Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook of The Rest Is History Podcast

Historians Dominic Sandbrook & Tom Holland feel surprisingly aroused and chuffed, respectively, about being Conan O’Brien’s friends. Hosts of The Rest Is History podcast Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland sit down with Conan to discuss laughing through the grimmest historical episodes, all-time favorite heroes of yore, and allowing history to remind us that everything is cyclical. Later, Conan consults his (not so) fake lawyer David Melmed about singing popular songs on the podcast. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (669) 587-2847.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Conan O'Brien?

  When it comes to insurance, Farmers doesn't like surprises. That's why there's Farmers coverage on a page. What is it you ask? Did you ask? I don't think you did, but let's pretend you did.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, what is that?

• 0:14Conan O'Brien?

  It's your coverage on a page, pretty straightforward.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:18Conan O'Brien?

  That's good, because sometimes it gets confusing, you know? What am I covered for, what am I not? Here it's all on a page. Does your insurance do that? Get a quote to get started at Farmers.com. Don't be confused, don't wonder. Farmers makes it pretty clear. Underwritten by Farmers Truck or Fire Insurance Exchanges or affiliate. Products not available in every state.

• 0:39Conan O'Brien?

  Who do you shop for first on the holidays, Sona? Was it, do you shop for the kids, or do you shop for Tac?

• 0:43Speaker 01

  My kids.

• 0:44Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, you gotta get them their stuff.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Or my dog.

• 0:46Conan O'Brien?

  And then your husband is last. Well, guess what? It's that time of year, you feel that, you smell that cinnamon cider in the air? Do you smell that?

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:56Conan O'Brien?

  And you see pumpkins around, people buying turkeys. Little early to buy a turkey. Doesn't matter. Holidays? I would say it's just around the corner, but that's a cliche. It's very nearby in the cupboard. Well, guess what? Amazon delivers joy with low prices on the gifts you want, even this early in the season. So get ahead of the season, shop early gifts, top picks, holiday decor, and advent calendars at low prices. Get ahead, start on holiday gifting with Amazon's low prices. Shop now at Amazon.com/holiday.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Hi, my name is Dominic Sandbrook, and I feel surprisingly aroused about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 1:38Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, you understand that.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Tom Holland, and I feel chuffed about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 1:47Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, looking that up now on UK slang.

• 1:54Conan O'Brien?

  Hey there. Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Shocking, shocking revelation today. Sona Obsessian is not with us. Her chair, like Tiny Tim's little stool in the corner, is empty. Just a crutch. She's not here.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:28Conan O'Brien?

  Instead, it's just Matt and I, which is nice, because this is a different dynamic for us. There's none of that her braying laugh.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. She's a nice icebreaker, though, because isn't it a little awkward if it's just you and me, you know?

• 2:41Conan O'Brien?

  Reminds me of an old Norm MacDonald joke. He said, "Yeah, I went to, uh, went home for Thanksgiving and, uh, saw the family and, uh, my dad and I accidentally made eye contact."

• 2:53Speaker 04

  (laughing)

• 2:54Conan O'Brien?

  And I thought, "God damn it, I relate to that."

• 2:57Speaker 04

  (laughing)

• 2:58Conan O'Brien?

  So now we have to look in each other's eyes?

• 3:00Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 3:00Conan O'Brien?

  Now you can't, you can't do it?

• 3:02Speaker 04

  No, I can't do that. I can't do that. But do you know where Sona is?

• 3:05Conan O'Brien?

  I don't. No one told me where she went.

• 3:07Speaker 04

  You're gonna love this.

• 3:08Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  She is speaking, I think a featured guest speaker, at an assistant's convention.

• 3:16Conan O'Brien?

  No, she's not. Is that a bit?

• 3:17Speaker 04

  I swear to God.

• 3:18Conan O'Brien?

  This is not a bit.

• 3:18Speaker 04

  This is true.

• 3:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  They're...

• 3:20Conan O'Brien?

  I can just see your eyes glowing.

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Is it a how-to or like a cautionary tale?

• 3:26Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  No, I think she is, you know...

• 3:29Conan O'Brien?

  Is it a scared straight?

• 3:30Speaker 04

  (laughing)

• 3:33Conan O'Brien?

  She turns the chair around backwards and sits down. "Look, guys, if you want to be an assistant, don't do what I did."

• 3:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:40Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, wow.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  I know.

• 3:41Conan O'Brien?

  So she's telling people how to be an assistant?

• 3:43Speaker 04

  Ostensibly. I don't know if it's a Q and A or she's doing a speech about it, but she is...

• 3:48Conan O'Brien?

  It could be a trial.

• 3:51Conan O'Brien?

  Crimes.

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Maybe it's an entrapment.

• 3:54Conan O'Brien?

  She's like Ike Man, she's in a glass booth.

• 3:59Conan O'Brien?

  She's wearing headphones. People are coming up and testifying against her.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  We may never see her again.

• 4:05Conan O'Brien?

  No, we're not gonna see her, cuz there, I know what the verdict's gonna be.

• 4:10Conan O'Brien?

  Wow, that's incredible.

• 4:11Speaker 05

  She also found out recently, before going to this, that it's for a bunch of tech company assistants.

• 4:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 05

  So it's not even like industry entertainment.

• 4:20Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Assistance, this is specifically tech.

• 4:23Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, this is a disaster. I mean, I wish we could find out where it is and quickly drive over there in a van. Let's find out when she's, when she's back. Remind me, we have to dig down deep on what happened.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  We'll do a whole segment on it.

• 4:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  We gotta find out more.

• 4:39Conan O'Brien?

  It's just astounding to me. But, you know, we love our Sona, we do miss her.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  We do. Rest in peace.

• 4:46Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, well, no.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  What?

• 4:49Conan O'Brien?

  You always go right to rest in peace. Well, that was a good meal, yep, rest in peace. No.

• 4:55Conan O'Brien?

  How are you?

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm.

• 4:56Conan O'Brien?

  This is a chance for us to really drill down. How are you, Matt Gourley, as a person? How's your life?

• 5:00Speaker 04

  It's good.

• 5:01Conan O'Brien?

  Look at me, I'm right here.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  No, I can't, I can't do it.

• 5:03Conan O'Brien?

  Look at me.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Right past ya.

• 5:06Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, wow.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  I'm good, I'm good, thank you. How are you?

• 5:09Conan O'Brien?

  But wow, you didn't say anything and then you put it right back on me. How am I gonna find out about you?

• 5:14Speaker 04

  What do you wanna know? I'm an open book.

• 5:16Conan O'Brien?

  You aren't, you aren't an open book. How are things at home? How's everything going?

• 5:20Speaker 04

  Good, good. My, um, daughter's cracking me up daily, you know.

• 5:24Conan O'Brien?

  How old is she now?

• 5:25Speaker 04

  She's gonna be four, uh, in, well, by the time this comes out.

• 5:29Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:29Conan O'Brien?

  Very good. Yeah, this doesn't air for three years.

• 5:35Conan O'Brien?

  So, uh, that's great.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:37Conan O'Brien?

  Is she funny?

• 5:37Speaker 04

  She's really funny.

• 5:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  She's a character, man. She rules the house. She's a, like, beta to the rest of the world, but it's just horrible alpha to me.

• 5:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, that's what happens.

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 5:49Conan O'Brien?

  They're like lovely to other people and then they come home and they're absolute Mussolinis.

• 5:53Speaker 04

  Um, you're not kidding.

• 5:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Even when it comes down to play, like, she gives me my lines for when we're playing.

• 5:58Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  She dictates them to me.

• 6:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:01Conan O'Brien?

  Well, it sounds like you're miserable at home.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  I'm having some struggles.

• 6:07Conan O'Brien?

  Well, feel free to, you know, talk to me anytime about anything that's going on in your life.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  I'd rather not.

• 6:13Conan O'Brien?

  I'd rather you did me that.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Okay, alright.

• 6:15Conan O'Brien?

  You know what we should do? Schedule it with David Hopping.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:17Conan O'Brien?

  Now, there's an assistant.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  I could talk to him.

• 6:19Conan O'Brien?

  You know who's not gonna go to an assistance convention is David Hopping.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:22Conan O'Brien?

  You know?

• 6:23Speaker 04

  How are you?

• 6:24Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, I gotta ask David.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:26Conan O'Brien?

  David keeps my schedule and he tells me how I am.

• 6:31Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, I'm doing very well, thank you. And I am going to head east, uh, to New York very shortly to help, this is a new experience for me, promote a film that I'm in.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  I know, this is exciting.

• 6:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and I'm, um, this is a new thing for me to say, "You gotta go check out my picture, see?" I mean, that's nothing I've aspired to or ever thought would happen.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  You should come on this podcast.

• 6:56Conan O'Brien?

  I should come on this podcast. We should take, you know what we should do? We should tape me talking and asking questions and then switch it around and I'll do the other side.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  It's a good idea, actually.

• 7:07Conan O'Brien?

  No, I-

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Do a video promo.

• 7:08Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, actually, it's an idea that I said.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  No, I really-

• 7:10Conan O'Brien?

  Which by definition is a good idea.

• 7:12Speaker 04

  It's, yeah.

• 7:14Conan O'Brien?

  It's an idea that I said.

• 7:15Speaker 04

  Nice tune, Mozart.

• 7:18Conan O'Brien?

  Not necessary. Not necessary. God, what a prick. I don't know why anybody talks to me.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Oh, right.

• 7:27Conan O'Brien?

