do. Our brains are very good humans at finding patterns. The only problem is we're really good at finding patterns that aren't there. And that's where a lot of, wait a minute, there were nine people in Dealey Plaza with blow darts and, you know, mortar shells and 35 different rifles and I mean, if you look at Oliver Stone's movie, what he's really kind of positing at the end involves about 750 people. Yes.

All of whom goes all the way to the top. All of whom would be instantly famous and rich if they went on Oprah at any time in the eighties and said, okay, here's what happened. Any other children, their spouses, anyone like that, you would eventually come up. Deathbed Confessions. Yeah. All of that. Well, however, though, you have to admit, sir, hand, sir, hand, straight up fucking MS-13

mind control, right? I don't know. I listened to that. I listened to the podcast on that one and I think, you know, I mean, I don't buy that. No. And I, he was in the kitchen at the ambassador. He fired the gun and then admitted to it, has a diary that says RFK must die. And if they've managed to make a conspiracy theory out of that, which involves him being

a robot. Yes. Which interestingly involves the plot of a Frank Sinatra movie, almost to the letter. You think they give a robot a better name. Which implicates Frank Sinatra, by the way. Yes. That son of a bitch should be going down. Fuck that guy.

Let's watch the language, please. Would you stop calling out my fucking language? I think also what's interesting is these days, because of social media, and there's so many, it's almost like all the conspiracy theorists are together on message boards now, disproving each other. Because to me, that's what most of all of the true crime talk on any of those kind of websites are now Reddit or whatever, it's people going, well, here's this theory and trying to pass that along, and people just being like boom, boom, boom, and having the

proof and that here's the yearbook, here's the year, here's the police report. And that's, there's all these people that are now acting like they work for police departments, because they can just go through files and they have the access. It's fascinating. So it's almost like curtailing some of that. I hope so. I think so. You know, we live in this, you know, it's Occam's razor, the most obvious answer is usually

the right one. And I think we have this need that that's too obvious. So there's a reason, you know, what's interesting to me is that the police detectives, real season detectives, they're usually working off of probability. So they know when a, when a, we've all heard the 911 calls where a husband's like, I just came home, my wife, I mean, I don't understand my wife. And then when they get there, they know that now sometimes this is to the detriment of solving the crime, but the overwhelming majority of the time is they're working off of, you

know what, I've done this a thousand times. And so we really need to drill down on this guy first and eliminate him because 85% chance it's this guy. And he has a story about a guy dressed as Santa Claus coming down the chimney with a machine gun and he just got home and he was decided to go and get a hamburger at three in the morning, which he never does, drill down on that guy and work off of statistics first. And I think that's why season detectives are so good at most of the time.

And we've gotten past the days of like, as you said earlier, like the Lindbergh kidnapping where, where the police and the press show up at the exact same time and everyone's walking around smoking cigarettes, filming it, touching everything and Charles Lindbergh is saying, I'm taking charge of this case and people so respect Charles Lindbergh that they let him and it's just a mess. I also think it's interesting the, maybe reversal of that, which is those experienced detectives that when they come face to face with a true psychopath, don't recognize it because they are the perfect cloaking animal that those, they're like, we don't like him

for it, it doesn't give, he doesn't make the hair on the back of my neck, stand up, whatever, where it comes back down to. That's the Ted Bundy effect. Yeah. Or then, and then the opposite is as in the husband isn't grieving that the way that they expect someone to grieve. And so they look at the, or they look at the husband, you know, as the person who did it, he's not crying, right?

Well, that's also, I mean, that's disturbing when people have to mourn a certain way or you're a murderer. Unfortunately, I mean, they are. Most of the time, those people. And then when you look at the shows later on, it's showing to see the footage. When later on, when, when they've later on confessed and they've, they're in, they're doing a life sentence and they, they finally say, yeah, I did it. And you go back and you look at them saying, I just want her back.

Yeah. I know she's out there. Steffi, if you can hear me, it's, you look at them and you think I, you know, that's, how do you do that? How do you do that? I feel if you've ever taken a, like a scene class in North Hollywood, you see that acting and you're like, no, no, no, no, this isn't real because it's, no one is that good of an actor unless.

Excuse me. I was trained in North Hollywood. Excuse me. That is why I'm confronting you right now. I took those classes to become a murderer. To become the murderer that you want to be. They were always saying, don't you want to, do you have a headshot? I don't need it.

I just need to learn how to say, Steffi, come home. Why did you say that? Who's Steffi? What are you doing? Why did you file your fingerprints off too? That's real creepy. All of this is so odd. It's so creepy.

