Bill Burr Returns Again

Comedian and actor Bill Burr feels good about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Bill returns once more to discuss his new special Drop Dead Years, the specific kind of funny that Boston produces, why we all need to stop arguing with bots on the internet, and 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?

  Who do you shop for first on the holidays, Sona? Was it, do you shop for the kids or do you shop for Tac? My kids. Okay. Or Oki. You gotta get them your stuff. Or my dog. 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? Yeah. 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.

• 0:47Conan O'Brien?

  Get ahead, start on holiday gifting with Amazon's low prices. Shop now at amazon.com/holiday.

• 0:55Conan O'Brien?

  The holidays are supposed to be about making memories, not managing the mess that comes with them. Between winter weather, road trips, shopping, and family gatherings, your vehicle can take a beating. Mine sure does. Same. Especially when I'm back in the Northeast, driving around. I mean, I grew up with that. Yeah. Cars were red, the salt on the road, people throwing rocks at me. Whaaat? That's not a weather thing. That's more of a me being, making people angry problem. WeatherTech helps protect your vehicle from snow, slush, salt, and seasonal messes. They also make the best gifts for automobile protection, from floor liners and cargo liner to side window deflectors, even gift cards. Great for today and to prevent future messes. Everything is built to last, easy to clean, and designed for harsh winter conditions, okay?

• 1:40Conan O'Brien?

  I grew up with this. Yeah. And the salt would eat away the car. We actually did have a Chevy. My dad had a Chevy Impala, and the floor rusted out and you could see the road going by. Oh! Boy, we were praying for WeatherTech and we didn't even know it. That was before it existed. That's cool. So get a gift today at weathertech.com.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Hello, my name's Bill Burr.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  And I feel good about being Conan O'Brien's friend, but I feel this is a little red flag that might be a little narcissist, that I gotta fucking say why I'm his friend every time. I feel like I've already answered this question.

• 2:18Conan O'Brien?

  I'm called a bottomless hole. There's no filling this. Every time, you're gonna have to repeat.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Gee, what is that like?

• 2:46Conan O'Brien?

  Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Sitting here with Sona Movsesian. And a giggling, I don't know why, Matt Gourley. It's the way I introduce the show, so just get over it. You can't giggle every single time.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  I can't get over it because every time, it's hilarious. It's like a nosebleed of change of environment. You go from "Woo!" to "Hi, and welcome to the show."

• 3:06Conan O'Brien?

  I'm a professional broadcaster.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08Conan O'Brien?

  Okay? And I have a question, and this is a serious question, which is, can I become flexible at my age? I mean, physically flexible. And this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, because I know people do yoga and stuff. I am a particularly tight, tight-assed gentleman of a later vintage. You see me all the time trying to stretch it out, don't you, Sona?

• 3:30Speaker 03

  I think your body is capable of it.

• 3:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  I don't think your mind is capable of it.

• 3:34Conan O'Brien?

  Be hon- be honest.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  I'm being very honest.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Sounds honest to me.

• 3:37Speaker 03

  I am so, I think your body can become flexible if you work at it, but you're also so tightly wound, you're just like, "Ooh."

• 3:45Conan O'Brien?

  No, but you see me trying, right?

• 3:48Speaker 03

  I do see you trying.

• 3:49Conan O'Brien?

  I do a lot of squats and bends, and I'm trying. And I was doing a live show with Tig Notaro once, and she... I was backstage just trying to stretch before I go out, and she had the microphone and could see me and was just calling me out in front of the whole audience. Like, Conan's doing these stupid stretches that will in no way... It was hilarious, of course, she's hilarious. I'm kind of fascinated with this idea that I think there's part of me that thinks because... Of what I come from, this very tightly wound, I don't know, Boston Catholic, whatever you want to do.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 4:18Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, and then my own propensities that it's never gonna happen. And then there were days where I think, no, I could do this. I could do this. I could, I could become a flexible person. But then I think there's another school of thought. No. If you're not flexible, at the age I'm at now, you can look it up, like Google away.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  I don't think that's true.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  And I'm sorry, do you want to be flexible just to be flexible? Or to what end do you, is there a sport you want to play?

• 4:42Conan O'Brien?

  I'd like to become a sexual athlete.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Oh, dear.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Sexual athlete?

• 4:46Conan O'Brien?

  No, uh, no, I, I, what I would like to do is, um, yeah, I, I just, I don't want to stiffen up as I get older.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  I notice you're wearing some, like.

• 4:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and I'm bringing it up today because, um, as you know, I'm still displaced, whatever. Very fortunate to still have my place, but I, I do sometimes just pick clothes out of the back of my car. And today I picked this stuff out and I realized I basically wore what you would wear to like a, a gym today, which I rarely do. I usually like to dress.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Can you stand up?

• 5:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, sure.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  I think it looks like you're in the Hunger Games.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:22Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. This is, this, my wife got these for my son. He didn't want them. And I put them on and then I realized.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Very uncomfortable.

• 5:32Conan O'Brien?

  I know, we should be, there's this weird cross hatching. It looks to me like, uh, I'm on the set of Logan's Run. The TV show from, or Tron.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 5:41Conan O'Brien?

  And this is not me. I never do this.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  I think you're just missing a headband.

• 5:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, but because I'm wearing this, I do feel there's a little bit of an eighties vibe. But also because I'm wearing this, when you wear clothes like this, you start doing stretches and it was on my mind. Cause, um, I started doing stretches today out in the main room where everybody is. And I got on the floor and other people, RJ.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  RJ.

• 6:05Conan O'Brien?

  RJ, who, uh, works here at the, at the, at the podcast. He told me he's been stretching like on a professional level since he was five.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, he stretches an hour a day.

• 6:16Conan O'Brien?

  He stretches an hour a day and, and, and here's the thing, he can't stand. He's so relaxed and loose. No, no, he's brought into work in a bowl. Like gazpacho. And they pour him into his seat and he does his work. But no, he's very impressive. He's super physically fit and um.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  I think he's a black belt.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  He is a black belt. He's like a multi-degree black belt in Taekwondo.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  I take back my reaction.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  You should, because he can fucking crush your head.

• 6:45Conan O'Brien?

  Can RJ come in? Because I'm very impressed with RJ. And you know what? A lot of people work here. Not impressed with a lot of them. I literally go around looking, is there someone here who I'm impressed with? Please, have a seat.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  Hi RJ.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  Hey guys.

• 6:59Conan O'Brien?

  So RJ, I should be asking you this question. First of all, what is your actual position here at the show?

• 7:04Speaker 05

  So I'm Adam's executive assistant.

• 7:08Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  And I do a lot of stuff for basically whatever Adam asks for. I just kind of do it.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  That's the easiest way of saying it.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  That's just sinister.

• 7:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, that sounds.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  So.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Dead bodies.

• 7:20Conan O'Brien?

  I saw you the other day breaking into an ATM with a crowbar.

• 7:25Speaker 05

  He asked for money.

• 7:26Conan O'Brien?

  I know, I know. And he said, "I don't want to use a card. Anyone can use a card. Use this crowbar." We were talking the other day. You mentioned stretching. It's been in the back of my head. And then today, before I know it, I'm on the ground, you're on the ground. And you're showing me these different stretches. And you did one where your hips basically just flattened out like a spatchcocked chicken. That had just been sl- and I was like, "My hips will never do that." I would need an operation.

• 7:54Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no. So we were doing frog pose. And it just, it takes time. The thing with flexibility is you can't force it at first. You kind of have to let your body ease into it. And then, once your body can ease into it, that's when we figure out how to contract muscles in a certain way.

• 8:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  And then when it lets go, when you let it go, then you fall forward.

• 8:14Conan O'Brien?

  Sona will tell you, because Sona has spent many years observing me. She watches how I wash makeup off.

• 8:20Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 8:21Conan O'Brien?

  She watches how I brush my teeth. And. I could start a fire on my face. Everything I do is, is, I'm not gonna say everything, but like, quick and hard, like, let's get this done.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:33Conan O'Brien?

  And there's a self-loathing involved in it. So stretching is the antithesis to all of that.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  And it's breathing.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  It's a lot of breathing.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  And, and, and, yeah, just being calm and patient.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Can you touch your toes without bending your legs?

• 8:46Conan O'Brien?

  Um, if my, I'm gonna say if I had an oper-

• 8:49Speaker 02

  It's a simple question.

• 8:50Conan O'Brien?

  If I had an operation where my knees were removed. And the, and, and, and my feet were presented to me.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  That's how I am.

• 8:57Conan O'Brien?