  This is why I'm trying to get out of it.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  You're being paid.

• 7:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  No, I do like talking to you and I can look you in the eye and I am happy.

• 7:38Conan O'Brien?

  Well- You're blinking in Morse code. Please, save me. Yeah, so that's my story, I'm, I'm gonna- I'm in the pictures!

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Let's end this, we should get to this because this is a really fun-

• 7:52Conan O'Brien?

  Nah!

• 7:52Speaker 04

  No, okay.

• 7:53Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, let's get into it.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Will you, will you read the intro for Christ's sake?

• 7:57Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, wow, religious. My guests today are two historians who co-host one of the most successful history podcasts in the world. The Rest Is History. I listen to these gentlemen all the time, they're always in my ear, and they are brilliant.

• 8:18Conan O'Brien?

  Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, welcome.

• 8:24Conan O'Brien?

  Gentlemen, I'm going to begin by saying that it is quite a come down for me to have you on the podcast, and I'll explain why. I have a very large ego, and for a while I believed that I had the greatest podcast in the world. I really did. I really thought I cannot be touched, no one can come close. And then one day, several years ago, I heard someone mention this podcast called The Rest Is History. And I'm a history buff. I listened to one episode, I listened to two, I listened to three and four. I've now listened to possibly 300 or 400 of your 800 I'm working my way through. And I have to concede that you have the greatest podcast.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  That's gracious.

• 9:07Conan O'Brien?

  You will always have the greatest podcast. I'm loving this podcast. There is, I am, I am an addict. I'm here to confess my addiction. And I, you're in my ears all the time. And whenever people ask me, what podcast do you listen to? I don't give them a list. I say it's The Rest Is History with Tom and Dominic. I was starstruck when I heard your voices. And I was in the room upstairs in my Larchmont, this is a palace, really.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:40Conan O'Brien?

  I heard your voices. I couldn't believe that you were here. So not since I met George Harrison back at Saturday Night Live, back in the day, have I been this excited. And you met Paul McCartney. Yes, I've met Paul McCartney.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  But we're more exciting.

• 9:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, you guys are, no, no, I'm gonna put you on the same level.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Okay, well, thank you.

• 9:57Conan O'Brien?

  You're on the same level. So gentlemen, thank you so much for being here. Really.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 10:03Conan O'Brien?

  That's all the time we have. It's been lovely having you. It's fine, you've said enough for us. Yeah, yeah. Let's, let's end it there. It's not going to get better. I love history, and my favorite thing about your show is that the history is brilliant, and I feel it's very well researched, and you're both very knowledgeable, but it's funny. And I'm a big believer in keeping two opposing ideas in your head at the same time. Time, you guys will talk about some of the grimmest things in the history of the world like World War One. But there'll be sections where you can't stop laughing. Yeah. And I'm laughing with you. And I love that because both things are true. World War One might be the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.

• 10:46Conan O'Brien?

  It's absolutely terrible and a war that was fought for no reason. And then I will find myself, you two will get talking about the Kaiser and what a ridiculous man the Kaiser was. And I will be crying, I'm laughing so hard along with you. Is is humor the way into this?

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Uh, no, actually. So the story is the way in.

• 11:05Conan O'Brien?

  Did you disagree with me?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  I did, yeah.

• 11:07Conan O'Brien?

  Let me explain where you are right now. You're in America.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:12Conan O'Brien?

  Former colonel. Okay, go ahead, go ahead.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  You've actually got 250 years of back taxes to pay.

• 11:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Come on, you knew that was coming.

• 11:19Conan O'Brien?

  I knew it was coming.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  I think the story is the way in always and the characters, but the humor emerges naturally. So we don't, we don't try to impose the humor on the story. But you know, you're doing the Kaiser, who's a ridiculous man, who's coming up with all these mad schemes to invade places and whatnot. And is basically smoldering with fury because he thinks his British relatives despise him. And that's what drives him. And you've got all these generals with gigantic moustaches and they've all got emphysema.

• 11:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  And all of that, that, I mean, that's true to the history. It's not us imposing it on it.

• 11:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  If you, you can blind yourself to that and say, no, history is terribly serious and very desiccated. But the humor is part of the human condition.

• 11:58Speaker 03

  I think that there's a case for seeing the whole sweep of human history as a very dark comedy.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  Because history essentially is the record of people not getting what they want. People over inflating their own sense of worth. And so there is a kind of inherent strain of comedy that runs throughout almost every period of history that you look at. And I guess that even the very darkest episodes, it's a comedy in the sense that Dante wrote the Divine Comedy.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  It's the sense that sometimes you have to, you have to laugh so that you don't weep.

• 12:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, I think to me, reference one of my favorite British comedies of all time, Blackadder.

• 12:41Conan O'Brien?

  There's a sense of so much of the humor from Blackadder and also from the Python films was just bring out your dead, bring out your dead in Holy Grail. Uh, and, and so much of the comedy in Life of Brian. The British are uniquely very good at doing this. Seeing the dark and the absurdly comical at the exact same moment.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:02Conan O'Brien?

  And holding both molecules together as they bounce off each other.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, people are funny, right?

• 13:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Human beings behave.

• 13:07Conan O'Brien?

  Many aren't, by the way. And I have footage to prove it.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  But often, often the people, often the people who take themselves incredibly serious, seriously are the funniest.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  By the gods.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  And history is, you know, the, the great figures of history invariably take themselves very, very seriously.

• 13:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yeah. I mean, um, you have your obsessions. You are obsessed with facial hair and you will.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Is that unusual? Who isn't?

• 13:30Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, no, and, and what I love is you'll talk about, again, I'll go back to the World War One example, but this goes throughout your entire podcast. Any subject you take up, if someone has absurd facial hair.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:43Conan O'Brien?

  You two start cackling.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:45Conan O'Brien?

  And, um, and, and most of the generals you introduce, Russian, British, French, uh, anyone from Austria, Austria, Hungary, uh, you are, uh, you know, Serbia, Croatia, you're, you're saying, oh my God, and this next one. An insane, an insane, this beard is, is, is greater than the previous beard.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  I mean, now you mention it, I'm thinking, actually, the Americans.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  War.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  They, they have very poor.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Moustache action in this, don't they? So we've got, we've got, obviously we've got a bit of a wait for the Americans to arrive.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, they totally.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Late for a world war.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  They, they, um, they peaked too early though, no? The Civil War, they've got that.

• 14:24Conan O'Brien?

  Civil War, brilliant, yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  At beards.

• 14:26Conan O'Brien?

  Civil War, we had great beards.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:28Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, and if, I mean, I'm, I'm not going to sit here and listen to you run our beards down.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  No, we are, we are huge admirers of.

• 14:36Conan O'Brien?

  Civil War beard. Civil War, 19th century Civil War beard. I mean, insane, our, our Secretary of War, Stanton, had an insane beard. Several men were living in it.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  And your current, your current Secretary of State for war, which I gather is now what it's called. He's banning facial hair.

• 14:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Does he not know his history?

• 14:55Conan O'Brien?

  Pete Hegseth said, "I won't have, there'll be no beards, there'll be no individuation, there'll be no..." And he said, "We won't have any hippies, cut your hair, shave your beard." And we know he's a true patriot because he wears an American flag tie.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 15:11Conan O'Brien?

  Which is what every true patriot does.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 15:13Conan O'Brien?

  And he, he, he went after anyone wearing beards, and I had the same thought, which is, "Excuse me, some of our greatest generals had incredible beards back in the day."

• 15:25Speaker 02

  They did.

• 15:25Conan O'Brien?

  And they did not affect their fighting ability at all.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  And if you're Custer, very long hair.

• 15:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes. Long golden locks.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  They were thinning though, weren't they?

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Yes, when he got scalped.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  That's what went wrong.

• 15:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  He was trying to compensate for his loss of virility.

• 15:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes. Do you think that because Custer was losing his hair, he felt, "I need to attack this village that's a hundred times larger than my fighting force"?

• 15:47Speaker 03

  I mean, imagine the surprise of the brave who scalped him.

• 15:51Conan O'Brien?

  Disappointment. Disappointment. Huge disappointment. They called him, they called him.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  They called him long hair.

• 15:56Conan O'Brien?

  They called him long hair.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 15:58Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my god, he's losing it.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  He looks like Larry David.

• 16:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, he had, Larry David should play Custer in that final battle. And when a hundred thousand hostile natives come over the hill, he should frown and you hear, "Womp, womp, womp."

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Because he loves the Civil War, doesn't he?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, he does.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  There's the famous photo of him with his daughter.

• 16:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Looking.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Looking like a cannon at Gettysburg.

• 16:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I'll be listening to you, and we're on Custer now, so this is a good example. I'm listening to your long, multi-episodes about, about the, you know, who is this Custer? What's happening? How did this whole thing come about? How do we get to this battle? The, the pre-story, and beautifully told. And then you're talking about one of the people who's fighting alongside Custer, underneath him, Benteen.

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:49Conan O'Brien?

  And you two. You despise Benteen?

• 16:53Speaker 02

  No, Benteen's a great man.

• 16:54Conan O'Brien?

  No, I thought you hated Benteen.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  No, he's very like Dominic.

• 16:58Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, well, I hated him, so by extension, I hate you.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  So opinions on that may differ.

• 17:04Conan O'Brien?

  I was just sad I now hate Dominic. Because I'm not a fan of Benteen. What about you?

