Malcolm Gladwell Returns

Author Malcolm Gladwell has mixed feelings about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Malcolm sits down with Conan once more to discuss his latest book Revenge of the Tipping Point, Malcolm’s observations as a new parent, the opioid epidemic, why Harvard has so many sports teams, and much more. 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.

• 0:02Conan O'Brien?

  Now Sona, clearly I'm a very important person to you.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:05Conan O'Brien?

  Just accept the premise and we'll move ahead.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:08Conan O'Brien?

  I'm a very important person to you. What would you get me from Macy's for the holidays?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  A vase.

• 0:15Conan O'Brien?

  No, I don't want a vase. I want something better.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  A jacket.

• 0:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, nice jacket. I love a nice jacket.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that jacket. Nice jacket.

• 0:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, so now you have to do it, because you said you would.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Aw man, I didn't know you were doing that.

• 0:25Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I know the holidays are months away, but it's never too early, Sona, to find gifts that I will love, gifts I will wear, and surprises that make the season unforgettable for me.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:37Conan O'Brien?

  Macy's Gift Guide makes holiday shopping easy with beauty favorites, stylish fashion, jewelry, cozy essentials, must-have toys, home upgrades, and picks for every person on your list. Coach handbags, Breville appliances, Lego UG, and more, all in one place so you can skip the scrolling and shop with confidence. Shop now in-store or online at macy's.com/giftguide.

• 1:02Conan 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.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:11Conan 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... So if you've ever finished your Coke Zero before the first fry hits the table, you're among friends. It happens. Occupational hazard with Coke Zero.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Hi, my name is Malcolm Gladwell.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't think about this. Well, I have mixed feelings about being Conan Brand's friend.

• 1:49Conan O'Brien?

  Now, wait a minute. Why would you say that? I'm a huge admirer of your work.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Can I do a long explanation of why I have...

• 1:54Conan O'Brien?

  Is it gonna be another book?

• 1:55Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, sure.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell. Brand new shoes, walking blues, climb the fence, books and pens. I can tell that we are gonna be friends.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  I can tell that we are gonna be friends.

• 2:19Conan O'Brien?

  Hi and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I've got Matt Gourley with me right here.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Hi.

• 2:24Conan O'Brien?

  Scribbling away something, I don't know what he's doing.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  What are you writing?

• 2:26Conan O'Brien?

  Last will and testament. And, uh, and I've got Sonam of Sessi in here.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:31Conan O'Brien?

  You know, we're getting into the holiday seasons.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are.

• 2:34Conan O'Brien?

  And, uh, I have a question for you because this is something that hit me recently. I don't often reveal my interior life, my emotions, but I'm gonna get vulnerable here for a moment, which is, as you guys know, I'm an empty nester now. My, both my kids are in school.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  You're also an empty soul guy too, aren't you?

• 2:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, empty soul, yeah, yeah. But that's been, you know, whole life. Uh, but I didn't expect to feel this way, but I remember feeling this way at Halloween. I walked by some houses and they were all decked out with, you know, skeletons and witches and things like that. And one of them had, there's this spider that plops down if it senses a presence. Have you seen that?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12Conan O'Brien?

  It just goes, oh, and it makes a little noise and its eyes light up a little bit. And I just had this really strong memory of my kids watching me put all that stuff out and being really excited and saying, where's the spider? And me going and getting, you know, there's the, you can get the fake graves and you can get the skeleton hand that comes out of the ground. My excitement came from their excitement of watching me do it. And, um, you know, they're not, they're in college now. And so we're not doing that to our house. And then I walked around and I had that pang of, it made me sad.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 3:46Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean? I had a moment of, oh, that's, that's done.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  I don't, I'm, I like not decorating. I'm not a decorator and now I have to because I have boys, my boys, and I'm just like, come on.

• 3:59Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, really?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  I gotta go get a web. Gotta get a web and like a spider and stuff? No, I don't wanna do that.

• 4:09Conan O'Brien?

  Really?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Also, where are you gonna put all of it? There's just so much storage.

• 4:13Conan O'Brien?

  You're a terrible person.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  It's not even that, it's just, do you like, you like it? You can't like it.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  We're big decorators for holidays. But I will say that when we had free time before Glenn, it was so much easier. Now it's harder to decorate because we don't have time and energy. We still do it, but, and we go big. We go pretty big.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Are you that house on the block?

• 4:33Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say we're that house. We're of those houses.

• 4:38Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, so.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Those houses.

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Why would, we drive around, a lot of houses in Altadena do it. And some of them, like, they'll let people into their houses and they do a haunted house.

• 4:52Conan O'Brien?

  They go all out.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:53Conan O'Brien?

  Well, there are, I mean, this is something that blew my mind because I grew up in, you know, suburb of Boston and I think a fairly normal street. And people would put out Christmas decorations or Halloween decorations. And then much later in my life, but, but nothing that crazy. Literally just a string of lights here and there. My brother Neil was the one that really went for it. He found in a junkyard a giant light up Santa. And without my parents' permission, he lit it up and hung it on the front of our house. My parents were very like tasteful people and they were freaked out. And he was like, you know, and I think it also, it ran on some, you know, now, now, or even then outlawed gas.

• 5:33Conan O'Brien?

  It was from like the twenties. I think real flames came out of the Santa. It was just, and it shot asbestos and viruses around. I think it, polio, it had polio in it. It carried, candy canes made of polio. Anyway, the point being that I then got out to LA after not seeing much. And there are these streets here in LA, set designers live there. Affluent people that make movie sets and they'll spend months and they'll bring in union crews and you'll see this insanity.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:05Conan O'Brien?

  And you can't believe it. And I think, oh, we just plugged in some candles?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  I like people who decorate their house for holidays they shouldn't decorate for.

• 6:18Conan O'Brien?

  What do you mean?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Like, why, why isn't there like a big Valentine's Day thing outside your house? Or a big St. Patrick's Day thing, or like, you know?

• 6:27Conan O'Brien?

  Well, some people go, I don't know, some people go big on St. Patrick's Day. As an Irish person, I don't like St. Patrick's Day. I think it's, I'm just, you know, I'm self-loathing Irish. So when a bunch of Irish people run around hitting each other with a head with green beer and saying saints begoros, I'm not having it. And they're always like one, a one fifteenth Irish. So, you know, when someone from the Czech Republic is saying, ah, me gosh, me gora. You know, I'm not having it.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  What, did you ever wear a shirt that said, kiss me, I'm Irish? Ever in your life?

• 6:58Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Ever in your life?

• 7:00Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Did you ever wear a shirt that just said, please kiss me?

• 7:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, well into my late 30s.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:06Conan O'Brien?

  Please hold me, I think it said.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Even sadder.

• 7:09Conan O'Brien?

  Please affirm my masculinity. I had a shirt that I wore for 35 years that was, oh, to feel a woman's touch.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  But oh, apostrophe?

• 7:20Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, yeah, oh, apostrophe. Oh, to feel a woman's touch. By the way, that's gonna be a new seller for our merch. Oh, to feel a woman's touch.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Conan, oh, to feel a woman's touch.

• 7:34Conan O'Brien?

  No, I think a lot of young people wore that shirt.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  I love the holidays, man. I can't get enough.

• 7:39Conan O'Brien?

  Well, well, first of all, you and your wife both worked at, at Disney back in the day.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  What's that got to do with it?

• 7:45Conan O'Brien?

  What I'm saying is.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Dorks.

• 7:47Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, no. Not at all. That's a big corporation, which I'm sure advertises with us in some way. My point is this.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  You go to Disney all the time.

• 7:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. No, my thing is that you guys come from the world of yay, let's, you know, let's, let's put on some costumes.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  No, no, hold on, timeout. Maybe she does. I was.

• 8:09Conan O'Brien?

  She was a princess.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  She was, but I.

• 8:11Conan O'Brien?

  She was a Disney princess.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  I was very cynical about working there. I did not like.

• 8:14Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, well, oh, you were, you worked at Disney, but you were the, you were in the resistance.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  I was the cool guy.

• 8:19Conan O'Brien?

  You're like the French waiter when the Nazis occupied, who, who brought the soup out a little slowly. Here you go, you German generals. Here's your soup. It's Vici Slaz, but I warmed it a little bit. Take that, you Nazis! Well, you showed them I worked for Disney, but I was in the resistance.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  How many wigs do you have? Be honest, in your house.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I don't have any wigs.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  You're lying. You must have like, "Oh, we're goofy, we got wigs."

