Werner Herzog Returns

Filmmaker Werner Herzog feels elevated, weightless about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Werner sits down with Conan once more to discuss his latest documentary The Future of Truth, finally acquiring a cell phone, how knowing hunger at a young age taught him to reject consumer culture, and a near-death experience involving a tarantula. Later, Sona’s dog Oki makes a welcome visit to the studio. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (669) 587-2847.

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

• 0:03Conan O'Brien?

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• 0:37Speaker 01

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• 1:10Speaker 02

  Hi, my name is Werner Herzog.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  And I feel elevated, I feel weightless about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 1:22Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? You should. That chair you're sitting in actually is attached to a scale.

• 1:28Conan O'Brien?

  You lost most of your body weight as you became my friend.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know, but let's hope so. Let's hope that I'm gonna dwindle down to 20 pounds or something like that, yeah.

• 2:02Conan O'Brien?

  Well, hello there. Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I gave it a little extra today. Well, hello there. Yeah, you did. Uh, Sona of Sessian?

• 2:09Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 2:10Conan O'Brien?

  Hello. Hello. Matt Gourley? Hi. Hi. We've got much to talk about today. What was it?

• 2:21Conan O'Brien?

  You just said, before we got on mic, "Talk about that!" Yeah. And I said, "Sure," but I didn't hear what you said. It was that...

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Sona and I did.

• 2:28Conan O'Brien?

  I have to pretend to be interested in your lives. Here we go, hold on. Hey, this is interesting. I understand that you guys went off on a summer vacation.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  No, not that.

• 2:41Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 2:41Speaker 03

  We did, we did voices for a cartoon.

• 2:44Conan O'Brien?

  I forgot which thing I'm supposed to be interested in.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Oh my god, Conan!

• 2:47Conan O'Brien?

  Hold on, I can do this, I can do this, give me a second. Hey, you guys had an opportunity recently.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Oh my god! Wow!

• 2:56Conan O'Brien?

  That's exciting, I want to hear all about it.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  Are your eyeballs painted on your eyelids and you're sleeping right now?

• 3:03Conan O'Brien?

  I just drew a face on a shovel.

• 3:08Conan O'Brien?

  I left hours ago.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  This is so funny because Sona and I never want to plan what we talk about and he always wants to plan what we talk about and then we finally give him something and he fucking forgets.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Exactly!

• 3:17Conan O'Brien?

  Because it involved your lives and I can't channel the enthusiasm. No, I am, here's what I've heard. All I know is that something was offered to me that I turned it down, of course it never got to me.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:31Conan O'Brien?

  And that you guys took it. So tell me about this adventure you had doing the thing that I said no to.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  We talked so much about what it was and what we did and you only remember it from the angle of how it involves you.

• 3:43Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. My own self-interest is my north star. It's my guiding light. Whenever, if I'm lost in the woods, I'll just remember who I am and that will lead me home. When I hike in the woods, I don't bring a compass, I bring a selfie. A headshot and I just take it out every now and then and it leads me north.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  All of this is true.

• 4:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  I'm lost and I don't know what to do. I can't see the sun, which way's home? Oh wait a minute, I've got a, I've got a headshot from 1998. From NBC.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  Is this you talking?

• 4:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's see here. There it is, what a handsome fella, so young, full of promise. Oh, it's leading me to the future.

• 4:30Conan O'Brien?

  Tell me about this gig. It was a gig that I turned down.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Oh my god. Yeah, well, yeah, do you want to tell it?

• 4:37Speaker 04

  No, you tell it.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  So, uh, we got, we both got an email from a show on Disney called Big City Greens, which is an awesome animated show.

• 4:46Conan O'Brien?

  It's a kid's show.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  It's a kid's show.

• 4:47Conan O'Brien?

  And the thing is, when you have young kids, you, I, trust me, I did this. I went through this phase when my kids were two, three, four, five, that age. I did so many voice-overs for shows that they were really into. But what happened is because it's animation, it takes a while. And then for it to come out.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:06Conan O'Brien?

  And by the time it would come out, I'd go, hey, guys, I just did Gilly Galoo Patrol. And aren't you excited to be like, what are you talking about? Man, they're rolling a joint. What are you talking about? My son shaving in the corner with an electric razor. What? No one watches that anymore, that was last year. So I think four times I said yes to things that by the time it came out, my kids were on to the next show. Hey, guys, I, I taped a Caillou seven years ago, it's finally out. It's the one where Caillou gets a wig. They found the cure for his bone cancer.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 5:45Conan O'Brien?

  I'm sorry, Caillou is a fucked up kid.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 5:48Conan O'Brien?

  Check out Caillou.

• 5:49Speaker 03

  I don't even know what that is.

• 5:51Conan O'Brien?

  Have you seen Caillou?

• 5:52Speaker 04

  I don't know what it is.

• 5:53Conan O'Brien?

  Has anyone here seen Caillou? Someone jump on mic who's seen Caillou, go.

• 5:56Speaker 04

  Yes, Ca- am I on mic?

• 5:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Yes, I've, Caillou's a French, uh, bald guy wearing a yellow shirt, maybe?

• 6:04Conan O'Brien?

  Looks like he's, uh, lacking an immune system. I'm gonna say this with all kindness, and not much happens on Caillou, and he seems rather meek.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 6:14Conan O'Brien?

  That's Caillou.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  So he's just French Charlie Brown?

• 6:16Speaker 03

  Oh, I was gonna say French Arnold.

• 6:18Conan O'Brien?

  No, I think he's French kid who's got an autoimmune disorder. But the point is, um, Caillou is French for please fucking help me.

• 6:33Conan O'Brien?

  There's no protein. There's no protein. My, my body can't process protein.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Can you help me, please? Can you help me? Can you help me, please?

• 6:43Conan O'Brien?

  Anyway, I would do things like that and then it would come out and my kids didn't care anymore. So.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  It does take forever.

• 6:50Conan O'Brien?

  If I had young kids, I would know. What's the show called?

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Big City Greens.

• 6:53Conan O'Brien?

  Big City Greens. I would know about this show, but because my kids are now, uh, you know, older than I am through some, uh, trick of time, um, yeah, I don't know this show.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's great. And when they did send us the email offering it to us, they were like, "We originally offered this to Conan, but he couldn't do it, so now we're coming to you."

• 7:14Conan O'Brien?

  I could have done it. I have plenty of time.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 7:16Speaker 04

  Does it, does it sweeten the case anymore that Tom Hanks has done it?

• 7:19Conan O'Brien?

  Um, yeah, but Tom takes a lot of shit I wouldn't do. I was offered the first Toy Story. I was offered the part of Woody and I turned it down. This was a long time ago and I was just like, meh. Splash, I turned down.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 7:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Forrest Gump, I turned down.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  That makes more sense.

• 7:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Tom mostly has taken.

• 7:39Conan O'Brien?

  They saw me and they said, hey.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  They wrote the script.

• 7:42Conan O'Brien?

  Let's write a.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  They wrote the character for you specifically.

• 7:46Conan O'Brien?

  They saw me running with braces on. And I had a weird buzz cut.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  I did have those braces when I was a kid.

• 7:52Conan O'Brien?

  Did you really?

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Who did?

• 7:53Conan O'Brien?

  No, did you?

• 7:55Speaker 04

  I didn't have braces on my teeth, though.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  I did.

• 7:57Conan O'Brien?

  But wait, why did you have braces on your legs?

