Ken Burns

Documentarian Ken Burns feels hopeful about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Ken sits down with Conan to discuss his latest docuseries The American Revolution, the historical myth of “us vs. them", and how his 1990 series The Civil War brought a recent American folk tune into cultural ubiquity. 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?

  With the US Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card, you earn an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Huh, it's a good deal.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:10Conan O'Brien?

  No quarterly activations, no categories to track, just unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Sona, just the other day, I bought you this antique wig stand.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 0:21Conan O'Brien?

  And I didn't get cash back, and I regret it now.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, that's a very thoughtful gift.

• 0:27Conan O'Brien?

  Do you wear a wig, or is that your hair?

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. It's definitely my hair. And so it's kind of insulting you would buy that gift for me.

• 0:34Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'll just return it anyway, but I do wish I got cash back.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:38Conan O'Brien?

  Visit usbank.com/smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions may apply.

• 0:52Conan O'Brien?

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

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:55Conan O'Brien?

  Just accept the premise and we'll move ahead.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:57Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:03Speaker 01

  A vase.

• 1:04Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:07Speaker 01

  A jacket.

• 1:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, nice jacket. I love a nice jacket.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that jacket. Nice jacket.

• 1:11Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:13Speaker 01

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

• 1:15Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:27Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Hi, my name is Ken Burns and I feel

• 1:57Speaker 02

  hopeful about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 2:00Conan O'Brien?

  Well Ken, you shouldn't be because this is the takedown of Ken Burns.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05Conan O'Brien?

  You have coasted way too long.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Fifty years of coasting.

• 2:08Conan O'Brien?

  Ah, just, "Oh, everybody loves their Ken Burns."

• 2:10Speaker 02

  That's why all the henchmen are here.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, "Get him, boss! Get him, boss!"

• 2:15Conan O'Brien?

  I have with me two people who don't read.

• 2:19Conan O'Brien?

  I'm pretty sure they don't write.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  We read magazines.

• 2:22Conan O'Brien?

  They, uh, yeah, oh, I'm sorry, I forgot about Us Magazine. That does count as my 1990s is showing.

• 2:31Conan O'Brien?

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

• 2:46Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, I can tell that we are gonna be friends. Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, joined by Sona Movsesian.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 2:54Conan O'Brien?

  Matt Gourley is out, he is on paternity leave and we wish him and his lovely family the best. God, I'm smooth. And then David Hopping, joining us. How are you, David?

• 3:05Speaker 02

  I'm good, how are you?

• 3:06Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, Sona, you said that you heard from your father?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:10Conan O'Brien?

  Gil?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Gil.

• 3:11Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, was this yesterday or the other day?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  This was last night, yeah.

• 3:14Conan O'Brien?

  Last night, he called you and he was unhappy. What happened?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  He texted me, he was angry. He saw a clip online and he got angry about something I said. And, you know, my parents are, you know, they're traditional people.

• 3:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  And I am, I'm, I have, I got a mouth and why are you laughing so hard?

• 3:34Conan O'Brien?

  No, but you know what, Sona, you're a modern woman of the world.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:38Conan O'Brien?

  You've been here, you've been there, you've been to Porter Square, you have been, you've seen it all, some say you've done it all, and your father...

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:47Conan O'Brien?

  Was born in a very small village.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yes, he was.

• 3:50Conan O'Brien?

  Where was this?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  This was in, in Turkey, what used to be Armenia, thank you very much. But yeah, he was born in Turkey and he was in a small village, immigrated here. They're traditional people, my parents. And I say a lot of things on this podcast that are not traditional things. And so yesterday he texted me and he's like, I can't believe you talk like that on the, on the podcast. And he said, you, you, you're a mother, you have kids. Like he, he went on for, and I was like, oh my God, my dad's actually upset.

• 4:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  But I couldn't think of which clip he would have been upset about. I say jizz so many times on this podcast.

• 4:28Conan O'Brien?

  You say everything.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I talk about dicks.

• 4:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  I talk about vaginas, I talk about like heated rivalry all the time. I couldn't, I was like, telling Tack, I was like, did I, is there one thing that was egregious?

• 4:39Conan O'Brien?

  Saying to Santa Claus, thanks for the gift. And Santa's like, what? Do you know what I mean? And then he's got to think about the 55 billion gifts he's given out. Right, but you are, yeah, you're the Santa Claus of filth. You're just constantly, it's butts, it's buns, uh, you know, you, you love it. Uh, and so what did you say? Did you defend yourself to your dad?

• 5:04Speaker 01

  No, I was just like, I, I really needed to figure out which thing upset him. So I said, which clip? And then he said, me, I appeared on my friend Rick's podcast.

• 5:15Conan O'Brien?

  I know Rick, yeah.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  You're Rick Glassman. And he, I was on his podcast and he, we released a clip, not even from this one. So I'm like, clearly he never watches this podcast. Cause otherwise he'd be really pissed.

• 5:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  It was that podcast and I, I watched.

• 5:28Conan O'Brien?

  What were you talking about?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  I said, I said the word fuck like twice.

• 5:32Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, wait a minute. But wait a minute. So he can't ever listen to this podcast?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Never.

• 5:38Conan O'Brien?

  Because I saw some of you with Rick and it was very tame compared to what you do every day here.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:45Conan O'Brien?

  Now, let me paint a picture for the people listening. Your father, uh, is, uh, very distinguished, very handsome.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:52Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, an older gentleman.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:53Conan O'Brien?

  He's got a, a big white mustache.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 5:56Conan O'Brien?

  No, does he not?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  I knew you were going to the mustache.

• 5:58Conan O'Brien?

  I know, I'm just saying.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  He's always had a mustache.

• 6:00Conan O'Brien?

  Does he not look like, he looks a lot like the guy who carves Pinocchio, Geppetto. He does. Does he not? Does he bear a resemblance to Geppetto? Just say.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little, he's a little Geppetto-esque.

• 6:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Have you ever noticed that your brother has hinges where his joints should be? Have you ever noticed that? And does your, remember when you were growing up, your brother would say, "I wish I could be a real boy"? Do you remember? Do you remember?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Oh, you're, you're actually asking me?

• 6:28Conan O'Brien?

  I'm saying your father carved your brother.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:32Conan O'Brien?

  That he is, in fact, Geppetto.

• 6:36Conan O'Brien?

  And I do hope that someday Danny becomes a real boy.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  You know what?

• 6:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I'm fine with my, you saying these things, because my dad does not watch this podcast, obviously. Because how can he not be mad about the thousands of things I've said on this podcast?

• 6:48Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, you are, uh, you are just, I'm thinking of like a sprinkler shooting water. You're a sprinkler that just shoots filth, but you get filth on every single part of the lawn. You know, the lawn is, is saturated with filth.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Why are you acting like you're an innocent guy? Which one of us has a voice for their penis? Not me. What's your penis's voice like?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Hey, leave me out of this. Hey, everybody back off.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Cut it out. I was just in here in these briefs minding my own business.

• 7:24Conan O'Brien?

  My penis is always reading a tiny copy of The New Yorker.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Oh, this is great. There's some good cartoons in this one.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  This is, you're, you created this environment.

• 7:37Conan O'Brien?

  He's got little glasses. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that your parents need to accept who you are.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  I know.

• 7:45Conan O'Brien?

  I think that's important.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:47Conan O'Brien?

  They need to see the real you, and I know you get into it with your mom a lot. You guys have your differences, because I think that you were quite, um... I think you were a lot to handle when you were growing up, were you not?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  I was.

• 7:59Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was.

• 8:00Conan O'Brien?

  And how are you and Nadia doing these days?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  We're cool. I love her, and I love my dad.

• 8:05Conan O'Brien?

  Of course you do.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  And I do, there are times when I say things where I think, "Oh, man, their friends will listen to this one day." But then I kind of forget what I say. And also, I mean, my dad, like, he was just like, "Tone it down a little." And I was like, "I don't know how to do that, Pop. I don't know how to do that."