  No, I, I am, uh, my problem is, of course, I have a, I have a little bit of an unusual build, very long legs, shorter torso, proportionally. So, yeah, if I really lean for a while, yes, I can get down there.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  I can't even do that.

• 9:11Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you're a mess. I mean, I don't wanna, you're not.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  I do think it takes time. I think you get sometimes impatient. You're like, I wanna be flexible now, but you have to just like, take your time with it, maybe. Can you be patient?

• 9:24Conan O'Brien?

  Here's my question is, RJ, would you be willing, uh, I shift you away from your responsibilities with Adam? Cause whatever shit you're doing for him, he can do for himself. And you just become my full-time stretch guru.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Yo, that'd be great. Let's do it. We'll both dress how you're dressing today.

• 9:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  We'll do it.

• 9:43Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, really? We'll both dress?

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Like that, yeah.

• 9:46Conan O'Brien?

  Like a guy from an early eighties space television sci-fi show. Okay.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  For sure.

• 9:51Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, yeah, I do, I, I'm, I'm into this. I wanna try it. I wanna try and become more flexible.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:57Conan O'Brien?

  I wanna evolve. This is something I'm saying as a serious thing. I, I am interested in this concept that I can keep evolving, that I can keep changing in certain ways. Uh, a lot of cool things have happened in the last 10 years that I didn't see coming, so why couldn't I become flexible?

• 10:13Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 10:14Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  And I think you should definitely put the work into it. Like, and then be patient and breathe and chill.

• 10:20Conan O'Brien?

  No, I want RJ to do it. I want him to do, is there any way that you can do all the stretching? I'm not involved, but then somehow, uh, you know, uh, I inherit all the benefits.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  In the inheriting part, probably not, but I need somebody to- To be like my camera guy when I'm stretching. Like, someone has seen my hand photos.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  I have. He is like full, like past splits. It's amazing. I know. It's pretty incredible.

• 10:45Conan O'Brien?

  That's crazy. And, and, but also, you started when you were five.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Really?

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was really into martial arts. The first thing I told my mom of what I wanted to be when I grew up was a Power Ranger. So then she got me into martial arts and I just stayed. I ended up doing that for a little over 20 years.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  To the point where you can take a Power Ranger now. You can beat one.

• 11:07Speaker 05

  Let's do it. Let's find a Power Ranger. I think I just joined like the evil side button.

• 11:14Conan O'Brien?

  There's probably one walking around Hollywood Boulevard.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:18Conan O'Brien?

  And you're just gonna, you're just gonna start kicking his ass. Poor guy's gonna have like a fanny pack. He's just trying to get.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  He just wants a tip.

• 11:25Conan O'Brien?

  He just wants a tip so he can take a selfie with you. Suddenly, he's getting wailed on by this red bearded martial artist.

• 11:35Conan O'Brien?

  Well, RJ, I'm very impressed by what you can do and I will, I will try to learn from you. I will try to absorb. You are now my, you are Yoda to my Mark Hamill in the second. One of those things that later became.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Skywalker Empire Strikes Back. Let's just skip the.

• 11:49Conan O'Brien?

  It was the second.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Honor the text, please.

• 11:51Conan O'Brien?

  It was the second one and then, but I guess now it's actually the 15th.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'm with you on that. How's flexibility of personality going?

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:00Conan O'Brien?

  Nope.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Is that in play at all?

• 12:01Conan O'Brien?

  Iron rod.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Maybe we evolve into a nicer person.

• 12:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  Maybe that's what we're.

• 12:07Conan O'Brien?

  Who's gonna listen to that podcast?

• 12:08Speaker 03

  No, it's gonna suck. It'll suck.

• 12:11Conan O'Brien?

  Hey, let's go see the new Don Rickles. He's really nice to the audience. And he gives everybody some fruit salad. Later. Don Rickles is broke.

• 12:22Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you, RJ. All right, guys, let's get into it. My guest today, that's right, RJ's a redhead. I'm a redhead. My next guest today, also a redhead, hilarious comedian, whose latest special, Bill Burr: Drop Dead Years, premieres March 14th on Hulu. He's also making his Broadway debut in Glengarry Glen Ross later this month. I love this guy. I'm thrilled he's with us today.

• 12:49Conan O'Brien?

  Bill Burr, welcome.

• 12:55Conan O'Brien?

  You and I have, we have a special connection. I really believe that. We're both gingers.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:59Conan O'Brien?

  We both grew up.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Unsightly, from the Massachusetts area.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  We're sort of the, we're the spice in the stew. That's what the gingers are.

• 13:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  We can't be next to each other. Like, we're only allowed, LA, LA County only allows us to hang out once a year and have a dinner. It's like-

• 13:17Conan O'Brien?

  There's only two of us that are allowed to be together. Two gingers from the Boston area that are incredibly, a weird mixture of bitterness, right? That has, I mean-

• 13:28Speaker 01

  I would've gone with anger first, but okay, we'll go bitterness, anger, um, confused.

• 13:32Conan O'Brien?

  I hide my anger, I think, or have in the past. Don't I hide it better than Bill?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 13:38Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, yeah. But it's there.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Children, don't I hide it when I'm smacking you in the station wagon?

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Agree with all my points, or there will be a discussion afterwards?

• 13:51Conan O'Brien?

  But Sona, you've seen, and Matt, you guys have seen up close the beast, right? You've seen the beast. We have. But for many years on television, I was a, quote, "good guy." But there was a Bill Burr inside me, always, always. Yeah, I think there is.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Why you gotta, why you gotta put your anger on me? I had nothing to do with you and whatever happened to you.

• 14:11Conan O'Brien?

  How do we know? How do we know? How do we know? We were in the same era. I know you're younger than me, but I remember-

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Well, you were older than me and you were always taller, so I mean, if anything happened, it was you. You threw the ice ball at me or socked me down at Fitzy. Something happened. Stole the stereo out of my fucking shitbox car. What a car, what do radio thieves do now?

• 14:31Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know. I don't know what they do.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  You're gonna like take the whole dashboard out and just walk around with this odd-shaped iPad?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Does anybody got a 2023 Mercedes?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Through back in the day, you could steal a stereo. It fit in everybody's fucking car. Another job lost to AI.

• 14:51Conan O'Brien?

  Do you go back to reunions and things like that?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  A high school reunion?

• 14:55Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know if I told you this, but I went back to one of mine years ago, a high school reunion, and I was doing the late night show, well-known person. I go back and this guy comes up to me and he goes, "Hey, go on and remember the time that you and me busted into that liquor store down by the point? And we stole all that booze, but the cops came and we both took off and you went left and I went right? And you got all the booze and then you drank it yourself?" And I'm listening, I'm like, "You have the wrong guy."

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:22Conan O'Brien?

  I have never, I have never had a parking violation in my life. I didn't drink when I, until I was like 26. He's got the wrong guy, but he inserted me into a story and I thought, "I bet that happens to you." Unless, no, you were probably the guy that was stealing.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I don't understand how someone doesn't, was it that six foot four ginger? Or was, I mean, how many of you, how many of you were up there?

• 15:41Conan O'Brien?

  Right, yeah. There was that guy I went to high school with who looked like Jane Lynch.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  I couldn't remember.

• 15:47Conan O'Brien?

  I think I committed a crime with him. No.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  No, I, I went to high school with, uh, I had a really cool grade. Like, everybody, like, it was funny. It was sort of like, uh, everybody, by the, by my senior year, everybody was sort of collectively partying with each other. So there wasn't like, you know, you had the cliques, the jocks, you had the, the, the people that took wood shop, the, uh, you know, the burnouts or whatever, and then just the background people like me. And then by the end of it, we all, we used to go down this place, Dan Road, which was, uh, this industrial park that was slowly being built, taking over the woods or anything. But they had like all of these, uh, dirt roads back there and these burnt up cars for insurance and shit. We used to drive down there and drink and every, every weekend it'd, the party just kept getting bigger and bigger and everybody was sort of high and drunk and just kind of got along with each other.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  So I've only been to one high school reunion. I went to my 25th and I had a great time.

• 16:38Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  But because I do stand up, like, I go around and I, I run in, a lot of people come out to my shows. So I, I kind of have like this never-ending sort of high school reunion, which is cool. When they hit me up or whatever, I always, always, you know, end up talking to them backstage and shit. And I get freaked out about how old their kids are versus mine, but I chose.

• 16:56Conan O'Brien?

  You got young kids.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yep, eight and four and a half.

• 16:58Conan O'Brien?