• 7:58Speaker 04

  I had, uh, the pigeon toes. I don't know even if that's the right term.

• 8:02Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, they lied to you. That's not what you.

• 8:04Speaker 03

  Your legs is crooked as question marks.

• 8:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  That's what they said in Forrest Gump.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  My dad used to pick me up out of the crib with, by the bar and swing me upside down.

• 8:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Why did you, so, did you have rickets or something?

• 8:15Speaker 04

  No, I just had, I had.

• 8:16Conan O'Brien?

  You had no citrus growing up?

• 8:17Speaker 04

  I had feet that turned inward and now they work too well and I walk like a duck. Like my feet turn out too, too much.

• 8:25Conan O'Brien?

  Jesus, I didn't realize I was working at a freak show. Oh my god. I'm sorry, is that inconsiderate? Well, coming from you, it's quite a compliment. Oh, that's nice. Sorry, I didn't realize 6'4", 190 pounds of muscle is a freak show. I think that's the technical term for Adonis.

• 8:44Conan O'Brien?

  Let's move on. So.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  We recorded these characters for Big City Greens, and you're right, it's not gonna come out for like, at least, I think, a year and a half.

• 8:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. That long?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Like a while.

• 8:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, she said 2027, so we can revisit this.

• 8:58Conan O'Brien?

  You're gonna be sending this to your kids in law school. You're gonna be, you're gonna be saying, hey, I'm sending you something. In what used to be FedEx, is now called Glitglorp.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Oh, you think the boys are going to law school.

• 9:08Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I think they're gonna have to.

• 9:16Conan O'Brien?

  No one, a lawyer will take it. We gotta go to law school ourselves. Right, Mikey? Right, Charlie?

• 9:26Conan O'Brien?

  Who says we ain't smart? All right, here we go. I love your boys, you know that.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  I know, I love them too. I'm the one who brought it up, so that's on me.

• 9:34Conan O'Brien?

  My guest today is a legendary filmmaker who's made over 70 films, including Grizzly Man and Fitzcarraldo. He now has a new book titled The Future of Truth. I am thrilled, I'm in awe of this gentleman.

• 9:52Conan O'Brien?

  Werner Herzog, welcome.

• 9:58Conan O'Brien?

  I want to thank you for being here. When I say that, this is my second take. As a director, how do you respond when an actor demands multiple takes?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't care, it's movies. And actually, I do not shoot many takes, even though some of it is very, very complex. I just finished a feature film with the two Mara sisters, Kate Mara and Rooney Mara.

• 10:24Conan O'Brien?

  They're fantastic, yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  They're fantastic, I mean, it's something you've never seen ever before or after. They speak in unison, move in unison, and it is extremely high-precision to speak in unison, have the same emotion in unison. And yet, I didn't have more than two, three, maximum maybe four takes.

• 10:47Conan O'Brien?

  Incredible.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Last time you were here, you were saying you were gonna, you started production on this film.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it has been dormant for a long, long time. And it's, it's wonderful that I finally did it. And it's also related to writing, to my writing. I, I wrote my memoirs. Every, every man for himself and God against all. And there's a chapter.

• 11:12Conan O'Brien?

  I like those odds.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Towards the end of the book, there's a chapter about unfinished business. And I speak about unfinished business, a story that I carried in me that I've in partially encountered myself with two twin sisters who spoke in unison. And these sisters, they not only speak in unison, they move in unison in the choreography. They fall in love with the same man, they have the same dreams. And they make the same Freudian slip of tongue at the same moment. So the film is called after one of these slips of tongue, bucking faster.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  In, in court.

• 11:58Conan O'Brien?

  You bucking faster.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Faster, yes.

• 12:00Conan O'Brien?

  I'm gonna remember that. I wanna use that. Eduardo, you bucking faster.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  And, and the bucking faster, by the way, is Orlando Bloom, who is absolutely wonderful.

• 12:11Conan O'Brien?

  Wow.

• 12:11Speaker 02

  And they had fallen in love with him and after they become so insistent, he goes, has to go to court for a restraining order. And the judge allows something that is completely unprecedented in common law in England or Ireland, where I actually shot it, to have two persons testify at the same time.

• 12:33Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, wow.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  In the same witness stand.

• 12:36Conan O'Brien?

  Both sisters in the witness box.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  And they speak in unison and they shout across, they get completely excited and panicky and jabbing with their fingers at the plaintiff.

• 12:50Conan O'Brien?

  Orlando Bloom, yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Orlando Bloom, and they shout in unison, he's lying. Don't you hear that he's lying? He's lying under oath. The bucking faster is lying.

• 13:02Conan O'Brien?

  And they both make the same slip.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Same slip of tongue, yeah.

• 13:05Conan O'Brien?

  When is this gonna be out? Can you screen it for us right now in this booth? Or at least act it out?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  I could, I could tell you the story, act it out.

• 13:15Conan O'Brien?

  You just did part of it, it was great.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  No, but, but it's still not finished.

• 13:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  But I have another film that is finished. It's called Ghost Elephants. And Ghost Elephants are shot in Africa and part in the United States, in the, at the Smithsonian, and in some scientific labs. And this will be shown in Venice Film Festival, end of August.

• 13:41Conan O'Brien?

  Incredible.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  There's a world premiere there in Telluride.

• 13:45Conan O'Brien?

  I just read your latest book. This is a testament to your productivity, which is off the charts. You've written a book called The Future of Truth, which is a bunch of just fascinating essays about what is the nature of truth and, and where are we headed? And, and in this post, you know, strange information age that we live in. But I noticed that at the very end of the book, I'm just looking at the dust jacket as if I didn't, you know, I don't need to read your bio, but it said something that struck me, which is you've done over 70 documentaries and feature films.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  It's probably more than 80 by now.

• 14:21Conan O'Brien?

  Since we've been in this room.

• 14:25Conan O'Brien?

  You ran out and directed seven movies while we were talking. We're in one of them. Yeah, exactly. But, okay, over 80, I'm gonna go with over 80. You should talk to your publisher. I, I think one of the reasons that I get nourishment from being around you is that you are such an inquisitive person in your books and in your writings. You can't mention an obscure tribe or place on earth that you haven't been to. You'll say, and I've been there, by the way. I was there to shoot this film, I was there to do this project. So before this is over, I'd like to have your frequent flyer miles, if I could. Because you're everywhere. I was fascinated to learn that you don't engage in social media, you don't have a

• 15:07Conan O'Brien?

  cellphone, and I think you read, lead a richer life than most people I've encountered, if not everybody.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Well, it's hard to compare each one of us as the privilege of living, to live your life, to live your life, to live your life. Um, we are here only once. So we better do something decent, do something meaningful. Whatever it is at the end of the day doesn't, doesn't really matter. But I have lived with a great intensity, with great, how shall I say, also great dangers, great, great challenges, and it has been wonderful so far. I can't complain.

• 15:50Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know how you survive without a cell phone in the modern era.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Easily, easily. I enjoy it. I do read. But in fact, I had to get myself a cell phone. Technically, I have one now. Because what happened in Dublin, I was filming at the train station, parked my car at the adjacent train station building. And I couldn't get out of it because it would open only with an application on a cell phone.

• 16:23Conan O'Brien?

  Apps, yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Yes, you could not pay cash. You could not pay with a credit card. You had to download an app of this parking lot. And then because it would register your license plate, the place where you parked in the duration of your time in parking. So I couldn't get out of it.