• 8:46Speaker 02

  No, that's the thing.

• 8:47Conan O'Brien?

  He does look like a guy who has a bunch of wigs on.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  I know, certainly you're the person with all the wigs.

• 8:51Conan O'Brien?

  No way, when I wear a wig, it's to pass a bad check. Okay? When I wear a wig, it's not to have fun. It's to pass the check that doesn't have my name on it. That's right, hi, Mrs. Ohurlehe. Now give me the feckin' money. I'm a Croatian man.

• 9:12Conan O'Brien?

  Anyway.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  You have a wig bin.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  You have a wig, you have a thing.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  We got rid of our wigs.

• 9:21Conan O'Brien?

  That's right. Sona, in fairness to him, one week ago, they threw out the wig bin. So you had no right accusing him. Anyway, I miss it. I miss it. I miss my kids. I miss, I miss, I don't know. I miss that part of life. So you should enjoy it now.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 9:39Conan O'Brien?

  It's fun to go out and buy the spider webs. Or, the other way to do it is just don't clean during the year. Get the real spider webs, you know what I'm saying? In real time.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  No one's doing anything. None of us are reacting. Did you want us to giggle?

• 9:56Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Did you want to giggle?

• 9:58Conan O'Brien?

  No, I just thought it'd be...

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Did you want something?

• 10:01Conan O'Brien?

  I really thought we had something there. I think we got a segment.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  Except it's an intro.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  It's an intro.

• 10:07Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, fuck, that's right. Yeah, so what were we saying? We had something really funny.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Oh, we're not gonna cut out that part where you didn't get your giggle.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  You didn't get your giggle.

• 10:15Conan O'Brien?

  Anywho's, I love the holidays, and I say that D-A-Z-E. There's a funny little something for you. My guest today is a New York Times bestselling author of books such as Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink. He also hosts the popular podcast Revisionist History, and his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, is out now. I'm thrilled he's here with us today.

• 10:40Conan O'Brien?

  Malcolm Gladwell, welcome.

• 10:46Conan O'Brien?

  Why do you have mixed feelings about being my friend?

• 10:48Speaker 04

  I hope you take this in the right spirit.

• 10:50Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  I walk in and you come and say hello to me and I see the famous hair. You, for your entire career, have been the king of the flamboyant hair club. You've been, and I'm someone who has flamboyant hair.

• 11:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  All of us have looked towards you.

• 11:06Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  As a kind of leader in the flamboyant hair.

• 11:09Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  And I look and it's not that flamboyant today.

• 11:13Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  And I felt a little let down. I was like, here I was to get a kind of dose, a kind of feeling that I'm on the right track, that when I, when I let the whole fro thing go crazy, there's someone else out there doing it from the Irish perspective and...

• 11:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I have an Irish fro.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  You do?

• 11:30Conan O'Brien?

  That's what it's called.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  But those famous, there's just, it's just kind of...

• 11:34Conan O'Brien?

  I'll tell you exactly what's going on.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  What's going on?

• 11:37Conan O'Brien?

  My, and again, this could be a book for you, Malcolm Gladwell, this could be a book, but unintended consequences, you write about all these kinds of things, you know, what's really happening behind a phenomenon that we, that, you know, we all take for granted, what's really happening. My hair is very susceptible to the weather and it needs, there needs to be some moisture in the air. And I'm really not kidding, my hair is a barometer. So when I'm in places like Seattle, Boston, where I'm from, when there's some humidity in the air, my hair is absolutely fantastic.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  It's on fire.

• 12:15Conan O'Brien?

  It's, and it's, it's big and springy and it shoots out. So moisture in the air is the Viagra for my pompadour. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I'm trying to use a medical terminology.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Are you insinuating that you have thousands upon thousands of tiny little erections growing out of your head?

• 12:32Conan O'Brien?

  Say little, but sure. But what I'm saying is today, it's been very dry. And I'm noticing lately, I get up in the morning and my hands are like scales and my hair has just collapsed onto my head.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:47Conan O'Brien?

  And I could have done artificial things to pump up my hair this morning, but I didn't want to do that.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  What, artificial, artificial things?

• 12:55Conan O'Brien?

  What do you mean?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  What does that mean?

• 12:56Conan O'Brien?

  Furious chemicals and balms. But I didn't want to do that.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:01Conan O'Brien?

  Malcolm, I, I, I didn't want to be fake with you. So I come in and I could see your face.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  My disappointment.

• 13:09Conan O'Brien?

  Sense, you said shit. I'm unhappy, out loud.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  I didn't, no, I should say I'm, my feelings of disappointment are, they're moderate.

• 13:23Conan O'Brien?

  Wow, for me, that's pretty good.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, it's just a little.

• 13:26Conan O'Brien?

  I'll take that.

• 13:27Speaker 04

  It's just, I came all pumped up.

• 13:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Cause like I said, you know, in every generation has a kind of flamboyant hair leader. Einstein in his day.

• 13:36Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Angela Davis in the sixties, right? We can go down the list, there's always someone, those of us who are trying to do something with our hair look towards.

• 13:45Conan O'Brien?

  I took a stand, my hair has never been the popular hairstyle. It basically is the Bob's Big Boy. It is, you know, it's a combination of Elvis, it's the, you know, star of Hawaii Five-O, Steve McGarrett.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  Yes, a little Steve McGarrett.

• 14:01Conan O'Brien?

  There was a lot of influences to my hair, it's got some rockabilly to it. And I let you down, and I apologize. But, and you're gonna really admire, this is a professional level segue, you did not let me down. Because you've written another fantastic book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, where you revisit.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  You're really anxious to change the subject from your hair, aren't you?

• 14:23Conan O'Brien?

  Well, because it's coming from a place of disappointment. And, and we're gonna talk about Revenge of the Tipping Point in just a second. But I wanted to start with something else that I just happen to know about your, your own life, which is that you're now in the world of, of being a parent.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  I am.

• 14:39Conan O'Brien?

  And what fascinates me is that I'm, I'm obviously very impressed and intrigued by the way your brain works. And to be honest, somewhat intimidated. And then I come in today thinking, that's one area where I've got 21-year head start on Malcolm Gladwell.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  I do.

• 14:59Conan O'Brien?

  What was that?

• 15:00Speaker 04

  You do, no.

• 15:01Conan O'Brien?

  I do. And I, and I feel like, yes! And, and not only you guys as well, we can kick this guy around.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:09Conan O'Brien?

  With our knowledge of parenthood.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're better.

• 15:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Do I know?

• 15:13Conan O'Brien?

  Sona, you took a two-fold.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 15:16Conan O'Brien?

  But, um, but no, no, you are, you're such an original thinker. But before we even get into the book, part of me wanted to say, hey, what's your take on parenthood? Because I bet it's fairly original and unique.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  No, no, no. The, in fact, the exact opposite. And the thing I realized really early was that every observation I had about my children, every other parent in history of parenting had already had about their children. So my entire life, I had been burdened by the obligation of originality.

• 15:47Conan O'Brien?

  Uh huh.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  The burden has now been lifted. And as a parent, I am free, I am free to say the most banal thing about my kids.

• 15:53Conan O'Brien?

  Great.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  And everyone's like, oh yeah, that, no one has ever, ever said when I've, because I, I've turned into the person I once despised. All I do is show people pictures.

• 16:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Nonstop, nonstop. By the way, in fact.

• 16:05Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, let me see.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  There they are.

• 16:07Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my God, beautiful, look.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  Adorable.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  Adorable, adorable.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  They're so cute.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  Very, very cute. I could, we could go on, I could sidetrack this whole thing. No, no one has ever said, when I make my observations, no. They always say, yeah, that.

• 16:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:23Conan O'Brien?

  But you know, it's funny, I bet, like, oh, here's Malcolm Gladwell. Let's ask him about being a parent. You know, we're gonna get this. And then you say, uh, it makes you really tired. And people are like, what? What? This from Malcolm Gladwell?

• 16:40Conan O'Brien?

  It can be challenging at times. It's rewarding, but also.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  None of those things, none of those things. But I, I do like, it's the secret club. You know, before you have kids, you're not a member of the club. And then you join the club and it's like, it's like, you get a whole new lease on life.

• 16:59Conan O'Brien?

  I had one thing that I'm, maybe I've said it to you guys, to Matt and Sona, but.