  Wow, okay. My kids are in their late 50s. My children. They have sciatica. You started a little bit late too, and I'm still way behind you, yeah. Yeah, you're way behind me. Uh, you know, I watched your special. In many areas. Yes, I, I, exactly. Don't rub it in. I watched your special, Drop Dead Years. Yeah. Loved it, and I know it's coming out. When's it coming out? I want to make sure I get, it's out right now. Okay, um, we're taping this a little beforehand. We're taping this in 1974. 1974. We're very excited about the Red Sox next year, the 75 Red Sox. It's amazing, and I'm glad that busing crisis is finally over. Oh, finally, yeah. No more racism, no more racism in Boston. And I, I'm looking forward to that story just sort of disappearing, so Boston can move forward.

• 17:46Conan O'Brien?

  Boston will be fine. Yeah. Um, no, but I watched your special and you talk about going to the funeral of a friend. First of all, it's a very, very funny, I feel it's a redundant saying Bill Burr had a really funny stand-up special. Why is it so hard for you to say that about me? I said it twice. I just root against you. I root, you know I root against you. You couldn't even open your eyes, all right? I'm admitting, he said something that was mildly amusing. Fucking bastard. Achieved some success. Another ginger from Boston, there's only room for one. Just what I needed.

• 18:23Conan O'Brien?

  But I watched your special and it was, uh, it's fantastic. You talk about a, losing a friend and going to the funeral, and of course, you have some very funny observations about that, but it, it opens up, it feels like you're, you're opening up a little more in this special about your personal life and some of your struggles, and it's, uh, it's, it's fantastic. Oh, thank you. I, I kind of, uh, you know, I was of that belief, as most people that come from the East Coast, that, you know, your, your anger and shit is like your security blanket, and then, and it's, it's made you who you are. It's why you're funny, it's why you have character, it's all of this stuff, and if you for some reason let go of this and actually enjoy life,

• 19:04Conan O'Brien?

  or maybe take responsibility for your actions and see your, how your behavior affects other people, uh, for some reason, that's going to be like the undoing of you, like.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  You know, there's a lot, I don't know about your, how you came up, but like in stand up, there was a lot of stuff out there. Don't get married, don't have kids, basically don't find happiness. That is the kryptonite to comedy. And I've, I've found that it's, it's, that's not true. And it's really the opposite is, is once you kind of, you know, get yourself to a new place, you can kind of revisit a lot of shit that you talked about with like a new like sort of point of view of it. Um, so yeah, no, I'm, I'm listening, but believe me, dude, I, I've only gone up like one flight of the Empire State Building. That is my messed up personality. So, uh, you know. This is the, the eternal question. Mm-hmm. And it's one I've thought about in comedy, which is you can be funny or you can be happy.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  And I really believed in that dichotomy. And I remember years ago, living in LA and stating that. Getting molested. Doing the things you had to do to get a late night talk show. Come on, it's out there now. All right. It's, it's better when you say it. Conan, say the name.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  We all did what we had to do. You know, I'm here now. It was a different time. Different time. Lot of couches.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  You know what? No one wanted me on a couch. Right? I mean, let's just be honest.

• 20:32Conan O'Brien?

  Not even your therapist.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  No one, yeah. No one was like, I gotta get me a piece of that Conan. Uh, but. That featherless ostrich.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Why? Why do I invite you back? I don't know. It's not right.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  But to your point, I really did believe that that was a choice you had to make. And I was okay with. Being miserable, yeah. Being miserable and, uh. I thought it made me tough. Yeah. I thought all of that stuff, like, you know, uh, you know, and all the movies that you watched, they just, they, they, they made you believe in, I remember I watched The Dirty Dozen. I watched The Dirty Dozen and there's that scene where they have to shave in cold water. We ain't shaving and blah, blah. So I was sitting there thinking like. Tough guys shaving cold water and I shaved in cold water for like seven years. As like a fucking dental assistant and stand up comedian and like it was like just something that I I it was a subconscious thing that that it was all of this stuff had happened to me.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  So you just always thought like this, yeah, I can't, you gotta get tougher, you gotta get tougher, you gotta get tougher. So all of this stuff that's happening to me, I won't feel it. And what I was really doing was I was I was walling myself off. Um, and it was so funny and there was and there was a lot of information out there about people like being walled off and all of that. And I would just watch them fascinated like, how the fuck do you not know what you're feeling, not even realizing that I was the exact same way. And um, yeah, no, it's mushrooms, mushrooms turned me around. I had, I had one mushroom trip and it sort of woke me up to this.

• 22:06Conan O'Brien?

  I've had people tell me I should do that. I've never done that. Uh, and I also have a long way to go. I'll admit that. I think I've made progress. Ted, I mean, you can be, you can be honest.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  I really do think you have, and I think mushrooms might be good for you.

• 22:22Conan O'Brien?

  You've always thought, uh, pot would be good for me.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  I did. Yes, I do.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Pot's a depress, that pot is like, I, I don't know, I know, weed, weed isn't weed anymore.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Oh, it is intense.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  We're like, yeah, I, these people came over for fucking Thanksgiving, right?

• 22:35Conan O'Brien?

  Why, why can't it just be Thanksgiving?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Cause you know something? It's how I, it's how I grew up talking.

• 22:41Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, okay, I'm just saying.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  I don't mean it in a bad way.

• 22:44Conan O'Brien?

  I went to my fucking kids christening.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I know, sorry. So I had some friends over for what is arguably, I feel the best holiday.

• 22:51Conan O'Brien?

  Uh huh.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  This is what I really feel, but I said fucking Thanksgiving, but I really love Thanksgiving.

• 22:55Conan O'Brien?

  Uh huh.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Because yeah, it's a nice hang and you don't have to buy anything of these Christmas.

• 22:59Conan O'Brien?

  Who doesn't like a fucking turkey? Who doesn't make some fucking giblets and gravy?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  As he sips his dainty little coffee.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  Ice coffee.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  I, I had to get rid of the straw. Uh, I'm not that, I'm not evolved enough as a man that I can drink out of a straw. You still feel all right about myself.

• 23:16Conan O'Brien?

  I just think of it as an aluminum dick.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Just doing my part to, to show that I'm an ally.

• 23:27Conan O'Brien?

  Aluminum dick.

• 23:28Speaker 04

  Can't wait to take another sip. Oh my god.

• 23:31Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, come on, Sona.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  This episode is called Conan Swallows.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Anyway. What was I talking about? So I had some people over for Thanksgiving. This guy go, he has a joint, right? So I'll take a couple of hits, whatever. I go, what is this? And he told me, he goes, it's a nice afternoon sativa, right? So didn't that sound like the wind was just blowing? Yeah. Through my nonexistent hair? So I go, alright. So I, dude, I took three of the hits off of that thing and I just wasn't at Thanksgiving anymore. I mean, I was like there, I was like, my wife just, people kept talking to me. My wife just kept going, he's useless, he's useless. You gotta wait a couple hours. It's so powerful, yeah. I, no, I'm not, I, it's too late for me. No, that's why I ended up texting you some of the jokes a few days later. That thing where we were doing the thing, uh, me and this other guy were high out of our minds and like, nobody in this industry was, has been buying anything since the strike. Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  But they're taking meetings, wasting your time. So we were like, we should waste their time back. We were just pitching sequels to perfect movies that didn't need a sequel. And my favorite was, uh, Two Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This time he's keeping the sink. And, and, and it's, it's all about, it's all about the Indian guy. After he throws it, he picks the sink up and he's running with it. And Tommy Lee Jones is chasing him. It's just basically comes to fugitive. You, you, you merge fugitive. Yeah. And my favorite part was he's standing near the waterfall. And he's like, this sink means a lot to me. And Tommy Lee Jones is like, I don't care.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  So I, I opened that up to my podcast listeners, too. Regular people are so fucking funny now because they're, they're pitching jokes. And so now they're funny. Somebody here, the best one, wrote a sequel to Schindler's List. It was called Schindler's Wrist. Um, it's, it's about the carpal tunnel Schindler got writing the list. And, and the therapy. And it's just this? And the therapy, and the therapy that happened. And the movie just ends with him being like, yeah, you know, it feels pretty good. You know, just, just totally anticlimactic. How you feeling, Schindler?

• 25:36Conan O'Brien?

  Ah, I gotta say, pretty good, pretty good.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Hey, you're, you're a wizard.

• 25:47Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:52Conan 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.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:01Conan 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.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:23Conan 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.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  They are.

• 26:32Conan O'Brien?

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

• 26:38Speaker 04

  What?

• 26:38Conan 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.

• 27:03Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, I wanna try something different.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  What?

• 27:05Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:09Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 27:09Conan O'Brien?

  Every morning.