You keep changing your face into a smooth surface. I think that's why I hate 911 calls so much is just the acting is so bad. When it's someone that's guilty and pretending, it's just the most cringing, horrifying, like people don't act like that when they're truly in panic and I love acting. I'm dying to do a thing of where we play three 911 calls of a husband and two of them didn't do it and one did and can we fucking tell which one didn't do it? Again, I'm at the swearing. Listen, I'm about to leave and consult with my priest.

No, but I think that would be- Who is also here? He was at dinner with you. He's a head writer. He's busy murdering. No, that would be chilling because we'd all get it wrong. Totally. Yes. I mean, imagine being on the jury of a murder case and knowing that it must be so hard because

I'm guessing if you're in that experience and the person clearly did it, but whatever responsibility to have to look at people and say, no, they're lying and so I will help you either be put to death or go to life for prison. Finally note, it comes down to a lot of times to who can afford a good defense attorney. It's like who is a prosecutor better than the defense attorney because that's going to decide it more than did you actually fucking do it, excuse me, did you actually do it? You're out of control. I really am.

It's pretty standard actually. I didn't realize you were in the Navy. Oh, we are. I am. It's very upsetting. I am. This is the podcast enlisting with Karen and Georgia and we should have told you earlier. The Marines were in town.

Okay. Sorry. He's so mad at you. I know. I have. I need to hold on. I'm going to, I have a little, these oils that help me from fainting. I have the vapors.

I have a little fan. This is my favorite. Swearings upsetting. Vicious murder. Oh my God. Knife's through the eyes. Listen, I'm not. You're there.

Yeah, I'm there. Yeah. I'm there for murder, but I'm sorry. I'm swearing. I'm sorry. I will not have it. Too far. That is not how I raised both of you.

Wait. What? It's another sick fantasy I have. When you, when you told the story of John List and you working on SNL, I thought. He was a really good gag writer, by the way. He just would come up with stuff so fast. Yeah. I thought in my mind, I began to see a sketch, like one of those fake commercials of something

that had to do with that spinning head because that, I saw that happen real time on America's Plus One. They made a whack. The three dimensional whacks. The clay head. Yeah. A specific visual. You didn't ever do anything with that, did you?

No. We didn't do anything. I never did anything with that. Maybe someone else did. Okay. I was fascinated by that. Me too. And then it worked.

Yeah. It really worked. They came up with, this is what he should look like. And a neighbor said, guess what? That's Gary. Yeah. Yeah. That's Gary.

There's Gary. That's Gary. And he's a, he's our local murderer. He calls himself on-ist. And that's John List. Totally. That was dumb. I am on-gift.

It's me. He couldn't be John List. No way. Should we do a fucking hooray? Excuse me. That's actually the name of the segment. We always close the show with a thing that we're really happy about. Oh yeah.

So we try to do the positive version of just anything to counteract the story. When we tell two murder stories in a row, then we feel like it's a good idea to kind of mention something that you're stoked about that's not death. Yeah. Do you think you have one of those? Does anything bring you joy? You can go third. All right, I'm going to just mention, and this is, it just came to me, but I've got

this new podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, and you can just get it anywhere where podcasts are free and you swipe up. And there's no murder on this podcast, but it's a lot of fun, and I think you'll enjoy it. And Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, available wherever podcasts are free. That was going to be my fucking hooray, is your podcast. And also, I try to keep the story to a minimum. Good luck with that.

Good luck with your podcast. Good luck keeping your podcast alive. Guess what? The original name was Conan O'Brien Needs a Fucking Friend. I think you would have done better. I think you're right. I'd like to say a fucking hooray this week for my favorite new podcast, Conan O'Brien Has No Friends, which is this funny little thing this guy's doing.

He's short. He's got dark hair. Really? He's the opposite of me. He's the literal opposite of you. Cartoon style. He's Brian Conando. The opposite of Conan O'Brien.

Yeah. Wow. That's him. And he just kind of talks. What's the opposite of Irish? That's all I get. I mean, he doesn't say a word. Yeah.

Yeah. Because I talk a lot. Yeah. He talks to himself. He just mutters, but he's very sexually liberated. That's right. There's no repression issues. Opposite of me.

He loves cursing. Single way. I don't know. I just, I think most humans are good. I'm going to say that seriously. I do think most humans are good. Most humans don't murder. It's the, it's the tiny minority of us that do murder, and I think most people respect

human life. And I think, I mean, that's something, don't you think that's something we should end on as a positive? 100%. Let's hold on to that. Yes. You know. Sorry.

Let's fucking hold on to that because I think that's. Let's hold on to that. Fucking. That's fucking right. What? What does that mean? I want to say mine this week for real is I just watched yet another cochleal ear implant video where a baby, no, not the operation happening.