• 8:22Conan O'Brien?

  You can't do that, you know?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  If you say something about, if we have a conversation about dicks and stuff, like, how are we not supposed to talk about dicks?

• 8:29Conan O'Brien?

  I will point out that you're usually the one that brings it up. You know, the topic is not dicks, and then you chime in a little bit.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:36Conan O'Brien?

  And say, "I've seen a dick or two." That's not what happens. You bring, I'm usually talking about Woodrow Wilson. And then you say, "Did he have a cock?" And I'm like, "Well, I guess he did."

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 8:50Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, but you know what I mean? That's usually how it goes. So this is on you, and you'll have to pay for this.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  I like poo poo pee pee humor.

• 8:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, you do.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I, that's my...

• 8:58Conan O'Brien?

  I have to say, I can relate somewhat because, um, my parents, very, very staunch, good, old-school Catholics.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:07Conan O'Brien?

  And they watched every episode of my show, starting in 1993. And what a cavalcade of horrific sights, sounds, and smells.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:19Conan O'Brien?

  And, um, and they were always, they would always just, my, you know, my mother would say, "We do a show with the masturbating bear, and then, you know, a talking whatever."

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Money shot Lincoln?

• 9:30Conan O'Brien?

  Money shot Lincoln, and all this stuff, and my mother would say, "Well, I just thought you looked lovely last night." That tie you were wearing, and she would always go to the thing that she, because, and so she never, not once, said, "Oh, you know, you gotta stop that." Not once.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 9:49Conan O'Brien?

  She knew I was bringing in the Benjamins. And that meant they'd get a ham for Christmas. Anyway, uh, hey, Gil, we love you.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  I love you, Pop, yeah.

• 9:59Conan O'Brien?

  And, uh, your, your daughter's doing a great job, and, um, I agree with you. She's, uh, she's horrible. Okay.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  That was almost nice. He didn't say I was horrible.

• 10:09Conan O'Brien?

  This is the end.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  My dad didn't say I was horrible.

• 10:11Conan O'Brien?

  No, but I, I also give him a lot of credit. He carved...

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yes, okay.

• 10:16Conan O'Brien?

  Your brother. He carved him.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  You start off being nice to my dad, and then you started talking about how he's the pedo.

• 10:21Conan O'Brien?

  How many times in my life have we been in a restaurant, or anywhere, and I have secretly taken my napkin, scrunched it up, and turned it into a giant mustache, put it under my nose, and said, "Hey, Sona Gil wants to talk to you."

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 10:33Conan O'Brien?

  And I have a maybe two-and-a-half-foot-long, uh, white mustache under my nose.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  I don't think we've ever had a meal without you doing...

• 10:41Conan O'Brien?

  Without me doing that.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  It's like you wearing glasses and not being able to do a bit.

• 10:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, if there's, and if there's no, uh, if I didn't have a napkin for any reason, they hadn't put out the napkin yet, or there was a mistake, I would tear the tablecloth.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:54Conan O'Brien?

  Off the table, smashing all the plates.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:56Conan O'Brien?

  Put it under my nose and say, "Your father's here to speak to you."

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:00Conan O'Brien?

  That's the beauty of our friendship.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  You'll never be able to watch this.

• 11:02Conan O'Brien?

  Um, or it's a doc, it's a podcast. You really should be listening.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 11:04Conan O'Brien?

  Here we go. Today's guest is one of the most influential documentary filmmakers of all time. His latest docu-series, The American Revolution, is available to stream on pbs.org and the PBS app. And.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  I can't believe he's the guest.

• 11:19Conan O'Brien?

  He is the guest.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  After this intro.

• 11:20Conan O'Brien?

  He is the guest, and I'm curious to hear what he has to say about cocks and jizz, and butts and buns, and poo poo and pee pee. This wonderful, wonderful historian.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 11:34Conan O'Brien?

  Who has brought the fabric of what is America into our lives. Refreshed it. And, uh, is, uh, just the very best that America has to offer poo poo pee pee.

• 11:51Conan O'Brien?

  Ken Burns, welcome.

• 11:56Conan O'Brien?

  Ken, I am thrilled that you're here. We've spoken a couple of times, but your series on the American Revolution, uh, was an absolute delight. Loved it. And fascinating for me because I grew up in Massachusetts. Where it happened. Right outside Boston in Brookline, Mass. And there's a couple of times when you're explaining, um, the, the Siege of Boston, where you cut to a map and in the slight low left corner, it says Brookline and shows a few hills. And I stand up like a nerd and cheer, and I'm like, "Brookline!"

• 12:35Conan O'Brien?

  And then try to act like I can take credit, though my people were still firmly in Ireland at the time, hitting each other with sticks. So, uh, so there's no way I can claim any credit for...

• 12:49Speaker 02

  If you look in the bigger maps as they pull out in New Hampshire, there's always Walpole, this tiny little village. The only reason why I justified it, I've lived there for 47 years, is that Walpole Gazette was this very well-respected, well-read, up and down the colonies, sort of rag sheet that, you know, had opinions and thoughts and was part of it. So I justified the little hometown shout-out, too.

• 13:14Conan O'Brien?

  Well, um, and I saw what you were doing and I thought it was pathetic.

• 13:19Conan O'Brien?

  I told you this would be the takedown.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  This is the takedown, right?

• 13:22Conan O'Brien?

  You know, it's such an easy point to make. Everything that everyone's dealing with in your series are things that we are dealing with now. And at the time, I don't know, when is this coming out?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  It's been out.

• 13:36Conan O'Brien?

  No, I know yours is out, but I'm talking about this.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  This isn't live?

• 13:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, this podcast.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  I was told this was live.

• 13:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, this is going to...

• 13:42Speaker 02

  I did Joe Rogan, it was live.

• 13:44Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no! No, Joe Rogan's a different situation. No, Joe Rogan's different. He's brave, he puts it out live. We are, we sit with, these are sent to a laboratory

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:54Conan O'Brien?

  where they're scrubbed of any opinions

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:57Conan O'Brien?

  or, um, you know, possible woke diatribes. So, uh, that's just not gonna happen here. But, you know, at the time, and I'm sure there'll be another crisis when this is airing, but at the time that this drops, this episode, um, will be about a month from now, right?

• 14:15Speaker 03

  This episode's probably gonna be two to three months from now.

• 14:17Conan O'Brien?

  Two to three months?

• 14:18Speaker 03

  April, yeah.

• 14:19Conan O'Brien?

  Why are we even here? This is insane.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, two to three months from now. I mean, I don't know where we'll be.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  We have a very packed release schedule, but we wanted to make sure this happened.

• 14:29Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, well, I would like to, I mean, I was really excited about this one.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Well, it's happening.

• 14:34Conan O'Brien?

  I hate the other guests we're talking to. I mean, I loathe them. Jesus. The one that, whatever's one is out now, or the one last week, or the one two weeks from now, these people are my enemies.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Good friends of yours?

• 14:44Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, dreadful people. I was excited about this, and now you tell me that it's coming out a year from April?

• 14:53Speaker 03

  The release schedule's always movable if we wanna...

• 14:55Speaker 02

  The 256 is really important, too.

• 14:59Conan O'Brien?

  I said, let's do this.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Look, look, look, we're gonna be celebrating 250 if we survive until 2039, which is when the US government starts. So don't get me started because there's, there's 31, which is Yorktown. There's 33, which is, you know, the British leave.

• 15:16Conan O'Brien?

  Well, we are taping this as we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  With hope.

• 15:22Conan O'Brien?

