Danny McBride Returns

Actor, writer, and producer Danny McBride feels thrilling about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Danny sits down with Conan once more to discuss his favorite childhood cartoons, pitching his Halloween sequel directly to John Carpenter, how writing for television prepared him to craft his book of short stories Thrilling Tales of Modern Men: Stories, and more. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (669) 587-2847.

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

• 0:03Conan O'Brien?

  One in four Americans targeted by scams ended up falling for them.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  I did.

• 0:07Conan O'Brien?

  For me, it would be four out of four. Did you fall for a scam?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam once.

• 0:10Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my god.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  They didn't steal much.

• 0:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, still, you got taken for a ride.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  I did.

• 0:15Conan O'Brien?

  And you just put it out there that you're easy to scam.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  I am!

• 0:18Conan O'Brien?

  One accident, a little click, can expose your information, putting you at risk of identity theft.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Mmm.

• 0:22Conan O'Brien?

  Thankfully, there's LifeLock. 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. Join now and save up to 30% off your first year. This is a good thing to have in your back pocket, don't you think?

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I need this.

• 0:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, you do need it. You need it fast. Go to lifelock.com/conan. That's lifelock.com/conan to save 30%. Terms apply.

• 0:51Conan O'Brien?

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

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:54Conan O'Brien?

  Just accept the premise and we'll move ahead.

• 0:56Speaker 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?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  A vase.

• 1:04Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:06Speaker 01

  A jacket.

• 1:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, nice jacket. I love a nice jacket.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, that jacket. Nice jacket.

• 1:10Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:12Speaker 01

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

• 1:14Conan 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.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:26Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:51Conan O'Brien?

  Hi, my name is Danny McBride and I feel

• 1:57Conan O'Brien?

  thrilling about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Wait, thrilling? You feel thrilling?

• 2:04Speaker 02

  I feel thrilled.

• 2:05Conan O'Brien?

  Actually, so cool, the way you said it has nothing to do with me.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  It sounds to me like plausible deniability about it.

• 2:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:34Conan O'Brien?

  Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. It's not just me that does this podcast. I am the beneficiary of having very strong, powerful, independent voices joining me. One of those is Sona Movsesian. Hello, Sona, and welcome.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Hi, hello.

• 2:48Conan O'Brien?

  And how can I welcome you when you already are welcome and you are an integral part of this whole...

• 2:54Speaker 01

  What are you doing?

• 2:56Conan O'Brien?

  Matt Gourley, good to see you as well, and I thank you for your service. No one gets there alone. So, here we are together on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Who are you?

• 3:05Conan O'Brien?

  And I am...

• 3:06Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, who are you?

• 3:08Conan O'Brien?

  My name is Conan O'Brien.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  No, you're not.

• 3:09Conan O'Brien?

  And I'm someone who's just filled with gratitude.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  No, you're not.

• 3:12Conan O'Brien?

  Glad to be here.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Have you been body snatched?

• 3:15Conan O'Brien?

  I was body snatched. I was very tired last night and I fell asleep next to a strange new plant I found.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Oh, no!

• 3:22Conan O'Brien?

  And I woke up this morning, there was a decayed, beady-eyed carcass next to me.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27Conan O'Brien?

  And then my body felt refreshed and new.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  I like this, whatever it is.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I do too. If you ever got body snatched, I feel like we'd all know, like, right away.

• 3:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  And it would just be you being nice to us.

• 3:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Or not doing bits, just being normal.

• 3:39Conan O'Brien?

  That's right, that's how you would know. I would just be, hello, Sona, how are you? And how's your family?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  And you'd be interested in the answer and you would wait for a response.

• 3:47Conan O'Brien?

  You know what'd be funny? The minute I... If there were body snatchers out there, if I came in and all I would have to do is say, "Hi, Sona, how are you?", and you would shoot me in the head with a shotgun.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, I would!

• 3:59Conan O'Brien?

  And you'd be right.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yes, I would. A hundred percent. I would know immediately.

• 4:03Conan O'Brien?

  I remember there was an episode of The Simpsons back in my time where I think it was one of the Halloween episodes, there's zombies that are taking over Springfield and Homer's shooting zombies left and right. And then Flanders pops up in a window and Homer shoots his head off and someone says, um, how did you know that he was a zombie? And he went, he was a zombie?

• 4:27Conan O'Brien?

  I just always loved that joke that he blew Flanders' head off.

• 4:33Conan O'Brien?

  Not even thinking about him being a zombie or not. You shot zombie Flanders. Flanders was a zombie. Uh, anyway, um, no, I'm, uh, I just wanted to give credit where credit's due. And I think this is a village.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  He's still going.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I know. It's really unsettling.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  What have you done with?

• 4:49Conan O'Brien?

  I want to talk about something, which is I always have ink on my hands. I don't know if that comes up on the podcast, but

• 4:54Speaker 02

  I don't think it has.

• 4:55Conan O'Brien?

  I write a lot with, uh, pens and I'm constantly doodling and I always have a pen in my hand. And I'm constantly writing notes in a journal or on a scrap of paper. And, uh, lately I've been using this fountain pen that Jeff Ross got me, uh, for my birthday, which is really nice. And I use it all the time and, but it does bleed a little bit of ink and I'm constantly.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Does it squirt?

• 5:19Conan O'Brien?

  What's that?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Does it squirt?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Like a novelty?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  No, I'm not do- I'm not doing anything.

• 5:24Conan O'Brien?