• 16:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  And I was stuck. And for things like that, I do have a cell phone.

• 16:49Conan O'Brien?

  I, I will tell you something.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  But it's always switched off, sorry.

• 16:53Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, I, there's a sign of our modern times is we have in my home two young kittens. My wife and I went out and we had heard that, oh, you can get a cat litter box that is self-cleaning. So we got it and we unpack it and we, it got very good reviews. We put it in the room with our two kittens. And it said to operate this, you need an app on your phone that you need to download. So there's an app on our phone.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  For cat.

• 17:18Conan O'Brien?

  To, for cat litter. A cat litter box. And it tells us when the cats went to the bathroom. Which of the two cats went? Because it knows the two of them separately by their, I guess, weight differential. What they did in there. What? Yes. What they ate. Yeah, what they ate. It analyzes the feces. It tells you what they ate. And then I think it sends the feces back in time. It's insane. And I now have a new rule, which is I will not. I don't want to buy a product that requires me to have an app. I think that's a crime. Yeah. I think it should be a federal crime to demand that, oh, I just. This is really nice. I bought these socks. You need to download the app. It tells you if it's on the right foot or the left foot. It tells you what your temperature of your body is.

• 18:02Conan O'Brien?

  It gives you alerts about how the sock is feeling. It's insane.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  And too much disinformation comes in through it. And people get addicted and they cannot take their eyes off and keep scrolling, scrolling. And of course, everything, everything that comes in via your cellphone or your laptop, emails or whatever, you have to distrust. You have to doubt. Every single mail asking you for, let's say, your.

• 18:33Conan O'Brien?

  Your information, yeah.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Your information for making a money transfer is probably something fraudulent going on. Every mail that you receive, or let's say, young girls receive mails from a young, handsome, young man, maybe behind it is a predator.

• 18:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Who is 60, pretending to be a 17 year old kid.

• 18:58Conan O'Brien?

  You're looking at me. That was an innocent. That was an innocent thing I was doing. Well, this gets us to this book, which I very much enjoyed. It's called The Future of Truth. Again, I don't know how you're able to make over 80 documentaries, films, constantly travel the globe and generate. I think you've generated two books since this new book, which will be coming out soon. But you're talking about truth. What is truth? What are we talking about when we talk about truth? And how unattainable it is. And at the same time, you make the point that it's the absolute truth of of any issue is impossible to determine, but we must strive for it. The striving is the important part.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  Well, nobody knows what truth is. We do not know. And there was a survey among philosophers, two thousand or so of them, and scientists, mathematicians, and trying to get a definition of truth. Nobody could come up with it. There's no way. There are different schools of thinking, schools that link truth very much with reality and facts. But the question immediately would arise, what is reality? Am I real? Am I just a rumor sitting here? Am I an imposter to try to persuade you it's me?

• 20:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  However, it's somehow innate. It's inborn in us that some sort of search for truth that makes us distinct from the from the chaos in the field. And in all my work, whoever is an artist, a filmmaker, is always confronted with a question of truth. It's something very, very deeply inherent in us. And I always have struggled with it, always have tried to define it and find the deeper stratum of truth in filmmaking, in writing. And it makes it meaningful what I do. And yet I do not claim that I'm in possession of the truth.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  However, I have found ways to approximate what we think may be truth. That's something deeply known in us. Because I'm sometimes changing facts, I modify facts, but not for the sake of misleading you or cheating you. I do it for the sake of arriving at the deeper stratum of truth. And I can simply explain it with Michelangelo who built, who did the sculpture of the Pietà in St. Peter's, the Virgin Mary with her son taken from the cross in her lap.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  When you look at the son, he's a thirty-three-year-old man, tormented, and the mother is only fifteen or maybe seventeen. So my question now comes, did Michelangelo try to cheat us or give us fake news?

• 21:54Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Of course he didn't. He wanted to, by modifying facts, got us into a deeper insight into the very nature of Jesus Christ, the Man of Sorrows, and into his mother, the Virgin. So that's the way I see it.

• 22:12Conan O'Brien?

  That he could have depicted Mary being twenty, thirty, forty years older in that moment.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Sure, yes.

• 22:21Conan O'Brien?

  And that might have lined up more with chronologically what's happening in that moment, but it would have not arrived, it would not have had the emotional impact, which is truthful, had he not altered their ages.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. And of course, would he have shown the Virgin Mary as, let's say, a fifty-five-year-old woman?

• 22:43Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  He would have created what I call the accountant's truth.

• 22:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  There's such a thing like fact-based accountant's truth, which is a term that, again, is not completely applicable to these things. But I do believe that he showed us something very, very deep in the emotional context.

• 23:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  It's always something that is among all the crazy facts and implausible things. Emotions are always, strangely enough, are always truthful.

• 23:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  And I'm describing a case, I made a film called Famili Romance LLC.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  In Japan, there's this company that, an agency that rents out friends or family members.

• 23:37Conan O'Brien?

  I am familiar with this because I've done it. I've done it. In Japan, you can rent, it's to deal with the problem of loneliness. And you talk about this in the book.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:48Conan O'Brien?

  You can rent a family.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Exactly, and the family, the family is fake, but the emotions are truthful. And that's, that's a significant thing. Or for example, you have an opera, which I describe in the book. And opera stories are sometimes completely incredible and strange and wild and and completely exaggerated out of context of any credibility and plausibility. And yet with the power of music, the emotions of the audience, the emotions that we feel are completely truthful.

• 24:35Conan 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?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  My kids.

• 24:40Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, you gotta get them your stuff.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  Or my dog.

• 24:43Conan 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?

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:53Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:29Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, I want to try something different.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  What?

• 25:31Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Ooh!

• 25:35Conan O'Brien?

  Every morning.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 25:37Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:39Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:43Speaker 03

  Oh, that's good.

• 25:44Conan O'Brien?

  See what I did?

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:45Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:49Conan O'Brien?

  They're America's best network.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 25:51Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Oh, that's weird.

• 25:58Conan 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

• 26:08Speaker 03

  You travel a lot.

• 26:08Conan O'Brien?

  travel show that I do.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:10Conan 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.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  That doesn't seem like a good idea.

• 26:21Conan O'Brien?

  I think it's a great idea.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 26:23Conan O'Brien?

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

• 26:28Speaker 03

  My god!

• 26:29Conan O'Brien?

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

• 26:33Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 26:33Conan O'Brien?

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

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 27:02Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Are you gonna do a bit?

• 27:08Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:10Speaker 03

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

• 27:14Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:23Speaker 03

  What?

• 27:24Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:27Speaker 03

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

• 27:29Conan O'Brien?

  No, a co- coincidence.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Oh, no!

• 27:33Conan O'Brien?

  That's why I get the big money.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  I gotta go.

• 27:35Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:55Speaker 06

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

• 28:05Conan O'Brien?

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

• 28:07Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 28:08Conan O'Brien?

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

• 28:10Speaker 06

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

• 28:12Conan O'Brien?

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

• 28:35Speaker 06

  Oh, I didn't really ask.

• 28:36Conan O'Brien?

  I just want you to know.

• 28:37Speaker 06

  It's the best way to support the show.

• 28:47Conan O'Brien?

  In the book, you break down the plot of an opera. It's the most insanely implausible. I mean, just breaking down the storylines and how people are posing as other people and fleeing, but then bumping into each other in a cave a thousand miles away, but then marrying each other accidentally, but then having kids who then... I mean, it just... It goes and goes and goes, but you're right when the music is added. Yeah. And there's a power... I mean, how many times have we broken down the lyrics to a rock and roll song that we love, a rock and roll anthem, and you just look at the lyrics and you think, well, this is ridiculous. But if the band is playing it and you're hearing that recording, you think this is an elemental truth in our lives, you know, that...