  And one of the things I've always loved about history is that it constantly reminds me we've been here before.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is the thing. We like to say history repeats itself. It never does. No event has happened twice. Ecclesiastes, which is the Old Testament, said what has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There's nothing new under the sun, which means human nature doesn't change. So that human nature is gonna superimpose itself over the seemingly random chaos of events. And we're gonna see themes and recurring echoes and what Mark Twain called rhymes. I have never worked on a film, whether it's about the Brooklyn Bridge or jazz music or whatever, that isn't rhyming constantly in the present. And I used to have a stump speech going off for whatever film it was. I'll give you one. This is 2011. I said, what if I told you that I've been working for years about a film about a single issue political campaign

• 16:13Speaker 02

  that metastasized with horrible unintended consequences? That it was about the demonization of recent immigrant groups to the United States? That it was about a presidential election cycle with unbelievable violence and kind of

• 16:26Conan O'Brien?

  Ranker.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Ranker and sort of muckraking and stuff. And that it also represented a whole group of people who felt they had lost control of their country and wanted to take it back. You'd say, wow, you're talking about the Tea Party or this and that. I said, these are only four themes of my film on prohibition. And they go, but what about the flappers and the gangsters? I said, they're, but the more interesting thing is this underlying resonance. The thing you have to do as a filmmaker, though, in order for the thing to speak more directly, is to, is to be disciplined, like Odysseus tied to lash to the mast, where you, where you can see, hear that, those echoes, but you don't go, oh, isn't this so much like today? I mean, the revolution has a failed invasion of Canada. It has a standing army that precipitates.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  This war in Boston, it has a big continent wide epidemic or epidemics plural that kills more people than the revolution. And also engenders a huge debate on the part of Washington about inoculating the army. And finally, he decides which many historians think is the best military decision he made. So, you know, plus a change as the French who came to our aid and without whose help we don't have a country would say.

• 17:34Conan O'Brien?

  Again, watching it, and as you said, smallpox is a, there's a terrible scourge that looks like it's going to cost us the war. What to do about that? And they're making decisions about inoculation that we're struggling with today. Which is a little mind blowing to me as the son of a scientist and physician. I have a hard time with that, but you know, so many people will say to me, oh, but you know, now we have the internet and I think, yeah, that's true, but they had broadsides back then. They had, they had their version of the internet. They had people saying irresponsible inflammatory things all the time and everybody's reading it.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Sam, Sam Adams is a failure as a brewer and a tax collector. But he's really good as a propagandist who says, my job is to keep my fellow citizens alive to their grievances.

• 18:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Sound familiar? There are people today within whose interest it is to keep up the divisions between people. Rather than show the fact that these divisions, which accounts for your and my 51, 52% are a mile wide, but a kind of an inch thick. And that what you want, the ability to transcend the dialectic of yes and no, one and zero, red state, blue state, is to tell a good story because it has a kind of benign Trojan horse effect. It kind of says, oh yeah, this is who we were, this is who we are. It's very, very similar, same, same degree of virtue and venality, same degree of generosity and greed, same degree of, you know, make up your own alliteration.

• 19:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And I think, you know, when I grew up, there used to be this kind of hagiography about the American revolution. And we would get these textbooks, you know, George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and I cannot tell a lie. And, you know, these people represented us as. Represented to us as these marble men who are infallible. And then what I've loved about my lifelong obsession with history is you see, George Washington is a very impressive man in a lot of ways. He's also a slaveholder. We always have to accept that both sides of the story, we both, we have to accept that. And I like my, you know, these humans to be human beings.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's the only way we can actually take a measure of inspiration from them. If they're just the gods, then they don't do something. We just feel like mortals. We're flawed, we know that. They're not, they're perfect, they never tell a lie. But I think we go back to heroism. The Greeks were trying to talk about it as something that was a war within people, between warring factions, you know, some, you know, that Achilles had his heel and his hubris to go along with his great strengths. And that what they're setting up are stories, good stories that remind us that we are all likewise divided within ourselves and we have chances to sort of tilt towards that virtue or tilt towards that venality.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  And so I think with the revolution, it's understandable why we've made it bloodless and gallant. You know, we got some big ideas in Philadelphia. We don't want them to be diminished, which we think if we admit this is a bloody civil war, a bloody revolution and a bloody world war, the fourth or fifth over the prize of North America. And that George Washington, the man without whom we don't have a country. And there's very few times in world history where you can say it's literally one person

• 20:50Conan O'Brien?

  One man, yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Deeply flawed, as you point out, rash, rides out on the battlefield, risking his life, which means the entire cause, makes a couple of really bad tactical mistakes.

• 20:59Conan O'Brien?

  Really screws up in New York.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Really screws up in New York and at Brandywine and a couple of other places where the, just the luck doesn't fall. But he's able to inspire people to fight in the dead of night, pick subordinate talent without any worry about whether they're better generals than him. He's happy to have.

• 21:13Conan O'Brien?

  Can I just say something? This is what I do.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:15Conan O'Brien?

  Now, you're gonna say. Talk about, you're gonna say, oh, this is insane.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 21:20Conan O'Brien?

  But I'm very, uh, like Washington.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 21:23Conan O'Brien?

  I, um, first of all, I'm very tall.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Tall, very tall.

• 21:25Conan O'Brien?

  He was maybe six, six-two.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Six-two, six-three.

• 21:28Conan O'Brien?

  I've made sure everyone here is inoculated against smallpox.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:31Conan O'Brien?

  Um, I, I pick, um, looking around for the people I've picked who I think are good. Okay, well, this isn't a good example, this room.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 21:40Conan O'Brien?

  No, but I think I'm, I'm very much like Washington.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  So, his other, his biggest and most important thing besides convincing people that they were not Georgians or New Hampshireites, but Americans and deferring to Congress, is that he gave up his power twice. So, these people are gonna really be so proud of you when you just walk away.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Well, I don't like the way this has gone.

• 22:09Conan O'Brien?

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

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love awards.

• 22:12Conan O'Brien?

  Every now and then in life, maybe something nice like that comes your way.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:15Conan O'Brien?

  Winning them consistently is almost impossible. It just doesn't happen.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:19Conan O'Brien?

  You know? Well, guess what? Winning five times in six years? You know what that sounds like to me? Sustained excellence.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 22:26Conan O'Brien?

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

• 22:35Speaker 01

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

• 22:39Conan O'Brien?

  I've been tooling around in an Ioniq 5N, which I love.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:44Conan O'Brien?

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

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 22:59Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  It should.

• 23:03Conan O'Brien?

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

• 23:34Conan O'Brien?

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

• 23:45Speaker 01

  What is that?

• 23:46Conan O'Brien?

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

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:49Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:11Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:16Conan O'Brien?

  You fell for one.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam?

• 24:18Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:20Speaker 01

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

• 24:26Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:30Conan 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.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:47Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 24:49Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  No, that's not the point of this.

• 24:51Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  It's so much money.

• 24:53Conan 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.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 25:03Conan 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?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:15Conan 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.

• 25:36Conan O'Brien?

  I do want to say one thing about Washington that's long interested me. He was kind of wide in the hips, wasn't he? Kind of a pear-shaped guy. I'm sorry, but he was. I hate to body shame our first president and someone who-

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Hard to know. There are no photographs and you gotta trust Gilbert Stuart or Copley or others-

• 25:52Conan O'Brien?

  Gore Vidal was the one who really pointed it out in one of his books.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Gore Vidal has some axes to grind, some founders to take down, you know?

• 26:00Conan O'Brien?

  He really, he portrays Washington as humorless and goes out of his way to talk about his wide hips and his big butt. No, I'm sorry. Those are just things I needed to get out there. Now, Ken, you're probably regretting being here. You think I'm-

• 26:16Speaker 02

  You got enough friends.

• 26:19Conan O'Brien?

  You're saying, "Well, how did this turn this quickly?"

• 26:23Conan O'Brien?

  But, uh-

• 26:24Speaker 02

  How did you get me into this?

• 26:27Conan O'Brien?

  You know, more publicists have been fired-

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:30Conan O'Brien?