  It doesn't, no, no, it's just that, it's just that when you're working around bottles of ink and stuff like that. And I kind of like it all my life.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  It's like an actual fountain pen.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Like there's liquid inside sloshing?

• 5:34Conan O'Brien?

  And I'm not, this is not an ad. It's, I think it's an Aurora.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  But it doesn't.

• 5:37Conan O'Brien?

  It's an Aurora. It's really nice. It's a good pen and he got it for me and I really like it and thanks again, Jeff.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  And let me try that out.

• 5:43Conan O'Brien?

  I use it all the time, but look at my hands. And I noticed when we were in, we were just shooting a travel show, Sona, and you were with me. Or in all of my different travels, I'm always about to go on camera and I see that there's ink over my right hand. Everywhere. And I just look like a little spout.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  First of all, feel how warm this is. What have you been doing with this pen?

• 6:05Conan O'Brien?

  What's that? Well, I keep it in a safe place.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Why is it leaking so much?

• 6:09Conan O'Brien?

  No, it's not.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  It's not leaking.

• 6:11Conan O'Brien?

  Don't diss the Aurora pen. It's just that sometimes, no, no, no, you gotta, God, you're not, just look, see?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  I'm writing with the pen incorrectly? No, see, whatever you're doing.

• 6:20Conan O'Brien?

  You went like this and with a fountain pen, you need to come at it with an angle. You were coming at it straight down and that's just stupid.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was writing. Huh?

• 6:31Conan O'Brien?

  Do you feel how warm it is?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I know. I think he's.

• 6:33Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I always hold it and I flip it around in my hand.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 6:36Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, and I always do that with pens.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Why are pens like that better than normal pens?

• 6:40Conan O'Brien?

  I'm not, well, they're beautiful looking.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are.

• 6:43Conan O'Brien?

  And, um, it's just kinda nice. I've always been a little bit, even when I was a kid, I told you I loved pens, paper. I wanted office supplies.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:53Conan O'Brien?

  I mean, what a freaky kid. I wasn't asking for a baseball glove. I wanted a little stamp that said void.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Stationery.

• 7:01Conan O'Brien?

  I wanted ledgers. I wanted ledgers. I wanted, did you get them?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  My God.

• 7:06Conan O'Brien?

  Um, yeah, my parents were very nice to me. They were, they would indulge me, but I remember thinking, all I wanna do is be able to sign forms and then stamp them. And then put them in a pneumatic tube, like in the nineteen twenties and.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Home Depot in the nineties.

• 7:20Conan O'Brien?

  Exactly. So I just, uh, I was always into that.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Okay, that's your, that's your thing.

• 7:25Conan O'Brien?

  Getting a little self-conscious now that, uh, you know, I go to these nice events or events where I'm supposed to be on camera and I, sometimes I look at the picture later on and there's just, it looks like I've crawled out of a grave.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  I think you're doing it wrong.

• 7:38Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  I think you're just writing incorrectly.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  You know what you need is like.

• 7:41Conan O'Brien?

  This from the person who, uh, I'm not gonna talk about the.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, there's no.

• 7:45Conan O'Brien?

  With which you attacked the page?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  There's no ink on my finger, but there is. There is.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  You need some of that, um, powder that like Shakespeare would throw on it after they write, you know, that, that soaks it up?

• 7:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, I think it was just sand back in the day. I don't know.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Do you have a quill?

• 8:00Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, I don't have a quill. I've never had a quill.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:03Conan O'Brien?

  But.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  I feel like you're a quill guy.

• 8:04Conan O'Brien?

  I.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I feel like you're very, you're very quill-esque.

• 8:08Conan O'Brien?

  You're a real quill guy. My blotters over the years, right? I would just fill them with what little.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  So many doodles. We kept them all. They were on your desk. And then when they would fill up, I would replace them and then you would just do.

• 8:20Conan O'Brien?

  Just blank at them, and you could probably tell my mood if you looked at like, oh, well, here's a do, here's a, here's a blotter from 1997.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:31Conan O'Brien?

  You could probably tell what was going on in my life.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Well, even right now in your journal, you've written in some kind of hieroglyphics.

• 8:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I write.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Does that mean anything?

• 8:37Conan O'Brien?

  No, I just try and create little languages and I like making lines. But anyway, that's what I got is that I'm covered in ink all the time now. And I need to, I need to, I need to clean up my shit a little bit here.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  You need to.

• 8:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, go ahead.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  I, I've completely stopped using pens and paper. I'm, I'm, I'm past that. I got a Kindle Scribe.

• 8:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  That I've started to doodle on, which is great.

• 9:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  So I don't.

• 9:01Conan O'Brien?

  You're trying to get a free one? Why would you bring this up?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  No, I'm just saying, if you need a solve, you can move into the digital age. Instead of going back.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 9:07Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, no.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Better for paper.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Move forwards. You can email yourself notes. It's great.

• 9:11Conan O'Brien?

  I, um, no offense. No offense, but I like the tactile nature.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  This is tactile.

• 9:15Conan O'Brien?

  Listen, I'm very suspicious, Blay, and for good reason, that you mentioned it's a Kindle Scribe.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  We can take that out.

• 9:22Conan O'Brien?

  Because.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  We don't have to take it out.

• 9:23Conan O'Brien?

  We're gonna leave it in because based on your past behavior, I think you're gonna try and write that off now.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  No.

• 9:27Conan O'Brien?

  I think you are.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Send it to us.

• 9:29Conan O'Brien?