• 29:31Conan O'Brien?

  That we should have sugar poured on us. And we should all have sugar poured on us.

• 29:36Conan O'Brien?

  That's a rare occasion where I actually read the text and I think the text holds up too.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  And you see, Carmen, it's the opera is a transformation of an entire world into music.

• 29:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  And then you achieve it. And as you mentioned, I mean, the story and the describing La forza del destino, the force of destiny. It starts with a young lover who is actually an Inca prince entering at night through the window of his beloved. And the father has, and Aristocles has just left, and here's some commotion or some noise returns, corners the intruder who wants to, who has drawn his pistol because he thinks he's attacked. But he recognizes the father, throws his pistol away to show that he has no bad intention. The pistol hits the ground, discharges, and

• 30:35Speaker 02

  hits the father through the heart and kills him. So that's only the beginning.

• 30:39Conan O'Brien?

  That's the first action of the play.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  It's just the first.

• 30:43Conan O'Brien?

  And it's the most reasonable thing that happens in the opera.

• 30:48Conan O'Brien?

  It just goes and goes and goes.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  Yes. It gets wilder and wilder and yet, and yet there's a beauty about it, the beauty of, and the joy of, by the way, the joy of stories, the joy of storytelling. When I modify things, of course, I would let the audience know. Either the story is so implausibly it cannot, I did a film in Kuwait when everything was set on fire before the first Kuwait war. All the oil wells were on fire and the commentary at the beginning explains that this was shot on a planet in our solar system. Meaning we as an audience know it cannot have been

• 31:28Speaker 02

  shot on Pluto or on Mars or Jupiter. It must have been filmed here. But the world that you see is not recognizable anymore. There's 60 minutes of images where you cannot recognize our planet anymore.

• 31:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  It's embellishing. It's in a way modifying things in order to enter into a deeper truth into some sort that elevates.

• 31:54Conan O'Brien?

  What I took away from the book was we all do this. It's in us. There's something called an Irish fact, which is when the Irish get going on a story. They they use Irish facts, which are are not. No, this is not factually correct. But when a person such as myself, who's 100% genetically Irish and steeped in whatever that is, good and bad. Is when I'm telling a story, the worst thing that you can do is definitely go, well, no, Conan, stop. Hold on. No, no, no. You spent $18. It was eight. You said 17. It was 18. And this is going out to you, my beloved wife, Liza.

• 32:36Conan O'Brien?

  She will hold me to account on some of the facts sometimes. And I'll look at her like the facts don't matter in this story. I know that I'm switching things out left and right, but it's a really good story. And it is getting to some moment that feels like it's the truth to me.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  More truthful than the sheer facts.

• 32:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  That's the beauty about it. That's the beauty about storytelling, the beauty about invention, the beauty about the invention. Somehow enters enters your heart and enters your dreams, but not your not your books of the accountant.

• 33:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Well, I think that's what you're talking about throughout the book is that emotions get us to a truth. Sometimes that facts cannot deliver.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:26Conan O'Brien?

  And we live in this world right now where people are constantly contesting, this is a fact. No, that's fake news. What's real? What's not real? We have deep fakes. We have AI. We're constantly debating whose reality are we going to use, which is the real reality. But I do think there are moments where everyone can look at something and the emotion they feel about it delivers the real. Truth.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you have to be careful about it because when you look, for example, at Germany in the late twenties, early thirties, and when Hitler came to power, it was this emotional impact.

• 34:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, that's true, yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  So you have to be very, very.

• 34:04Conan O'Brien?

  No, it's not unfailing, but it's, it's.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Just be suspicious, remain suspicious and, and you see, I see today ten year olds who very casually tell me, oh, don't open this here. That's, that's an attempted fishing or what do they call it? And they look at it, yes, and they say, yeah, look at this here and look at that here. Just put it into junk. And they deal with it with great ease.

• 34:30Conan O'Brien?

  They've grown up with it. They, younger people, yeah.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Even the, the generation of, let's say, the twenty, thirty year old who also grew up with it, don't have this kind of ease and nonchalance about separating things and being suspicious. It's a little bit like with prehistoric man. When they were out roaming around and hunting and gathering, they would gather berries and they would gather mushrooms. But I'm sure they were suspicious about things and they would not pick the poisonous mushroom or the poisonous berry. They were, they had a natural, acquired suspicion about things.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  And it was so natural that we can certainly assume that they did not hate nature. They didn't hate nature. They just knew how to navigate. And it's the same thing. You don't have to hate the internet and the cellphone and whatever is coming at you in these new media. You just have to maintain a, a complete level of suspicion. Truth is not like, like a point somewhere far out in the distance, like a light, something translucent, something which is far out there, which you can, which you can never reach. It's more a process of searching for it.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  approximating and having doubts, going uh uh wrong routes and then recalibrating your your way. That's what I have done all my life. And knowing that I will never get at the very, very truth, it doesn't matter.

• 36:15Conan O'Brien?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter the search itself.

• 36:17Conan O'Brien?

  The search is the point.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  The search is the point, uh, not giving up the search. And could I have the book? Because I, the very last chapter.

• 36:25Conan O'Brien?

  I wish this was your book, but you know what? It's not. The publisher sent a uh.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  But I have it.

• 36:32Conan O'Brien?

  You have it. Good. They sent us, I have your copy at home, your paperback, but to have a hardback here on the table, they sent us, I think there's a.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Hardback doesn't.

• 36:41Conan O'Brien?

  Pornography they sent us. Very good, by the way. Fantastic.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Actually, no.

• 36:46Conan O'Brien?

  There's a picture of Fabio here.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  No, that is.

• 36:48Conan O'Brien?

  Is the book.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, the cover.

• 36:50Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, this is the book.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  The cover, the cover is correct. But you see, uh, the, um.

• 36:55Conan O'Brien?

  What did they put here? This is the great degeneration, how institutions decay and economies die.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  No, no, don't, don't worry about these things.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Let them, let them decay. But you see, I, I just recorded it in a, in a, a studio, and it will be out as an audiobook at the same, at the same time, uh, with the printed version. And it has a last chapter, the future of truth. In the future, the chapters are 10 pages, 15 pages or whatever. The very last chapter is only two lines long, the future of truth. And it reads, "Truth has no future, but truth has no past either. But we will not, must not, cannot give up the search for it."

• 37:51Speaker 02

  End of the book.

• 37:52Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, no, it's uh, it's striving is probably what it's ultimately all about. It's interesting because I'm thinking about the way you live your life. We talked earlier about how it must help you that you've kept things simple. You avoid the distractions of social media and a cellphone. You also avoid a lot of the distractions of materialism. You've had, you've had a great success, but you, unlike many famous directors, you're, you're driving a car that you've owned for maybe 12 years.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  The last one seventeen or eighteen years.

• 38:30Conan O'Brien?

  Seventeen or eighteen years, okay. What kind of car is it?

• 38:34Speaker 02

  A simple Ford Explorer.

• 38:37Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, yeah.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  But the most primitive.

• 38:39Conan O'Brien?

  I love that's a great, this is why Ford Explorer is not asking you to do commercials. Because you're like Ford Explorer and then you shrug like, what are you gonna do?