• 17:07Conan O'Brien?

  I try very hard not to tell first time expecting parents any kind of, alright, let me tell you. Sit, have a seat.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:15Conan O'Brien?

  And let me spin some wisdom for you. I always try and tell them, it's like trying to explain to someone who's never been immersed in water, what that feels like. It is such a profound change in your life, that you just need to go through it and then you're gonna look at me and nod.

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:34Conan O'Brien?

  But to try and sit and explain, the only way for someone to understand what it's like to be in a body of water is to jump in a body of water. And until you've done that, the greatest writers in the world cannot explain to you what that feels like.

• 17:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:48Conan O'Brien?

  And so, you just have to go through it. The only advice I ever give is, lots of video. Because you're, when they're, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now, you are going to look at all of it, over and over and over again.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  That I'm taking of them. I thought you meant video that I'm showing them.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Lots of screen time. Just set them in front of an iPad.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  I thought you were just saying...

• 18:12Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no. You, you got it exactly. Specifically, VHS, video. Uh, I think it should be all movies from the eighties and late seventies.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Lots of murder.

• 18:23Conan O'Brien?

  Lots of murder, and just they should be, no, uh...

• 18:26Speaker 04

  It'd be funny if that was my advice.

• 18:27Conan O'Brien?

  Lots of screen time, and high fructose corn syrup.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  We, uh, one, one, one season of Revisionist History, we, um, we did a, we rewrote the ending to The Little Mermaid.

• 18:39Conan O'Brien?

  Uh huh.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  Over the course of four episodes, uh, which is possibly three episodes too many, but it was very fun. Cause you know, and it's all wrong, the ending, right? Yes. And it's a, and I had run across this...

• 18:49Conan O'Brien?

  All wrong because...

• 18:51Speaker 04

  Well, I'll explain to you.

• 18:52Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  Conan, um, do you have, do you have daughters, by the way?

• 18:55Conan O'Brien?

  I have a daughter and a son.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  Oh, so, only two? That's unusual for someone of...

• 18:59Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 19:01Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, and, and guess what? Guess what? They're both alcoholics. And they dress like leprechauns, Gladwell. Wow! Uh, guess what? You know what?

• 19:17Conan O'Brien?

  A little bias there. I guess what?

• 19:21Speaker 04

  Can you resist?

• 19:22Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, you can't resist.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  O'Brien is the last name.

• 19:25Conan O'Brien?

  You can't resist also the Irish are the one people where you can say whatever you want and no one gets upset, not even particularly the Irish.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:34Conan O'Brien?

  On that point, first of all, on Irish bias, which is always confirmed, I would have had more kids. And after our second child, my wife said, "You're never to touch me again." Which I've held on to that.

• 19:52Conan O'Brien?

  But, and the second one, this is a true story. I did it at a benefit the other night. I performed at a benefit for a really good cause. And just before I went up, some guy who was at the benefit in the crowd came up to me. I want to say he was like late 30s, had a little bit of a fratty vibe to him, maybe 40. And he's like, "Hey, man, so when you go up to perform, do you usually, you know, have a couple of, you know, a couple of hits?" Because he was holding a drink. And I went, "No, I don't do that." And he went, "No, come on, but you probably have at least a drink." And I went, "No." And he went, "But you're Irish." And he looked really like, I don't understand, you know, how an Irish person cannot be drinking. It was just fascinating to me that in this age of sensitivity, and he's like, "Nope." And I was like, "No, okay."

• 20:33Speaker 04

  You guys are, you're the last.

• 20:34Conan O'Brien?

  We're the last.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  We can sort of open season.

• 20:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, you can.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  No, it's fine.

• 20:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, you can. And go for it.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, no.

• 20:41Conan O'Brien?

  But so.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Didn't mean to offend you.

• 20:44Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, you, I find, again, you can't offend the Irish. Yes, every thought I ever had as a parent has already been said probably by the ancient Greeks.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. No, no, it's great. No, I ask only because you must have seen The Little Mermaid if you have a daughter. And I had read this Law Review article by this professor who was watching The Little Mermaid, she was a contract law professor with her kids, and she got outraged at the way The Little Mermaid story portrays contract law.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Because, because of course, the plot twist in The Little Mermaid is that the Little Mermaid enters into a contract with Ursula that she will give up her soul unless she gets the hand. There's no way that contract will be upheld by a court of law. And this law professor got very angry that Disney was deliberately perpetrating this kind of injustice on contract law. And so she wrote-

• 21:39Speaker 02

  She has no issue with there being no such thing as mermaids, though?

• 21:42Speaker 04

  No, no, no. Also, she points out, the mermaid is underage. You cannot, an underage person can't. So there was so many red flags, so many red flags. So she writes this very angry law review. And I remember, I was, I was reading it-

• 21:55Conan O'Brien?

  Remind me never to watch a movie with this person.

• 21:57Speaker 04

  I know. No, no. And I, I was like, I had, I had one thought and only one thought only, and that was, this woman is the greatest genius. And so I just, I basically ran back to the office and called her up. And turns out she is hilarious. And she inspired me. So then I, turns out there's multiple problems with The Little Mermaid. I mean, to get into it. And so I, did you know that the screenwriter actress Britt Marling, friend of mine, I said, Britt, I have this problem with Little Mermaid. She said, so do I. And so she rewrote, I got her on the case. And then we performed it. I got Jodie Foster and Glenn Close to play key roles.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  And the, and I, what I really wanted, the final piece was, I wanted Disney to sue us. Because I've heard they're famously litigious. And I thought, this is the greatest marketing opportunity in the history of my podcast. My podcast's not as big as yours. I need to have these kinds of-

• 22:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 22:52Speaker 04

  And so I did everything in my power to bring this to the attention of the attorneys at Disney. Nothing. To this day, basically, I accused them of everything under the sun. I ripped off their content. I did everything you're supposed to do to get a lawsuit.

• 23:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  No lawsuit.

• 23:06Conan O'Brien?

  That's disappointing.

• 23:07Speaker 04

  It is.

• 23:08Conan O'Brien?

  I think there's nothing sadder than not being sued by Disney.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  I know. It was like, it was like when they, remember they were banning books again in like Florida? And the first thing I did was like, am I on the list? Am I on the list?

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Oh, please. Oh, please, please, please.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  I wasn't on the list.

• 23:30Conan O'Brien?

  Your name represents everything you've built, okay? Everything, like, I feel that way about my name.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:35Conan O'Brien?

  It stands for all of the work good and not so good. But guess what? Your children's names represent their whole futures.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:43Conan O'Brien?

  Your children haven't even started building their futures, but their identities are already valuable. Your child's clean credit history can make them a target for identity thieves. Never thought of it that way, but it's true. Identity thieves can open loans and credit cards using your child's social security number, racking up debt and ruining their credit. And you may not notice until they try and get their first credit card. So it could be a long time.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:06Conan O'Brien?

  Well, guess what? With LifeLock, you can add family members to your plan, giving you the power to block identity threats targeting your children. Now, Sony, your kids are pretty young still.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  They are.

• 24:15Conan O'Brien?

  Five, but within a couple of years, you know, they're gonna be buying heavy machinery online.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  What?

• 24:21Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna be, become tractor fanatics. They're gonna be buying tractors online. So if you have expenses or money stolen due to identity theft, you're backed by the million-dollar protection package with up to $3 million coverage in some plans. So join now, save up to 30% off your first year. Go to lifelock.com/conan. That's lifelock.com/conan to save 30%. Terms apply.

• 24:45Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, I wanna try something different.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  What?

• 24:48Conan O'Brien?

  I like to change it up. I like to learn things, so I'm gonna try and make apple cider.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 24:52Conan O'Brien?

  Every morning.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:53Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, just to see if I can do it.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, fall's the perfect season to try something new, like joining T-Mobile.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 25:00Conan O'Brien?

  See what I did?

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, there are 250 reasons to join T-Mobile right now. You wanna hear what they are?

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:05Conan O'Brien?

  They're America's best network.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:07Conan O'Brien?

  True story. Plus, T-Mobile has got off-grid satellite coverage. That comes in really handy. I like to just wander in the woods sometimes.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that's weird.

• 25:15Conan O'Brien?

  When I'm thinking about, like, making apple cider. And that's when it comes in handy. Here's another reason. High-speed data in over 215 countries and destinations. I travel a lot for the

• 25:24Speaker 01

  You travel a lot.