  -after Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend taping. It's always the first thing. Why? Whose idea? You said- We do have something, we have a few things in common. One thing is that I read, I'm addicted to reading history and my wife loves fiction. And she's always trying to get me to read fiction as if eating my vegetables.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:52Conan O'Brien?

  You know, eat your vegetables. And I just have this burning desire to know what happened. And if she's reading this wonderful, powerful novel, I'm like, "Yeah, but what happened? That's just made up!" And so, she has wonderful photos of me when we've gone on vacations over our long marriage on different beaches in a different beautiful settings, reading the most turgid, dark books about, you know, uh, the Gulag. I'm sitting there with like a rum punch next to me.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  But she could be reading, you know, Schultz and Nissen or-

• 27:29Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, she's very well-read and she's always reading, um, you know, she's reading great stuff and she has convinced me. She's, she's-

• 27:36Speaker 02

  No, no, no. There is as much drama in what was and what is as anything the human imagination makes up. But it's not- Choice because you're gonna lose Shakespeare if you're not gonna let people make stuff up. Right? You're gonna lose a lot of wonderful insight that comes from whatever the license is that people take to to sort of focus on our interior lives and why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing and making of it.

• 28:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I have to say even one of my probably my favorite book is a historical novel. The Killer Angels, which is

• 28:10Speaker 02

  That's what got me into the to do the Civil War. I finished reading that.

• 28:13Conan O'Brien?

  Is that true?

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Let me tell you this. I gave David McCullough gave it to me. I finished reading it on Christmas Day, 1984. I was visiting my dad in Michigan and I said, I know what I'm gonna do for my next film. And he said, what's that, son? And I said, the Civil War. And he goes, what part? And I said, all of it. And he just shook his head and walked out of the room. You know?

• 28:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  And it was it was because the Civil War had been looming over all the subjects of the film I'd made in really bizarre ways on the on the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Shakers, on the Statue of Liberty, on on the Congress, on Thomas Hart Benton, on on all the Huey Long, all of the stuff I had done and that or were doing and that I just couldn't figure out that this seemed to be as Shelby Foote once said, you know, it's a American history is this clear river that flows into a bloody lake that flows out clear again. Not true, but the idea that everything has to pass through the Civil War was important to it. So, yeah, I mean, I Killer Angels. Have you read The Raven by Marcus James?

• 29:16Conan O'Brien?

  I have not.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Very antiquated book, 1920s. He won the Pulitzer Prize, I think, for this or another one. He did a biography first on Andrew Jackson, but then he did one that The Raven is on Sam Houston. And there is so much that happens to Sam Houston before he's even heard of the word Texas. I mean, he is this close to the presidency. He's sort of holding the governorship. While Andrew Jackson is is at president, he's gonna be the next president for sure. He marries this young girl, his wife, and at some moment she leaves him. Do not know to this day why she did. Something sexual, an old lover, whatever it was. He resigned the governorship.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  He went to what is now Memphis, swam across the Mississippi and became big drunk, a kind of dangerous, loose cannon Indian agent across the Mississippi. And he still hasn't heard. He's had fought duels in in Congress. I mean, it's just about if somebody gave me a hundred and eighty million dollars and said you had to do a feature film. I do the life of of Sam Houston based on on this.

• 30:24Conan O'Brien?

  On the Raven.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  On the Raven.

• 30:25Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you know, it's there's so many things that really happened in our history and just in history in general, that if you wrote it as a screenplay, someone would say, eh, this is too much. You know what I mean? This is you lost me. You know, Avatar is more believable than this. You know what I mean? This is you got a little crazy here when he swims across the river and you think, no, no, this is all.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  All true.

• 30:47Conan O'Brien?

  And and I think that's what's always attracted me so much to it. My dad was really into history and I got into it and I realized, oh, it's just stories. And, you know, Sona's Sona's always giving me a hard time. You always make fun of me for reading so much history.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Well, you read a lot of history, but like you don't read like Fifty Shades of Grey, for instance. I've recommended books to you and you completely ignore me.

• 31:10Conan O'Brien?

  Have you read Fifty Shades of Grey?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Haven't.

• 31:13Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, this is your next your next this is your next documentary, Ken.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  I did the blue and the gray, but I.

• 31:20Conan O'Brien?

  No, no. It's like the blue and the gray, but a little different.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Bluer, it's bluer.

• 31:25Conan O'Brien?

  Imagine the Civil War with spanking.

• 31:30Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  So Shelby Shelby Foot said Shelby's foot said to me once, I was struggling over how to tell something and he goes, are you how to tell that like a very complicated thing between Chancellorsville, Vicksburg and Gettysburg? And he just said, God is the greatest dramatist, meaning just don't stop doing what everybody else does, which is do either all of Vicksburg before Gettysburg or do all of Gettysburg after Vixter. You divide it up and say when it happened, you know, and just stop and go.

• 31:58Conan O'Brien?

  Tell what happened.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Tell what happened. And then he said, just think about it. Lee surrenders to Grant. And a few days later, Lincoln, who's been working 18 hours a day, has enough time to go to the theater.

• 32:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  I've had a few projects which shall remain nameless with various places in this town where people are wanted to adapt something we've done. And the stuff that's good is the stuff that's true. And the stuff that's made up is the stuff that just doesn't work.

• 32:24Conan O'Brien?

  It doesn't work.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  You could say, he would never say that, or he would never do that. Or why did you need to add that? Because there's already a life that has that kind of, if you brought it to a producer, they go, that can't possibly have happened. Like the whole story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was my first film that PBS showed, was exactly that. You could not make it up.

• 32:46Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I like anything that makes you stop, because I spent so much of my life in New York City, living there. And every time I pass the Brooklyn Bridge, I think about what went into making that. And it used to be just this thing, it's a Brooklyn Bridge. And we can all do that. But when you realize that, this is before people know what happens when you submerge humans, you know, at great depths.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  And get cases.

• 33:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, and you put them in these caissons and you submerge them down, but they don't know. And people are dying these horrible deaths. All the thought that went into it and the lives that went into it. And then what it meant when it was completed, and it's beautiful. And so I just appreciate when I read history. One of the things it does is it usually makes me a little more optimistic, which is a strange thing to say, because most of the history I'm reading is very, you know, many dark things happen. But I meet a lot of young people who have this attitude that these are end days and the world is on fire and it's all over for us.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  I had a friend in the financial industry in 2008, in the fall, said, this is a depression. And I said, you know, in our depression, in many cities in America, the animals in the zoo were shot and the meat distributed to the poor. When that happens, I'll agree we're in a thing. To me, the optimism is a natural recourse, because you've seen, I mean, there's something unprecedented about the level of the perfidy and where it's taking place at this moment. But I've seen it in the story of Yuli Long, I've seen it in other places. And so you just realize, you know, you want to be on guard. You just, you know, that other 49% is talking really loudly, but you can't.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  History is a great, great teacher, great, great teacher.

• 34:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and it's also, uh, it's like a friend that can calm you down and give you a little bit of perspective. When things are very dark, I've had so many people say to me, it's never been worse in this country than it is now.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  We're more divided in the revolution.

• 34:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and I'll say, uh, okay, um, have you heard of the Civil War? And do you know what was going on in the Civil War and was going on in Vietnam? But we, we have a lot of work to do and we have to be on guard and we have to speak up. But there's so much to be hopeful about.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, great.

• 35:07Conan O'Brien?

  And that needs to get out there. And I think one of the things that I've liked so much about your work is that it's taking, whether it's jazz or baseball, uh, you're taking these things that are a really important part of America and who we are. And you're telling us about this wonderful gift, but at the same time, you're telling us all the darkness that's involved. You're just telling the truth. You're not trying to push it one way or the other. Yeah, calling balls and strikes. And, uh, I always walk away feeling this sense of nourishment that I've been taken care of.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  We live in a world, and that waitress and so many people are, it's a highlight reel. That's all it is. So Babe Ruth, to take somebody ancient in baseball, only hits home runs on that highlight reel. Babe Ruth struck out almost three times as many times as he, as he hit a homerun. Um, he also comes up once every nine times at bat, which means that sometimes everything falls to a middle infielder, a second baseman. The recent seventh game of the World Series was exactly that case, where the big, the big superstars didn't do the thing that the second baseman did, and that was the difference. And I think that's a really good simplistic analogy, uh, to history. You've got to call balls and strikes.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Um, and you have to be able to understand, I mean, you see the ballplayers who all, they hit the homerun and they cross home plate and they thank God for delivering that. They never do that when they hit into a game ending double play, right?