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, okay, let's, let's take the name out of it, let's.

• 38:51Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's okay, that's okay, it's a simple.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  No, no, but I asked for the one with the least amount of digital things in it.

• 39:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, good.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  No, no sort of phone calls that come in or Google whatever maps and routing you and so. And I asked, do you still have a car where I can hand crank my windows? And I said, no, since 12 years, it's, nobody produces it anymore. Then I asked, do you have a car if my electric system somehow fails me? Then I can hand crank the windshield wiper in a thunderstorm? And they just laugh, but they got the point. So I just, I just need four wheels and engine and a steering wheel and.

• 39:44Conan O'Brien?

  Fred Flintstone had it, right? So you also, I don't think you own a lot of clothing or shoes, right? Do you have, how many pairs of shoes?

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Basically one pair, but I do have sandals.

• 40:00Conan O'Brien?

  Someone's hit the big time. Take it easy. You sound like Jesus Christ. I also have sandals. Oh, Jesus, hitting the big time.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  But Conan, you will understand, as you have been in the Austrian mountains not long ago, I do have strong, heavy boots for being in rocky terrain.

• 40:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, good.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  It's not just one pair of shoes, but basically.

• 40:22Conan O'Brien?

  But you keep things very simple.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I don't need.

• 40:26Conan O'Brien?

  Do you have a lot of suits and things like that?

• 40:28Speaker 02

  No, no, a jacket. I put it on for you today.

• 40:32Conan O'Brien?

  This is the jacket that you own? What, are you Johnny Appleseed?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  No, I actually own a jacket that's very Bavarian in style.

• 40:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 02

  And I, yeah, and I actually own a suit. But for, for very formal sort of events where I would dress up to the occasion.

• 40:57Conan O'Brien?

  I, I do understand. I didn't used to understand this, but you know, when Maria Kondo's books came out and she started talking about you need to clean out your closet, you need to, these things weigh on you. That resonated with me, that when I have a lot of stuff,

• 41:16Conan O'Brien?

  it has a psychic weight, which doesn't really make sense, but it feels like it does. And it doesn't mean I'm gonna have less.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, you're not learning from it.

• 41:26Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no.

• 41:27Speaker 03

  You're not adjusting anything.

• 41:27Conan O'Brien?

  I have 15 homes.

• 41:30Conan O'Brien?

  I've never been to 12 of them. But I won't let anyone else stay in them, uh, cause they're mine. No, but it's, uh, I do understand the, the principle of it.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Well, the principle is, uh, is the observation that we are ruining our environment because of two major reasons, underlying reasons. Number one, we are too many for this planet. We are using eight or nine billion, nine thousand million human beings and the, um, the resources of our planet are not sufficient. So we are over. Overdrafting our our account here on this planet. And the second thing is consumerism. There's a great amount of human beings on this planet and growing into consumerism.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  And you see it with emerging countries. They are wildly into consumerisms. And that's why I love, for example, the Amish. The Amish who who do not want to have electricity, do not want to drive cars, they have horse buggies. They do not have telephones, television or anything like that. And let's say if there's a cataclysmic catastrophe, they are the first survivors because they are homestead farmers. And they can provide what they need.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  And Inuit, by the way, would also hunter-gatherers would have a real survival if it comes to a cataclysmic catastrophe, which is not too far fetched to think about it. So and and just in in order to understand what's going on, throwing things away is is not the right thing. It doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel right, Conan, because I grew up as a child of the Second World War. Yeah. I was born in the middle of Second World War. I know what hunger is. I was hungry. Two and a half years of, and that's my strongest memory, being really hungry.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  And I'm, it pains me, it pains me to see how people are throwing forty percent of the food away into the trash. Hmm. Um, it's it's not that I do, I want to be ideological or being the the prophet of anything. It just pains me, pains me and it's not right that we are into this amount of consumerism. And it would be very easy to reduce the amount of things that you are throwing away by simply managing your your fridge better. Mm hmm. I overlook sometimes something and, oh my God, it's gone and it's it's moldy and I throw it away. But it doesn't happen very often.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  And it's simply, simply because my experience in life was different than your experience in life for most of the people that I encounter here. Not that you have to adopt my ways of life, but it's healthy to look a little bit about how we are in a culture of consumerism.

• 44:50Conan O'Brien?

  It has to be a profound influence on you, the way that you, you were born into that cataclysmic event and then experienced hunger, which is the most primal, really, deprivation you can feel. And I, I know, and it's just, I know, I, as one of six kids in a family, I didn't know hunger, but I knew the fear of my brothers taking my food. And so you'll attest to this, Sona, I eat like somebody in a prison yard. I have my arms around my food and I'm here, you know, living in Los Angeles with, you know, everything at my disposal and I still eat my food very quickly and my eyes dart

• 45:34Conan O'Brien?

  around because I think Neil's gonna get it if I'm, if I'm not careful. And so these things stick with you.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, but what sticks more to me is not that I was hungry.

• 45:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  It's remembering my mother, who could not feed us.

• 45:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Three boys and she doesn't have enough food to satisfy the most basic needs and...

• 45:57Conan O'Brien?

  So in a way, you're, you're remembering her pain at not being able to perform...

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Our kids get, get over it easily and it didn't, didn't damage me that I was hungry. It, it made me alert, it made me curious, it made me looking around what is not going right here. My mother, when we were tugging at her skirt and we were kind of wailing and we are hungry and give us something to eat and she's, I remember that moment, she spins around completely collected and calm. She says to us, "Shut up, children, shut up, boys. If I could cut it out of my ribs, I would cut it out of my ribs, but I can't." And she goes on working in whatever she was doing. And it sticks to me to this.

• 46:46Conan O'Brien?

  It's seared into you. Yeah, of course it does. Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  So it's, uh, that's much worse for the parents, for the mother. It's much worse.

• 46:55Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  To, um, uh, being incapable of feeding the children than it's for the children themselves. We can take a lot.

• 47:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I'm thinking about, you know, your book brings up all these questions and there's so much to talk about with, obviously with AI and, and deep fakes and, um, how, talking about the search for truth, but everything can be manipulated now and it's only going to, we're just at the beginning. So I'm curious, are you okay, Werner, with your distinctive voice, your image living on beyond you? And, uh, I mean, it must have, first of all, I'm sure it exists. I'm sure there's a, there, there are Werner AI generated.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And even before AI, I had at least thirty doppelgängers and they speak with my voice. They adopt my accent. I mean, fine, let's accept my accent as it is, but, uh, but they give you advice for difficult situations in your life.

• 47:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  They read books to you. They tell you jokes. They do whatever. So, and I thought, yes, experience of self has changed and of course with the internet in particular. And, um, uh, doppelgängers and, uh, fakes of you are rampant out there. And I'm sure there are fake Conan out there.

• 48:24Conan O'Brien?

  No one wants to do that. Yeah. There's been no takers. They want, they want other Verners. No one wants another Conan. You're making them and everyone's like, how big? I'm trying to sell them. Give them away for free.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  No, I can live with it easily. Let, let them do the battle out there and let them do the dirty fight out. I mean, the doppelgängers.

• 48:43Conan O'Brien?

  But I'm thinking right now, if I, if I could change the directions in my car to being Werner, I would happily do that. I would, I would happily have Werner telling me to take a left on Crenshaw, you know? Uh, I, that would fill me with delight and, um, and, you know, if it enabled you to buy another pair of shoes, then everyone wins.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  I should, I should be actually the voice of, of these systems.