• 25:25Conan O'Brien?

  Travel show that I do.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Conan O'Brien?

  Stream this podcast while ignoring local landmarks. That's always fun to do. Like, oh, look, there's the Mona Lisa. Yeah, check it out. I'm in the Louvre. I should, but I'm listening to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  That doesn't seem like a good idea.

• 25:38Conan O'Brien?

  It's a great idea.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:39Conan O'Brien?

  You know, you can see art anytime. But how often can you listen to this podcast?

• 25:44Speaker 01

  My god.

• 25:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Now, all these reasons make T-Mobile a great choice.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 25:49Conan O'Brien?

  T-Mobile is stacking up reasons to join. Go to T-Mobile.com and find yours best. Based on analysis by Ookla of speed test intelligence data. First half of 2026. Can't believe I read that. T-Satellite with capable devices in most outdoor areas in the US. Where you can see the sky. High-speed international data with qualifying plan. Visit T-Mobile.com. Consult a physician. I just threw that in there.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 26:18Conan O'Brien?

  So, you have to admit, the holidays, it's really about hanging with the people you love.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:24Conan O'Brien?

  And getting to be yourself. Not going to some stuffy holiday party where you need to conform to what the man wants you to think about the holidays.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's about being yourself. Turn your holiday time into Miller time by enjoying a Miller Lite in a place where you're free to enjoy yourself. On a walk with a cousin. With a cousin? Why are they getting all specific about?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Because it's family.

• 26:45Conan O'Brien?

  But what about a niece or a nephew?

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:49Conan O'Brien?

  Like a walk with an ex-wife? I don't know. I mean, they're just throwing, that's a weird, they just made a very specific choice.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:56Conan O'Brien?

  Now's the time for those unexpected holiday side guests and enjoy a great tasting light beer. 'Tis Miller time, as Dickens wrote. Miller Lite is brewed for taste. The taste you can depend on. The original light beer since 1975 and still iconic more than 50 years later. I like to be with my bros, my chums, my posse. Crack open a Miller Lite, take a swig, a sip. Look around and see my friends. We've known each other forever and we're just hanging out.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys are just doing chest bumps and high-fiving.

• 27:26Conan O'Brien?

  Miller Lite is great taste done right. Go to millerlite.com/conan to find delivery options near you or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. 'Tis Miller time. Celebrate responsibly Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  You know, the story that got me writing this book is I wanted to say something about the opioid crisis, which I think is like kind of the most under discussed thing going on in our society right now. And I was very, I wanted to understand how it was that OxyContin makes this enormous, I mean, it's not the first painkiller, it's not the first opioid painkiller, it's not the first addictive painkiller, yet it's the one that sets in motion this epidemic that now, you know, kills over 100,000 Americans every year, which is such an astonishing number. I don't, I can't even, I don't understand how we even wrap our minds around how many Americans die every year of overdoses. But, but understanding that there was this very, very deliberate Machiavellian brilliant, but evil strategy

• 28:32Speaker 04

  they followed, which was an epidemic strategy, which was all about understanding that they did not need to convince the majority of doctors to prescribe opioids for, to start an epidemic. They only needed, in fact, the end up, the statistic I was, is at the core of this was, they ended up, we ended up with a situation at the end of OxyContin's life where 1% of American doctors were prescribing 50% of the OxyContin.

• 28:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  And that's the whole game. They understood, we don't even have to worry about, we can basically ignore 99% of doctors. Our concern is with the 1%. A couple thousand doctors in the whole country will be sufficient to get this thing rolling because those guys at the fringes will prescribe so many prescriptions of OxyContin, that's all, that's all we need. And so they take a sales apparatus, which typically if you're a drug company, you build a sales apparatus to, to reach the broad middle of doctors, and they just deployed it towards these kind of like whack job doctors who were way out of, you know, the norm in, you know, in small town Tennessee and visited them hundreds of times.

• 29:39Conan O'Brien?

  Wined and dined them.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Wined and dined them and convinced them to write thousands of prescriptions for OxyContin. That is the distillation of an epidemic strategy.

• 29:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. It's not the law of the few, it's the law of the very, very few. In analogous situation, you talk about how they did a COVID study involving hundreds of people and, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people got sick and it was from two people.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:04Conan O'Brien?

  In the study, it was two of them.

• 30:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:07Conan O'Brien?

  Spread it.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:08Conan O'Brien?

  In the same, and it's analogous, in the same way that with, with OxyContin, they had, you described. The tragedy of it is that the vast majority of doctors are responsible. And there are laws and mechanisms in place to keep something like this happening. You describe how doctors.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 30:28Conan O'Brien?

  There was a, a rule put in place that if you write someone a prescription for a drug, this powerful opiod, it's on a triplicate form, so there's three copies. And because of that, it keeps everyone in line. There's three copies of it.

• 30:43Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 30:44Conan O'Brien?

  There's a real record, a lot of dissemination of what I'm doing. Okay, so everyone is gonna be good. But then these drug companies found out there are some places where they, that law doesn't apply.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that's where they feasted on.

• 30:57Conan O'Brien?

  And that's where they feasted. And, um, and then you talk about, what's really disturbing is reading the testimony later on, where people are being asked, members of the family.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  The Sackler family.

• 31:08Conan O'Brien?

  The Sackler family.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:09Conan O'Brien?

  They're being asked, do you feel any kind of responsibility? And it's all passive language. Well, the kind of famous Nixon quote is, mistakes were made.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:18Conan O'Brien?

  Um, about Watergate. Well, mistakes were made.

• 31:21Speaker 04

  None of them, you know, none of them went to jail.

• 31:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  If you think about it, like, you know, Sam Bankman Fried, who, you know, I guess, uh, committed a fraud and went, you know, although none of the, very few of the people who he apparently defrauded actually lost money. He's in jail for how many years? Eight years? So you can, you can mislead rich people and you're in jail for eight years, but you can kill a couple hundred thousand Americans and you're fine.

• 31:46Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  I find that very curious. I don't really understand how, I mean, I realize it was a legal settlement and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. But still, it's kind of shocking that.

• 31:54Conan O'Brien?

  It is shocking.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  And they, and then you're talking about when they testified before Congress, they talked as if this whole epidemic had been started by someone else. It wasn't even, it was, or this company, Purdue Pharma, that their family had started and created and, and run for two generations was a kind of. Third party off by the side that they had no connection to. I mean, I just find the whole, everything about the opioid crisis is astonishing to me.

• 32:21Conan O'Brien?

  I remember being shocked very recently, one of my children came home from school. Someone came to their school and told them, showed them how to use Narcan. That's how prevalent this is, that the way we were shown a fire exit.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:41Conan O'Brien?

  And had a fire alarm practice. Now, kids are being shown how to, you know, young adults are being shown how to use Narcan because, and thank God they are, because that's saving a lot of lives. But that's where we are now.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:58Conan O'Brien?

  It's, it's just standard training for kids.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. One more welcome to the world of parenting, the one more thing I have to worry about.

• 33:07Conan O'Brien?

  Well, it's, I mean, something I never thought about, obviously, when I was growing up and didn't have to worry about. And there's so many things that kids have to worry about today. It does make me profoundly sad that even fairly innocuous things that a kid may experiment with can have been tampered with.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:28Conan O'Brien?

  And, and kill them. So, you know, that's the world we're in. And I'm going to end the podcast right there.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Oh, no!

• 33:38Speaker 04

  Conan, you're just bringing us down. This is.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  I know.

• 33:41Speaker 04

  What happened to your famous joie de vivre?

• 33:43Conan O'Brien?

  Guess what happened? Guess what happened? You came in and you shit on my hair.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Is your mood contingent on your hair?

• 33:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yes! Yes! And now I'm spiraling. My hair is flat against my big Irish skull, which is loaded with alcohol.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Jamison's.

• 34:03Conan O'Brien?

  Jamison's. And I'm, I'm primed for a fight.

• 34:11Conan O'Brien?

  But you know, you know what, there's so much, it's really funny, like there's, on an upbeat note, because there's so many fun puzzles in this book and intriguing things. There's one thing that you brought up in the book, and I'm jumping around here because I don't know a better way to discuss it, but you talk about how, we all know, World War II ends, 1945, there's the revelation, Nuremberg Trials, about concentration camps.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Sorry, upbeat note?

• 34:40Conan O'Brien?