  I think you are.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  By the way, I was gone for that. And Blay, we gotta talk, man.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  You know what? If we brought that up again, I need to, I need to apologize to your mom.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  We're gonna continue this in the segment after the interview. It will be actually part four of Blay's tax saga.

• 9:46Conan O'Brien?

  Tax evasion scandal. And by the way, Blay is guilty of the same thing that put Capone in prison.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Okay, take us to the intro.

• 9:52Conan O'Brien?

  Okay. I guess today, as a hilarious writer, producer, and actor behind such shows as Eastbound and Down, Vice Principals, and The Righteous Gemstones, he now has a new book titled Thrilling Tales of Modern Men. Very excited he's back on the podcast.

• 10:12Conan O'Brien?

  Danny McBride, welcome.

• 10:17Conan O'Brien?

  Danny, as you know, I'm a massive fan of yours, have been since day one.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Well, the feeling is mutual.

• 10:23Conan O'Brien?

  And I'm just thrilled that you're here and we have a lot of stuff to talk about and we'll talk more in depth about it in a little bit, but you wrote a book of short stories called Thrilling Tales of Modern Men and you write so well and the stories are great and I'm very proud of you and also jealous because I like to write. I haven't gotten my shit together to do something like this and this is fantastic. And then the thing I'm most jealous of is the first quote, you know, you get, you know, known people to write a nice quote on the back. Yours is from Sturgill Simpson.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:07Conan O'Brien?

  And I love Sturgill Simpson.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Oh, he's the best.

• 11:10Conan O'Brien?

  And so much so that I, I have a band on the side and I play Sturgill Simpson and I've said to people, I'd like to get to know Sturgill Simpson and people said, he was on your show.

• 11:24Conan O'Brien?

  And I'm like, I know, but it's not the same. Like, I wish Sturgill Simpson was my friend. He's such a good writer, such a good singer-songwriter.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Well, I could negotiate that meeting, I'm pretty sure. I could, yeah.

• 11:36Conan O'Brien?

  It's gonna end up with me, a suitcase of cash in a parking lot, late at night.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:41Conan O'Brien?

  Where the deal goes down.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  We'll meet you around the world somewhere, one of your destinations for your show.

• 11:46Conan O'Brien?

  I would love to hang with both of you at the same time, but this book, we will talk about it, but I want to start on some other stuff first, which is who the fuck do you think you are?

• 11:59Speaker 04

  Let me tell you.

• 12:00Conan O'Brien?

  Come, let me tell you something. I don't like you and I don't like your comedy. I don't like your southern ways. I'm from Boston, see?

• 12:11Conan O'Brien?

  You know, I was thinking about you, reading up about you, and one of the things that we really have in common was how important Saturday morning cartoons were to us and sort of our comedic outlook. You were watching, first of all, you took it really seriously. I remember my brothers and I did too. We would study the Saturday morning lineup because it would refresh. It was a big thing back in the day. Now I think new shows come and go all the time, but if you're like me, I'm older than you, but I remembered in the summer, you'd start reading about the shows that were going to come out in the fall, what the schedule and the lineup was going to be. You'd circle the ones that were interesting to you in the TV guide.

• 12:51Conan O'Brien?

  They'd be, you know, you'd talk about it. And then you, we were there Saturday morning. I would like get up and have coffee.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Oh, me.

• 12:59Conan O'Brien?

  And I was like five.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  Pounding it to get through gummy bears.

• 13:03Conan O'Brien?

  Coffee and a couple of cigarettes.

• 13:06Speaker 04

  I gotta make it to Smurfs.

• 13:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Conan O'Brien?

  And then I would watch these shows with real interest.

• 13:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:14Conan O'Brien?

  You know, so you were watching, probably the thing that influenced me the most was not a new show. It was Warner Brothers cartoons, you know, Looney Tunes characters. They influenced my comedy timing, everything. And you were into Daffy Duck.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  I was into Donald Duck.

• 13:31Conan O'Brien?

  Donald Duck?

• 13:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:33Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I don't respect that.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  I like how, I like how angry he was. He was always so pissed off and it was just such a funny, so funny against someone like Mickey, who just literally never loses his temper.

• 13:45Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  And then he's just buddies with the angriest guy.

• 13:48Conan O'Brien?

  Who's ever existed.

• 13:51Conan O'Brien?

  All right, well, I got that wrong. So now we're talking about Disney.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Daffy Duck is very cool too.

• 13:54Conan O'Brien?

  I love, I love Donald Duck because, I mean, Daffy Duck, because he's, he really is disturbingly insane.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, he is. He can pull his beak off and put it around the back of his head sometimes.

• 14:06Conan O'Brien?

  But I mean, just, just, he needs to be medicated. He needs to go to McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. Um, and we're all laughing, but it's like, no, no, he's, we know what this is now.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  If he was on TV now, he would get the care that he needs.

• 14:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:25Conan O'Brien?

  But so you like Donald Duck. Donald Duck is so pissed.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Oh, so pissed.

• 14:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  And everything, the whole universe is always shitting on him all the time.

• 14:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Just like constantly. He just has this little blue shirt on, just walking around pissed off.

• 14:38Conan O'Brien?

  That awful blue shirt.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Little hat.

• 14:41Conan O'Brien?

  And no pants.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  And no pants, no pants at all.

• 14:44Conan O'Brien?

  I think that's why he's pissed.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, it probably is.

• 14:47Conan O'Brien?