• 17:09Speaker 03

  What was it? Well, I obviously respect and, you know.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  The line was, I read it out on the podcast, the line from the book, it said, "Beneath his chubby-cheeked cordiality lurked cold and sinister intelligence."

• 17:23Conan O'Brien?

  That's you.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I read that out to Tom, and Tom said, "That's like you." And then I was so offended by that, I read it to my wife, and she said, "You're literally describing yourself."

• 17:31Conan O'Brien?

  Right. So of the villain, one of the villains, or as history has often miscast him.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  No, he's not a villain. He's a great man.

• 17:38Conan O'Brien?

  Please, I'm saying as, as history has miscast him. He's often been seen as the villain of the value, but you say, "No, I, this man is terrific. I like the cut of his jib."

• 17:48Speaker 02

  I do like the cut of his jib. So initially, he lets himself down a bit, doesn't he, by being difficult and not helping Custer? But then at the end, when they're trapped on the hill with Major Reno.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Who, Major Reno, who's in a massive funk.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Who's sobbing and, and like, has to be trussed up like a hog.

• 18:01Conan O'Brien?

  Like a hog. You know, I do, I will say, I had sympathy for Reno, and if anyone's lost at this point, we're talking about the Battle of Little Big Horn.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Everybody's lost.

• 18:12Conan O'Brien?

  And, and please, this is my podcast, and these are the only two people left in the world that I really want to talk to, and I'm taking this ship down right now. But, one of the reasons I sympathize with Reno is I think if I'm ever in a difficult situation, a life and death situation, I will lose my nerve and I will have to be trussed up like a hog by my friends, to keep myself from hurting myself.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, what you described, you compared Reno to yourself. Do you remember?

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I said I would run away.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, you said you compared him to yourself at live shows.

• 18:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  So, Tom has to be trussed up like a hog before our live shows because he's gibbering with nerves. Whereas I, having behaved poorly all day. Yes.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  But then cool, calculating intelligence kicks in.

• 18:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes, yes. This is, I mean, so first of all, I think I'm more in the Tom camp.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:58Conan O'Brien?

  I will be gibbering.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:00Conan O'Brien?

  It's a word I love.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Were you gibbering before your shows, before your talk shows?

• 19:03Conan O'Brien?

  I gibber all day long. I don't think you understand.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  You were gibbering during them.

• 19:06Conan O'Brien?

  I speak in tongues. I have whatever Irish disease we have where we speak mostly in Babel.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:14Conan O'Brien?

  That's me all day long.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:16Conan O'Brien?

  And then they occasionally record it and we seem to be able to sell ads.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:19Conan O'Brien?

  That's what's happened.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:21Conan O'Brien?

  I love the podcast. I'm gonna say my only, my only problem is occasionally you two. And I, and I understand why you're doing it. You're very proudly British. You will throw out the name of some minor member of parliament in the late eighties or early nineties and you'll both start cackling about Cecil Beetlebarter. And you'll be giggling and I will be driving my car and I will turn it into the nearest tree.

• 19:53Conan O'Brien?

  Killing myself. I've been reincarnated many times.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  From boredom.

• 19:55Conan O'Brien?

  No, just rage that you two are having so much fun about Cecil Beetlebarter. And I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  So, so he will have very thick glasses.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  He'll have a kind of silvery hair.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  And he'll have dandruff.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Massive dandruff.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  He'll have a pinstripe suit. He'll look an utterly unmemorable figure.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  He'll be.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  But he will have been insanely brave during the Second World War and taken out three German tanks.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  That's so that you love.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  And taken the MC.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  I see.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  And it's a contrast between them.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  And then he'll be caught in a flat.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  Wearing stockings.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Wearing stockings, yeah. With a black bin liner and an orange in his mouth or something like that.

• 20:40Conan O'Brien?

  You know, winning an award, that's a big achievement, right?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:43Conan O'Brien?

  Every now and then in life, maybe something nice like that comes your way. Winning them consistently is almost impossible. It just doesn't happen, you know? Well, guess what? Winning five times in six years? You know what that sounds like to me? Sustained excellence.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 20:58Conan O'Brien?

  Hyundai has done just that, earning the title of America's best SUV brand for 2026 from US News and World Report. You are a very happy Hyundai driver.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I drive a Hyundai Palisade and I love my car. I love it. I love driving it around.

• 21:11Conan O'Brien?

  I've been tooling around in an Ioniq 5 N, which I love. Beautiful car. Well, listen, whether you need an SUV for everyday life, your next big adventure, or extra room for family and friends, Hyundai has an option for you. The Tucson Hybrid is loaded with technology and built for everyday life. The Santa Fe Hybrid's fully capable and ready for adventure. The Palisade, that's yours, right?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Hello!

• 21:31Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona. The Palisade Hybrid, yeah, delivers premium capability and class-leading interior space. With available, I have this memorized, H-Track all-wheel drive, up to an EPA-estimated 619 miles of range on vehicles like the Palisade Hybrid and Hyundai's industry-leading warranty. It's easy to see why Hyundai continues to deliver the quality, innovation, technology, and value drivers expect from an award-winning brand. View US News Best Cars at cars.usnews.com and call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

• 22:04Conan O'Brien?

  Who do you shop for first on the holidays, Sona? Was it, do you shop for the kids or do you shop for Tac?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  My kids.

• 22:09Conan O'Brien?

  Okay. You gotta get them your stuff.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Or my dog.

• 22:12Conan O'Brien?

  And then your husband is last. Well, guess what? It's that time of year. You feel that, you smell that cinnamon cider in the air? Do you smell that?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:22Conan O'Brien?

  And you see pumpkins around, people buying turkeys. A little early to buy a turkey. Doesn't matter. Holidays, I would say it's just around the corner, but that's a cliche. It's very nearby in the cupboard. Well, guess what? Amazon delivers joy with low prices on the gifts you want, even this early in the season. So get ahead of the season, shop early gifts, top picks, holiday decor, and advent calendars at low prices. Get ahead, start on holiday gifting with Amazon's low prices. Shop now at amazon.com/holiday.

• 22:57Conan O'Brien?

  Technology can generate salary recommendations in seconds. But building an offer that lands skilled talent, that takes more than just an estimate you came up with.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 23:07Conan O'Brien?

  That's where Robert Half's new 2027 Salary Guide can help.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 23:11Conan O'Brien?

  Did we use a salary guide with you, Sona?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Uh, no, but maybe-

• 23:14Conan O'Brien?

  For several years, I just gave you groceries, remember?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  I know, yeah, I remember that. That was not good.

• 23:19Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, well, anyway, now you got Robert Half's new 2027 Salary Guide. As a staffing firm placing talent every day, Robert Half combines compensation data with the experience of local recruiters. You can hire with the confidence that comes from experience. The new Robert Half Salary Guide is here. Visit roberthalf.com/salaryguide.

• 23:44Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, I have to ask, uh, how you two met? Because the chemistry between the two of you is perfection. And, um, I, that's a big magic of the show. And I'm curious, how did these two, how did these two guys come into each other's orbit?

• 24:00Speaker 03

  We were thinking of lying about this, weren't we?

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so actually on the way in, Tabi, our producer, said you need to make up a new origin story because it's not very good.

• 24:08Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, so we can, I'm happy with a lie if it's a good one.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  No, it's not a good one. We haven't had time to think of one because we're not very imaginative.

• 24:14Conan O'Brien?

  Do you want me to think of one for you?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 24:16Conan O'Brien?

  You're in combat together in the Grenade, you're in Grenada, I'm guessing, right?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Grenada, like when the Americans invaded.

• 24:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  No, we're kicking, we're fighting the Americans.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, surely we'd be fighting- On behalf of the Commonwealth, yeah.

• 24:27Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Because the, you disgraced yourselves invading Grenada. You let yourselves down invading Grenada.

• 24:32Conan O'Brien?

  How did we let ourselves down?

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Because it's a British-

• 24:34Speaker 03

  British colony.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Yes, British colony.

• 24:35Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you needed a little help.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't know.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  This is good, this is going very badly.

• 24:39Conan O'Brien?

  Anyway, we didn't meet in combat. I'm sorry. I'm sick of, I mean, we've helped you out a few times, I believe.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Late.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:44Conan O'Brien?

  We, hey, we show up late, yes. We showed up late in World War I, we showed up late in World War II.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:50Conan O'Brien?

  Um, and, uh, but that's the way we are. We like to show up late and I like to arrive late at a party because people notice me more. It's my ego and I think that's what Americans love to do historically is show up when the tide has almost turned, it's almost too late. And then we, uh, supply you with tons of mediocre equipment, but lots of it.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course, the trouble of the World War I is we were both on the wrong side. So we should have joined with the Germans.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  To have a crack at the French.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  You smash the French once and for all.

• 25:19Conan O'Brien?

  Now, let's talk about this, uh, Dominic. Uh, you were- You are so through and through a British citizen. You loathe the French and you're always going after them on the podcast.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:33Conan O'Brien?

  And I-

• 25:34Speaker 02

  I actually lived in France. I speak French.

• 25:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I'm, listen, I'm very impressed with, I love that you took the time to learn the language-

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Right, of the enemy.

• 25:41Conan O'Brien?

  -of a people you despise.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Right, of the enemy. So that you could-

• 25:44Conan O'Brien?

  You could be passive aggressive to them in their own tongue.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Conan O'Brien?

  Do you, do you ever, did you grow up, is this just you playing a part or is there real animosity there towards the French?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  I think probably initially playing a part, but it's entered, I've forgotten who I am and it's entered.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  The mask, the mask has blended into your flesh.