  You'll see, we're getting there, we're getting there.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, this does not end well, if I have a sense.

• 34:46Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, no, this was, not that it's upbeat, but it was fascinating to me, that the Holocaust was very little discussed in the late 40s, the 1950s, the 60s.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Through the end of the 70s.

• 34:58Conan O'Brien?

  Through the end of the 70s, and then, there's, was it a movie, it's a television movie.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  Four-part miniseries, so if you go back and you look at, I got, when I got interested in this, I got all the textbooks you would read in freshman year European history, in the 60s and the 70s. If you read them, and you're reading, they got like four chapters on the Second World War, you read all four chapters, and you're looking for when they discuss the Holocaust, and you look, and you look, and you look, and there's nothing there. There's like, two sentences, there's like, "And then the Germans created camps where they put displaced persons, gypsies, communists, and Jews, period," and then they go on to something else. You're like, wait, how is this, these are serious textbooks. And then you look, you can keep going, and there's actually been, there's a whole scholarship about how they weren't denying the Holocaust, they just weren't mentioning it.

• 35:49Conan O'Brien?

  It wasn't discussed.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  It just wasn't, there is no, there's only one Holocaust museum in this country prior to the 1980s, and that's actually here in LA, and that was one that was created almost by accident. A bunch of, I tell that story in the book, a bunch of survivors are at Hollywood High, learning English together, and they want a place to put their stuff, the stuff they can't bear to keep in their house, right, the uniform from Auschwitz, whatever. And then what happens, so there's this, and if you, if you look at like, how often is the word Holocaust used? In books, magazine articles, newspapers up until 1979. And the answer is it's almost never used. Then there's a four part mini series on NBC starring Meryl Streep and James Woods called Holocaust,

• 36:33Speaker 04

  which half the country, it has a 50 share. Half the country tunes in to watch it and boom. After that, that's when we get all the Holocaust museum.

• 36:43Conan O'Brien?

  That blew my mind that this was not discussed and that this one TV series that I frankly don't remember watching, changed everything, completely changed the dialogue. I remember the same thing happening with, I mean, this is crazy, but there was a, in the eighties, there was a, The Day After. Yes, yes, that's it, The Day After about nuclear war. And there's footage of Ron and Nancy Reagan, President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan watching it. And they're gobsmacked. This is the guy who has the nuclear football is saying, what? This would be bad.

• 37:21Conan O'Brien?

  And so the net cut to him meeting with Gorbachev, you know, at Reykjavik and saying, well, we have to make sure this never, you know, and be based on a TV movie that got maybe, what if that hadn't been greenlit? I mean, it's, these things turn.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  On these incredibly.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Judgment of Nuremberg not land with people?

• 37:40Speaker 04

  No, you, I mean, there are these little mentions here. There's Dara Van Frank, obviously, which is on Broadway and also a movie. But even that, remember, that's really about Van Frank's story in, in, in, in Holland. It's not really about what's going on in the camps in Central Europe.

• 37:58Conan O'Brien?

  Also, just a bit, Judgment of Nuremberg is not all, it does not focus on the Holocaust. That, do you know what I mean? It, in a way that you would expect it today. It's very much, it's, it's very much about the prosecution of evil and the, the, these, these bad, bad Nazis. But it's discussed and there's a famous scene, I think with Judy Garland, but it's.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  And they show footage. Remember they show it in the courtroom, they show like.

• 38:29Conan O'Brien?

  It's not highlighted that way.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, the average American, when they finally run that that mini series, most Americans had if they they had, they were dimly aware that there had been, the term that was used back then was that there had been atrocities.

• 38:44Conan O'Brien?

  Right?

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. But the idea that there was this kind of systematic destruction of European Jewry at the scale that it was and with and what that meant on a kind of, it was not, was sort of absent from discussion. It's it's kind of, and then they take the, the mini series then gets resold to German television. And the same thing happens only times 10 because the Germans had just not mentioned the Holocaust at all. And all of these Germans discover for the first time what their country did. And it has, there's a whole literature about what happened when the Germans finally watched this NBC. I mean, the country was in a uproar.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  I mean, you cannot imagine, there's almost no analogous media event to what happened when the Germans watched this. It was on late night cable and the whole country tunes in.

• 39:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  And it just kind of, there was, you know, all the major newspapers ran these huge sections discussing what had happened. And people were like, wait, and that's when now you have in Germany, a real heightened awareness of their responsibility for the Holocaust.

• 39:50Conan O'Brien?

  I have a very, very, it's moving and it's very impressive too, that when you go to Berlin, there is, they've not only acknowledged it, but there's a sense that they're going to great lengths.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:05Conan O'Brien?

  To make sure that everyone is aware. And I mean, all the plaques outside of homes that say these people were taken from this home and they were taken to this camp and they were murdered. And it's just, there are a lot of countries in the world, you know, I don't know if there's any such thing as an innocent country, but many countries. Have things to own up to and don't. And it's, you know, it's impressive how much Germany has.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  But the whole thing goes to this question of that there can be, I mean, what interested me was that there can be a moment when public opinion or acknowledgement or knowledge of an event can kind of shift overnight. I mean, is that, that was what attracted me to that story.

• 40:52Conan O'Brien?

  Well, there's a, there's a, there is a lighter version of this, which is really got me thinking. You talk about Will and Grace.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 41:00Conan O'Brien?

  There were these very perceived rules about if you're going to talk about, let's say you're going to talk about homosexuality or gay couples on a television, here are the rules. And there was this way in which that it has to be done responsibly and Will and Grace didn't follow any of those rules.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, so this is all this work of, I've ran across this really wonderful TV scholar named Bonnie Dow, who does this analysis. First she starts with the way that Hollywood talked about women's issues. So remember that wave of kind of feminist shows starting in the seventies? Mary Tyler Moore Show.

• 41:36Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Rhoda. Yeah, Cagney, Cagney Lacy? Is that, yes, I think that's part of that. And she points out that you would think watching those, that those were shows that were kind of pro women's liberation or whatever feminist, but they follow a very implicit, an implicit set of rules about how a woman is allowed to proceed. She says that in every case, the woman was only allowed to succeed in a, if she was succeeding in a man's world and she, all of those heroes were childless and not in a relationship. So the, the real message of that, of those shows were, yes, you can, you can get ahead if you're a woman, but only if you give up any chance of having a family.

• 42:17Conan O'Brien?

  Right, there's no domesticity.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  There's no domesticity. So it's like, so it's not really, are those shows pro feminist? Or when you watch them, do you think, oh, wow, that's the price I have to pay if I want to participate? Then she says, there's a similar set of rules about the way Hollywood dealt with gay topics. And the rule was homosexuality was always. Problem to be solved. In other words, the plot surrounding the gay person had to turn on the fact that everyone else in that person's life was trying to fix all of the crisis that had been caused by this person's sexuality. The gay character was only ever seen in isolation. So they didn't have a community, they didn't have, they weren't in a relationship, they didn't have, they were just off by themselves.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  It was like, the typical one would be, you find out your 60 year old son is gay, right? And so the whole family is left to deal with this intense problem. Another rule was no sex. So you can't ever see what this thing is about. You're, you're, it's all always an abstraction. And the, oh, and then the last one was that the, the, um, the gay character cannot be the center of the narrative. They have to be peripheral to the narrative, narratives about it. So, you know, you, you, you add these up and you get, you could, you could watch a made for TV movie that might be on its face, might be quite sensitive and sympathetic to the gay character.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  But all of these rules are telling the audience that this guy's off in the margins, he's on the fringes. He's incapable of participating fully in modern life, right? So, and there's a wonderful book, like this film scholar does a book where he looks at every single film from 19, like 1940 to 1975 that had, or 1980 that had a gay character. And he just shows like every single one of them meets a bad end. They either are killed, commit suicide, end up in prison, or like every single one, there's like 48 characters. I'm like, every one of them. And what happens with Will and Grace is that Will and Grace comes along and breaks every one of those rules. So Will's gayness is not a problem to be solved, but never, it's never perceived to be a problem.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  He's, he's never, he's not seen in isolation.

• 44:33Conan O'Brien?

  He's also, it's Will and Grace, so he's number one on the call sheet. He's not peripheral.