  Walk around with no pants for a while and you'll just be an angry guy. Bus seats hot, it's not that hot. It is when you have no pants.

• 14:56Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, so you watched that and you watched?

• 15:00Speaker 04

  My, my lineup was, uh, the Dungeon Dragons cartoon show. That was awesome. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think of what else came in the, the littles. Do you, I don't know if you're.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  I think you and I might be the same age. What year were you born?

• 15:11Speaker 04

  I was born in 76.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  73. So, yeah, the little snorks.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  You were a little too old to be watching the littles. Let's be honest. I was almost aging out of the littles.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  I was a late bloomer and what I bloomed into was disturbing.

• 15:24Conan O'Brien?

  I just have to admit, I was watching Saved by the Bell when I was 45 years old.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Those kids were hot.

• 15:29Conan O'Brien?

  Those girls are pretty.

• 15:32Conan O'Brien?

  Dude, you're 45.

• 15:35Conan O'Brien?

  You're here in a, you're here in an electronics store watching Saved by the Bell on nine televisions. You've been here every morning. Um, yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  The littles were awesome though.

• 15:47Conan O'Brien?

  What are the littles? I don't even know what that is.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  Their, their theme song was literally, we are the littles. Uh, they just said their name and they were just tiny people that lived in someone else's house.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Normal people, normal sized people's house.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  But they would like make their beds and stuff out of like matchboxes and they would like design things like that, you know, were full size, but they would use it to their advantage.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Cutesy animated. They kind of all look like elves almost.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, somebody should, somebody should remake that. Then you mentioned shirt tails. I remember that. That was such a strange concept for a show, which was just animals who their shirts said stuff, right?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  That was, wait.

• 16:20Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 16:20Speaker 04

  That was the, that was the concept.

• 16:21Conan O'Brien?

  Animals that wear clothing?

• 16:23Speaker 04

  That wear shirts.

• 16:24Conan O'Brien?

  That wear shirts and their shirts say things?

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think they change depending on their emotions and stuff, right?

• 16:28Conan O'Brien?

  I believe so. So the shirts are like a mood ring, but they have words on them.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  And they might not have worn pants. They might have, yeah.

• 16:35Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, there we go.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  And see again, the, the trend of no pants.

• 16:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Just shirts.

• 16:39Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? I walked through them all wearing a shirt that said hug me with no pants. Not one person hugged me. Not one. It's surprise. Yeah. I guess the security guard, it's kind of a hug when they pull you to the ground.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, that, that counts, that counts.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  That's what they were doing.

• 16:59Conan O'Brien?

  So you're growing up, that's important to you. You're raised Baptist.

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, yep.

• 17:04Conan O'Brien?

  And, uh, your mom used to perform at the church. She would write out like skits and do the scripts and make puppets and she would do a little show.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 17:17Conan O'Brien?

  That must have influenced you.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  It definitely did. Uh, yeah, I mean, I remember I was like surprised when she even took it on like, you know, we just went to church. Then suddenly my mom is stepping up into this position where she's gonna do puppet shows in front of the whole church.

• 17:31Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  I was like, how are you gonna do this, mom? You, do you know about puppets? Do you know how to do puppet stuff? She does.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  But yeah, they would, she would kind of like drum up these like two to three page little, uh, scripts. And then she would, it was her, it was my dad sometimes, and then it would be other people from the church playing some of the other characters. And it was just like the children's sermon before the big sermon. They would, uh, you know, so it'd be something, you know, thou shalt not steal or whatever. And it's just a little skit about a kid who steals like lunch money at school and why you shouldn't do it.

• 18:02Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  But it was, you know, I think what was cool about it was the idea of being able to see something created. And then like a few days later, performed in front of people. And then, you know, my, from my point of view, I'm not doing the puppets. I'm not, I don't have anything, I don't have anything to do with it. I'm just sitting there watching the process. Like I'm seeing her in our kitchen, writing these scripts and like, you know, running the lines. And then a few days later, I'm at church, like looking around, watching people watch it and respond to it. And, you know, I just thought it was cool. Cool. I think that was like the beginning of me sort of like even understanding like, oh, this is like something you could do. You can, you can write things in your kitchen and people might respond to it.

• 18:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, that's so cool. You, were you quite religious then when you were a kid, when you were Baptist?

• 18:45Speaker 04

  I wouldn't say I was religious. I think I spent most of my time like, you know, doodling on the minister's face in the program or, or just imagining what else.

• 18:55Conan O'Brien?

  I think we went to the same, I think I'm, whatever religion you are, I'm that religion. Yeah.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  But it's funny because now that, you know, we, I stopped going probably in middle school, but we went all the time. But then you look back and like, oh, it was actually kind of awesome that for like an hour you had to just be forced to sit there and be quiet.

• 19:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  While, you know, I think my imagination would run wild during that time.

• 19:15Conan O'Brien?

  Me too. I was Catholic, so I went to Catholic mass, but.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  You guys had to stand up and sit down a lot more than we had to.

• 19:20Conan O'Brien?

  Stand up and sit down.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  We could just be lazy. We could just sit there every now and then clap along to a song.

• 19:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Yeah. We had to stand up and sit down a lot, but there's still a lot of time to look around. I would just look around St. Lawrence's church and like, I would look up and just imagine all kinds of insane things because you're not allowed, you weren't on a tablet. They didn't have tablets then. And you just, you had to, you were trapped with your mind.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:44Conan O'Brien?