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 27:10Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:12Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:16Speaker 04

  Oh, that's good.

• 27:17Conan O'Brien?

  See what I did?

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:18Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:22Conan O'Brien?

  They're America's best network.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 27:24Conan 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.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  Oh, that's weird.

• 27:32Conan 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

• 27:41Speaker 04

  You travel a lot.

• 27:42Conan O'Brien?

  Travel show that I do.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:43Conan 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.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  That doesn't seem like a good idea.

• 27:55Conan O'Brien?

  It's a great idea.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 27:57Conan O'Brien?

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

• 28:01Speaker 04

  My god.

• 28:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. No, all these reasons make T-Mobile a great choice.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 28:07Conan 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.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 28:35Conan O'Brien?

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

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:41Conan 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.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:50Conan 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?

• 29:02Speaker 04

  Because it's family.

• 29:02Conan O'Brien?

  But what about a niece or a nephew?

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:06Conan 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.

• 29:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:13Conan 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.

• 29:41Speaker 04

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

• 29:43Conan 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.

• 30:05Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you've changed your life a lot, right? You've cleaned up your act a little bit.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  I mean, I feel I have.

• 30:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  My wife, I don't know. I just don't know if I'm ever gonna get over that hump.

• 30:13Conan O'Brien?

  She's, uh, first of all, I love your wife.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Listen, enough about you and your private desires.

• 30:22Conan O'Brien?

  I'm just saying, we live in an experimental age.

• 30:26Conan O'Brien?

  We live at a time when...

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Hey, man, you're sucking an aluminum dick.

• 30:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  I mean, hey, and I have no shame about it. I gotta tell you, the second...

• 30:32Conan O'Brien?

  Hell, last second!

• 30:33Speaker 01

  The second, the second the tie comes off, I'm telling you, man, this guy, he becomes a different guy.

• 30:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. There's always a clip on, anyway.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  No, my wife, my wife is, is, yeah, she's the best. She's the best.

• 30:43Conan O'Brien?

  You guys, you guys came over for dinner and, uh, she's fantastic. And I, and, and I feel I accomplished the same thing. I found the right person. I found someone who is on me, uh, understands me, uh, does not let me get away with shit. Sometimes she lets me get away with a little, just because she's like, ah, let him go.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:02Conan O'Brien?

  Just let him, let him blow out the lines a little bit.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let him go. But, uh, yeah, but, yeah, Nia's amazing.

• 31:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, she is.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  You know, just when you're fucked up like me, I, I do need, I, the one big thing in our thing is, I, I had to let her know, I go, I need an atta boy every once in a while. Okay? You, you can't just every fucking day be reading me the riot act. I mean, I know I'm a fucked up guy and I know that I'm difficult to live with, but every once in a while, you know, I did make waffles this morning, you know? I don't remember that being brought up.

• 31:31Conan O'Brien?

  No one says atta boy anymore, by the way.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Is that just expected?

• 31:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Atta boy? No one says atta boy?

• 31:36Conan O'Brien?

  No, no one says atta boy.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  How about, there you go? There you go, Conan.

• 31:39Conan O'Brien?

  There you go! You did it!

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Look at you!

• 31:41Conan O'Brien?

  Look at...

• 31:42Speaker 01

  It becomes real passive...

• 31:43Conan O'Brien?

  Look at Big Boy over here!

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it becomes real passive aggressive. There you go!

• 31:47Conan O'Brien?

  There you go!

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Look at you! Must be nice. Must be nice. I got that one. I got that one from somebody who's completely fucked up their life. He goes, oh, yeah, you're, you're out there in LA doing things. Christmas is coming up, you got money for gifts. Must be nice. Must be nice. And I'm just like, oh, yeah, it is. Life is pretty good when you're not doing drugs, getting fired every two weeks.

• 32:10Conan O'Brien?

  Also, I'm sorry, this guy has come into you with a real low bar.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Oh, you, you know, must be nice.

• 32:16Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, that was it. That was it.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Must be nice.

• 32:18Conan O'Brien?

  That was it.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Must be nice. You got some sneakers you can put on your feet?

• 32:21Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, that, that was, that was, it was, it was building towards that, you know? I mean, this, you know?

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:28Conan O'Brien?

  It's just...

• 32:30Speaker 01

  It just was one of those things. And I always told him, I said, listen dude, if you're in a hole, if you're reaching up, I'll try to pull you out. But if you're face down in it, digging it deeper every day, I'm not fucking, I'm not getting involved in that. And he just couldn't get his head around that. And then he'd go, I don't know. The last time I talked to him.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  He goes, I've been working out. I've been working out. I go, oh, that's great. I thought he was turning his life around. He lost a fight to his son.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Wait, that was his workout? He came at his son and lost? No, he was working out because he lost a fight to his son. So he's like, oh, man, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta lay off, I gotta lay off this shit. It's just fucking, no, but that's one of the things too. That's the craziest motivation for I gotta hit the gym. I'm signing up. Hey, well, what made you come in? Well, I'm fighting my, uh, my, my 17 year old son. And he got the better of me. So this is my wake up call that I need to work out so I can beat the shit out of him. Right. And people always say like, why, why is, why are so many people from Massachusetts funny? And I always go like, cause that is the kind of person you run into all the time. And he said that's without a bit of funny, wasn't supposed to be weird. Yep.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Or anything. He was just straight up talking to me going like, yeah, man, he's, he's strong now. I mean, he actually like knocked me down and stuff. So, you know, I've been doing the curls. And it's just like, do you ever think of just like maybe going out to like have a cup of coffee and figure out what's going on with you guys? Like, I don't think you want, you really want to, you don't want to fight your son. I don't think he wants to fight you. No, dude, no, I know, I know. But still, you know, just like, you know, it's, it's one of those, uh, I don't know. I, I, I go back to, uh, and another thing too, I always remember when you were in Massachusetts is people would always, oh, you know, that guy, oh dude, that guy's a character. He's a character. And everybody is like this, like, uh, it's, it's like they're very like uninhibited. And, and they get into like their, these, these habits and these things that they do. And, um, and they don't realize like how colorful they are.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  And it's not until you travel and you go back and you just, you come back to Massachusetts, you're like these, you go to like, I don't know what it's like now because like sports is like so, uh, I, I can't stand the direction that it went into. But when I used to go to like tailgates at the fucking Pats game, you know, when you We're like drinking on Route One. We used to park in this guy's backyard and then you walk down train tracks, active fucking train tracks. People walking, holding hands with kids. And then you would go up the, under Route One, up the thing and then walk in and just the shit that you saw. The stuff that people said, it was a comedy show from all the way, like people trying to be funny, people not being, just being who they were. You get to your section before the giant, you know, fucking screens took over.

• 35:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  There was a class clown in every fucking section.

• 35:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  And I used to try to be that guy and sometimes I was and then there was, sometimes it'd be a guy funnier than me and then I would just be entertained by him. And that happened at Red Sox games, Bruins games, big time, Celtics, all of those things. And um, I think like these TV screens and all of this shit that they have now, it's, it's just like crowd control. Like the second there's a stoppage of play, that's like, you know, they got these dumb races and your section has to root for it to like win a T-shirt and shit, it's. It's dumb.

• 35:35Conan O'Brien?

  Were you, I was of the era where my brother and I would go down to Fenway Park without it. Just would think, hey, let's go watch a Red Sox game and would walk down and you could get bleacher seats.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, for like eight bucks.

• 35:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and we would get bleacher seats and we would sit in the bleachers, no planning, no like, we got tickets. And we would go and we'd sit up there and what they did was they hired, this is back when the Red Sox.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  They'd stand on Conan's shoulders and then pull themselves up over the green monster.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  What's happening up there Luke? Slide down. Hey Luke, who's ahead? Ah, the Reds are giving us a shellacking.

• 36:07Conan O'Brien?

  And then, then the beginning of his comedy career, hey, you guys were supposed to pull me up.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Fuck you, you fucking redheaded cunt.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  Hey, that's the title of my autobiography.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  That was supposed to be a surprise, Random House next year. Fuck you, you fucking redheaded cunt.

• 36:24Conan O'Brien?

  I was doing a pre-promotion for it.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 36:27Conan O'Brien?

  No, but we would sit in the bleachers and what was hilarious was they used to hire like football players. Uh, these massive linebackers from, I think BU.

• 36:38Conan O'Brien?