• 36:34Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  So if there is that oversight.

• 36:36Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, it's, it's, I always think if you're gonna thank God, you also have to blame him.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:40Conan O'Brien?

  And I want to see people doing that, striking out and going, I defy you, God!

• 36:46Speaker 02

  You know, the only thing I've ever seen is Pedro Martinez is pulled off the mound when the Red Sox are beginning to lose something and he looks up as he's being pulled off. I've never seen, I talked to him about it, I've never seen anybody do it. But you go back to the revolution, most of the founders become, particularly Jefferson, Diaz, they believe that there is some sort of supreme being, supreme architect, divine providence, the supreme architect of the universe, whatever they call it, who is disinterested in the affairs of us and makes no distinction between faiths. What an unbelievably great way to understand it. So it's my obligation to sort of be better, pursue happiness was not objects in a marketplace of things, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  To be more virtuous, to earn the right of citizenship, but then also present myself as moving closer through my actions to whatever that higher being is. It's a really great way to conduct yourself. And they also understood the first amendment, which we say free speech and because of Minneapolis, you know, right to protest and assembly, the number one thing is we shall make no establishment of a religion. Every other country on earth had been born with a set official religion. Here's the stamp and we didn't have it. And it has been one of the blessings for us and we speak about the political benefits and their legion. This is the enlightenment applied to a physical thing, a government, but it's also the religious

• 38:15Speaker 02

  thing in which you're just trying to pull the fuel rods out of what everybody does is they make a they, a them. It's the playbook of the authoritarian. This is a bad, the radical, this or the They are the cause of all our problems. Enemy within, you know, for Hitler it was the Jews and the Jehovah's Witness and homosexuals and Marxists and Bolsheviks and whatever it might be. Everybody looks to say it's them and, you know, I've made films about the US, but I've also made films about us, right? That's it. There's an intimacy there as well as a majesty and complexity and even controversy to the US. But the thing I've known after doing this for Fifty plus years is there is no them, there's no them, no them.

• 39:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  And and and our obligation is to try to remember to tell people there's no them in some way in story form.

• 39:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  And that's what you were talking, you're just leading off.

• 39:09Conan O'Brien?

  It's all us.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  With with just, you know, just how much a story can have this sense of, boy, this is just like it was before. And just like it was before is very much like what's happening now.

• 39:21Conan O'Brien?

  Well, it's also, if you don't read history or you think you're you're not interested. There's this belief that the way things are now is the way they've always been also in a in a inaccurate way. So.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:33Conan O'Brien?

  There's this notion, I think a lot of young people probably think, well, the Republican Party has always meant. Um, has always been um tied to like fundamental Christianity. And I think, no.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:45Conan O'Brien?

  No, they would have been, I mean, for a long time, that is exactly the Republican Party and Republicans. They start from the beginning of the party's establishment would have been kind of horrified by that idea. That it that we were tied to that. Do you know what I mean?

• 40:00Speaker 02

  So.

• 40:00Conan O'Brien?

  That's a more of a recent invention.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Oh, it is.

• 40:02Conan O'Brien?

  Nineteen eighty.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  I've got a map of the political parties and they're just twist. I mean, by there was the last Cabot Lodge to run against a Kennedy in or anybody in was sixty two. And Ted Kennedy took the seat vacated by.

• 40:17Conan O'Brien?

  The Senate seat.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  The Senate seat in Massachusetts and he lost. And um he loved Ted Kennedy. He said, yeah, we voted for the same things. I don't think I disagreed with them on anything. I voted for civil rights. You think, you know, wait a second, the Republican Republican Party was founded in eighteen fifty four in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. To end slavery. The Whig Party had died. They were looking out of the ashes to start something. They put up a candidate, John C Fremantle, the Pathfinder in fifty six, he loses. And then this guy, this bizarre, tall, thin lawyer prone to bouts of debilitating depression. Wins the election in eighteen sixty.

• 40:55Conan O'Brien?

  As a Republican.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Forty percent of the vote as the beginning of the Republican Party as a national force, the most successful party. Unfortunately, also because it often tax. To different places and, and basically gets, is really good at convincing people to vote against their own interests. I mean, that's been the last 50 years of the Republican Party, but I mean, up until when, when Johnson took Kennedy's civil rights, which Kennedy couldn't have passed, took it and got it through, and then the Voting Rights Act, he knew he was losing the South. But he'd, he was a Southerner Democrat. You woke up on, on January, you woke up on election day and you had every one of the 11 states of the former Confederacy in the Democratic Party comp. You could count on those electoral votes.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  And now you wake up on election day and the Republicans count on it. Ronald Reagan began his traditional post-Labor Day campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That's in Choctaw County. He did not go there to honor Goodwin, Cheney, and Shermer, the three civil rights people who were murdered there. He went and began within the first few paragraphs in to talk about states' rights, which was virtue signaling, I don't know if virtue is the right word, but signaling to his audience. And then one by one, you watch, you've already seen it happen, the former states of the Confederacy that have been solidly anti-Republican because they were trying to promote racial equality, switch over.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  And it's just, it's been, it's breathtaking to watch just the changes that the, just the two parties, let alone the various three parties that kind of like fish live parasitically off the various parties. It's, it's a wonderful, dynamic, fluid thing. Harry Truman said, "The only thing that's really new is the history you don't know." That's really great. I mean, confounding thing, because we live in this narcissistic present, so therefore we're all chicken littles, the sky is falling, it's worse than it's ever could be, and you don't have the agency to pull yourself out of the nosedive that you're, you're put yourself into.

• 42:57Conan O'Brien?

  Well, this, and this is, uh, there's never been a, what I, one of the sentiments I agree with is there's never been a better time to be alive than right now.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  And it's actually the only time to be alive right now.

• 43:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, but you know, I'll have people say, "Well, come on, things are really bad. Why do you think it's, uh, give me one reason why this is the best time to be alive," and I'll always start with child mortality rates.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:22Conan O'Brien?

  Like, do you realize that for almost all of human history? Uh, if you had children, there was a very good chance that most of them would die. That's, that was just the way it was. That's why there are few, there's no industry around making toys for kids or portraits of kids for a long time because they don't last that long. Very few of them make it.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Um, big market for small caskets.

• 43:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's just, uh, but no, it's really, but it's awful. Sorry to bring this up. This is really dark.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  You go into graveyards in New England and you've got, um, four, three, 18 months, six, eight, 12, and then, and then 96 and 100. Are you like?

• 44:01Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, if you got past your, your, if you got past, uh, in, into your teens, um, you probably lived to be 98 and wrote the Declaration of Independence. But, but what's, um, no, it was just, I, there's, I would like people to be a little more conscious of all the ways in which we're very blessed.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:24Conan O'Brien?

  And I also, when I, when I watched the, the American Revolution series, one of the things that impresses me is just this stunning good luck.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:35Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, the idea that, that so many things broke our way during the American Revolution does make you believe in providence. And it reminds me of this quote that I'm going to butcher right now. I think it was Otto Bismarck said, "There is a divine providence that protects, uh, drunkards, children in the United States of America."

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:54Conan O'Brien?

  And it's just like this wonderful quote where,

• 44:56Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 44:57Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know what is going on with America, but they always seem to get away with stuff.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Well, this is happening in the early days of the revolution when the improbable successes, along with mostly failures happened, they all saw it as a sign of providence.