  And I wasn't thinking about the stuff I was supposed to be thinking about. You said that you're, you have said that you, your parents got divorced and that also probably had an effect on, whatever, you questioning this whole Baptist thing.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just saw it as, you know, I don't think it's, it was exclusive to like the Baptist church, but it was at that time in the eighties, it was sort of like, you know, people weren't getting divorced as much and especially at the church, I think. So it was just, we, after it kind of happened, I felt like my mom didn't really feel like welcome there as much. And so then she would drop me and my sister off and we're like, well, we're only going because you were going. We ain't trying to go to this thing by ourselves.

• 20:24Conan O'Brien?

  You walk in, you peek, the car's left, and then you guys go out the back door.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, and you know, the cool thing about that church I went to is called Salem Baptist Church. It was in Spotsylvania, Virginia, but it was actually a church that was around during the Civil War. So it was just kind of wild to go to some little church that was like, oh, this was like standing.

• 20:43Conan O'Brien?

  Was it the same Spotsylvania?

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:46Conan O'Brien?

  As the battle?

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, yep, same one. Yeah, a lot of, lot of Civil War action in my hometown.

• 20:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 04

  Lots. Those are nasty battles, too. That one, that, that area too, had some of the nastiest battles. Like, I think it is, it's known as the bloodiest ground in all of North America because of how many battles were there. But the gnarliest one, I think, is that Battle of Wilderness that was there. And that's like this insane battle that happened over the course of a few days in the forest. The forest was on fire and guys were literally just like hatcheting each other. I mean, it was like, it was awful. It was insane. And yeah, it's a killer. I used to go there all the time and just enjoy myself. Watch, think about that, that brutality.

• 21:30Conan O'Brien?

  Good times. So great. Now we're talking. That's a good, that's a good first date. I've talked about this on the podcast, but I'm a, you know, history buff and a Civil War guy. And I remembered what, my wife and I, it's, people think it was our honeymoon. It was not. It was after we got married, but just shortly after, like a couple of months later, I had a week off from the late night show.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  That's a honeymoon, isn't it?

• 21:55Conan O'Brien?

  No, we had our honeymoon and then we came back from it. But then maybe two months later, I had a week off and she said, let's take a trip. And I said, yeah, let's drive down through Georgia and visit the different towns in Georgia. And, you know, she liked it. And then the next thing you know, I'm saying, she said, where are we going to now? And I said, Andersonville. And she said, what's that? And I said, that's the giant prisoner of war camp where the Confederates kept all the Union troops, didn't feed them, and they all died of diarrhea. And she said, we're going to Atlanta to the Four Seasons Hotel. And we're gonna drink Apple Tinis and get our diarrhea there. So we did that instead, but.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  I think you had a great idea.

• 22:38Conan O'Brien?

  I think I had a great idea. Think of all, looking at a field, think of all the diarrhea.

• 22:51Conan O'Brien?

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

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love awards.

• 22:54Conan 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.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 23:08Conan 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.

• 23:17Speaker 01

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

• 23:22Conan O'Brien?

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

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Hello!

• 23:41Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:16Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, I want to try something different.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  What?

• 24:19Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Ooh!

• 24:23Conan O'Brien?

  Every morning.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:24Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 24:31Conan O'Brien?

  See what I did?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:32Conan O'Brien?

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

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36Conan O'Brien?

  They're America's best network.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:38Conan 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.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Oh, that's weird.

• 24:46Conan 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

• 24:55Speaker 01

  You travel a lot.

• 24:55Conan O'Brien?

  Travel show that I do.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:57Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:07Speaker 01

  That doesn't seem like a good idea.

• 25:08Conan O'Brien?

  It's a great idea.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:10Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Oh my god!

• 25:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  What?

• 25:17Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:20Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 25:20Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 25:49Conan O'Brien?

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

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:55Conan O'Brien?

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

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah!

• 26:04Conan O'Brien?

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

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Because it's family.

• 26:16Conan O'Brien?

  But what about a niece or a nephew?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:20Conan O'Brien?

  Like a walk with an ex-wife?

• 26:23Conan O'Brien?

  I don't know. I mean, they're just throwing, that's a weird, they just made a very specific choice.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:27Conan O'Brien?

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

• 26:54Speaker 01

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

• 26:57Conan O'Brien?

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

• 27:19Conan O'Brien?

  I do think one of the things that made The Righteous Gemstones just so great was you knew your subject, you understood these people, and also, I always sensed there's affection there, too. Like, I don't think it works to make a comedy about people if you just think they're stupid and loathsome.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 27:43Conan O'Brien?

  And that's not what you did. You had a real understanding and affection for these people, and found them ridiculous, but also understood them at the same time. Does that make sense?

• 27:55Speaker 04

  It does make sense, and I think we were, that is what we were trying to do. And I think we extended to a lot of the stuff from even, you know, Eastbound to Vice Principals. It's sort of, you know, we know that we're not dealing with like, the best examples of mankind. And, uh, but I think that it's fun to treat them still with, uh, with a little bit of empathy and even giving them enough depth, so, you know, there's layers there. I think it, I think when comedy is written where there is such a disdain for what you're joking about, it can kind of become boring. I think it becomes more unexpected if you're confused as the audience of where you even kind of sit with this person.

• 28:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I think, I mean, I talk about this now. I do think it's very tricky, always have to have a blend in comedy. If you're just thinking about the comedy, and obviously, we're very divided right now in this country, and people are yelling at each other a lot, and it's very vitriolic. And I think sometimes that, I don't know, it just makes comedy, if you want to talk about it or portray it in any way, the only way to do it is to show some nuance and empathy for a different point of view. But that's not what a lot of people are interested in.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:03Conan O'Brien?