• 26:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 26:03Conan O'Brien?

  Beautiful, beautiful.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Tom, you like the French, though, don't you?

• 26:05Speaker 03

  I do like the French.

• 26:06Conan O'Brien?

  You don't have any, when, that whole period when Napoleon's trying to-

• 26:10Speaker 03

  Well-

• 26:10Conan O'Brien?

  -destroy the English islands, you're okay with that?

• 26:14Speaker 03

  I like them because I think they're, they're the coolest of enemies. They are a very, very classy enemy to have. And I think because we always beat them, that redounds to our credit. So, I mean, I wouldn't in any way underestimate the French.

• 26:27Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  They're a bit, I mean, for most of England's history, and indeed Britain's history, they were much richer, much more powerful, much more sophisticated. And so the pleasure of thrashing them-

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Is all the sweeter.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  -becomes all the sweeter.

• 26:38Conan O'Brien?

  No, they do have those desserts.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  They do.

• 26:41Conan O'Brien?

  Those desserts are fantastic.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:43Conan O'Brien?

  And I mean, show me, you have some great, I mean, your desserts are fine.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  No, you have- The French don't do a pudding though, do they? They don't do a proper pudding.

• 26:50Conan O'Brien?

  Well, yeah, but I don't think they want to do a pudding.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  They do a tart.

• 26:53Conan O'Brien?

  They're letting you have the pudding. Because quite frankly, no one really wants a pudding.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  No, no, you're wrong about that.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  I, I love pudding.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta have a pudding.

• 27:01Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, I don't have to have a pudding. And, and you may think this is a cul-de-sac we've gone down.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  It is.

• 27:07Conan O'Brien?

  This is a dead end. I say, I'm gonna go hard on this pudding thing. I think you guys have disgraced yourself with your puddings.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Okay, wow.

• 27:14Conan O'Brien?

  And there, there we go.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  This is punchy stuff.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  I mean, I, the French, of course, would agree with you.

• 27:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:22Conan O'Brien?

  That's the one, I'd jump in with the French on that one. You guys, you have your obsessions and I love that. And you also have your heroes. Dominic, I know for you, it might be Admiral Lord Nelson. Is he your all-time favorite? Who's your all time favorite? Because I want to get from both of you.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  I think for both of us, Nelson.

• 27:41Conan O'Brien?

  Nelson.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a, do you know, I have a tendresse, it's a French word, for Richard Nixon. I like Richard Nixon.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  I find him very entertaining.

• 27:50Conan O'Brien?

  He's fascinating. Well, my show here in the States began in September of 1993, and a reporter asked me, who would your favorite comedy guest be?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:01Conan O'Brien?

  And I said, Richard Nixon, because Richard Nixon was still alive. He was the face of comedy for about a good 12 years in our country. All comedy, comedians were obsessed with him. He was a very fun guy to have sport with. And, I mean, he obsessed every comedy writer for, you know, a huge chunk of modern American history. So I wanted to talk to Richard Nixon. And then he passed away, I believe, I started in September, I think he died in maybe March. And I thought, there goes my chance.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Do you know what, AI, they can bring back some kind of Nixon avatar sweating aggressively at you. Horror. Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  So we.

• 28:46Conan O'Brien?

  Nixon does appear on this podcast many times. I morph into Nixon, even when he's not appropriate. Horror. And it's a very cartoonish, over the top.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  We, we went to Disneyland and they've got an animatronic version, they've got, what, a Lincoln? And Disney. So I'd have thought that Nixon would be.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  An animatronic Nixon. Like, kind of walking very stiffly.

• 29:05Conan O'Brien?

  Nixon himself was an animatronic Nixon.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  There may not have ever been. I mean, we love him as well. We're very keen on inappropriate footwear. People wearing the wrong shoes at the wrong time. And Nixon was brilliant at that, because he, what was it, he wore.

• 29:17Conan O'Brien?

  Black shoes on the beach.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. And we, we.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  We like that in a.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I admire that in a man.

• 29:25Conan O'Brien?

  I, okay, a little tidbit, and I'm gonna brag here for a moment. One of Nixon's biographers who knew him is a woman named Monica Crowley, who's written a lot about Nixon in winter, late in his career. She told me that.

• 29:41Conan O'Brien?

  Nixon, at the end of, very end of his life, was flipping around. He wanted, he was interested in television. He liked to watch television. And I premiere and he watched our first episode. And then she said that he liked it and told her, "I like it. It's Mad Cap." I'd say me. It's Mad Cap. And I thought, I love that Nixon, now, I want Monica Crowley to write that down so that it's part of the official record. But she told me that he watched it, probably with his shoes on, over his pajamas, and watched it at 12:30 at night here in America and said, "I like it. It's Mad Cap."

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he would say it without smiling, wouldn't he?

• 30:21Conan O'Brien?

  No, he would.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  There'd be no flicker of amusement on his face.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  So basically, you had six months where you could have leveraged that.

• 30:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I think, um, yeah, I, well, first of all, very quickly, critics turned on me and Nixon's advisers probably would have said, well, no, his advisers were famously terrible. They would have said you-

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Double down, double down.

• 30:38Conan O'Brien?

  You should, you should break into the DNC for no reason at all and pay the burglars out of your own pocket and you should immediately go on Conan O'Brien's late night show. Um, so Admiral Lord Nelson for both of you?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  You've got to throw in somebody ancient there, Tom, don't you?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Uh, no, because people in antiquity are terrifying and terrible. Um, I mean, they're astonishing. I think almost without exception, yes.

• 31:04Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I think back then, your average person was grabbing someone who walked into their, walked by their house and thrusting them over a large sharpened stick, you know, and impaling them.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  There's quite a lot of that going on.

• 31:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  I, I think that they, um, the further back in time you go, the harder it is to relate to people because they are so different. Um, and I think of someone like Alexander or Julius Caesar. They, they are terrifying because they move to kind of moral rhythms that are very, very strange and remote to us.

• 31:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  So I can't kind of love any of them or admire them. Um, so I think it has to be kind of more recent because then you can understand them.

• 31:45Conan O'Brien?

  Well, my all time favorite is Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, because, uh, he's the one figure that-

• 31:55Conan O'Brien?

  Is more impressive the more I learn about him. The more I, I, I think he's, I think he might be one of our greatest authors. Also, one of our greatest humanitarians and an incredible statesman and funny.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  And what's, what's your take on his wife?

• 32:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Because we had a disagreement about this.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  We got into trouble. I got into trouble.

• 32:13Conan O'Brien?

  Where did you get into trouble?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Saying she was a monster.

• 32:16Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think that's right.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  I, I was, I was sticking up for her.

• 32:19Conan O'Brien?

  I think that's too simple. I think it's too simple to say she's a monster. I think she was unwell.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  That's unbelievable.

• 32:24Conan O'Brien?

  I think she was.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  I'm literally never coming on this show again.

• 32:27Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you weren't coming again anyway. You said that before we even started.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:30Conan O'Brien?

  I'll do this once. My people tell me I have to do it.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. I didn't realize you were listening to our conversation.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Let's hear about, let's hear about why Mary Lincoln is not a monster.

• 32:40Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, she is, uh, she is, um, crucial, I think, to Lincoln's rise. She comes from a connected family. She's very ambitious on his behalf.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:55Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, my wife, who's also a massive fan of, uh, both you gentlemen, massive fan and regular listener. She, um, she did a great podcast called Significant Others and she talked about Mary Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln and talked about the complexities of what's good about Mary Lincoln and what's, but it's, her podcast and the research was that she did a lot for him. She was very ambitious on his behalf. Um, in some ways she was a good partner. She was highly flawed, but I think to dismiss her as a monster isn't fair.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Did she not, though, steal all the spoons from the White House when she left?

• 33:30Conan O'Brien?

  Who hasn't done that?

• 33:31Speaker 03

  I've never done that.

• 33:32Conan O'Brien?

  I've been to the White House three times.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Did you steal the spoons?

• 33:34Conan O'Brien?

  I stole a flat screen television.

• 33:38Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, spoons, I don't need a fucking spoon.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Mary Lincoln didn't do that.

• 33:41Conan O'Brien?

  Who needs a spoon? If you're going to go, go big, I said.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:45Conan O'Brien?

  So, yeah, I, um.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, but she stole something like 6,000 spoons or whatever it was.

• 33:49Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, come on, get over it.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Honestly.

• 33:51Conan O'Brien?

  And nothing, you know?

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 33:52Conan O'Brien?

  What did Margaret Thatcher take when she left power? I do have a question. Wait, I do have a question. This is a serious question that has confused me somewhat over time. I sometimes have a take on a British figure that's completely out of step with what British people think of that figure.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  So like who?

• 34:12Conan O'Brien?

  Well, Margaret Thatcher's won because I feel that you almost can't.

• 34:18Conan O'Brien?

  I've been in circles where you almost can't bring her up.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:21Conan O'Brien?

  And she has been cancelled. And I've seen books of great women in history. And Margaret Thatcher isn't even in there. And she's this highly significant person. And I understand that there's complexities there and there are things that she did. But interesting to me that she isn't held in more esteem.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Dominic has written a 7,000 page book on her.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  So.

• 34:51Conan O'Brien?

  I didn't know that.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Is absolutely the man to take this on.

• 34:53Conan O'Brien?

  Do you think, am I correct that I've been around Brits and I've said, what do you guys prefer? Brits, Limeys, what do you like?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  I think we're.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Englishman.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, Englishman, officers and gentlemen.