• 45:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  That they would be like the walls of Jericho. You would just blow the trumpet and they'd fall down. Think about it. The odds on Lexington Green and that morning of April 191775 are zero of success. And six and a half, really long, bloody, this is what we don't admit to, bloody years later, civil war, revolution and global war, um, is 100%. And the, the phenomenal good luck in the midst of some really bad luck. And bad decisions and stuff. I mean, it's a lot of it has to do with the size of the continent. It has to do with the weather. It has to do with the distance, 3,000 miles from the home office. So a letter coming takes longer than a letter going back because of the Gulf Stream.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  And so you just, I mean Franklin, this writer comes up to his, his place in Paris and he's trying to get the French in. And he needs some little victory just to convince them. And then the writer goes and he walks out and he says, Philadelphia fell? And he goes, yeah, which it had through Washington's neglect at, at Brandywine. And, and he turns away and he goes, but wait, there's better news. That a couple of months after that, the Battle of Saratoga took place. Washington had nothing to do with it, other than sending two of his best generals, Daniel Morgan and a guy named Benedict Arnold, who was the hero of Saratoga. And it's, it's not only a little thing, it's a gigantic, the surrender of entire British army. And Franklin goes, whoa, he goes right to the.

• 46:33Conan O'Brien?

  Why didn't you read me that one first?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  And yes, and he asked him first. I mean, he was pessimistic in disposition towards the news he was about to get. And then they go to Louis the 16th, and within a couple of months, they've got two alliances, one of which is essentially $30 billion for the aid. An army and navy, you know, guns, whatever you need, that are going to be the key to the American.

• 46:54Conan O'Brien?

  No, the French completely saved our bacon, something we probably occasionally like to forget. And also the French, because they gave us so much money and so much hope during the Revolutionary War, go bankrupt, leading to their revolution. They had other problems too.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  When the Declaration came, yeah, there, I mean, the British Constitutional Marneke was a pretty good place for a government to live under. And, and that's why you're a loyalist in the colonies and, and you're excused. We didn't make loyalists bad people. We just made them, they, you know, this, your prosperity, your education, your good health, your property that you own, whatever it might be, has come from that. The French are more oppressive and, and then when Franklin's there, they adore him. And he's speaking the same language.

• 47:39Conan O'Brien?

  He's a rock star in France.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  He's the most famous American on earth because of his scientific stuff, but he's charming and he's. witty and he and he also shares sympathy with Montesquieu and the others of the French Enlightenment, not just the Scottish Enlightenment. And then when the Declaration happens, he prints it up and asks all the newspapers to print it. So they print it. So ordinary people are reading, yeah. And you, the power of this, the importance of the revolution, just in the ideas cannot be denied. This thing promotes revolutions, our Declaration promotes revolutions for more than two centuries. When Ho Chi Minh on September 2nd, 1945, that's the date that the Japanese are surrendering unconditionally on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  He declares Vietnamese independence and he is quoting Thomas Jefferson from that second sentence. And standing next to him are OSS officers who have saved his life earlier in the year and are supporting him. And within a month, they're going to be told by the State Department, oh, he's a communist, you can't do that. He, you know, and you would think if we had stayed with him and then followed the Geneva Convention and allowed the election of him in 56, there'd be 6 million more human beings haunting the earth.

• 48:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Well, there it's amazing just how many times things just keep flipping and flipping and flipping. So, you know, Stalin, our best friend and our buddy up until about 1946. Yeah. You know, or 1945, 46, and then it switches. And so I have a propaganda poster of Uncle Sam and I think it's Chiang Kai-shek and Churchill and Stalin as all these good buddies who are tormenting a little Hitler. And it's like Uncle Sam's arm is draped around our good buddy Stalin. And you, then they get the word after the war, we're switching that now.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Yes, right.

• 49:26Conan O'Brien?

  He's now the villain of the story. We got it. Okay. He's the bad guy. And this happens so many times in history. It's kind of fascinating.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  So the biggest, I mean, the

• 49:34Conan O'Brien?

  I'll be later seen as a good guy. You'll see.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  The 20th century is the bloodiest and it has, the biggest killers are Mao, followed by Stalin, Stalin and a distant third is Hitler. It's really unbelievable and they were our ally. The Second World War is won by American manufacturing, followed by Soviet sacrifice.

• 49:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  By Western ally sacrifice. It's really, it's a triumph. In 1945, more than 50% of all things manufactured in the world were manufactured in the United States. And it, and I mean, to understand exactly what happened. And Stalin had the, you know, the Russian fear, as Putin does, of needing all the buffer states. And so he was gonna hang on to it. And there was no army that could, that was the size of his. There was no energy to decide as Churchill's fulminating, "Go take it back." To go take it back, nobody was gonna do it. And so we ended up with a post-war paralysis, but we ended up with the Marshall Plan, one of the greatest things Americans have ever done. You know, we do things for other people because that's a good thing to do,

• 50:39Speaker 02

  not because we're not serving ourselves.

• 50:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, historically, we've, we have done a lot. It's just because it was the right thing to do.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  And then we, we had a stasis. Now, you can spend your entire life, and many people do, listing the crimes of the United States. But as you were suggesting earlier, if you start with the Declaration and the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights and land-grant colleges and the Homestead Act and national parks and child labor and GI Bill and Social Security and interstate highway and man on the moon and affordable. I mean, you're just like, the list of positive things that we've done. And yet, we've been told that the enemy is our government. And it is in the interests of people to make that happen, to remind people that we're divided and there's them and there is no them.

• 51:28Conan O'Brien?

  I have to just ask you, and this seems very superficial, but you just listed about 35 things with great eloquence and fluidity. I'm guessing we're sort of the same age. I can't do that anymore. I can start to list things and then I go eh, eh. Well, you know what I mean eh.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  It's really.

• 51:43Conan O'Brien?

  Well, how do you do that?

• 51:44Speaker 02

  It's really bad because I'm 10 years older than you, so.

• 51:47Conan O'Brien?

  Are you really?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  72. Are you, are you 62?

• 51:50Conan O'Brien?

  I'm 42. Yeah, I saw a doctor this morning. No, I'm 62. That was, did you see, have you seen her do that?

• 51:58Speaker 01

  I'm very, you could never.

• 52:00Conan O'Brien?

  I can't, if I was listing the ingredients in my smoothie, I couldn't do that.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  I know.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  I did them in kind of chronological order, too.

• 52:06Conan O'Brien?

  I saw that. I'm looking at you do that. And I know I'm supposed to be like, no, these are really good points, but I'm still, I was just stunned. He just said so much stuff without looking at notes.

• 52:19Conan O'Brien?

  I'm very shallow, Ken.

• 52:24Conan O'Brien?

  I'm thinking the acts that were passed. The TWC, the MIO, the WWN. La ba da habba da, the si ba da doo ba da. The rubba da ba ba da, the si ma da ma ba da.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  See, you know your shit.

• 52:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, see?

• 52:35Speaker 01

  I was so impressed and then the whole time you're just like, my brain no working.

• 52:39Conan O'Brien?

  My brain's so good. If you want to feel bad about yourself, have a conversation with Ken Burns.

• 52:46Conan O'Brien?

  Now I picture, I picture cameras sweeping past. Black, black and white photos of me looking sad. And you, and you hear a shokin farewell.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Well, what we often do is start in the photograph off in the dark. That vague thing, and then pan to the extra close up of the eyes. And, and, and you begin to feel the tragedy of it.

• 53:06Conan O'Brien?

  As Conan's mind slipped away.

• 53:10Conan O'Brien?

  He knew, ma ma. That he had to retreat to the idiocy of a podcast. Ma ma ma, ma, ma ma ma, ma ma ma. Let's make that documentary.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good idea.

• 53:22Conan O'Brien?

  You'll have three viewers.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:24Conan O'Brien?