  Does that make sense?

• 29:04Speaker 04

  It totally makes sense. Then, the thing is, when everyone is kind of like, on both sides are angry about the same exact stuff, it also just makes any comment you're making sort of feel redundant, like people, it's like well-traveled paths, you know? So I do think when you can find that nuance, you probably have a better shot of actually like, making people think. If it's not something that they've been shouted out about over and over again.

• 29:26Conan O'Brien?

  The, um, what's interesting, and I think it's interesting to me, is that you... You came to be known through comedy and hugely successful in comedy, but you've also carved out time to do these other things. You were a huge force behind the Halloween franchise, the reboots. And it's so fascinating to me because I've always thought there's a weird like a sometimes they people say, or I've said, many people have said it, there's a symbiosis between comedy and music. Like a lot of comedians also love music and there's some kind of weird parallel. I also think there's something going on between comedy and horror.

• 30:10Conan O'Brien?

  There's some, they're very different, but also there are things about them that aren't that different because it's all about surprise.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Exactly. I think you're, you're with both of them, you're structuring an experience, you know, you're with a joke, you'll, you know, you obviously want to pace things out so that the punchline gets the biggest laugh. And I think it's the same way with those scares. You, you think about how, you know, oh, we'll make them a little scared here and then we'll let them off the hook here and then boom, we'll hit them here. So I think there is a little bit of that is, is similar is the, yeah, the architecture of trying to make sure you get the result that you're going for.

• 30:45Conan O'Brien?

  Also, I mean, if you look at Jordan Peele, his work, if you look at Obsession, if you look at Weapons, a lot of these people have got their chops in comedy. And then, you know, when I was watching Weapons last year, and, and one of the reasons that I really wanted to do something with it on the Oscars was that, that character of Aunt Gladys is to me a comedy character. And there's so much of the movie that's kind of funny at the same time. And it's that, that's that. razor thin line between this is hilarious and this is horrifying.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 31:26Conan O'Brien?

  And many times when I've been trying to be funny in my career, I've been horrified.

• 31:32Conan O'Brien?

  But.

• 31:34Conan O'Brien?

  And if I tried to, you know, frighten any guy, I think they would just start laughing. So. But there's something going on there. And so it must have been a great creative outlet for you. Clearly it was.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  It was a lot of fun. You know, that was. Jason Blum had come to David Green about adapting that. And, you know, David Green and I have gone to college. We went to college together. We've known each other for a really, really long time. And, you know, he came to me and was like, I think I might do this. Would you want to help me? I'm like, no way. We should, you shouldn't relaunch Halloween. It's a terrible idea. I love Halloween. Don't do that.

• 32:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  But then as we were thinking about it, I was like, well, I mean, if someone's going to, why don't we give it a shot and let's see if we could. And, yeah, it was honestly, it was like unreal. It was so funny to be sitting there like writing on that script. And you're just writing, you know, the shape walks into the room.

• 32:24Conan O'Brien?

  I was formed in that movie. My babysitter made me watch it when I was five with the lights out. And so to like do away with all those sequels that in their own way I love, but to come back the way you guys did. With the 2018 one. It was like closure for me.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  The whole experience was awesome. Not only getting to do that, but even, you know, we had to go through steps of approval to do it. Like David and I had to go to John Carpenter's house and pitch him what we wanted to do. And it was sort of like, I've never really been nervous about pitching an idea ever. It was just like, oh, they don't like it. They don't like it. But suddenly as we're like knocking on his door, it's like, oh God, I think I'll be crushed if he doesn't like what this idea is. This is insane. And so we, you know, I'm meeting him and pitching him this idea of like, we have an idea of what we want to do with something you've made. It was all of a sudden like, what are the balls of us? What are we thinking? We should never have.

• 33:15Conan O'Brien?

  That's great.

• 33:16Speaker 04

  It was awesome. But then, you know, we, once we got his approval, we sent it to, to Jamie Lee Curtis to, because obviously it wouldn't work without her in it. And, yeah, when she called back and was like, yeah, I want to do this. I mean, Green and I are just looking at each other like, what is going? Going on. I mean, it was it was insane. And when it premiered at a at TIFF, I think it might have been the most proud I've ever been of anything that we've done. I mean, I was so nervous of what that reception was going to be for that one, because I'm I'm there with them. I'm a fan of this. It meant a lot. And I just really wanted it to work for the other fans. And I remember watching that and just my stomach was in knots. I wasn't like eating for like two days leading up to it. And we're sitting there and when it got to the last half where they're like in the house with them.

• 34:00Speaker 04

  And everybody in the theater is like cheering and applauding. I was just like, oh, God, yes.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  How happy to live.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  It was it was awesome. It was so much fun. Yeah.

• 34:12Conan O'Brien?

  I also think writing how someone gets killed.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:16Conan O'Brien?

  Would be kind of fascinating because there is a real art to it, you know, just you if if a character just gets killed. Well, that's, you know, gets gets shot. It's boring. It's trying to think of these inventive ways that are sometimes fifty percent comedy.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:36Conan O'Brien?

  The way someone, you know, and if you watch these movies as they're competing with each other to do it in a more interesting way.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  There's the scene at the rest stop when Michael Myers comes in and just drops teeth on the ground from. It's harrowing.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Well, I I think that idea about the teeth dropping, it might have even I I might be remembering it wrong, but I feel like it was. Uh, our location, our buddy who works in locations who had that idea. And so that's the other thing is you're working on a, you know, if you're on a comedy, sometimes you'll get jokes from.