• 35:06Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, Admiral.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:10Conan O'Brien?

  Lord Commander.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Just sir is fine.

• 35:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, okay, sir. Lord Admiral. Your Highnesses.

• 35:18Conan O'Brien?

  I have noticed that you have to have her as part of the conversation and it's as if she didn't exist. And I, that doesn't feel right to me. Am I correct about that?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  I think, I think kind of liberal opinion, for want of a better word, a better phrase, still holds her in very low regard because she was a, you know, she was a right of centre politician.

• 35:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  A lot of people suffered under, in the Thatcher government because of deindustrialisation.

• 35:43Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  She was a very, very strident and partisan politician. You know, you were, she, you were one of hers or you were one of the opposition.

• 35:52Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  And she drew the battle lines very clearly. So it's understandable why people hate her, right?

• 35:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  I completely get that. I mean, I'm sure Tom would probably agree with me on this. She's an incredibly impressive person.

• 36:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  So if you look at photographs of her government, she's often in the room with 40 men. And she's the only woman.

• 36:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  And she's, you know, made her own way. She's fought her way up the ladder. She's incredibly well prepared because she thinks she has to work harder than any man. Because she thinks she'll be dismissed at any moment. So that, and she feels she has to become harder than hard to prove that she's not a soft and sensitive woman. All of which maybe makes her quite unlikable. I think she probably wouldn't have got on with us because she had very little sense of humour. And she was hard, you know, hard company, difficult company.

• 36:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Um, but she is, I mean, certainly compared with Britain's recent prime ministers.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  So that I think, I think that there's a kind of kaleidoscopic quality to people's reputations in history. And I think the fact that, how long was she, 10 years? She was prime minister for 10 years?

• 36:50Speaker 02

  11 years.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  And basically, we, you know, we, current prime ministers last about a week.

• 36:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, they're like fruit flies. They have the same life expectancy.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  And same intellect.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  They're so terrible.

• 37:00Conan O'Brien?

  But they're nourished on the blood of others.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, they are so terrible that I, I think her reputation can only improve by comparison.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, the comparison between her and Liz Truss, Keir Starmer, I mean, which is not.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  I mean, names that no, no, no one listening will ever, wouldn't have heard of any of them.

• 37:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, they just enter the front of Downing Street and they go out the back without breaking stride.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:21Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, I, um, I'm also, uh, a, a big churchophile. I, I, I, I really love Churchill. And I know that, um, I've talked to, uh, British people who, oh, well, you know, he behaved poorly here. He behaved poorly there. There's a lot of it that maybe doesn't age well. And sometimes I am impatient. I think, oh my God, you know, this, this was the perfect person at the perfect time. With the perfect wit and the perfect eloquence, um, that alone should protect him. Am I wrong?

• 37:57Speaker 03

  He got one massive thing right. And I think essentially that cancels everything he got wrong.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah. Also, I mean, you've got to give him massive credit.

• 38:05Conan O'Brien?

  When you say one massive thing right, just for anyone who's, you know, he, uh, the, people were trying to appease Hitler, appease Hitler, appease Hitler. And he said enough of this.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  He's right about that, but I think specifically, it's the moment when the Nazis are on the French coast.

• 38:20Conan O'Brien?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  Um, there's a serious prospect that the British government may open negotiations with Hitler.

• 38:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  And had that happened.

• 38:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Then the history of Europe and of the world would have been radically different. But it doesn't happen. Is massively down Churchill.

• 38:38Conan O'Brien?

  Because of one man who said, no.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Right. I mean, it's amazing.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  It's a pinch point.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  It's amazing story about him addressing his MPs and saying to them, if this Long Island story of ours is to end, let it end only when we are choking in our own blood on the ground.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  And that kind of stirring stuff. I mean, nobody says that outside movies. He says that he galvanizes the English language, the English people.

• 38:59Conan O'Brien?

  I have a, I have a theory that, again, I'm just gonna go with Brits because I don't know what to say. Um, that the British people are famously afraid of, or wary of puffed up language or it, you know, I know it's certainly true of the Celts. The minute someone starts to say, we, everyone is going, oh, get over yourself. That all the rhetoric I love of Churchill's sometimes is slightly embarrassing.

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Well, the thing is, he, he, he speaks like that from about the age of four.

• 39:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it makes him a very, a, a very comical figure. So what is it, the age of 10?

• 39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, he's at school.

• 39:38Conan O'Brien?

  I loved him at four saying, anyone who will not give that toy and put it back in my pram will choke on their own blood.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  But the thing is, he's, I mean, he, at the age of 10 or something, when he's at school, he's writing essays about how he is going to save Britain.

• 39:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  From foreign invasion.

• 39:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  And he, in a sense, you know, his whole life has been preparation for 1940 when, when he.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  And the other thing.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  He stands alone.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  He got loads wrong. He made loads of terrible, terrible mistakes and some of his, you know, more intemperate statements don't stand up very well today to ask scrutiny. But when you look at his life, he had an amazing life.

• 40:13Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my God. He is Zelig. You know the Woody Allen movie Zelig where he's in every pivotal moment in history?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Africa and he escapes from a Burgh prisoner war camp. He's in Cuba when the Americans are fighting in Cuba. He's fighting in India.

• 40:24Conan O'Brien?

  He's hit by a cab in New York City in the 1930s.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  These crazy.

• 40:28Conan O'Brien?

  He's everywhere.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  This extraordinary life. Plus, he is such a likable personality. He's so ebullient.

• 40:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  He's such fun. He's a great laugh. If you were sitting next to you at dinner, no, you wouldn't get a word in edgewise.

• 40:41Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I would.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  But he'd be.

• 40:44Conan O'Brien?

  But you don't know.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  You're messing with. Hey, Winston! Ooh, let this Irish idiot in here.

• 40:53Conan O'Brien?

  I, uh, when I visited, I have my frequent stops when I'm in London, Imperial War Museum, I always have to go. I witnessed an argument, this is in the late 80s, I was at the Imperial War Museum and I witnessed, there's a, there was a British half-track there, and two old German men were saying, "This was not the best design." And two British guys said, "Well, it was bloody well good enough, wasn't it?" And they got into it, and I thought-

• 41:20Speaker 03

  What was the accent that that British person had?

• 41:23Speaker 02

  I fail, chap!

• 41:25Conan O'Brien?

  Dick Van Dyke taught me how to talk to guys. Blimey! Hello, guv'nor! I did that to Hugh Laurie's face once, and I think he struck me, uh, but it's all a blur now.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  We have an episode on Mary Poppins coming up.

• 41:39Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, really?

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, we do.

• 41:40Conan O'Brien?

  Terrific, well, apologies-

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Dick Van Dyke, he was taught his, um, Cockney accent by an Irishman, who'd been appointed by Walt Disney.

• 41:47Conan O'Brien?

  It was the ultimate act of the IRA.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Mr. Savage! Explains a lot.

• 41:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, um, yeah, he has apologized many times. I had him on the show and I asked him about that, and he said, "I'm sorry, that's what I was taught, it's terrible."

• 42:02Speaker 03

  He was, he was.

• 42:02Conan O'Brien?

  But to his credit, he's Dick Van Dyke, he's a national treasure for us, and, uh, and he apologized. But, uh, what were we talking about? I've drifted.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Churchill.

• 42:15Conan O'Brien?

  Imperial War Museum.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 42:17Conan O'Brien?

  And then Chartwell. I went to Chartwell, which I-

• 42:19Speaker 03

  That is great.

• 42:20Conan O'Brien?

  And I just, looking at, Chartwell's the country estate that Churchill bought when he didn't have the money to buy it, and he was making, I mean, to his credit, earning his living, writing articles, and probably spending money he didn't have, but he bought Chartwell, and there are a few homes that tell you who the person is. Most of them have been redone, the person isn't really there. My two favorites are Chartwell, uh, and, um- Teddy Roosevelt's house at Sagamore Hill on Oyster Bay.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Never mean that.

• 42:52Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, you have to go because Teddy Roosevelt's there.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:55Conan O'Brien?

  They didn't touch it. His wife kept it exactly the same. When she passed, it became a museum. Nothing's been changed. It's filled with stuffed heads and bombast and hyperactivity and.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  They're quite similar, I think.

• 43:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, they are.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  They're very similar. Do you know who T O's hero was?

• 43:14Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, well, Kipling? Who?

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Oliver Cromwell.

• 43:16Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, that's Oliver Cromwell. Yes.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  His hero, one of my heroes, actually, kind of, sorry.

• 43:20Conan O'Brien?

  Not so much of the British. I mean, it'd be Irish. I once, my grandmother lived with us growing up and she was, uh, she had been born in eighteen ninety.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 43:31Conan O'Brien?

  And the movie Cromwell was on in her room. She, it was room on the second floor. Richard Harris film. And I'm crossing her room and the door is slightly ajar and just the flickering image, she's watching it. And it's a scene where the British are, uh, under Cromwell or something's going on. I can't remember. But it was something about the Irish and my grandmother's watching and she just said, "The bastards."

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, you know, we, we, um, we grew up on these, um, children's books called Lady Bird books. And they were the books about great lives. So there was, um, Oliver Cromwell was one of them. And it has kind of famous summing up and it says, "Oliver Cromwell, brackets, except in Ireland, was a kindly man."

• 44:16Conan O'Brien?

  Colonel O'Brien, except for to his staff and friends, was a kindly man.