• 44:37Speaker 04

  He's not peripheral. He has Jack and he has boyfriends, he's part of a community, you know, go on and on and on. He, he's, he's the center of the show, he's not a, he's not, and they affective that. So if you if you're someone who's watched TV your whole life and all you've seen is gay characters in this very specific context where there's something deeply problematic about them and all of a sudden you're exposed to a show where there's a gay character and there's nothing, I mean, he has problems, but they're not problems related to his sexuality. He's just a neurotic, just another neurotic.

• 45:08Conan O'Brien?

  He's like the rest of us.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  He's the rest of us.

• 45:10Conan O'Brien?

  He's got problems, we all have, yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Living in an apartment in New York, which is what all sitcoms were about in those years, right?

• 45:15Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  So it's, there's something with that show that kind of, that is, that is a revolutionary show. It completely rewrites the rules. I think, you know, it's always a fun experiment to say, what are the five most important television shows of the last 50 years? I think Will and Grace is like, I would put it, I don't know, second, third? I think it's, I don't think it's.

• 45:40Conan O'Brien?

  I think.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  I think it's ahead of Archie Bunker. I think it's, you know, they always say 60 Minutes is one and like.

• 45:46Conan O'Brien?

  I usually get three. I'm usually three.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Your show?

• 45:49Conan O'Brien?

  Late Night with Conan O'Brien is usually three.

• 45:50Speaker 04

  Huh.

• 45:51Conan O'Brien?

  Are we, are we in the real world or in my reality?

• 45:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:54Conan O'Brien?

  Because I like my reality. And in my reality, I think Mermaid is perfect.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  I should not have laughed so heartily at your suggestion.

• 46:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I don't know what you find so funny. I'm always like three or four, but I know what you're saying.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  I think you're top ten.

• 46:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  But can I make a peripheral point about Late Night and the decline of what Late Night just meant?

• 46:14Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, sure.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  So for several generations, this is not related to my book, all of America, not all of America, a huge chunk of America, every night watches some version of either Jimmy, Johnny Carson or someone else.

• 46:27Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Interview somebody, engage in a conversation with somebody.

• 46:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  And it's highly entertaining, but also what they're seeing is a masterful interview, interviewer, interview someone, right? So you're getting, it's kind of like interviewing class conducted on a national basis for everyone in America. That goes away and my, I have become convinced that no one knows how to interview anyone anymore or even have, really what Johnny Carson is having is conversations, right?

• 46:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Really fun conversations. I think the art of conversation has declined at the same time as the decline of Late Night. I don't think people, you need a model, no one has a model anymore. They're not, it's like.

• 47:06Conan O'Brien?

  You're being incredibly rude right now. I'm interviewing you. They're all done. And you said, "No one knows how to interview anymore."

• 47:14Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 47:15Conan O'Brien?

  And I would like you to have a big fuck yourself sandwich. Can you, do we have a fuck yourself sandwich? That's not a good conversation. With a little pastrami on it? That's a bad conversation. I mean, make good talk. Me make good talk, not bad talk.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  No, but you're, no, you're part of, you grew up on these people.

• 47:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Right? You know what I'm talking about.

• 47:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  You grew up on, and various versions of that. All of the different late night hosts offered you a different version of how to do it. Right? And when that goes away as a model, who's left?

• 47:45Conan O'Brien?

  Well, there's a lot of things I could say about it.

• 47:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:48Conan O'Brien?

  But I, I do think, um, that the architecture of a late night show, um, for a long time was kill time. Meaning when the, the form comes along because in the late 40s, early 50s, someone at NBC realizes, "We just go off the air at 11 o'clock at night. Why do we do that?"

• 48:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:14Conan O'Brien?

  It's like a, a, a family that discovers, "We've got an attic. Why don't we go up there, finish the attic, and suddenly we've got three more bedrooms." So the early late night shows are people killing time.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:27Conan O'Brien?

  And that's what they are for a long time, is killing time. And a lot of good conversation comes out of-

• 48:34Speaker 04

  Comes out of killing time.

• 48:35Conan O'Brien?

  Comes out of killing time.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:36Conan O'Brien?

  What happens is, uh, there's a lot of money in it. Then there's more competition and television and media in general speeds up. And there's more and more pressure on them. And then suddenly it's, well, you can't sit and have a long conversation. There needs to be a lot of energy. There needs to be a lot of, it has to be frenetic, the pace of it. And if you look, if someone ever does a study on late night television, go back and watch Carson and watch early Letterman. Even the, you know, earlier versions of my show or early episodes in the early 90s, there is a slower pace.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  I mean, to some extent, podcasts such as this have filled that void. Cause we're slowing down, right? We are.

• 49:22Conan O'Brien?

  Or choosing-

• 49:23Speaker 04

  We're basically killing time right now, Conan. I mean-

• 49:25Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, we are killing time.

• 49:27Speaker 04

  We are, me as-

• 49:28Conan O'Brien?

  But-

• 49:28Speaker 04

  I don't have anywhere to be. Do you have anywhere to be? I don't have anywhere to be.

• 49:30Conan O'Brien?

  I haven't had anywhere to be in four years.

• 49:40Conan O'Brien?

  Your name represents everything you've built, okay? Everything, like, I feel that way about my name.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:45Conan O'Brien?

  It stands for all of the work good and not so good in my life. But guess what? Your children's names represent their whole futures.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:53Conan O'Brien?

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• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:16Conan O'Brien?

  Well, guess what? With LifeLock, you can add family members to your plan, giving you the power to block identity threats targeting your children. Now, Sonya, your kids are pretty young still.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  They are.

• 50:25Conan O'Brien?

  Five, but within a couple of years, you know, they're gonna be buying heavy machinery online.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  What?

• 50:31Conan O'Brien?

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• 50:56Conan O'Brien?

  We all have those pieces in our closet we can count on. Sonya, I imagine for you it's that leather jacket I got you.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Are you gonna do a bit?

• 51:02Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, it's a really nice leather jacket I got you once.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  I had that and then I replaced it and yes, I use it all the time.

• 51:08Conan O'Brien?

  We all have that versatile jacket, the perfect t-shirt, and those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy. And you know what I was thinking about this morning?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  What?

• 51:17Conan O'Brien?

  Quince. They do it best. They really do. I was really thinking about this.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  What a coincidence that we're doing an ad for them.

• 51:23Conan O'Brien?

  No, a co-coincidence.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 51:27Conan O'Brien?

  That's why I get the big money.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  I gotta go.

• 51:29Conan O'Brien?

  Cut to very small amount of money. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials and designs that are timeless, thoughtful, crafted, and made to be worn again and again. And when the temperature starts to drop, Quince makes it easy to build on those everyday staples with versatile layers. Layer up. That's the key. Now, Blay, you're using some Quince.

• 51:49Speaker 05

  That's right. I'm spending a lot of time back east in Michigan. It's getting a little colder, so I got a featherless quilted jacket in Atlas Navy, and I just feel like a different guy. I feel classy.

• 51:59Conan O'Brien?

  You look like a different guy, because you're well-dressed.

• 52:01Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 52:02Conan O'Brien?

  No, I'm serious. He looks like a hobo half the time.

• 52:04Speaker 05

  That's true. He's right. That's true.

• 52:05Conan O'Brien?

  No, they really do great stuff. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. All right. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Please do that. Say, "By the way, I heard about this on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend."

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Oh, I didn't really ask.

• 52:30Conan O'Brien?

  I just want you to know.

• 52:33Conan O'Brien?

  It's the best way to support the show.

• 52:40Conan O'Brien?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp therapists can help you figure out what rules or traditions aren't serving you and how to rewrite them. And with insurance, many members pay $15 or less. Some pay $0. BetterHelp, they do a great job. You're in good hands. BetterHelp therapists are fully licensed in the United States with at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. When it comes to matching with a therapist, BetterHelp does the initial work for you. Just take a short questionnaire to help identify your needs. And if you're not happy with your match, this is the best part. A lot of people think, "Oh, my God, this is the person I've signed up with. I need to make this work." That's not the case. If it's not a good match, you switch to a different therapist at any time from BetterHelp's tailored recommendations.

• 53:26Conan O'Brien?

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• 53:51Speaker 04

  I've noticed that you, there's a chapter of this book that you have not mentioned at all.

• 53:56Conan O'Brien?

  Which is?

• 53:56Speaker 04

  For reasons that I think will become obvious.

• 53:58Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  It's the chapter where I attack Harvard University. You're on my order.

• 54:02Conan O'Brien?

  I'm all, I'm all in favor of attacking Harvard University.