• 35:08Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  People sitting around like, oh, you should say this, like, oh, it's not bad. When people suggest things like he should drop the teeth, you're like, great idea, but also keep an eye on this dude. That is fucked up.

• 35:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:23Conan O'Brien?

  Where'd you come up with that idea?

• 35:29Conan O'Brien?

  Sometimes, I don't know, I don't want to talk about it. I mean, I want to take the credit, but.

• 35:36Conan O'Brien?

  That's fantastic. Yeah, I, I, uh. It just occurred to me that it would be, I don't know, be really funny to shoot a short thing where it's you going to John Carpenter's house to pitch him and he doesn't really like the idea, but you hang around. And then you use all the tropes from horror movies, like he goes into the kitchen at night and opens the refrigerator door. And then when he shuts it, you're right there. And you're like, I just really think, I told you, I don't want to do it.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  The pitch.

• 36:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's just, it's called the pitch.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Season of the pitch.

• 36:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, season of the pitch and you just keep.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  I don't let it go.

• 36:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, you don't let it.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  I become his dog, like in a thing.

• 36:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's all the, exactly, it's all this stuff that has been used a million times. I'm always amazed now when people use some of those tropes that have been used way too many times and they don't put a spin on it. Like, really?

• 36:28Speaker 02

  That's where we're talking about Widows Bay. There's a, there's a slasher episode and a moment with a shotgun that you wish you'd seen in slasher movies for decades. And you finally see it and it's wonderful.

• 36:39Conan O'Brien?

  Widows Bay is, they're, I mean.

• 36:41Speaker 04

  I can't wait to see it. Everyone I know loves it. And I have that on my list.

• 36:45Conan O'Brien?

  Here's what I, they, they're doing something new on that show. Which is, it's not a comedy, it's horror and there's comedy, but they've got this ratio. It's like they invented this cocktail. It's kind of perfect and I don't think anyone's done quite that yet.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 37:06Conan O'Brien?

  And they, they, they do, I think one of the real brilliant things about the show is they'll get the tension up to this highest pitch. And then they'll always deflate it in this kind of humiliating way, but then get the pitch right back again. And without giving anything away, but there's this one point where there's a, there's like a demon and the main character, Matthew, Matthew Rees has gone in to, to talk to the demon. And this other woman says, you gotta go in there and talk to the demon. So he goes in and he's starting to talk to the demon and it's like knife's edge tense and then. The door just opens and she goes, "I forgot my purse."

• 37:48Conan O'Brien?

  The demon and Matthew Reese, wait a second while she gets her purse and she backs out. You're like, "Who the fuck does that? Who does that?"

• 37:57Speaker 04

  It's great.

• 37:57Conan O'Brien?

  Anyway, I don't know why we're plugging this show that neither one of us is involved in. But Widows Bay, you're a genius. I just have to give a shout out. Katie Dipple is the mind behind Widows Bay. I think she's brilliant and she's a former intern on our show. And she's brilliant. She's done a ton of other work, but I think Widows Bay is her masterpiece. And also, while we're talking about other people's work,

• 38:26Conan O'Brien?

  I think Hyundai makes an incredible.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 38:28Speaker 04

  They've come a long way.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 38:34Conan O'Brien?

  Let's talk about this book because Thrilling Tales of Modern Men. I know that this is a theme you've worked on for a while in your work over the years, which is men kind of trying to confront maybe a world that's passed them by, or men who feel... Well, you're gonna describe it better than I am.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  No, no, you keep going. I want to hear how you describe it. No, you're totally right.

• 38:57Conan O'Brien?

  Men like me who are masculine and never lose.

• 39:04Conan O'Brien?

  I'm gonna do... Oh, actually, I can read from a New York Times review.

• 39:09Conan O'Brien?

  "This is shit," it says.

• 39:10Speaker 04

  Elementary.

• 39:12Conan O'Brien?

  It's a very inarticulate review.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Oh, I hadn't read that one yet.

• 39:14Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no, this is the New York Times. "What a piece of shit." Shitty, shitty, shitty shit. What the hell?

• 39:21Speaker 04

  My mom wrote that.

• 39:24Conan O'Brien?

  I thought this was in my toilet, but it was... No, it's a book... No, New York Times review. "Some of the stories fit neatly into the canon of wounded protagonists who lash out. Others tip toward a quieter emotional depth, albeit laced with obscenity and the occasional violent outburst. They're all undeniably the work of a storyteller interested in entertaining while also poking at what makes men tick and then go boom." Which is... Yeah. I'd buy that book.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  You'd write that book?

• 39:53Conan O'Brien?

  I don't have to, because you gave me one for free.

• 39:59Conan O'Brien?

  Not for free. Uh oh.

• 40:00Speaker 04

  I need, I need the Benmo.

• 40:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, it's coming, it's coming. Cause I'm real good with tech.

• 40:08Conan O'Brien?

  But this comes out of like, you're very, you're so good, and I'm going back to even if, you know, your first work, Foot Fist Way, and through everything you've done at, and also, you know, Donald Duck. Like, people who are, you know, assertive, male characters that are also pissed off and frustrated because things aren't working out.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:32Conan O'Brien?