Oh. The baby for the first time hears its mother's voice. I'm telling you, you line up like four of those and you'll be good to go for the day. Yeah. You'll be crying, but it's the most beautiful, like, and maybe that does kind of circle back to podcasting, but it's the, the human voice, the effect it has on babies and people who haven't heard anything is the, it's so magical to watch someone experience that for the first time.

Beautiful. It's really good. And I invented it. This is my idea. That's beautiful. I think the only thing that I can top that with is if you see a really good Colombo with Peter Faw. Oh.

From the 70s. Truly. One more thing. I mean, I would watch that over. Oh, look, I can hear. And he did it with a freaking glass eye and just jacked up teeth. Oh, exactly. That's true.

No one else can do that these days. I'm sorry. I'm sure your thing is moving too with the kids in the hearing. I mean, maybe you're in the... But Peter Faw, when he's on his game... Your one up and shit thing is, I'm sure it's great on your podcast. Listen, what I like to do is challenge people and make them, you know, feel bad about their choices.

That's my podcast. Oh, cool, cool. Well, we're sociopaths, so good luck with that. There's a chance one of you will murder me. I'm just trying to figure out. It's going to be, I don't know. One, two, three, not it. Oh.

Oh, that'll get you out. Sure. What if that held up in court? Yeah. Oh, no. Your honor. We want to talk to you. What if you're not it?

Well, we find no choice. We must let you go. Wait. Should we give him the sociopath test? You may have heard of this already. Okay. I'm ready to go. Which I don't know.

Oh. Right. I'll probably fail. Okay. Because I'm in entertainment business. That's true. That's true. A woman goes to a funeral.

Yes. I don't think I got this right yet. One goes to a funeral that's like a family member. Yeah, yeah. And she's a very attractive man. And she doesn't get his, I think worse sociopaths for number. Number. And she doesn't get his info.

A month later, another member of her family dies and they're at the funeral together again. How did the family member die? How is this a test? I don't know. I'm just more. This is a test of us telling stories. You guys are terrible.

Thank you. This is your specialty. Right. Describing crime and murder. Yep. So wait a minute. Let me see if I can do this. Okay.

Someone has lost a family member. Right. They go to the funeral. Yes. And there's this handsome person there. The next time they go, they see that they've lost someone else who's also from their family. Yes. Yes.

Okay. Maybe. And they see that same person, that person that they're seeing is in the casket. That person is dead. No. No. Oh. It's not great.

It's really not a great. I don't get this. The wording is incorrect, but essentially it's the sociopath test because they said people who are sociopaths will get it immediately and they'll go, oh, they killed their other family members so they could meet that person again. Oh, you didn't tell it right. Yeah. I didn't tell it.

I didn't tell it right. I've done this. I've killed people to get closer to people. And this doesn't count. You know what? One, two, confessions in podcasts don't count, they're not admissible. If it's a podcast, if it's a podcast that's popular with millennials, it's not admissible. I feel used.

That's pretty cool though. Yeah. No, I know. I've done this. Nothing's cooler than being popular with millennials though. That's right. Well. They're all freelance.

Exactly. They're all listening with their wool hats and their unicycles and their ukuleles. Even their mustaches and razor scooters and they're eating their cashews. I don't know why I said cashews. It has no, it doesn't apply at all. They're delicious. I think that was a, I think that was a plug, wasn't it? For your new cashew company.

Are you working for big cashew? God damn it. I'm in the pocket of big cashews. Big no out. Big no. Thank you for being on. This was really fun. This is.

Thank you for having me. I mean it, I'd like to come back because I, murder has been, ask anyone who knows me. It's the theme in my life. I'm so surprised and I love that. Yeah. I love knowing that. We would love to talk to you more because I feel like we barely scratch the surface. I have so many murderers we can talk about.

So that was a yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I'll be back. I'll be back. The sad thing will be when your listeners complain, why is Conan on for the ninth time? Yes. Come on.

Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm cool with that. You'd be our like, was it Burt Reynolds that was a regular on Carson? So many people were regulars on Carson. True. Burt Reynolds, Buddy Hackett, I'll be their Buddy Hackett. Okay.

Yeah, that suits you more. Or your George Siegel. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or your Henry Winkler. You just said it. Needn't do it. Oh, gosh.

Come on. Carson Daly. Okay. What? Sorry. We should say Carson. It can be one of the two. Carson nine times.

Wow, that's impressive. Carson Daly. Carson Daly. Oh, cancel that. Okay. Cancel it. Okay. Are we wrapping it up?

I think so. So, yeah. You did your incredibly confusing riddle. The test. You failed. It was a test and you... No, no, no. You guys failed that test because you couldn't tell it correctly.

You know, we all failed together. We failed together. I think that's the joy of podcasting. Yeah. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Elvis, you want a cookie? Good boy.