• 49:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  They tell you. Uh, in five hundred feet from now, turn left.

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Or get more philosophical than that. In five hundred feet, you shall cease to exist.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  No, calmly, calmly intimidating, turn left now.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Something like that, yeah.

• 49:34Conan O'Brien?

  Or else, you have arrived, or have you? Do any of us really arrive? But we always have a philosophical question.

• 49:43Speaker 04

  We must drive to arrive.

• 49:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. It's the, it's the journey that's important.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  No, it would be great joy if I, if I would pop up with the voice to give you guidance for turning right or left or going for the next twelve miles straight. So, um, no, uh, self, uh, the experience of self, uh, is, is a massive change. And of course, uh, I, I do not want to, uh, to put it down completely because it has glorious, magnificent possibilities in science, in pharmaceuticals, in transportation, in you just name it. But at the same time, uh, it, uh, has already, it's on route to take over warfare, directing drones and I mean huge swarms of them.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  And it will be overwhelming, the, uh, the face of, uh, of warfare of the future. And of course, uh, um, cheating, pretending, propagandizing, all these things are, are like a nemesis, are like, uh, it's, it's out there and, and we have to be, we have to be alert to it. And, and again, I say, when you're curious and when you're, uh, access different sources, very quickly you would find out this is even invented. I've seen movies, short films, completely created by artificial intelligence.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Story and acting and, and everything, and they look completely dead. They are stories, but they have no soul.

• 51:24Conan O'Brien?

  They don't have the spark, yeah.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  It's not only a spark, it's they are, they're empty and soulless. And you know, it's a most common lowest denominator of what is filling billions and billions of informations on the internet. The common denominator. And nothing beyond this common denominator can be found in, in these fabrications. And you will immediately identify it. You will find it very quickly. And I have no problem that people are using it like school kids, using it as a tool. The same way we used dictionaries or encyclopedias in my time.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Or we would use a calculator for, for calculating multiplication or the square root of something, fine. But you should understand what does it mean a square root of something? What is the mathematical concept behind it? What is the mathematical concept of logarithmic curves and things like that? You have to know that. If you know that, use the calculator. It's fine.

• 52:42Conan O'Brien?

  It's interesting because when I listen to you, when I speak with you, when I read your work, when I see your films, there's a pattern where things can get quite grim. But then you'll say something that makes me very optimistic. Um, I, I find that it's a bit of a, it's a wave, you know, uh, which, which is should be because you can always see both. But I find myself even in this course of this chat we've had, at times feeling like you're telling me we're all in great danger and it's over. Um, but also feeling optimistic at times that if we strive and if we try to see things as they are, uh, or we make multiple attempts to find a real truth, we'll get there somehow.

• 53:25Conan O'Brien?

  So I'm always end up with two ends to the story when I talk to you. A, a bright one and a, and a darker one, which I think is probably okay.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Sure, yes, and I am, I love storytelling and I, I love what I do and, and of course, when I, when I listen to you, yes, you're right, and it continues until this very day. I just made a film called Ghost Elephants, a documentary in Namibia.

• 53:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's okay.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  And what is interesting is that tribal people in the southern part of Africa, Kalahari, Sun, Bushmen, tribesmen, they link the fate of humans to the, to the fate of elephants. If these elephants disappear, human beings also will disappear because they are mutually somehow incorporated in, in each other's. The soul of elephants lives in you and lives in a, in case of these tribal people, lives in our tribal communities.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  And it's beautiful to, to see that and, and it's, it sounds a little bit as if it were a documentary on, on wildlife, but you see elephants only for 20 seconds in the film. Otherwise, you see ghosts, you see the spirits of elephants. And how do you, how do you show the spirit of an elephant? And that's a big question. And, and they show the glory and the magnificence of elephants. And at the same time, as you have suggested, yes, there's, there's this glorious side and the dark side. If we exterminate them, it will probably lead to our own self-destruction.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  And yet, of course, we don't do it completely. We try to protect them, preserve them, study them, keep them alive.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. That's a great way to look at environmentalism, is do it for ourselves, not for...

• 55:30Conan O'Brien?

  Not to be noble, but these creatures need to endure so that we can endure.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Sure, and it's more than just enduring and.

• 55:39Conan O'Brien?

  Thrive.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  Today, as we are around it about and still thriving, I do not want to live in a world without lions, period. I just want to see them around.

• 55:52Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Or without elephants.

• 55:54Conan O'Brien?

  Is there an animal you hate that you're fine if we get rid of it?

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Well, I'm worried about spiders.

• 56:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I just wanted you to admit, so it's okay to kill this. If you're listening, kill a spider.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  And a spider, a tarantula, that didn't sting me or bite me, almost killed me once. I was in the jungle in the Peruvian.

• 56:19Conan O'Brien?

  But not a bite? It had a gun?

• 56:21Speaker 02

  No, no, no. We were desperately trying to get a flight, a single-engine flight, amphibious flight, far out into a small tributary of the Amazon. And I was waking up every night, ah, the plane is there. So it wasn't there, so I went back to sleep. Suddenly, at four in the morning, wake up, wake up, get out, get up, the plane is there. So I put on some clothes, put one shoe on and the other, and there's a sock still in there. And I grab into the shoe and pull it out, and it's a tarantula. I mean, almost hairy, as big as my fist. And I dropped the tarantula, and my heart stopped beating. It literally

• 57:06Speaker 02

  stopped beating. And I knew it. And I thought to myself, dying from a heart attack is ridiculous, not because of a tarantula that has not even bitten you. And I was sitting there, and I was looking at the tarantula, and tried to listen at my heartbeat, which wasn't there anymore. And then after 20 seconds or 30 seconds, all of a sudden, I was back to life. So I don't like spiders.

• 57:45Conan O'Brien?

  Do you have an edit of our, my favorite quote of yours from one of the previous podcasts was you talking about your favorite reality show that intrigued you and it's burned into my brain and I hope to burn it into everyone else's. Give it a roll, Eduardo.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  Here comes Honey Boo Boo.

• 58:01Conan O'Brien?

  That just makes me happy. You enunciating Boo Boo. Gives me so much joy. Do you still watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo or have you moved on to Love Island?

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Now I'm still searching around. Honey Boo Boo, of course, you made something beautiful out of it. I had no idea that it would have such repercussion in your spiritual life.

• 58:26Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, it's huge. It's the only reason I get out of bed in the morning. And when I'm down, I think of you saying Honey Boo Boo and it makes me very happy.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  I had no idea that it was that funny, but I accept it today. I enjoy myself because you made it into such a wild thing.

• 58:47Conan O'Brien?

  Well, a joy to talk to you always, Werner, and I'm in awe of your spirit and your tenacity and your curiosity. These are all great qualities and we can all, I should get a bracelet. What would Werner do? Because I think you have a terrific outlook on life and I'd like to be a little more like Werner Herzog. So Werner, until we meet again, thank you so much for being here and for honoring us with your presence and your insights.

• 59:21Speaker 02

  I enjoy to be with you at this table. Thanks a lot.

• 59:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. And yes, look for, if you want to request that Werner Herzog become a directional vocals on your...

• 59:32Speaker 04

  You can actually do that on the Waze, speaking of app, on the Waze app, you can plug in a few little things. So probably there were enough soundbites from this recording. Turn left and I'm worried about spiders.

• 59:45Conan O'Brien?