• 44:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, which I think, um, yeah, sums up perhaps.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  What was that saying, Cromwell? He was robust in Ireland.

• 44:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  He was robust.

• 44:27Conan O'Brien?

  Robust, yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Robust is a very useful word on the podcast.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  But, uh. He had sometimes pungent views.

• 44:32Speaker 03

  Pungent and robust. They, they carry a lot of weight.

• 44:36Conan O'Brien?

  You know, the, the, the larger to Google Earth out of this all, these little areas for a second. One of the things that sustains me, and I know that you have a lot of young listeners, which I love because, um, the role that history plays for me in my life, my knowledge of history and my enthusiasm for it, is it often reminds me that we've been here before and that the history of mankind is a lot of things constantly going wrong. Um, and.

• 45:08Conan O'Brien?

  You know, good, good people in the mix trying to right the ship. But I get a lot of satisfaction out of all the things that are happening today that are so, can seem so dire. And of course, unlike anyone that you're talking about in your podcast, we're being bombarded with bad news constantly through this new technology. A lot of young people just think, well, this is the end of the world. And I try and remind them.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Things have been worse.

• 45:36Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no. But I keep telling them, do you think 1914 was great? How about 1861 in the States? I mean, even in our recent history, the 60s was a dreadful decade. 70s, 80s. I mean, it's hard to locate a time when we all didn't think, when I was at university, as you call it, when I was in college, we all thought Reagan is going to blow up the world. And this is the end.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Late for the first two world wars, early for the third.

• 46:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Well, well, there we go. Oh, there goes Moscow.

• 46:06Conan O'Brien?

  There goes well. But I mean, and I, I'm just constantly reminded that we have, we had a moment of optimism when the Berlin Wall fell, which quickly turned to cynicism. And then things seem to have just gotten much worse in Russia. And we see what's happening in the world. And I think, well, this is the way it's been. It's always been this way.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  So I would say a couple of things. One is that people always behave badly. History keeps happening and people will continue doing bad things because human nature doesn't change. And yet, most people alive today live longer, healthier, you know, more comfortable, warm, you know, warmer as in shielded from cold, lives with more opportunities, more, you know, the broader cultural horizons, all of that kind of thing. That's not to be complacent. But you know, you'd rather be here than at any previous point in history.

• 46:56Speaker 03

  And the other thing is dentistry, which is always mentioned.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  And antibiotics.

• 47:00Conan O'Brien?

  My father was a microbiologist and studied antibiotics his entire life. Never went to the dentist, though. Face of just broken tombstones in his mouth. British.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Like George Washington, like George Washington. He walked around with other people's teeth in his mouth.

• 47:15Conan O'Brien?

  That's right.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Poor from Washington.

• 47:16Conan O'Brien?

  That's right.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  We knew he was a bad man, but that was confirmed.

• 47:19Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, had to eat, you know, he, he ate because of his bad, bad teeth. Can I tell you?

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Go on.

• 47:24Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, he would have tripe. Tripe was all he would eat, which is cow's.

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Really going down in our estimation, isn't he?

• 47:29Conan O'Brien?

  Cow's stomach mashed up and then boiled. And this, this man who might be the greatest American of all time, through his rotted jaw would suck tripe into his mouth.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  That makes me feel so happy.

• 47:41Conan O'Brien?

  You know, the worst teeth, the worst teeth.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Won't you forgive us?

• 47:44Speaker 03

  No. Ramesses the Great, the pharaoh. Um, they found his, uh, his mummy. And he'd lived to about ninety seven. And they inspected his jaw. And because the sand, you know, it's Egypt, so sand gets into the bread. Uh, ninety odd years of chewing on bread had worn down the teeth, had worn down the gums, had exposed the nerves. He was pharaoh, he was, you know, one of the greatest figures of ancient history. His, I mean, every minute would have been excruciating agony. There was nothing that he could do about that.

• 48:19Conan O'Brien?

  Nothing he could do.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  So I, I, you know, just say that to cheer people up who may be depressed.

• 48:24Conan O'Brien?

  You think you're, yeah.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  Doom scrolling.

• 48:25Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly. If you're depressed about what's happening right now and global warming, remember there's not sand in your bread. Yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  And, you know, and there's been, um, the world has been convulsed by terrible examples of climate change before.

• 48:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Um, say the sixth century A.D.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Possibly the worst year in human history. Um, there's a kind of great climatic event, the world cools, the crops fail, there's plague, there's war, everything collapses. Um, and I, I again, offer that as a reassurance that things may seem bad now, but honestly, they have been so much worse.

• 49:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and I think I, I go back to that all the time is there's also a,

• 49:08Conan O'Brien?

  this is not just uniquely American. American thing, but it's very popular in our politics to can't we return to that golden old time? And as a his as a as a not a historian like you gentlemen, as an amateur, I always say, tell me when that was.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  Never existed.

• 49:24Conan O'Brien?

  What is what is this golden time? And you know, they'll try and say things like, well, you know, in the 1890s, you know, the thing that's always recreated when someone opens an ice cream shop and people have arm garters and wax mustaches and people and I think, no, that was no good.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  Lynching.

• 49:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, no, no, I mean, exactly. It's it's it's uh, there is no golden past. And I think that's one of the things that sustains me uh, these days is I listen to your podcast and you tell these great stories. And I I love the stories and I learned so much, but it informs how I live today. It informs how I read the news. It informs how I take what's coming. And I'm usually be I'm usually a little, I think, calmer. And I work with a lot of young people who are convinced I I remember during COVID. Oh, uh, someone who was waiting on me in a restaurant telling me she was very young. She was about 20 and she said she's very sad. And I said, why? And she said, I'll never see a concert again.

• 50:23Conan O'Brien?

  I'll never see a live concert again because that's over now because of COVID. And I said, no, no, no, we we were here in 1919. We've been here a bunch of times before. These happen and they go away and we move on. You're going to see so many concerts and so many of them are going to be terrible.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  You'll be dreaming of lockdown.

• 50:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, I have to ask you, uh, I have not listened to your Rolling Stone podcasts, your Satanic Majesties podcasts. Beatles or Stones? I just have to ask.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Uh, for me, Beatles a hundred percent.

• 50:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Stones.

• 50:54Conan O'Brien?

  Okay. Well, I have to tell you, Dominic, you're wrong. You're wrong.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Wrong about wrong about.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mary Lincoln.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Mary Lincoln.

• 51:02Conan O'Brien?

  And wrong about the Stones. Look, I love them. An amazing three chord band, but.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  You're not a bit bored of the Beatles?

• 51:08Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  A bit ubiquitous.

• 51:09Conan O'Brien?

  It's impossible. It's impossible. And look, is it their fault that their stuff is you're penalizing them for their popularity?

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Been too good.

• 51:17Conan O'Brien?

  Incredible. Well, wrong again. Um, and. And I should tell you, Mary Lincoln.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Loved the Beatles.

• 51:22Conan O'Brien?

  Played with the Stones for a while. So you should really hit the Stones, yeah.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  She was one of Peter, Paul and Mary, right?

• 51:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, she was with Peter, Paul and Mary, yes. Then she left, replaced Bill Wyman for a little while as bass player. And then Mick got jealous, she was getting all the attention. Yeah, that was, I have to ask you on a personal note, this thing has blown up. You started as a lark, you were having fun.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:44Conan O'Brien?

  And now it's all this.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, mental.

• 51:47Conan O'Brien?

  Are you enjoying, I mean, Tom Hanks is a huge fan. Will come on the podcast, I've not been invited.

• 51:55Conan O'Brien?

  Listen, I understand, I understand my place in the hierarchy. I have a small cameo in Saving Private Ryan, I'm shot. I'm the ninth guy to be shot, just coming right off the boat.

• 52:05Speaker 03

  What would, if you, what would you like to talk about?

• 52:07Conan O'Brien?

  We'd pick a topic, you could pick a topic with me and I would come to London. Where do you do it? Do you do it in London?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  No, you can do it everywhere, you don't have to move.

• 52:15Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, no, I want to be there in person. Or do you guys, are you together when you do it?

• 52:19Speaker 02

  No. We hate each other. No, god, I mean, that would be terrible. Yeah, no, never. This is the first time we've been together for about four years.

• 52:24Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  It's very unpleasant.

• 52:26Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'd like to be with one of you live, so I would like to be at one of your, I'm imagining a grand estate. And I would like to be with one of you in person and I would like to make the other jealous.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  And the butlers. Maybe we could, maybe we could talk about why Mary Lincoln was a goodie. Or why the Beatles are brilliant.

• 52:43Conan O'Brien?

  I could do the Beatles in a second.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 52:46Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, I would happily join you guys anytime. This has been a thrill for me and I got to talk about, about 170th of the things that I would love to talk to you about. But, so it goes, we'll leave that for another time. If you're not listening to The Rest Is History with Tom and Dominic, you're a fool. And you don't, and you know what? You don't even have to be a history buff. They're stories and they're the best stories that ever were. And they're told by two great storytellers. And so, The Rest Is History, please give it a listen. And thank you to both very much for being here.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Thank you for having us.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 53:39Conan O'Brien?

  You know, winning an award, that's a big achievement, right?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love awards.

• 53:42Conan O'Brien?

  Every now and then in life, maybe something nice like that comes your way. Winning them consistently is almost impossible. It just doesn't happen, you know? Well, guess what? Winning five times in six years? You know what that sounds like to me? Sustained excellence.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 53:57Conan O'Brien?