  And they would, you know, at guys with massive necks and they were the crowd control, but not professional crowd control. Their job was just if anything got out of line, if they saw some people like having a little too much to drink and maybe getting into it, starting to fight a little bit. These guys with massive necks from BU would go running up and they would whale on people. And that was more, we went to watch that more than we could watch the game.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Well, the art of bouncing back then, it was, nobody knew how to de-escalate a situation. It was all just ramping it up. I still remember, I was doing this gig at Nick's Comedy Stop and downstairs was a nightclub. And I still remember the night these guys, they kicked this dude out and I don't know if this guy ever walked again. They basically, it was a dance floor and you know, you're in there, it's super fucking loud, you know, Bell Biv DeVoe era, like that shit was playing, you know, Poison or something. And then you just heard this commotion and I looked over and I think it was two bouncers and they had just grabbed this guy, picked him up and started running full speed with them. And there's like innocent people there and the crowd just parted like that and they, they had him like nine feet in the air and the door jam is like eight.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And they were both running like a 440 with this guy. And like from the middle of his back to the back of his head, just slammed into this middle thing and he folded like a chair, just threw him out onto Warren Street. I remember everyone like.

• 38:02Conan O'Brien?

  I like that you can't, I like that you can't get through this without laughing.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Cause dude, it was.

• 38:05Conan O'Brien?

  That's the most Boston part of this. So anyway, his spine is severed.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  No, but now like, there was like no cameras. So it's just like, like if you ever did that today, forget about there'd be cameras, the owner of the club would be like, dude, I'm gonna have a lawsuit every fucking weekend. You guys are fired. So they just threw that guy, everybody was like, oh, and everybody just went, oh!

• 38:29Speaker 01

  And then the music's still playing and like, it was the funniest thing ever as far as like, it took a good minute for relaxed dancing to happen again. It was kinda like.

• 38:39Conan O'Brien?

  That is Bell Biv DeVoe.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  No, it was definitely like the tone had been set.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  I'll never be like they they must and then they must have done that more than once because they were working together. They just grabbed the guy. I knew a guy that was a bouncer. He said, sometimes we would just walk up to somebody just to start a fight and we'd just walk up to him and be like, hey, man, you gotta get out of here. And they didn't do anything. And they would just do it hoping that they would, because they, you know, a lot of guys weren't juice back then. And it was, you know, it wasn't the the cream that they have now that also has like a suntan lotion or whatever, a sunscreen in it, whatever these guys have now.

• 39:14Conan O'Brien?

  That's what I use.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  It was the it was the horse tranquilizer shit. So they like wanted to get into fights. And I somehow I avoided all of that. I avoided all of that shit. Like, past a certain age, I just stopped. I was like, these guys are like, people getting their fucking ears bit off and stuff, you know, I knew this guy, like, you know, he's like, his party trick, he would eat a light bulb. Oh, yeah, gums bleeding, smiling at you. It was just like, yeah, these guys, these guys.

• 39:37Conan O'Brien?

  It was a better time.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  These guys are on another, these guys are on another level. I'm just gonna stick to the comedy. And, yeah, there was, there was some really interesting, there was a lot of characters back then.

• 39:48Conan O'Brien?

  A lot of characters. It was funny, you did this special in Seattle. I almost sensed you love to go to a place where you feel like you're not just gonna, you could, you go to certain places where you're just gonna get, where you know what their attitude is, and you know, you're gonna get unconditional love. Obviously, you have a lot of fans in Seattle, but you you go there, I think, because you want to challenge some of what Seattle may stand for right now in some ways. Is that possible?

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Well, I I did what I did in Seattle because of collectively the way they think. But like, if I did it in Utah, I would have did it a different way.

• 40:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, exactly.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  It would have been the same thing to kind of like, you know, like, mess with them a little bit.

• 40:29Conan O'Brien?

  But you like the pushback. You enjoy it.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the thing I can't, I don't want to.

• 40:33Conan O'Brien?

  It's your, I mean, it's, it's the cold shave for you. There's part of you that wants to go someplace. And you did this for years on my show, which was, which was, you know, why I always loved you. But you would, you would have the take. That wasn't the comfortable take that everyone would applaud at. You would always want to put yourself in a situation where you weren't.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Push people away?

• 40:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  That's what I'm doing.

• 40:58Conan O'Brien?

  But no, but no, but it was hilarious. And I think something that's quite unusual about you.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Well, the reason why I love the city and then that theater for me is a funny place. Because everyone talks about like Nirvana, that they were the ones that knocked off the metal bands off the top 10 on MTV. And it was, it was really, I felt when Pearl Jam put out that video and Eddie Vedder climbed up at the Moore Theater and dropped down into the crowd. And it was like, okay, so that Nirvana thing wasn't a fluke. There's more of these bands. And it was like, the first time that I felt like old, you know, I was about 23.

• 41:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  There was no more exciting birthdays, you know, I, you know, 16, you get your license. 18, you're an adult. 21, you can drink. 22, you graduate college. This is the first kind of like, oh, now I just go, all right, bye. Good luck with your life. We're watching these people. And it was just funny to me to go back to that place where that happened. Cause it took me forever to like that band. And now I like them, but it took me forever. Cause I was just, cause of where I was just like, fuck those guys.

• 41:59Conan O'Brien?

  Wait, Pearl Jam?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:00Conan O'Brien?

  What was your beef with Pearl Jam?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  They knocked Warrant off. It was so stupid.

• 42:04Conan O'Brien?

  Because you liked Warrant?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  It wasn't that. It was, it wasn't what they represented was I wasn't young anymore. It was the end.

• 42:11Conan O'Brien?

  I see, I see.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Listen, even I knew when all of those W bands were coming in, that like, this is like the end of this shit. But there was also still some like, I'll tell you this, uh, uh, what's, what's their face? Um, oh my God, I'm flicking on the name here. When they did Monkey Business, Sebastian Bach, uh.

• 42:31Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, Skid Row.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Skid Row.

• 42:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Dude, them live on SNL doing, uh, uh, uh, Monkey Business or whatever. Dude, I'll put that up against anybody. Sebastian Bach and the whole band sounded fucking unreal. But, but the, the, the whole industry at that point was already moving on.

• 42:46Conan O'Brien?

  Sure.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  To grunge and it's a killer album. So there was, there was still, you know, any genre, there's going to be like awful versions of that. But like, that was just my first experience of like, oh wow, this is like over, you know? So that's kind of why I picked that theater to do it. Cause it was funny to me like to come back to this place that remind, and then, you know, Drop Dead uses whole mortality thing that I was thinking.

• 43:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, you talk about, you say there's these ages when men, not women, men just drop dead. And you say it's 49 to 61.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and anything after that, you're just looking at a prolonged illness.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  No, you gotta.

• 43:23Conan O'Brien?

  But you say that's the age, that's this window, and he said, it doesn't happen, it's really funny, I don't want to blow your special, I want people to watch it.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  These are the years I'm in, so I've got to make sure I go to the hot doctor, and I got to make sure I watch what I eat, dude. And then, you know, then you can make it to that, uh, to that next level, where, you know, you're that old guy at the golf club, talking about how they just took your gallbladder out and, you know, just talking about what ails you. I can never be that guy. I've tried so many times to get into golf, I just cannot fucking do it.

• 43:53Conan O'Brien?

  I tried it once, and I thought, it's gonna take so much work for me to be very bad, that I'm, I want, I want to put that time into maybe getting a little better at guitar, like, that was my.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  You know, and, and nobody seems to be enjoying it, like, you talk about, anybody goes, you know, I was going, yeah, the first four holes were good, and then I was sort of, I couldn't have my fucking driver, and then they're like, why would you keep doing this? And it takes forever, and it's mind-numbingly, like, boring, it's just, I like watching pros do it, I like that my friends enjoy doing it, but I would rather go do shit.

• 44:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  I'd rather go play drums, ride a motorcycle, fly a helicopter, like, why wouldn't you do that as opposed to fucking say, what are you, what are you, 112 yards? What do you think? What are you going, what are you going, you going 7, 8 iron? And they got their, their fucking sniper scope. It's so fucking, it's so dumb. It's so dumb, it's like, all you guys need to go home and either get divorced or work on your marriage, because there is nothing, nothing is happening here. This is, it's like a library.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Like, you got, it's like the whole, it's so quiet, shh, shh, all of this shit, it's, it's just bad, it's just bad, and everybody with the wacky, you either wear really wacky clothes, like you're in a Three Stooges sketch, or, or, or you dress.

• 45:11Conan O'Brien?

  Hey, lady!

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Or you dress like you're, you're, you know, Tiger Woods adjacent, or whatever, yeah, so.

• 45:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Oh, he's a scratch golfer, that guy, that guy's a scratch golfer.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Oh, is he? That's amazing.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Like he's dunking.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  It's just like.