  So look for that soon. All right. Thank you, Werner.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 59:55Conan O'Brien?

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

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:59Conan O'Brien?

  You fell for it.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  I fell for a scam.

• 1:00:01Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

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

• 1:00:10Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  [laughing]

• 1:00:14Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:00:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 1:00:32Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

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

• 1:00:35Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  It's so much money.

• 1:00:36Conan O'Brien?

  One accidental click, Sona, can expose your information, putting you at risk of identity theft. Luckily, this is the point. Not that you should start scamming, but that everyone should get LifeLock.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:00:46Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:58Conan O'Brien?

  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. Join now and save up to 30% off your first year. Go to lifelock.com/conan. That's lifelock.com/conan to save 30%. Terms apply.

• 1:01:16Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:01:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Conan O'Brien?

  You know?

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 1:01:26Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:01:30Speaker 03

  That's good.

• 1:01:30Conan O'Brien?

  Did we use a salary guide with you, Sona?

• 1:01:32Speaker 03

  Uh, no, but maybe...

• 1:01:34Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:01:36Speaker 03

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

• 1:01:38Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:02:00Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  Me too.

• 1:02:09Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:02:40Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'd like to discuss, not the elephant in the room, but Sona's dog in the room.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:02:47Conan O'Brien?

  Sona, this is a first. I sat down at the mic, like any professional, ready to go, when in my peripheral vision, I look to my right and I see that Oki, your dog, is with you. Oki has been a fixture for a long time. When did you get Oki?

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  Special girl. Well, we were just talking about this. We got her in September 2018 and this podcast premiered November 2018.

• 1:03:11Conan O'Brien?

  So Oki is pretty much the same, exact same age as the podcast.

• 1:03:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:03:18Conan O'Brien?

  And the same amount of downloads. Yeah.

• 1:03:21Speaker 03

  What do you, do you guys ever think about what your animals sound like?

• 1:03:25Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Mine are like, "Oh, oh, what?" Mine is, "Feed me, fucking feed me, all day long, feed me, feed me."

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  I brought, I'm worried she's a little depressed lately. Cause she's been under our bed a lot. She used to like roam around, but I think she's just not used to the change of scenery. So she's just been in, under the bed a lot.

• 1:03:49Conan O'Brien?

  Have you checked under the bed? There might be like half a ham back there.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  Oh no, the half ham. We left it there, I forgot. No, she's just, I don't know. I just brought her.

• 1:03:57Conan O'Brien?

  Now, Oki, let's talk about Oki. Of course, famously, you brought Oki to a restaurant once when you were gonna meet me because you thought... Well, I'm eating with Conan. They don't allow dogs at the restaurant, but I'll bring Oki because who's gonna say boo to Conan O'Brien? So you used, did you use me?

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  Yes, I did use you. I did. Who was gonna say? I mean, look, it wasn't, it was outdoors. You're making me sound really shitty right now.

• 1:04:25Conan O'Brien?

  You used to do this when you would drive me places. You would go like 110 miles an hour in a residential zone. And your whole attitude was, what are they gonna do if they pull me over? I'm sitting here with the, with the golden child, Conan O'Brien.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  Have you ever, we, you know, we now have to talk about this, but you've been pulled over and they haven't given you a ticket.

• 1:04:42Conan O'Brien?

  You know what they do?

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:04:44Conan O'Brien?

  They pull me over and they say, sir, do you realize? Holy fuck. Are you?

• 1:04:54Conan O'Brien?

  And I go, well, yes, officer, I, I have. I just, so much work, so prolific.

• 1:05:01Conan O'Brien?

  September 13th, 1993.

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 1:05:06Conan O'Brien?

  Every medium you try, a total home run. Officer, please. Officer, do you need a change of pants? I do. And then they always let me wear their cap. They give me candy.

• 1:05:19Speaker 03

  They're gonna shoot their gun, probably?

• 1:05:20Conan O'Brien?

  They let me shoot their gum. They let me shoot their gun. Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's amazing.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you made me sound bad. I did. It was outdoors. We were meeting outdoors at a restaurant. They probably, there weren't any other dogs there, but I don't, I don't think I explicitly asked.

• 1:05:37Conan O'Brien?

  Explicitly said, no dogs.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:05:39Conan O'Brien?

  You walked in, holding your dog, sat down opposite me.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Conan O'Brien?

  A woman at the next table went into anaphylactic shock.

• 1:05:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:05:47Conan O'Brien?

  Cause she was allergic to dogs. She is no longer with us.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  She died?

• 1:05:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Did she?

• 1:05:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Speaker 03

  Oh, but Oki got to sit with us.

• 1:05:57Conan O'Brien?

  I said, we should use a penknife and make a small opening in her trachea so she can breathe. And you said, on it, chief, and stabbed her to death in the throat.

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  I heard about this.

• 1:06:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it was all over the papers, the papers.

• 1:06:09Speaker 04

  And then you let Oki just go feed from everybody's plates.

• 1:06:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and from her wound.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  But they didn't arrest me, cause I was with Conan.

• 1:06:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, they couldn't. They said, you're, you're technically guilty of murder, but. Conan!

• 1:06:25Conan O'Brien?

  You're on the cover of TV Guide three times.

• 1:06:30Conan O'Brien?

  Rolling Stone twice. You were one of Us Magazine's 75 bachelors in 1995 to, quote, "keep an eye on."

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  Is that real?

• 1:06:42Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know. I think that last one's kind of true.

• 1:06:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. Speaking of the early days of this podcast, Oki played kind of a pivotal part because one of the earliest segments we did, and we should recount this story at least in a nutshell, is the text between you and Conan about Oki. Do you remember this?

• 1:06:57Conan O'Brien?

  I don't.

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  The Oki shits?

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  Remember when I text you, I was like, "Oki shit everywhere." And there's throw up, and I gotta stay and clean it up, and then I'll be in soon.

• 1:07:07Conan O'Brien?

  And I read it, which way?

• 1:07:08Speaker 04

  You read it as, "I'm gonna be late. Okay, I shit everywhere."

• 1:07:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yes. Yes. The dog's name is Oki, and this is a blast from the past, but, and what a blast, but you said, "Oki shit everywhere." And I read-

• 1:07:22Speaker 04

  That's so no say.

• 1:07:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, "I'm gonna be late. Okay, I shit everywhere." And I thought, wow, TMI.

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  We were talking about this before. The sentiment and the reading of it is like, "I'm gonna be late." Pause, like, "All right, you got me. I'm late because I shit everywhere."

• 1:07:38Speaker 03

  No one asking me.

• 1:07:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and I just pictured you firing at the walls.

• 1:07:44Conan O'Brien?

  But-

• 1:07:45Speaker 03

  Don't picture it.

• 1:07:46Conan O'Brien?

  But then-

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  Too late. And every listener is now, too.

• 1:07:50Conan O'Brien?

  And then, remember you got that second dog?

• 1:07:52Speaker 03

  Huh?

• 1:07:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, its name is "I Have to Be Honest with You." And you said, "Remember, I got these texts, 'I have to be honest with you I.'" Yeah. It was the name of the dog, was "I Have to Be Honest with You I." Which I thought was, and it was all ran together. "I Have to Be Honest with You I" was the name of the dog, which is an Armenian term, meaning "bright sun come over mountain." And anyway-

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  While shitting.