• 54:07Speaker 04

  There is an extended, there is an extended assault. You know that this is a-

• 54:10Conan O'Brien?

  I was, you know, I wasn't hiding from that chapter. There's so much to talk about. But you talk about how it starts with Harvard has a women's rugby team.

• 54:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:23Conan O'Brien?

  And you, and you basically say, "Why?" Why? And you go ahead, you take it. By the way, I was on the women's rugby team. I got a scholar, that's how I got my scholarship.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  The, you should, first of all, I should say parenthetically that no one spends more time attacking the Ivy League than me. It's my, I was, that's why God put me on this earth, I feel. That's my, I've done it so many times on my podcast that whenever I come up with my new attack, which I do every year, it's just everyone just in the room just rolls their eyes. That's, we could do a whole, put Malcolm on the couch, why is he so obsessed with him? But, put that aside, the particular argument here is based on, I'm trying to figure out, Harvard University, where you attended, is-

• 55:04Conan O'Brien?

  I can't hide from that anymore.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  You can't hide from that anymore.

• 55:06Conan O'Brien?

  1981 to 85.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. They, plays more Division One sports than any other college in the country. No one else is even close. Everyone, people don't realize this. You always think the big sports school is like Clemson or something. No, no, no. It's Harvard. They have more student athletes than anyone else. And not only that, they give a massive admissions preference to their recruited athletes. So the easiest way to get into Harvard is not to be the best student in your class, it's to be the best athlete in your class.

• 55:38Conan O'Brien?

  But also very specific athletic endeavors.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the, the sports they, they really, really, really, really care about are, and let's see whether you can detect some kind of common denominator, rowing, fencing. Sailing, rugby, tennis, it's country club sports, right? So I do a whole chapter on why would they bend over backwards to participate in all of these country club sports? And not only that, to give massive, basically to do an affirmative action program for the athletes in the sports. And the answer is because, you know, a sport like tennis, to be a recruited tennis player, you have to play division one tennis. To play division one tennis, your parents have to be willing to spend 50 to 100 grand a year in your game.

• 56:24Conan O'Brien?

  It's enormously expensive.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  Enormously expensive. So when I say I'm setting aside four admission slots every year for tennis players, what I'm really saying is I'm setting aside four admission slots for the children of people who have enough money to spend $100,000 on their kids' ground strokes. So it's a way of making sure that enough rich kids attend your school. It's really obvious.

• 56:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 04

  Right? And like, this drives me crazy because I'm someone who believes very strongly in the idea of a meritocracy, and I think it's one of the most beautiful things about this country. And the idea that the reigning symbol of meritocracy in this country is essentially going out of its way to reward kids who play rich kids' sports. Like, think of an admissions preference for kids who are good at sailing. Like, it's ridiculous.

• 57:11Conan O'Brien?

  Well, maybe they're gonna grow up to be fishermen, lobstermen. You know, I mean, they're gonna probably go to sea and explore the oceans. I mean, I think most of those kids are gonna end up, right, hauling crab?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why they're doing it.

• 57:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I think so. Well, there's another, okay, this brings up another point, which is that, because when I read that, I thought, shit, I should have done some fencing. I worked way too hard in high school.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  That would have been much easier.

• 57:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I should have been a bee, a champion beekeeper. But the bigger point is that people can eventually game anything. That's the way I feel about it, is that, because the other point is, okay, let's set all the rich kids who are playing those sports aside and say, okay, we really want it to be a meritocracy, so we're gonna have it be about the SAT. People can game that because parents hire SAT tutors. There's billions of dollars spent a year making sure that that kids are very familiar with that test. I think it still does test people who are, you know, off the charts in certain. You can obviously, but but what I'm saying is that no matter what you do.

• 58:30Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, we've seen this on Wall Street a million times. You set up these rules, someone will find.

• 58:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:36Conan O'Brien?

  A small crack. Someone will say, hey, wait a minute. No one ever said anything about mortgage backed securities. Bang.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:42Conan O'Brien?

  Everybody's doing it. And then the whole system collapses and we wonder, wait a minute. Why did that guy who works on a garbage truck own nine properties? You know, what is going on?

• 58:53Speaker 04

  I once, you know, speaking of the SAT, I once challenged my assistant to the LSAT. I thought it was really fun. I got a tutor. I went through that whole process. And the hilarious thing, of course, about the tutor was the first thing he said is I had to learn to quote, process without understanding, which.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  What?

• 59:12Speaker 04

  Meaning, which I thought was hilarious because it's it's a test designed to measure your aptitude for being a lawyer. And the test for being a lawyer can only be, you can only do well as if if you learned how to process without understanding. If my lawyer came to me and said, I processed your case without understanding it, I think I'd be a little bit alarmed.

• 59:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 04

  But so that it was like.

• 59:30Conan O'Brien?

  Sounds like a good lawyer, though.

• 59:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:33Conan O'Brien?

  And I have a lot to say about the Little Mermaid. That's not contract law.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  No, but it does. I was part, I never, because, you know, in Canada, we don't have, I'm Canadian, we don't have standardized tests. I knew nothing about this. I moved to America after college and I hear people talk about the SAT and it sounds like some kind of strange holy right. You know, that I.

• 59:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  And I was so kind of curious that at a certain point in my life, I decided I had to do. And I I went and I sat in that big room with hundreds of other people. I was the only person over the age of like 25. And I ended up tying my assistant.

• 1:00:08Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Which I thought was good. I, the money was on her because she's 24 and the the general consensus around the office is I didn't stand a chance because I've obviously lost so many brain cells.

• 1:00:19Conan O'Brien?

  What was your score?

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  I don't remember. It was, it was not impressive. Basically, I was headed, I was headed for a mediocre Losco, which that's fine. Someone's got to be mediocre.

• 1:00:30Conan O'Brien?

  Well, here's the other thing, too. I mean, I've said this to everybody I've ever encountered in this business is that I have had the privilege of working with so many talented, amazing, funny people who are great at what they do, and often I don't know where they went to college. Because the amount of pressure we put on that is insane.

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Conan O'Brien?

  And you talk a lot about resilience and people who are not from a monoculture, but people who are forced to be resilient and the great benefits that that has. And I don't know, I just, I'm always...

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  I thought you were going to tell us your SAT score. I thought that's where you were headed.

• 1:01:12Conan O'Brien?

  I intentionally forgot my SAT score. I intentionally, if you could, I selected which brain cells I could forget. And I forgot those.

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  No, I have, I had that chapter, another chapter of the book where I read in the, I ran across a bunch of articles by these two sociologists, Anna Muller and Seth Arberton. And they were talking about a town they would only call Poplar Grove. And they had been working there, studying it for years. And it was, they described it, and I later figured out what they, where they, what town it was, and went there for myself and confirmed it. It's the perfect, it literally is the perfect community. If you went, if you went there, you would say, it's like upper income, on the water, incredibly tight knit.

• 1:01:58Conan O'Brien?

  It's like Gilmore Girls or something.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  But like, but...

• 1:02:01Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'm sorry.

• 1:02:04Conan O'Brien?

  Lights in the trees at night and a...

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  I did not expect you to say Gilmore Girls.

• 1:02:10Conan O'Brien?

  My neuron misfired and you laughed.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  Those are some rich literary allusions that you're, that you're working with Conan.

• 1:02:19Conan O'Brien?

  My favorite Bronte novel is Gilmore Girls.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  No, no, so it's

• 1:02:23Conan O'Brien?

  So Poplar Grove, yes.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  Poplar Grove, high school best in the state.

• 1:02:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  You know, every amen to the under the sun. And they had had a suicide epidemic at the high school for, that had gone on way, way, way, way longer. And it was incredibly heartbreaking. And these two, Muller and Arberton, so do all this analysis. And their conclusion is that one of the big problems with the town, the reason this has happened, is that it was a high school that only had one culture. So, you know, I'm sure your high schools too. My high school, like a normal high school, it had like 10 different

• 1:02:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  cliques you could join, you know, the jocks and the nerds and the whatever. And the point of that is it's powerfully protective that any child coming into that high school, no matter how dysfunctional they may feel, can find a home. There was a place you could go if you were, you know, we called them stoners. But in my high school, which is rural Canada, that meant you smoked cigarettes.

• 1:03:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  Which is very quaint.

• 1:03:18Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 04

  But if you wanted to be a quote unquote stoner and smoke Marlboro Lights, there was a place for you, right?