• 45:29Conan O'Brien?

  Well, this makes me happy because I've sometimes I'm adjacent to a lot of people that are golfers. Jeff Ross golfs a lot and likes to talk about golfing. Eduardo just said he does.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 45:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  No, no, listen, if, if, if, listen, if that's what gets you going, that, that's cool. I just, I tried. No offense. No, because it, I'm, I'm joking. It does look like a great hang. It does look like a great hang. We should talk all the time. It's just not, it should be nine holes and I would argue maybe seven.

• 45:59Conan O'Brien?

  Seven holes.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Like if, is there a golf slider thing that I can do, like three holes? There are courses that offer nine holes. Yeah. No, there's, there's one off the five that's a par three. There's one down in Torrance that's an eight, an 18 hole par three. It's like, that's, that's what I, yeah, I'm going in with three clubs, 48 balls, and I'm not looking for any of them. I don't give a shit and I count every fucking stroke. Like if I, if I go to tee off and I miss, I go, they, oh, that's a breakfast ball. No, it isn't. It isn't.

• 46:25Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  It isn't. I was trying to hit the ball and I missed. That fucking counts. Setting the tone. These are going to be honest scores today. Nobody looks at you. They all look down at their silly pants.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  No, it attracts and rewards dishonest people.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  A lot of contractors, real estate agents, lawyers. You're just running into a lot of people.

• 46:50Conan O'Brien?

  You're a happy man now. That's what I like. You know, your anger fuels you.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Dude, I went on a motorcycle ride the other day that was fucking life changing. It was just, it was fun. I was riding.

• 46:58Conan O'Brien?

  Where'd you go?

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I, I went up the canyons in, I think La, La Canyada or something like up that way. And it was my buddy's bike and it was a big bike and I was, you know, those big Harleys with the fucking ferring. So it's like scary, you know, it's like you're on a Clydesdale. And on the way up, I was kind of scary, but on the way back, I kind of got the feel for it and I kind of, you know, did my version of tearing through the canyon. And I, I was like, I was euphoric for like two days doing that. And that's like, just something golf has never done for me. Like I remember a couple of times I've hit good shots and people are going, eh, it's the shot that's going to make you come back. It's like, no.

• 47:30Conan O'Brien?

  It's not.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Do you have nighttime golfing? I would do that. Like those, you know, like those driving range things, those.

• 47:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  With the big net. That looks like fun. You know, there's chicks there, the people drinking and stuff. Yeah, top golf. That looks like, like if I was young, this is like a nightclub with golf. That looks fun. But like to actually just like become a member, have to vote on things, like you join this, this sports HOA.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Okay, uh, we got a dentist here. Uh, seems like a good guy, wants to be a member. Uh, see Conan, you take him out for a round of golf, you feel him out.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Feel if he's, uh, our kind of person that, uh, we want in our little clubhouse here.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  An HOA.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  It really is.

• 48:21Conan O'Brien?

  You know, you talked about one thing, there's so many things you bring up that I relate to, and one is, you don't own a gun, but you like guns. And you bring this up in your special, and I kind of relate, meaning...

• 48:34Speaker 01

  I'm too scatterbrained to own a gun.

• 48:36Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, I don't want a gun in my house, I...

• 48:38Speaker 01

  I'd love to have one.

• 48:39Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, you would? I, I don't want a gun in my house, I don't want a, but, I've, I've kind of always been fascinated by guns and the times that I've been in situations where someone's let me shoot guns, I've...

• 48:49Speaker 01

  It's fun.

• 48:49Conan O'Brien?

  Found it to be very cathartic, it's really interesting to me. I, I like to kind of get the basics down of it, but I don't want to own one.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:57Conan O'Brien?

  I understand that.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  I, because I, I know that I am like, I mean, the joke I do, I, I, you know, I lose my cellphone, like, like, I'll walk into a room to, to get something that I forgot, and then I will leave, and I, and in the process of getting that, I'll have left whatever was in my hand.

• 49:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  And I'll, my passport, I'll get to the airport, fuck, and I gotta go back, like, I am too, um, whatever it is. However, my brain is, like, you have to be on it to own a fucking gun. Especially if you have kids in the house, and like, uh, you know, I, I'm, you know, you kind of gotta know, gotta know where your skillset is, you know? So, like, I learned a lot of shit, like, uh, in like aviation, where of, of not, is flying within your ability. You know what I mean? So you're always looking at the weather and stuff like that, and I just always look at that stuff, you keep the odds in your favor, and, uh, you don't just do something when you're up there because what you're flying can do it. It's like, do you have the ability to do it, is it safe to do it here, or whatever? And, uh, you know, just doing stuff like that, like, I, I just look at like, um, no, I like, I, I go into gun stores all the time.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  I like the old school, like, revolvers, I like those cop shows that I watch, I'm like, oh, that's the Clint Eastwood right there. That's Beretta had that or whatever, you know? Um, and I like the old school like rifles and stuff, but I'm not into like the, uh, I don't know, like the, the, the semi-automatics.

• 50:12Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  What's the one that everybody wants to get? The, uh?

• 50:15Conan O'Brien?

  AK, what is it?

• 50:16Speaker 01

  AR-15.

• 50:18Conan O'Brien?

  AR-15, yeah.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  To me, that's like the electric car of the fucking gun world, you know? But like, if you just have a revolver, that's like driving a stick, you know what I mean? You gotta be good at it. That shit's kinda like, eh, you know, you're just, you're just watching your misses until you hit the fucking person. What?

• 50:34Conan O'Brien?

  It's true, though.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  How many fucking opportunities do you need? Jesus Christ.

• 50:38Conan O'Brien?

  It's like 900, anything is firing 900 rounds a second. You don't have to, there's no skill.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  It's a gunfight meets T-ball.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, no, but that's also like another thing too is, is what I'm trying to do now, like when I'm going out there is I'm trying to more like bring people together, which is a really hard thing to do because everything gets politicized, like fires, viruses. I, I did, uh, I did Kimmel the other night. I deliberately was apolitical, complimented the fire department, Department of Water, and somebody takes a clip and said that I, I, you know, Bill sides with Gavin Newsom. It's like, I couldn't pick that guy out of a fucking lineup. I've seen him after games when they cut to KTLA and they show him for a second, salt and pepper hair, sort of.

• 51:21Conan O'Brien?

  Sure, he's a game show host, yeah.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a vague understanding of who that guy is, but like, uh, I didn't know what party he was in. I don't watch any of that shit. I don't watch any of it.

• 51:30Conan O'Brien?

  You don't watch news? You, you're not a news junkie.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  There is no news.

• 51:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  There is no news. It's just all people's fucking opinions. And then politicians are grossly underpaid. So they let you vote, so you get to choose who goes, oh, my guy won or my guy lost or whatever, and then they go in there, and then the rest of the time, you don't get to like vote on what they're voting. They vote on it and the, the people that own them, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're doing, they're working for them. And all of those guys, like, you know, they're all worth like 40, 60, 80, 100 million dollars, making like six figures a year. How do you do that legally? How do you, Conan?

• 52:04Conan O'Brien?

  I don't have the answer.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  I know, you don't. And everybody, but the geniuses, they got everybody, like, they divide, divide, divide. Every fucking time. CNN does it, Fox News does it. And I, I find these people that, who watch that shit. It's, it's like people who come out of prison who are institutionalized, you know, and they can't fucking live unless they're inside. You watch that 24-hour news enough, you know? And you follow, you know, you start thinking paranoid thoughts and you follow those paranoid thoughts onto the internet. There's gonna be a website that agrees with whatever fucked up thought you have.

• 52:33Conan O'Brien?

  Sure, yeah.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  And then validates, and then you just go like cra- like, my last time I did, uh, I, I, I did Kimmel. Somebody wrote to me and was like, dead certain that Jimmy Kimmel was a CIA operative.

• 52:45Conan O'Brien?

  Well, he may be, actually.

• 52:48Speaker 06

  Oh my god.

• 52:48Conan O'Brien?

  I, I don't, I don't, I mean, I don't like to add fuel to the fire, but...

• 52:52Speaker 06

  Oh, okay.

• 52:53Conan O'Brien?

  I was, I was with him in the CIA for a while. It was me.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Now, what did you do, what did you do to get kicked out? That the CIA disowned you?

• 53:01Conan O'Brien?

  They said, "We don't, we don't want a hairless ostrich."

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Featherless.

• 53:05Speaker 06

  Featherless.

• 53:06Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, okay, featherless. Uh, no, uh, it was me, it was Fallon. Uh, there was a bunch of us that were in heavy CIA training.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  There were.