  Hyundai has done just that, earning the title of America's best SUV brand for 2026 from US News and World Report. You are a very happy Hyundai driver.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  I drive a Hyundai Palisade and I love my car. I love it. I love driving it around.

• 54:10Conan O'Brien?

  I've been tooling around in an Ioniq 5 N, which I love. Beautiful car. Well, listen, whether you need an SUV for everyday life, your next big adventure, or extra room for family and friends, Hyundai has an option for you. The Tucson Hybrid is loaded with technology and built for everyday life. The Santa Fe Hybrid's fully capable and ready for adventure. The Palisade, that's yours, right?

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Hello!

• 54:30Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona. The Palisade Hybrid, yeah, delivers premium capability and class-leading interior space. With available, I had this memorized, H-Track all-wheel drive, up to an EPA-estimated 619 miles of range on vehicles like the Palisade Hybrid and Hyundai's industry-leading warranty. It's easy to see why Hyundai continues to deliver the quality, innovation, technology, and value drivers expect from an award-winning brand. View US News Best Cars at cars.usnews.com and call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

• 55:04Conan O'Brien?

  Did you know that one in four Americans targeted by scams end up falling for them? You fell for one.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam?

• 55:11Conan O'Brien?

  Now, you didn't lose too much money, but you did lose.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  I did lose and it was very inconvenient and now they put protections on my account like I'm, uh, dumb.

• 55:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I don't know where they got that impression.

• 55:23Conan O'Brien?

  Criminals are now using AI to make scams look more realistic than ever. In 2025, AI fraud spiked 1,210% and cost Americans $893 million. That's incredible. Well, with AI, it can get so smart now.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:40Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 55:42Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that's not the point of this.

• 55:44Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point. So click, Son, it can expose your information, putting you at risk of identity theft. Luckily, this is the point. Not that you should start scamming, but that everyone should get LifeLock.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 55:56Conan O'Brien?

  LifeLock has live US-based restoration specialists who will be with you every step of the way to fix your identity theft from first alert to full restoration. This is fantastic. How do you not have this?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:08Conan O'Brien?

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• 56:15Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 56:16Conan O'Brien?

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• 56:26Conan O'Brien?

  Coca-Cola Zero Sugar is so good, it's almost impossible not to finish it before the meal arrives. It's just too good to wait. That happens to me sometimes.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Me, too.

• 56:35Conan O'Brien?

  You can try rules like no sipping until the appetizer arrives, or you tell your friend, "Don't let me touch my glass." But every time you're staring at an empty glass, Sue, if you've ever finished your Coke Zero before the first fry hits the table, you're among friends.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 56:49Conan O'Brien?

  It happens.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:51Conan O'Brien?

  Occupational hazard with Coke Zero.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:53Conan O'Brien?

  Real Coca-Cola taste, zero sugar, too good to wait. Enjoy an ice cold Coca-Cola Zero Sugar today.

• 57:07Conan O'Brien?

  We have something very important to discuss right now.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Is it important?

• 57:10Conan O'Brien?

  It's very important, Son. If you'd even questioned me, it's abhorrent to me. Recently, we had a discussion about singing popular songs on the podcast. Is that a copyright infringement? Do we have to then pay off these artists? Or are we allowed to sing a popular ditty? Do we have the freedom to do that?

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:32Conan O'Brien?

  And we realized there's one person we need to talk to.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:35Conan O'Brien?

  He is one of the loyal

• 57:39Conan O'Brien?

  Troops here in the Team Coco Army. He's a magnificent lawyer. Despite never having practiced law. Or graduated from law school.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  He's the Jose Royal of lawyers.

• 57:54Conan O'Brien?

  But no one pretends to be a lawyer better than David Melmed. And David, thank you very much for being here. And I also want to say, people really like David Melmed.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:04Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, everyone's just talking about that.

• 58:06Speaker 06

  We're all big fans.

• 58:07Conan O'Brien?

  You know, I'm a controversial figure here in the building. But you are universally very well liked.

• 58:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:13Speaker 06

  Thank you. Appreciate that.

• 58:15Conan O'Brien?

  And so, and I thank you. You do terrific work for us in your capacity as a fake lawyer. So David, let's get into it. The question is, can I sing songs on the podcast? Can Sona sing songs on the podcast? And Matt Gourley, is he allowed to break out into a tune every now and then? What's the answer?

• 58:37Speaker 06

  I'm going to give you a lawyer answer to that.

• 58:40Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 58:40Speaker 06

  The answer is maybe.

• 58:43Speaker 06

  The answer is maybe.

• 58:43Conan O'Brien?

  Maybe. You're rotating in your chair a lot nervously, David.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  Maybe, I don't really want to know.

• 58:50Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 58:50Speaker 04

  I've got it and grows.

• 58:52Speaker 06

  We could actually use that as an example right there.

• 58:54Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 58:55Speaker 06

  That's a perfect example, right?

• 58:56Conan O'Brien?

  This is timely, too.

• 58:57Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 58:57Conan O'Brien?

  What song was that? Because the way you were singing, it was just awful. What song was it?

• 59:00Speaker 04

  That's always the song, Live Forever.

• 59:02Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, okay, got it. Terrific.

• 59:04Speaker 06

  So that's a perfect example right there. Thank you.

• 59:07Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 59:08Speaker 06

  I think there's a way to approach these. I think music is probably one of the most controversial sort of topics in all of clearance. Right? I think music, particularly with you, Conan, your love of music and sort of the idea of music now in podcasts has become a hot, certainly a topic within the legal community. And so now that we have an example, I think the first thing.

• 59:37Conan O'Brien?

  If you don't get more interesting faster, I'm going to kill you.

• 59:41Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 59:42Conan O'Brien?

  It's that interesting.

• 59:42Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 59:43Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, it's that simple.

• 59:44Speaker 06

  It's that simple.

• 59:45Speaker 04

  Look at all these notes.

• 59:46Conan O'Brien?

  You have, I mean, look at the, you're not, you're not talking to the Supreme Court.

• 59:50Speaker 06

  Yes, I am.

• 59:50Conan O'Brien?

  It's just us, David.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  He is the most professional person in this room right now.

• 59:55Conan O'Brien?

  I know, but that was just dreadful.

• 59:57Speaker 06

  I know. He'd let the man talk. I think.

• 1:00:00Conan O'Brien?

  I did!

• 1:00:01Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:00:01Conan O'Brien?

  And it was awful!

• 1:00:03Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:00:04Conan O'Brien?

  It was the worst thing that ever happened to me! I'm sorry, David.

• 1:00:08Speaker 06

  That's okay.

• 1:00:08Conan O'Brien?

  Continue.

• 1:00:09Speaker 06

  And I'm used to this.

• 1:00:10Conan O'Brien?

  In no way, in no way feel constrained by what I've said or intimidated.

• 1:00:14Speaker 06

  I'm not.

• 1:00:15Conan O'Brien?

  As your employer continued doing that awful thing you were just doing, continue.

• 1:00:18Speaker 06

  Exactly. This is, okay. So, there's a step approach to that. I think the first thing we ask is, what is the intended use of what you are trying to do? And I think why I ask that is a lot of times I hear samples and they're really terrible. I think the, when I actually ask the person, what do you want to use it for? They hear themselves say it and they say, you know what? We're good. We're actually not going to use that. Once we get to step two, say, you know what? We want to do that. Then we get to, where do you want to use it? Where do you want to distribute it? And so in that case, just, I'm putting you on the spot, Gourley. Where would you want to use that within?

• 1:00:53Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I think we're talking about this podcast.

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Conan O'Brien?

  So, this is, I think what we're all talking about is the same thing.

• 1:00:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Conan O'Brien?

  Which is, okay, we're having this podcast and we're talking and someone brings up Robert Palmer and Sona says, wait, which one is he? Because she's younger and I go. Murder, swash, face, true, addicted to. He's so fine. There's no telling where the money went. And what do you do now? It comes across your desk.

• 1:01:18Speaker 06

  Yes, it does.

• 1:01:18Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think you have a desk.

• 1:01:19Speaker 06

  I do not. I sit in the corner.

• 1:01:20Conan O'Brien?

  But you.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  He does sit in the corner.

• 1:01:22Speaker 06

  I do sit in the corner.

• 1:01:23Conan O'Brien?

  You do sit in the corner.

• 1:01:24Speaker 06

  I do sit in the corner, yes.

• 1:01:24Conan O'Brien?

  Well, when you get a real law degree, you'll get a real desk.

• 1:01:26Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:01:28Conan O'Brien?

  But David.

• 1:01:29Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:01:29Conan O'Brien?

  That's the example.

• 1:01:30Speaker 06

  That's a great example.

• 1:01:30Conan O'Brien?

  They come to you and they say, Conan O'Brien, joined in by Matt Gourley, uh, uh, Robert Palmer song. We just did it. Do you cut it out or do you let us do it?

• 1:01:39Speaker 06

  I say, again, maybe. I would say, let's try to get permission to do that. I think that is the goal here is to say, do we need permission to do that? So that, again, is a difficult thing because you could say, look, we need to release this episode next week. How are we supposed to go to the record label and say?

• 1:01:59Conan O'Brien?

  Robert Palmer's gone. He has tragically passed.

• 1:02:01Speaker 06

  Yes, he has. And he has an estate that's very protective.

• 1:02:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  Of his musical work.

• 1:02:05Conan O'Brien?

  And then, does someone get them a sample of us singing it? And they listen to it?