  You will be stripped of every award you've ever won.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Can we talk about the idiocy of podcasts for a second?

• 53:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Like this year promoting, I mean, I always do that. There's no money in PBS to go out and promote stuff, you know, to speak of. So you can't put billboards on Melrose and Beverly, you know, saying, or the buses or the subways or whatever across the country. So you go out and we did 40 cities, 80 screenings, you know, 250 interviews, radio, satellite tours, TV and radio, and also this time more podcasts. I think, I think there are 352 million podcasts in the United States and I now have done half of them today. Today is the half, half, half the podcast.

• 54:01Conan O'Brien?

  So what you're saying is we're the last stop.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm sure they're gonna give me more.

• 54:08Conan O'Brien?

  Conan realized, ma ma ma, that he was the last stop.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  I'll do the, I'll do the music if you want. You can just keep going.

• 54:14Conan O'Brien?

  It's hard for me to talk and do the music. Not that I can't.

• 54:22Conan O'Brien?

  Conan knew that there was, he was the lowest of the low.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  My dearest Sarah.

• 54:28Conan O'Brien?

  Conan writing home, my dearest Liza. Ken Burns today said he had done every podcast and now he was doing.

• 54:39Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I will.

• 54:48Conan O'Brien?

  This is all, this is making me so happy right now.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna fill in.

• 54:54Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, sorry.

• 54:56Conan O'Brien?

  My dearest Liza.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  His brain doesn't work anymore.

• 54:59Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, so I'm just making you so happy that you're singing that tune.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  I've been singing that tune and dining out on that tune for 36 years.

• 55:07Conan O'Brien?

  I often, I downloaded it onto my, I have, I have this, this sounds self-serving, but I do like to work out.

• 55:18Conan O'Brien?

  Check this thing out, this body, but that's not the point. The point is, I like to listen to a hard, fast, like, rock and roll music for you when your heart rate's up, because that really gets me going. And then I kind of runs on the treadmill and lift the weights and do everything I have to do. But I dropped in there a long time ago into my workout feed, "A Show Can Farewell", and it will come on and I'm, I'm just, I won't take it out, but when it comes on, I stop working out.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Maybe it's just to restore your heart rate.

• 55:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly. I just stop whatever I'm doing.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  To have a cry in the middle of your workout, they say is really good.

• 55:55Conan O'Brien?

  And to think about everything this country has been through.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:05Conan O'Brien?

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

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love awards.

• 56:08Conan O'Brien?

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

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 56:23Conan O'Brien?

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

• 56:31Speaker 01

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

• 56:36Conan O'Brien?

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

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Hello!

• 56:56Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona. The Palisade Hybrid, yeah, delivers premium capability and class-leading interior space with available, I have this memorized, H-Track all-wheel drive, up to an EPA estimated 619 miles of range on vehicles like the Palisade Hybrid and Hyundai's industry-leading warranty. It's easy to see why Hyundai continues to deliver the quality, innovation, technology, and value drivers expect from an award-winning brand. View U.S. News Best Cars at cars.usnews.com and call 562-314-4603 for complete details. Did you know that 1 in 4 Americans targeted by scams end up falling for them?

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:35Conan O'Brien?

  You fell for one.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam.

• 57:37Conan O'Brien?

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

• 57:39Speaker 01

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

• 57:45Conan O'Brien?

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

• 58:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:06Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 58:08Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 58:09Speaker 01

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

• 58:10Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  It's so much money.

• 58:11Conan 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.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 58:22Conan O'Brien?

  LifeLock has live, U.S.-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?

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:34Conan 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.

• 58:53Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, I want to try something different.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  What?

• 58:55Conan O'Brien?

  I like to change it up. I like to learn things. So I'm going to try and make apple cider.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 58:59Conan O'Brien?

  Every morning.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:00Conan O'Brien?

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

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, fall is the perfect season to try something new, like joining T-Mobile.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 59:08Conan O'Brien?

  See what I did?

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:09Conan O'Brien?

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

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:13Conan O'Brien?

  They're America's best network.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:15Conan 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.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Oh, that's weird.

• 59:22Conan O'Brien?

  When I'm thinking about, like, making apple cider.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 59:24Conan O'Brien?

  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

• 59:31Speaker 01

  You travel a lot.

• 59:32Conan O'Brien?

  Travel show that I do.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:34Conan 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.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  That doesn't seem like a good idea.

• 59:45Conan O'Brien?

  It's a great idea.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:47Conan O'Brien?

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

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 59:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  What?

• 59:54Conan O'Brien?

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

• 59:56Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 59:57Conan O'Brien?

  T-Mobile is stacking up reasons to join. Go to tmobile.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 tmobile.com. Consult a physician. I just threw that in there.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:00:29Conan O'Brien?

  So "A Shoke and Farewell" was not

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  It's not contemporary to the Civil War.

• 1:00:33Conan O'Brien?

  It's not contemporary to the Civil War. That's a song that one of your

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Session musicians.

• 1:00:37Conan O'Brien?

  Session musicians came up with?

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so his name is Jay Younger. He's a Jewish kid from the Bronx who wrote the most beautiful Scotch-Irish lament I've ever heard in my life. I'm not even sure at the beginning he knew what he had. It was so filled with heart. A friend of his, one of his co-musicians, had given me an album they'd put out, and I was just doing needle drops. And on the fourth song of the first side, I heard this thing, and I went, wow. He runs a music camp still. Does in in the Catskills and near the Ashokan reservoir, part of the New York City thing. And they were breaking up for the summer and everybody was heading back to the new school year. And he sat down in like 15 minutes or so, wrote Ashokan farewell. And it is, I guarantee that today, whatever today is, it is being played 100 times at a funeral or a memorial service.

• 1:01:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Or a wedding, or a renewal of vows. And sometimes it's with this letter that Sullivan blew. A Rhode Island soldier wrote back to his wife before his death at the first battle of Bull Run.

• 1:01:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  And it's, it's, I, I've just never come across a, a piece of American music that works. And I like the fact that it was a Jewish guy from the Bronx who turned out a Scotch Irish.

• 1:01:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. He wrote it for a bar mitzvah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:01:55Conan O'Brien?

  The original title was it? The horror. Look at you. More comedy. Can the horror, the horror. Very good. You're, you're killing it. I, I feel very threatened right now. Very threatened.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  But you gotta pick subordinate talent that you know is better than you, right? That's what George Washington did. And look what he got to be, the father of our country. Like, he didn't know he was George Washington. He didn't know there was going to be a dollar bill or a quarter, a big spiky thing in the national capital name for him or a state on the other side of the continent that's named for him and every other state has a county or a town. He had no idea that that's what was gonna happen.

• 1:02:34Conan O'Brien?

  No, he just, um, it's so fascinating to me that some of them must have been aware. Some of the founding fathers must have been aware that I'm going down in history as a great man. Whether it was Jefferson or-

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  Humility, you know what it is? They're aware of you. They're aware of you. They talk. John Adams talks about the millions yet unborn. They are all speaking about like, this is not just for right now. We're doing this. Like Tom Paine says, not since the time of Noah do we have a chance to make it over. This is why the world turned upside down. Everything had been the same. For a thousand years, your family had worked the same plot of- Land in Wales or Scotland or Ireland or England. And now you had, you, you, you had the possibility of owning somebody else's land, Indian land. But you, you had, you could see that things could change and that all of a sudden, everybody up to this point had been subjects. And now they were this new thing called citizens.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  And a few sentences after Pursuit of Happiness, a few phrases. Jefferson says, "All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable." It's not hard to parse. It means that heretofore, everybody just puts up with the authoritarian boot. And you know what? We're not gonna do that anymore. We're not gonna do that. It's gonna take extra energy. And I think whenever we're in a bad spot, it's because that energy has atrophied. And that we've forgotten that we have that energy, not you, within me. Not that somebody else is gonna take care of it, but I'm gonna do. And you're seeing, one of the good things about all these young people who are, you know, what's the matter with kids today? They're running for office. They're, you know, they're mayor of New York. They're, you know, they're doing stuff.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  And that, that is a democratic impulse in the face of the idea that no, evils are not sufferable. We don't have to do this. We do not have to put up with this. Not the war, what Tennyson wrote, that nature is, is red, meaning R E D, in tooth and claw, meaning everything's bloody and everything's, you know, Stephen Miller says, you know, "The mightiest win." It's not about that. We, we invent civilization to forestall the law of the jungle. And what you have are guys who are saying, no, it's just the law of the jungle. That's what authoritarians say.