• 53:14Conan O'Brien?

  I was asked to leave. Fallon kept singing, they asked him to leave.

• 53:29Conan O'Brien?

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

• 53:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:34Conan O'Brien?

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

• 53:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:42Conan 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.

• 54:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:05Conan 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.

• 54:13Speaker 06

  They are.

• 54:14Conan O'Brien?

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

• 54:20Speaker 06

  What?

• 54:20Conan 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. Who do you shop for first on the holidays, Sona? Was it, do you shop for the kids or do you shop for Tac?

• 54:47Speaker 03

  My kids.

• 54:48Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 54:49Speaker 03

  Or Oki.

• 54:49Conan O'Brien?

  You gotta get them your stuff.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  Or my dog.

• 54:50Conan 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?

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:00Conan O'Brien?

  And you see pumpkins around, people buying turkeys? A little early to buy a turkey.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:05Conan O'Brien?

  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 a head start on holiday gifting with Amazon's low prices. Shop now at amazon.com/holiday. 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.

• 55:47Conan O'Brien?

  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. BetterHelp is now in network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members.

• 56:31Conan O'Brien?

  And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/conan. That's better H E L P dot com slash Conan.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  I was into conspiracy theory, but then like, once you're actually in the thing that people are conspiring about and you realize how ridiculous their theories are, because you actually have a little bit of information, it's like, oh my god, like, that's me. That's how I was. I, I, I used to think all of this shit and I was putting things together and I forgot that I, I didn't know any of these people. I was a zillion miles away or whatever, but uh.

• 57:10Conan O'Brien?

  My least favorite thing in this era we're in is everyone's certain. Your, every, is certainty and I like, whatever happened to uncertainty? Whatever happened to, I like comedy where I admit, I don't know. I don't know what the answers are.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:24Conan O'Brien?

  And uh, I'm gonna think of some stuff that I, is amusing to me and share it with you and hope that you find it funny. But I see it a lot in comedy now. There's a lot of certainty and there's, and, and in politics, everyone's absolutely 100% certain about everything. And it's, it's, uh, that's the thing I.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  I've been guilty, I was guilty of that like early, or I like to think earlier in my career, I was doing, I was doing this and then, you know, now I'm trying to do more of, of that. So I always try to like, uh, always just let people know that I don't watch the news and I don't read and this is just what I feel.

• 57:58Conan O'Brien?

  It comes across that you don't have to do it. It's very clear.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Okay, good. No, that's good, because I don't want, I don't want the responsibility of that, like, uh, you know.

• 58:06Conan O'Brien?

  Can, can you read? Are you able to read?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 58:12Conan O'Brien?

  They said, you're acting it sound like it was a decision that you made.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  No, it depends on like, you know, when I was really fucked up, like really fucked up and didn't know I was fucked up, it would take me 20 minutes to read one page.

• 58:23Conan O'Brien?

  Wow.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Because every word or sentence would remind me of something like, my, my brain was like on spin cycle and it took a long time to, to understand that.

• 58:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  I just thought I was dumb, because that's what they said when you, you know, there wasn't like all of these diagnoses, you were just an idiot. And uh, so that's what I thought. I said, oh, is this taking so long because I'm dumb? And then after I said, oh no, I think I might be a little traumatized. I don't, or I don't know what the fuck it is, but I also knew enough not to take any drugs because of it. It's like, oh, you know, I can kind of like try to figure this out and get myself.

• 58:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  It's like all these idiots taking Ozempic. It's like, do you really think after all that cake you ate, that all you have to do is shoot this thing into your fucking leg? And then you're gonna be skinny, like. Okay, not to do a pun here, but you can't have your cake and eat it. Like, there's gonna be an unbelievable disease on the other side of that. You don't just get to melt the pounds away and... There you go. That was weird. And then I just did this.

• 59:21Conan O'Brien?

  You too.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Somebody was trying to claim that these sugar companies are now breaking down what's an Ozempic, and they're putting a chemical in their candy that's gonna override the Ozempic. And it's just like, so my body's basically a battlefield. Like, I'm not even a person at this point. Well, that's my thing, why I don't watch the news of politics, cuz nobody's talking about... Nobody's talking about that shit. Or you watch like a fucking baseball game, and everybody's holding up a sign of somebody they know that beat or died of cancer, and nobody's saying why. Or asking why do all the... They never did that. People used to smoke at the fucking game. And you knew less people that died of cancer. Like, I want people to start holding up signs like, you know, uh, "Thank you, Roundup." And you watch how quickly MLB will cut away from that.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Cuz they make... They're in business with those guys.

• 1:00:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Ah, here I go, now I'm going on the internet.

• 1:00:10Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's okay, that's okay. So you're positing that there's a lot of carcinogens out there, and no one's talking about it?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  No, I just wish that regular people, which is most of us, would just stop yelling at each other. Stop letting these fucking idiots get you stirred up. Stop arguing with bots. Like, no matter what the fuck is on there. Like, it'd be, you know, like, the LA fires or something. All you gotta do is, "Ah, cuz of Biden, uh, cuz of Trump, uh, Kamala." That's all you gotta do. And then all of these fucking people just jump on the hook.

• 1:00:40Conan O'Brien?

  And it's a fire. It's a... It used to be something you didn't argue about. There's a bad fire.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  I know, just watch Chinatown, and just realize that this place shouldn't be here.

• 1:00:48Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  We've all known this.

• 1:00:52Conan O'Brien?

  It's a desert.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  There has never...

• 1:00:54Conan O'Brien?

  Ship water in, yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  I can't believe I live in a desert, and there's no water in the hydrants.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  There's some in your ice bath.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  People, your lawn is all green this did like, we were, we're living like idiots out here. We know that we're, we're living on like, like this, we're living on the moon and, and it, it looks like we're living in New Hampshire. Like that's, that's eventually that that's gonna come around, you know, and every year we have a drought and they tell you not to take as long a shower and blah, blah, blah, and we all fucking blow it up. We're, I think we're all responsible for that. I don't think you just blame it on like a political party and, uh, I, and I don't have a solution for that, but I don't think the solution is to sit there and blame people and try to, you know, happen during your watch, Conan. This is on you. The St. Francis Dam disaster is on you. By the way, they found out years later that they, they built that dam into a prehistoric,

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  uh, uh, mudslide and they didn't have the technology and that guy carried the guilt of that. When the St. Francis Dam collapsed out here and like a 30-foot wall of water went to the, through the valley, they found people's bodies down in like fucking Mexico and this guy carried that. Again, he can't get through this without laughing. That is so Boston. I just, they found bodies in Mexico. I mean, I just can't imagine, you're in your log cabin or whatever, Jimmy crack corn and I don't care. All of a sudden this fucking wall of water. And then if there is a God, you wake up talking to him, still holding your bat, like spitting out fish, what the fuck happened? Spitting out fish. Like a cartoon. I, I know. I know like a cartoon.

• 1:02:28Speaker 06

  Oh my god.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  I can't believe, you're the guy who built that shit and you're like, what happened?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  He probably heard it. He probably heard it go through the, the sound of it. What is that? What is that? That's the shit you built, you fucking asshole? What made you think of the St. Francis Dam? Look that up. When did that happen? Where did, where did this come? This is even better. It gets even better. After the dam collapses, some fucking asshole wanted to climb up it to do like the original selfie or whatever. He climbed up on top and he fell off and died.

• 1:03:08Conan O'Brien?

  It was built between 1924 and 1926.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Uh huh. And when did it collapse? 1927.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  The dam failed in 1928.

• 1:03:16Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my god. So we're sitting here talking about current events and you just go right to the St. Francis dam collapse in 1928. Cause I know you like old timey shit. I do. You like Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. I've been to his house. He has the library of a 90 year old. The thing was missing, he should have agreed to me with a pipe. I have a pretty good library. He does, they're all leather bound. Oh, come on.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  They're not all leather bound.

• 1:03:45Conan O'Brien?

  Oh yeah, no, he was. You know what I should have in my house?

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  He was totally intimidating. He was going, I've read all of these.

• 1:03:50Conan O'Brien?

  I did not.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  And he goes, and all this information is in here.

• 1:03:55Conan O'Brien?

  It's all in my mind.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  And you, and you will all sit here and listen to it.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Oh my god, it was the longest night of my life.

• 1:04:03Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  I get it, Conan, you've read about the Third Reich. Jesus Christ.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Dennis Miller would have been like, take it easy.

• 1:04:17Conan O'Brien?

  Take it easy, cha cha.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jesus. I would love to see the two of you guys, two big brains going back and forth.