• 1:02:09Speaker 06

  We actually would provide the sample. Because you're recording this, right? We're recording this and we bring it to them.

• 1:02:15Conan O'Brien?

  This is awful.

• 1:02:16Speaker 06

  Okay, well.

• 1:02:16Conan O'Brien?

  Again, I mean, this whole segment is a trinket.

• 1:02:18Speaker 06

  I think it's fantastic, actually. I think this is very helpful.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  I agree. I like it.

• 1:02:22Speaker 06

  So we bring that sample to the record label, say, hey, look, Conan O'Brien, Matt Gourley, Sona, would love to use this sample.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  I'm okay. You could leave me out of it.

• 1:02:32Conan O'Brien?

  Conan O'Brien. She is tone deaf, yes.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't have to lump me in on the Robert Palmer one.

• 1:02:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yes. Now, here's my question. Would you say this promotes Robert Palmer's discography?

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Or disparages his entire thing?

• 1:02:46Conan O'Brien?

  No. It doesn't. It makes you think, oh, I did love that song. I don't love the way they're doing it, but I do love that song. And I'd like to go out and immediately on Spotify, get the complete Robert Palmer collection.

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  You would certainly use that argument in a negotiation for a fee.

• 1:03:03Conan O'Brien?

  This is ridiculous. I'm just, you know, the thing is, I'm not a musician who's playing the song. I'm just saying, she's so fine. There's no telling where the money went. And then suddenly, a highly paid pseudo lawyer.

• 1:03:20Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:03:20Conan O'Brien?

  Who's suspiciously tan all the time.

• 1:03:22Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:03:23Conan O'Brien?

  You are, I come in in the middle of winter and you've got the deepest bronze tan. Do you use a tanning light?

• 1:03:30Speaker 06

  I do not.

• 1:03:31Speaker 04

  No, it's just natural. He's a handsome guy.

• 1:03:33Conan O'Brien?

  You are incredibly handsome.

• 1:03:34Speaker 06

  Well, you asked me that two years ago.

• 1:03:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I know. You did. So guess what? It's the last time we spoke.

• 1:03:39Speaker 06

  That is true. Until today.

• 1:03:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 06

  You, Conan, you came to my corner.

• 1:03:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 1:03:45Speaker 06

  And you said, do you tan? Do you tan? I would love that tan.

• 1:03:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Speaker 06

  And I said, I don't. I actually get, I get outside. I have a, you know, glowing.

• 1:03:53Conan O'Brien?

  You have an incredible glow.

• 1:03:55Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:03:56Conan O'Brien?

  What do you attribute that to? Is it your lineage?

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  Are you pregnant?

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  How is this pertinent to the song?

• 1:04:02Conan O'Brien?

  Let me do this.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:03Conan O'Brien?

  We're getting to it in a second.

• 1:04:05Speaker 06

  This is important.

• 1:04:06Speaker 04

  What, are you a lawyer?

• 1:04:06Speaker 06

  Go ahead. What was your question? Sorry.

• 1:04:09Conan O'Brien?

  So.

• 1:04:09Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:04:10Conan O'Brien?

  We'll get back to it more important than this. But David, would it? Explain, explain this golden hue you have.

• 1:04:16Speaker 06

  I think genetics.

• 1:04:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Speaker 06

  I think my, I have parents in their eighties that look like they're in their sixties. So that's the first.

• 1:04:22Conan O'Brien?

  But what is it, what is your genetic makeup? I know that's probably an incorrect question to ask these days, but that is. Where are your genetics? I must know.

• 1:04:32Speaker 06

  I would say there, there's probably a sort of Middle Eastern.

• 1:04:38Conan O'Brien?

  Beautiful.

• 1:04:39Speaker 06

  Beautiful skin, olive.

• 1:04:41Conan O'Brien?

  Gorgeous.

• 1:04:41Speaker 04

  But you, you're forgetting that he has these beautiful eyes, too.

• 1:04:45Conan O'Brien?

  Also, can I say something else? He has, he has, you have, listen, you have salt and pepper hair.

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:04:50Conan O'Brien?

  Which is to die for. I mean, I'm walking around with this clown dessert on my head. And I look at you and I'm like, he may not be a real lawyer. He may be the only thing we could afford.

• 1:05:00Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:05:01Conan O'Brien?

  But gotta do him in a Mississippi second.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  What? He is your lawyer. He is your lawyer.

• 1:05:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, okay, well.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  All I'm saying is you can't ask about genetics and you can't say, I want to do you to the lawyer.

• 1:05:13Conan O'Brien?

  Well, listen.

• 1:05:13Speaker 04

  Actually, out of time, I'm glad we covered all the legal questions to the music.

• 1:05:18Conan O'Brien?

  I'm just gonna say one thing. He's so fine. There's no telling where the money went. Listen, so, um, back to the other, the initial point of this whole thing.

• 1:05:29Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:05:29Conan O'Brien?

  Which is you're very good looking.

• 1:05:30Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 1:05:31Conan O'Brien?

  Wait, that wasn't it. Back to the real point, David, which is you're saying that anytime we hum any ditty, you have to get on the phone and try to buy the rights from some monsters?

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Can I just, can I add?

• 1:05:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:47Speaker 03

  Last, Conan, you argued that if you hummed, the worse you hummed it, the more rights we would have, right? Like if you were off with your, with the melody or the tone, then we would be able to use it.

• 1:05:57Conan O'Brien?

  I would say, for example, famously litigious Led Zeppelin. No one gets to do Led Zeppelin stuff. But if I sing it and it's wrong, but everyone knows what I'm doing, do we still have to pay?

• 1:06:10Speaker 06

  You could. You could.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  You'd have to get the lyrics and the melody wrong, though, right?

• 1:06:14Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I could do the whole thing.

• 1:06:16Speaker 06

  Now.

• 1:06:16Conan O'Brien?

  There's a lady who knows.

• 1:06:20Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:06:22Speaker 06

  That's, that's.

• 1:06:23Conan O'Brien?

  Those speakers are bows.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 1:06:26Conan O'Brien?

  And she's trying. I. To Nirvana. Nirvana. Now that, now would I have to pay for that? No way.

• 1:06:37Speaker 06

  Well, I wouldn't say no way.

• 1:06:39Conan O'Brien?

  Why?

• 1:06:39Speaker 06

  You'd say maybe. I would say maybe, and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. If you were in, if you were led, no. I'll tell you why.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  You ask the questions that you don't want to hear the answer.

• 1:06:48Speaker 06

  I don't think you want to hear what the answer. I, I'm saying, in the most conservative way, yes. Now, there are different exceptions you could, for example, I think the use, the fair use word, de minimis use is used a ton. But you've already committed the copyright act, right? So when I, I have talked to you, Son, about this plenty of times where, and I think I'm going to use Jeff Ross's name, he loves the word de minimis. It's just a little bit of use that a court would never say, you know, we're not going to litigate this. Go ahead and use it. Conan O'Brien, he could, he can do two, three seconds of that song. No, we're not, we're not going to even go there. Now.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  De minimis.

• 1:07:22Conan O'Brien?

  Why does Jeff love de minimis? I haven't heard de minimis since the Latin teacher saw me without my pants on.

• 1:07:26Speaker 06

  Exactly, that's what he said. That's what he said. That's exactly what Jeff said.

• 1:07:30Conan O'Brien?

  Pretty good, huh, Son? Look at her, look at her.

• 1:07:34Speaker 06

  That's, that is what he said.

• 1:07:35Conan O'Brien?

  It's not the maximus.

• 1:07:37Speaker 05

  A quick question. Should we do a two-parter and continue to?

• 1:07:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, we should do a two-parter.

• 1:07:43Speaker 05

  Because we're out of time.

• 1:07:44Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, we are sitting here with our, he says he's a lawyer, we've seen no paperwork. David Melmed, impossibly good-looking and beloved here on staff.

• 1:07:52Speaker 06

  Very sweet, thank you.

• 1:07:53Conan O'Brien?

  Stay tuned for part two.

• 1:07:57Speaker 05

  Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonum of Sessian and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gorley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross and Nick Liao. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

• 1:08:17Speaker 05

  Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Britt Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. You can also get three free months of Sirius XM when you sign up at siriusxm.com/conan. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

• 1:09:07Speaker 05

  Hey, it's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a White Claw. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it. Hey Teddy! Oh, hey, man! Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life by the glow. White Claw.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Please drink responsibly. White Claw Seltzer Works, Chicago, Illinois.

• 1:09:38Conan O'Brien?

  When you hear Alka Seltzer, you probably think heartburn, right?

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:09:41Conan O'Brien?

  Well, did you know Alka Seltzer has a line of cold and flu medications known as Alka Seltzer Cold? Did you know that, David?

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  No, but I feel like we need it.

• 1:09:50Conan O'Brien?

  Why didn't you know that, David?

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  I know you expect me to know everything.

• 1:09:53Conan O'Brien?

  I knew this because I've...

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Did you?

• 1:09:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I've tried it, it's really good. And I like that fizzy, fizzy, fizzy when you drop the Alka Seltzer Cold into the water. Alka Seltzer Cold Fast Dissolves Tablets are designed to deliver cold and flu relief fast. Just drop the two tablets in water and hear those bubbles bursting into action, ready to work faster than pills. Bubbles faster than pills. Pills take time to dissolve, not bubbles. Next time a cold or flu strikes, quick! Alka Seltzer Cold: Nothing Works Faster for Cold and Flu Symptom Relief. Among oral products used as directed.