• 1:08:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And you said, "I Have to Be Honest with You I" "humped the leg of a chair for three hours with my eyes rolled back in my head." And I said, "What?" And you said, "Yeah, I Have to Be Honest with You I" "has an erection that won't go away and has gone for nine hours straight." Remember this?

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  Do you remember your dog, "To Tell the Truth I"?

• 1:08:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Speaker 04

  "To Tell the Truth I licked my own butt for a long time."

• 1:08:42Conan O'Brien?

  And then, remember you got a cat called "Don't Tell Anyone, This is Just Between Us, But I." Remember that?

• 1:08:51Conan O'Brien?

  These are all true stories. If only, did you ever think of Fido or Art or Snoopy? No!

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  Oh, no. Poor Okie. Okie, they're using you for comedy fodder.

• 1:09:04Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? You can tell Okie knows what's happening because Okie has just sunk his head, her chin down onto your leg and is just in a depressive funk.

• 1:09:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Conan O'Brien?

  Mott once again.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:15Conan O'Brien?

  I can't wait to get back under that bed and nibble that half ham.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 1:09:20Conan O'Brien?

  Why do you keep hams under the bed? Is that some sort of?

• 1:09:22Speaker 03

  I love ham.

• 1:09:23Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  Why wouldn't you keep ham under the bed?

• 1:09:29Conan O'Brien?

  So, you're sleeping and you've got your eye mask on?

• 1:09:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Conan O'Brien?

  And you just do a reach under and grab a hunk?

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  Pre bedtime ham hunk.

• 1:09:37Conan O'Brien?

  I love that.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  Is it on the floor, just getting dusted?

• 1:09:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's all covered in...

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  It's collecting a lot of things, yeah. It's seasoned. It's getting seasoning. The dust actually makes it taste a little better. So, you guys should try it. Bed ham.

• 1:09:50Conan O'Brien?

  Bed ham. Well, I enjoyed this segment. I really did.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  I'm glad you did.

• 1:09:54Conan O'Brien?

  And I'm glad you brought... I'm gonna reach over and give Okie...

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  What's the name Okie come from?

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  So, when Tac and I were in Japan, we were in Okinawa for our honeymoon for a chunk of it. And then my friend Nairi posted her picture on Instagram and said that they were looking for a home for her. So, to remember where we were, we called her Okie, which is short for Okinawa.

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  Okay. You had a really nice wedding.

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  We had 550 people at our wedding.

• 1:10:21Conan O'Brien?

  It was great. It was really fun.

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  That's not a wedding. That's a...

• 1:10:24Conan O'Brien?

  Convention. It was a convention.

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wish I knew you back then. I would have invited you. It would have been crazy. People throw money on the floor. You're dancing on money the whole night. Awesome. And then, did you guys hear someone in Glendale stole, like, the money from a wedding?

• 1:10:40Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 1:10:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Conan O'Brien?

  Well, just so everyone knows, Armenian weddings, you throw money in the air.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  Yes. You throw money in the... There's money everywhere.

• 1:10:49Conan O'Brien?

  It's $1 bills.

• 1:10:50Speaker 03

  Well, some of them are like fives.

• 1:10:52Conan O'Brien?

  Not at your wedding.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  How dare you!

• 1:10:54Conan O'Brien?

  Cause I was going, I was looking hard for a fiver. I would take a five, I would have taken a two. They were all singles, I'm sorry. It looked like there was an explosion at the Scores Strip Club.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  But there were a lot of ones. And then, there's no registry usually. They, it's just envelopes of cash. And so you put them in a box and some guy came into a hall in Glendale and then like, stole the whole box of money. It must have been like a hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:11:19Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my god.

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  Crazy. There's video, you see him like sauntering and grab it.

• 1:11:24Conan O'Brien?

  Do we know who he is, has he been caught?

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:11:25Conan O'Brien?

  But they have him on video.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, but it's fresh. It's fresh. It's like, it just happened.

• 1:11:31Conan O'Brien?

  You should have a crime show where nothing's ever solved, but you have that exact optimistic tone. And they never figured it out!

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  Yes!

• 1:11:38Conan O'Brien?

  Never! And they called him the Zodiac. Yeah! And no one figured it out! Anyway, next week, this guy went in the woods and he's just gone. I don't know, did they find him? I don't know! Isn't it great?

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  Yes! That's a great podcast. I'm gonna do it.

• 1:11:54Conan O'Brien?

  Well, listen, I'm gonna wrap this up, cause I think we've gone on for quite a while, but we had some good laughs. Uh, I do love Oki, especially you bought him, I remember, or you had it made, her, I'm sorry, her.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Conan O'Brien?

  You know, different pronouns, I suppose.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  Who knows?

• 1:12:09Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, you bought Oki, uh, a little Slash hat, cause you love Slash. When Guns N' Roses, a top hat.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  She was a Slash for Halloween one year. She had a little leather jacket and then a little-

• 1:12:20Conan O'Brien?

  She's got curly hair?

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, she had, and we, we just got her groomed, but usually she's like fluffy and she was Slash-like. It was awesome.

• 1:12:27Conan O'Brien?

  Very cool.

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Conan O'Brien?

  Alright, well, peace out.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  She's the coolest dog in the world.

• 1:12:30Conan O'Brien?

  Peace out, and, uh-

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  Don't say Tupac.

• 1:12:33Conan O'Brien?

  No, I was gonna say, uh, I was gonna say Slash.

• 1:12:35Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:12:36Conan O'Brien?

  It's very cool.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  You can say it.

• 1:12:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, Sal Hudson, love him.

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Conan O'Brien?

  What a great guy.

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  He's the best.

• 1:12:40Conan O'Brien?

  Good friend to us. We've touched on many subjects, we've roamed, we've come up with some amazing dog names. If you wanna use them, we will lease them to you. Peace out. Sal Hudson. Slash. Tupac.

• 1:12:53Conan O'Brien?

  Last.

• 1:12:55Conan O'Brien?

  And shout out to Sona's other dogs. I swear to God, you can't tell anybody but I.

• 1:13:02Conan O'Brien?

  And this is a complete cone of silence. You can never breathe a word of this, but here goes I.

• 1:13:08Conan O'Brien?

  And you have to swear on your life, your mother's life, and your father's life, that you will never repeat what I'm about to tell you. Aye.

• 1:13:16Conan O'Brien?

  Peace out.

• 1:13:18Speaker 04

  Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sona Movsesian, 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.

• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  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.

• 1:14:28Speaker 04

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

• 1:14:59Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:15:02Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:15:02Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:15:08Speaker 06

  Ooh.

• 1:15:09Conan O'Brien?

  Did you know that, David?

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  No, but I feel like we need it.

• 1:15:11Conan O'Brien?

  Why didn't you know that, David?

• 1:15:12Speaker 06

  I know, you expect me to know everything.

• 1:15:14Conan O'Brien?

  I knew this.

• 1:15:15Speaker 06

  Did you?

• 1:15:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I've tried it, it's really good. And I like that fizzy, fizzy, fizzy when you drop the Alka Seltzer Cold into the water.

• 1:15:21Speaker 06

  You do, yeah.

• 1:15:22Conan O'Brien?

  Alka Seltzer Cold: Fast Dissolves Tablets are designed to deliver cold and flu relief fast. Just drop the two tablets in water and hear those bubbles bursting into action. Ready to work faster than pills. Bubbles faster than pills. Pills take time to dissolve, not bubbles. Next time a cold or flu strikes, quick! Alka Seltzer Cold: Nothing works faster for cold and flu symptom relief. Among oral products, use as directed.