• 1:04:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. One of the things that I most admire about your work is I watch it and I feel reinvested. That's the word I come up with is that I'm reinvested in

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Us.

• 1:04:59Conan O'Brien?

  This experiment, and it is an experiment, and we just have to keep working on it.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  The last line of the film, and it's not giving it away. Benjamin Rush, the only physician to sign, said, "The American war is over, but the American revolution is still going on." Doesn't mean like Jefferson, I'm sure he would wish he could take it back. That the tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of patriots every 20 years? No. It means that we designed a system so we can figure out how to do that without the bloodshed.

• 1:05:25Conan O'Brien?

  Right, right.

• 1:05:28Conan O'Brien?

  Unbelievable. Well, uh, thank you so much for being here. And, um, this is remarkable. You have to come back. I know you want to do all the other podcasts first.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  No, no, let me, let me get to some of the half a million more that I've got, got to do, yeah.

• 1:05:44Conan O'Brien?

  You know, we have a pretty big audience on this one, so I, you know, you might want to skip some of those other ones, you know?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  Five, plus you and me, that's seven.

• 1:05:53Conan O'Brien?

  No, Eduardo doesn't listen to this.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Oh, he doesn't listen, doesn't listen.

• 1:05:56Conan O'Brien?

  He has no patience for this shit.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  So we're six, including you and me. Okay, well, that's good.

• 1:06:00Conan O'Brien?

  But it's six that really go out and buy stuff, so that's important. Ken, I could talk to you for maybe 40 hours and just be the happiest guy in the world and not...

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  I'm totally down with that.

• 1:06:10Conan O'Brien?

  And not, yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  I have a brief nine-part response to every question.

• 1:06:18Conan O'Brien?

  Listen to Ken Burns's 14-part response. But I, uh, I've taken such solace in all, in your work. It's just, uh, um, it does nourish me in the very best way, and I do think all of this goes beyond politics. I like to try and step out of that divide and try to say to people that we, I believe we all want similar things, and we, uh, and I think there's many more, uh, good people than bad people. Uh, and this is, uh, I mean, I, I love this country and I always think we can do better.

• 1:07:01Conan O'Brien?

  And I think we will, and I just get that from your work, and I get so inspired.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  I, I think, obviously, if you know where you've been, you can know a little bit better where you are. That's the optimism in the face of the Chicken Littles of this narcissistic moment. But you also know where you're going, and so you can begin to see in the midst of, you know, being like that little kid and, um, in, in Schindler's List, completely submerged in shit, that, you know, he's, he's submerged in shit because he's... Dedicated to living and so that our next job is repair and restoration. And we should be thinking about that.

• 1:07:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Rather than, oh, is the sky is falling. Oh, it's really, it's been worse. You know, this is the worst it's ever been in American history. It's not.

• 1:07:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  And, and, um, you know, things will, there's a fluidity. And the only thing that's certain is it's going to change in some way. And you have to actually be prepared to catch that change.

• 1:08:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Speaker 02

  That's the, that's the biggest thing.

• 1:08:03Conan O'Brien?

  There's, uh, better times are coming and we have to prepare for that.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Happy days are here again. Yeah.

• 1:08:09Conan O'Brien?

  Um, all right, well, Ken, uh, again, if anyone out there hasn't listened to the American Revolution series, um.

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  We actually, they can watch it too. Because listening is a podcasty kind of thing, you know?

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  But, but we, we, we spent 10 years assembling images.

• 1:08:29Conan O'Brien?

  Play the music.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Even when there were no photographs. Da, da, dee.

• 1:08:32Conan O'Brien?

  I swear to God. I swear to God, um.

• 1:08:38Conan O'Brien?

  I didn't realize that there were images that went along with the show.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Conan O'Brien?

  I watched it on television, but my face was averted from the screen.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 1:08:50Conan O'Brien?

  And I'm told it was quite beautiful.

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:52Conan O'Brien?

  As Conan's eyesight failed and he listened to the broadcast of Ken Burns' special. Uh, Conan was filled with joy.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  They're a pretty dense, literate thing. You can listen to them too. It's okay. But there's some nice, there's some great paintings and some cool reenactments and.

• 1:09:09Conan O'Brien?

  You know, it's, it's beautiful and I don't know why I said, listen, I think.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Cause we're doing a podcast?

• 1:09:14Conan O'Brien?

  No, I think I was really thrown when you made that long list fluently. I think I, I was in shock that my brain has atrophied to this degree.

• 1:09:25Speaker 02

  Did you want to practice the list? Yeah.

• 1:09:28Conan O'Brien?

  Oh.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:09:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Tech, duration.

• 1:09:31Conan O'Brien?

  Constitution.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Bill of Rights.

• 1:09:32Conan O'Brien?

  Bill of Rights.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  You can jump ahead. Land-grant colleges.

• 1:09:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Homestead Act.

• 1:09:36Conan O'Brien?

  Homestead Act, of course.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  National Park.

• 1:09:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, National Park.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Child labor. I forgot to say even antitrust laws, you know?

• 1:09:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  That's pretty good.

• 1:09:42Conan O'Brien?

  Antitrust, yeah.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Then I think there'd be all the New Deal programs and then certainly-

• 1:09:47Conan O'Brien?

  Let's list them.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Social Security, labor's right to organize.

• 1:09:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  WPA, which created 10,000 landing strips. And the Civilian Conservation Corps with all that work on the parks. I mean, if you landed at LaGuardia Airport, New Deal. Went through the Triborough Bridge, New Deal. Lincoln Tunnel, New Deal. Right? Skyline Drive, New Deal. Right? All the bridge, all the dams in the Lincoln Highway, all the dams in the Northwest. That's all. 10,000 landing strips, a billion trees. We're not even out of the New Deal.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 1:10:17Conan O'Brien?

  The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:10:21Conan O'Brien?

  It's a legume.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 1:10:23Conan O'Brien?

  That I still know.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:10:25Conan O'Brien?

  And that's my list.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, Ken, please go out and do more amazing work. Also, this book is gorgeous.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  So Jeff Ward, our writer-

• 1:10:34Conan O'Brien?

  It's absolutely gorgeous.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  That I've worked with for 45 years. This is the most wonderful book. He has put his heart and his soul into it.

• 1:10:42Conan O'Brien?

  No, and it's just gorgeous artwork.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Conan O'Brien?

  To your point. And, uh, and I spent, I just, I opened it randomly to a page of some Revolutionary War powder horns that were etched, engraved, and I was just geeking out over them, thinking, "I gotta get a powder horn."

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Conan O'Brien?

  Went on Amazon, nope.

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  No powder horns?

• 1:11:02Conan O'Brien?

  No Revolutionary War power horns, uh, powder horns.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  You took a powder horn.

• 1:11:06Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, exactly. Okay. I'll do the comedy around. Now you're doing the comedy too?

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  I'm getting my ass kicked.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  You were here for the takedown of me.

• 1:11:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  It's not happening that way.

• 1:11:17Conan O'Brien?

  This was jujitsu.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Conan O'Brien?

  Ken, thank you so much. This is amazing.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  This is really fun. Thank you.

• 1:11:24Speaker 04

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

• 1:12:05Speaker 04

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• 1:12:32Speaker 05

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• 1:13:02Speaker 06

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