• 1:04:22Conan O'Brien?

  One of my old girlfriends took a photo of me and it's like on this beautiful beach, like 1994, when I took like my first vacation ever and I'm on the beautiful beach in the Caribbean and I'm sitting there and I'm reading William Shire's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It's like a telephone book with a swastika on the cover. And I'm completely in shade because God forbid.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  What country were you in?

• 1:04:45Conan O'Brien?

  No, I was in the Caribbean somewhere. And so God forbid I'm, I get any sunlight at all and I'm wearing, you know, Rose Kennedy's sun hat underneath an umbrella and I'm reading this giant morality tale about the rise and fall of the Third Reich in tiny print.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  You know, I went to Prague and I went to that church where those guys holed up who shot that SS guy.

• 1:05:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  And they stayed there for like fucking, I don't know how many days, just fighting these guys off. They tried to flood it and drown, they still got the bullet holes in there.

• 1:05:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  So it's unreal. Like, like World War II is just like this thing, cause it wasn't here. When you go over there, it's just, and they still got the, like, if you go into like Berlin.

• 1:05:22Conan O'Brien?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  And what, the few structures that are left, you're like, oh yeah, this really fucking happened. You know, you go, you go to like countries that they bombed. And they just have the ugliest buildings because after the war, they were just leveled and their economy was done. So they just had to like, just build these things really quickly.

• 1:05:38Conan O'Brien?

  I was doing my travel show with my team and we checked into this town in Lince, named Lince, and we're walking around and I said, every building here looks like it was built starting in 1950. Man, they, for whatever reason, they bombed the shit out of the place. And so I, I got on my phone, looked up Lince, like what happened in Lince. And Lince is the, uh, it wasn't his birthplace, but it was the town where Hitler grew up. The Allies knew that. It was also, they, I think it was in armaments, they were, they built armaments there. And so they, they bombed the shit out of it. And you can see that every single building, and I've seen this in Cologne too, where the only thing they didn't hit was the cathedral.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Conan O'Brien?

  The cathedral, uh, and I've talked to people there and they've said, people who think, you know, war, who romanticize war need to come to these places.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it's brutal.

• 1:06:29Conan O'Brien?

  Cause every single, every single building was demolished, everything.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  There's in, uh, what do they call it, Czechia, whatever they're calling it now. Uh, there's a town where they, they had, I haven't gone, I would never, it's just too sad to go to. But like, when they killed that SS guy, uh, for some reason, they, they, I don't, I forget the story of.

• 1:06:47Conan O'Brien?

  They assassinated him. The resistance assassinated him.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  So they found out whatever town, some of those guys, they thought they were from, and they fucking killed everybody in that town.

• 1:06:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  So they have like this, this, you know, these silhouettes of like, you know, men, women, children. It's just fucking, it's fucking brutal. It's brutal. And then what's funny is when you go.

• 1:07:06Conan O'Brien?

  What's funny? This is unbelievable. Go, go.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what's funny is you go to Stockholm, Sweden, okay? And it, it looks like you're in the Keebler Els, like home city.

• 1:07:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  And you're like, well, hmm, why did this one survive? And you found out they remained neutral.

• 1:07:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they, they let the Nazis, they looked the other way as they used their trains to go into, uh, Norway. And then that whole fucking thing was wild, cause I went over there and they were talking about how, you know, Norway had fought for, uh, to get the bottom third of their country liberated from Sweden.

• 1:07:37Conan O'Brien?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  And they had just gotten it back. And then during World War Two, I don't know if this was some like, you know, petty shit, they let the Nazis go in there and, you know, fuck them all up. So then Norway's economy was flattened and Sweden, just because they were still standing, became this economic power. So Norway was so desperate, they tried to sell the bottom of the third of their company, country back again. And Sweden's like, yeah, now we don't want.

• 1:07:59Conan O'Brien?

  Jesus.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  And then they found oil there. And then the Swedes go, now we go over there and do jobs that they don't want to do.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  But everybody has like a sense of humor about it now because no one was alive when all of that shit happened. You know what I mean?

• 1:08:14Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Kind of, but it was, uh, yeah, it's pretty fucking, uh, it's pretty wild.

• 1:08:19Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I knew this is where the podcast was gonna go. At the very beginning, I said, I'm gonna get us to, uh, the devastation in World War II.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Hitler was into architecture though. That's why he left like Paris and Prague alone. He just like, they're too beautiful to destroy. That's just such a funny, like wrinkle in his personality. Like, cause he's murdering 6 million people. Ooh, is that Art Deco?

• 1:08:43Conan O'Brien?

  He did at the end want them to burn Paris. And he, and one general was like-

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Cause he couldn't have it. He was like a fucking jilted lover.

• 1:08:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly. So at the very end, he wanted to, you know, I'm just, I'm tired of you letting Hitler slide.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Bill Burr. One of my favorite Norm jokes of all time.

• 1:09:02Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  He was on Letterman, he was talking about Hitler and he goes, he's like, you know, uh, he goes, the more I read about this guy, the less I like him.

• 1:09:15Conan O'Brien?

  God bless you, Norm.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Totally presented it like he was the only guy who would ever run up.

• 1:09:20Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know if you ever heard about one of the worst people of the last century, but, uh-

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  I'm, uh, I'm getting into it.

• 1:09:26Conan O'Brien?

  Listen, I want to make sure we get the word out on your special. It's out right now. And, uh, it is called?

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Uh, Drop Dead Years.

• 1:09:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  And it's on Hulu, it's streaming on Hulu and, uh, yeah, I'm very, uh, very proud of it and I'm looking forward to, uh, I guess when this thing airs, when this airs, I'll be, uh, be doing Glenn Gary Glenn Ross on Broadway at the Palace.

• 1:09:46Conan O'Brien?

  That's fantastic.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  If you'd like to come, if I'm allowed to invite a ginger.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  I might have to have, uh, Odenkirk invite you and maybe that, that's, we'll find a loophole.

• 1:09:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. Me and Ed Sheeran will come together with Ron Howard.

• 1:10:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, from the day I met you, I was like, no one's mind works like yours. And it's a beautiful thing to behold.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't know which way that was going. Dan met you. I was like, why did we book this guy? The way your brain works, I'm constantly saving your stories. It's exhausting. You're exhausting, Bill. Well, I, right back at you, man. I always love coming on whatever you're doing and hanging out or whatever there is. It's effortless, man. You're one of the funniest guys I know. And you know that's sincere because I couldn't look at you when I did it.

• 1:10:31Conan O'Brien?

  I know.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Two Irish guys can't look at each other.

• 1:10:33Conan O'Brien?

  We can't look at each other. That's another.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  All right, let me tell you something, you fucking cunt. I love you to death. I wouldn't throw you in shite. For all the fucking shalalies in fucking O'Toole Town.

• 1:10:47Conan O'Brien?

  That's another Norm line. He had a line once where he said, "I went home to Christmas break and..." "At one point, I accidentally made eye contact with my father."

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  And I was like, I know what he's talking about. We all know what he's talking about.

• 1:11:03Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, man, that guy.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  All right, Bill Burr, go in peace to love and serve the Lord or whatever. That's it. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for having me. And yeah, I don't know how to wrap this up. This is my, this is your job. That's it, everybody. We'll be back after the break. We'll be right back. You gotta go buy a mattress. We'll tell you which one to get. Sarah Michelle Gellar when we return. Courtney Thorne Smith when we come back.

• 1:11:28Conan O'Brien?

  I could go back to like way old shows that I did. Say, we got so-and-so next.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:35Conan O'Brien?

  Come on.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. 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.

• 1:11:58Speaker 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 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 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.

• 1:12:46Speaker 07

  Time for a quick break to talk about McDonald's. It's the tangiest time of the year. For a limited time, head to McDonald's and get a McRib sandwich. Make it a meal by adding a medium fries and a soft drink like an ice cold Diet Dr. Pepper. So grab a McRib sandwich and embrace the tang. Save time by ordering ahead on the app. Participate in McDonald's for a limited time. Dr. Pepper is a registered trademark of Dr. Pepper, 7-Up Inc.

• 1:13:11Conan O'Brien?

  Hey there. Conan O'Brien here to tell you how you can get even more from me and many of your other favorite shows. If you want to be the first to hear new episodes ad-free and a whole week early, subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com/podcastplus to start your free trial today. Now, I'm excited to give those of you who want a chance to listen early, a chance to do so, because I know you just can't wait a whole extra week to hear my beautiful, reedy, annoying voice. So go subscribe and be the first to listen right now.