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  How'd you make it out of there?

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, no, yeah, exactly. I, um, the, um, my high school was so tame in retrospect, I don't even know. It's just, it's, it seems like a kind of fantasy that it even existed.

• 1:03:37Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I was, I was, yeah, in the same way, I went to a very large public high school. There were kids who weren't gonna go to college. You know what I mean? Their dads worked for the town. There were kids whose parents were, uh, you know, professionals who wanted to go to an Ivy League school. There were, I mean, there was just this large swath of almost every kind of kid you could imagine. There was a, uh, something called school within a school where there are very artistic and kids that could have set their own schedule and, but there was just, and then there was a large immigrant population. We had, and this is the late seventies. We had, uh, some students whose parents had fled Iran. We had students who were from China.

• 1:04:20Conan O'Brien?

  And so it was, it was great in that it sounds like the exact opposite

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:04:27Conan O'Brien?

  of this Poplar Grove.

• 1:04:28Speaker 04

  And the thing you understand is, yeah, so imagine What Poplar Grove is, is a city, a town and a high school where there's only one of those groups, where every, every child is required to conform to the super sporty, socially successful, on their way to Ivy League model. And so if you don't fit and work in that incredibly narrow description, there's nowhere for you to go. There's only one culture. And the, the epidemic they had was the, was the result of, was the consequences of that kind of narrowness. And it made me, it's interesting because it made me realize, you know, in all of our discussions about diversity, we sometimes make diverse, achieving a diverse environment, make it seem like it's medicine, like it's the right thing to do, but it's hard.

• 1:05:12Conan O'Brien?

  Eat your vegetables.

• 1:05:13Speaker 04

  But in fact, in this example, diversity is what makes a community resilient. It means that any problem that one group has isn't necessarily going to spread to other groups because they're different, right? They're, and I just thought that was really, you know, and the idea that the parents of this town, this is the community they wanted for their kids. They moved there because it was perfect. They are the ones who supported the notion that we should have this incredibly strong, unified set of values about what it means to be a successful student at the school. And then they were somehow baffled by the fact that everything went sideways. And I, you know, this, as a, coming back to my new parenthood, this is what, the only observation I will make about parenting, is that this, this confusion between what

• 1:05:56Speaker 04

  we want and what our children need seems to be the principal, that's the principal conflict of, I always catch myself thinking, and I'll very confidently say to Kate, my partner, I'll say, you know, I think Edie should do this, right? And in fact, what I'm saying is, I would like to do this, and I'm using her as a kind of front.

• 1:06:16Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  To.

• 1:06:17Conan O'Brien?

  You want a cigarette.

• 1:06:22Conan O'Brien?

  Come on, go down and get a pack.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  But this was the worst, this was the kind of, this was the biggest version of that problem that like, parents are just, like, I, there's a, there's this woman I, who wrote a book, a woman named Linda Flanagan, wrote a book called Taking Back the Game, which is all about what's wrong with youth sports. And she's always, she was a coach for many years. It's a really brilliant book. And she has this moment when she talks about, like, possible fixes. And one of her fixes is that parents need to stop going to games. And it's the same idea that, that, because what happens, of course, it's pleasurable for the parent to go to the game. There's, no one's denying that, but the parent is confusing what's pleasurable for them and what's pleasurable for their kids. And the question is, does your child want you there, really, like, deep down?

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  And, you know, by what we're doing when we show up for those games is we are, we are intruding on what should be a, this kind of, this time for kids to play with other kids without the scrutiny of, and the pressure that comes from parents watching. Like, that's the perfect, you know, example of this. And I, this made me wonder, how many times do we, is this what, you know, I'm a young parent. Is this what parenting turns into, this constant conflict?

• 1:07:34Conan O'Brien?

  Look, we talked about this, I think, we had a guest here the other day, I think it was Josh Brolin, and we were talking about his upbringing, and I was saying, what I would always say to my wife when the kids were little was, remember it's important that they're bored. Because I think one of the things that's come along with super parenting in this age is that a child needs to be activated and engaged and entertained at all times. And I swear to God, I, you know, I'm one of six, and there was a lot of, you know, I say this, a lot of benign neglect, meaning no one on my ass not being helicoptered just because my parents worked, there was a lot going on.

• 1:08:17Speaker 04

  What number were you?

• 1:08:19Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, third.

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  Okay, oh, you're right.

• 1:08:21Conan O'Brien?

  Third to the top, yeah. And so, I, I just remembered having a lot of time with my brain. And it was nightmarish, but...

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  I was, I was bored for the first eight years of my life. And I would complain to my mother, and she would say exactly that. She would say, "It's good for you to be bored."

• 1:08:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And look at us, here.

• 1:08:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, here we are.

• 1:08:39Conan O'Brien?

  Here we are, having the greatest conversation.

• 1:08:43Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I have to wrap this up because we've gone.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  You've solved it.

• 1:08:47Conan O'Brien?

  Well, first of all, I think we've solved the engineering of humanity. And you and I, if we're just put in charge, can fix everything. It's a testament to your book that I read it and it's got me thinking about 700 different things in different ways. And so, and that is, that is the power that you seem to have is just raising these issues. And also, it's, it's, it goes back to that concept that I was talking about earlier, which is, we can all be tricked, we can all be conned, we can all be manipulated. It's really fascinating. The more you think about it, I think the more you build up some sort of resilience towards it.

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:27Conan O'Brien?

  And a little bit of immunity, where you can think, wait a minute, is this what I want? Or do I want this because this is the way everything has been engineered by somebody? And it probably has.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  I have a confession to make, which is that the entire time we've been talking, I've been, you have your notebook open.

• 1:09:44Conan O'Brien?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:44Speaker 04

  I've been trying to read upside down.

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Because I want to know, like, were your notes, when you made notes to yourself, were they different from the things where you're like, book's terrible?

• 1:09:55Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I can read it to you right now. Oh, fuck, Gladwell's coming. This is going to be another shit show. Hair not up to Gladwell's standards. He's probably going to go after the Irish parentheses did last time.

• 1:10:09Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:10:10Conan O'Brien?

  He seems to have a real thing. Let's hope he doesn't bring up Harvard. I loved my time in the, on women's rugby. It was my only way in. Why the fuck has he got such a bone to pick with my favorite sport? That's where I met Tracy. I mean, I don't know.

• 1:10:28Speaker 04

  Hey, Tracy.

• 1:10:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't, why do you leave it out like that? You're just, it's distracting.

• 1:10:36Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I'm sorry. Look, I've got drawings.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. 1963.

• 1:10:41Conan O'Brien?

  That's the year I was born.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

  That's the year I was born.

• 1:10:42Conan O'Brien?

  I did a drawing of Senator Abe Ribbikoff.

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  Oh my god, that is-

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  What the fuck?

• 1:10:48Conan O'Brien?

  Why? I'm a strange man.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  That is so fantastic. Ribikoff, Senator from New York State. Was he in New York State, or was he-

• 1:10:56Conan O'Brien?

  I want to say he was Connecticut. He was the one in the 1968 convention. Why did I draw Senator Abe Ribikoff?

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  Wait, Conan, we're born in the same year. When's your birthday?

• 1:11:06Conan O'Brien?

  April 18th.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Okay. I was just checking to make sure we weren't, in fact, born on the very same day.

• 1:11:11Conan O'Brien?

  We were born in the same hospital and switched at birth.

• 1:11:15Conan O'Brien?

  That's why we both have crazy hair.

• 1:11:17Speaker 04

  Turns out you're the Jamaican.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  Against all law.

• 1:11:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, and you're a terrible alcoholic. Ah, Gladwell.

• 1:11:28Conan O'Brien?

  I love talking to you, and clearly, I mean, this could go on for seven hours, but even podcasts have sped up.

• 1:11:38Conan O'Brien?

  But I do hope you'll come back, and I hope you'll come back, even if there isn't a book, if we can just chat. I love, I really enjoy it, I really enjoy it. And if the art of conversation is dead, I don't know what this was, because I really thoroughly had a great time.

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  As did I. Thank you, Conan. I will, next time I'll be nicer about the "I feel." I'm gonna say, I'm gonna come up with something really, I'll think, spend the next couple of years coming up with just the right word.

• 1:12:07Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? I think you nailed it the first time. Yeah. Hey, thank you so much, sir.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

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

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  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- 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 SiriusXM 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.