  And that seems to be this area that you love exploring, and now you've got this really terrific book of short stories that tackles that.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's just, you know, it's an extension, I feel like, like what you were saying about the, the work I've done in TV, like this kinda came to me because I really just wanted to see, could I do that and deliver that same experience, that same vibe, the same level of storytelling? Could I do it in a totally different format? And that was kind of why I entered this and, you know, even the way the stories are sort of structured, like they start in essence with like a cold open and the title of the story like comes up later in the story.

• 41:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  And so it was kind of a way of me sort of trying to translate what I, I mean, I've written at this point like over 80 episodes of TV.

• 41:14Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 04

  Uh, and so it trains your brain to work in a certain way when it comes to storytelling. And I was just trying to use some of the stuff I learned doing that to just put it into a totally new endeavor.

• 41:23Conan O'Brien?

  Also, it, it feels too like, if you're writing episodic television as you have, you know, brilliantly over the years, you've got these characters, you wanna get multiple seasons and you set up your own rules and you set up who your, you know, protagonists are and your side characters, and then that's what you've gotta work with over and over and over and over again. And with a project like this, you can have an idea, explore it in a short story.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 41:56Conan O'Brien?

  And then pivot.

• 41:59Conan O'Brien?

  Say, okay, I'm done with that. Now it's gonna be about a robot. Now it's gonna be about a magician uh who's suspended in a box in a mall and gets in over his head. Now it's gonna be about a sitcom actor who takes revenge on the coyote that killed his pet. Like you, you, you're working in a shorter form, but you can go, you can go nuts, which is great.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  You can go nuts and you know, gemstones, I was writing on that for, you know, seven years, basically. And it was so much fun and it was fun writing for all those characters and that world that we established was a ton of fun. Uh, it's weird, you know, like when you've, when you've worked that long on something, once it's over, it is like, almost like a breakup. It's like getting over a relationship or something that I wanted to write more, but I felt like, I ain't trying to get into anything too serious. I just need, I need to get in and out. I just need some short stories, you know? I felt like I couldn't like commit myself to telling a story that was gonna take that much time, you know? And so the idea was like, I think there's just a lot of stories I wanna tell. And this allowed that to happen where you didn't have to think of the story of like, well,

• 43:05Speaker 04

  will this have legs for four years? Will this, you know, when you tell this one episode, it has to connect to six other episodes that tell a story. It's like you could enter it, start it and take it to completion in one sitting. And um, yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. And I think after writing so much TV, it was uh, yeah, it was a sort of a cleanse that I needed.

• 43:26Conan O'Brien?

  Well, uh, now is this, what is your process? I know it sounds like a boring question, but to me it's fascinating. Do you, do you write these stories here and there? Did you just sit down to write a collection of short stories?

• 43:40Speaker 04

  You know, I started the, I think there's only like maybe one or two of them that are from this, but how I even began even writing in this format was when we were writing Vice Principals. It was, we, we wrote both of those seasons in one year. So it was one solid year of just working on that morning, noon and night. And it was the, I was about, I think about five months in, I was feeling that thing of like, oh, I love these guys, but fuck, I have to do more with these guys today.

• 44:05Conan O'Brien?

  You're locked in a room mentally with these few characters.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  And you're just trying, it's a, becomes a puzzle figuring it all out and. I was just sort of like, the idea of anything else felt appealing. So I just started, I started this thing where in the morning before I'd go into the writer's room, I would just freehand write like anything I wanted. And I would just get to about three or four pages and I would stop it. And I had no ambitions for what any of it would be. It didn't have to be anything, I didn't have to continue the same story, just whatever idea I wanted to, I would just let myself write that. And I did that for the rest of that year. I ended up filling up like four books full of just all this stuff. And I put it away and didn't go back to any of it. And it really did kind of help my brain as I was writing my scripts. It helped me exercise different ideas and get things out and kind of stay excited when I would go into the writer's room.

• 44:51Speaker 04

  And then I guess it was around 2020, I just like pulled those books out and looked at them for the first time. Like, was there anything in here that was like worth anything? And most of it sucked, but there were a few things that, that just kind of got my imagination going. Or I was like, oh, it'd kind of be interesting if this thing continued. Or if I wrote more on this, I would do this with it. And so that was kind of the beginning of it. I pulled out of those books probably about maybe like eight to 10 of the little kind of like snippets of stories. And then started focusing on expanding those things. And then as I did that, I ended up getting rid of most of them. I kept like one or two. And then I just kind of was like, I want to do this. I want to try to like create a book that I put this sort of level of thought into. And yeah, and then that just became, you know, I was kind of teaching myself how to do it.

• 45:35Speaker 04

  I thought the big difference between doing this and then writing a script is with the script, there's always someone else really talented is going to come in to make it better. You know, whether it's like an actor is going to come in or the DP is going to make it look cool. And it was kind of interesting to have it where you're like, oh, I'm just writing this. And then I really need to go, I need to do all that stuff myself. I need to make sure that this is translated to people the way I'm imagining.

• 45:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, Ernest Hemingway didn't say, well, this is what I got, punch it up.

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. Give it a little juice.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  The font will be really nice.

• 46:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, there's once, let's focus on this one story, Institute of Men.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:10Conan O'Brien?

  It's because it's a fascinating idea. Do you want to talk about it a little bit?

• 46:13Speaker 04

  It's um, it's a story about a guy who is getting self-conscious about his, his hairline is receding. He's losing his hair and uh, he's worried a coworker of his thinks that he has Gollum-esque features and that if he loses his hair, it really could be bad for him, you know?

• 46:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  So, he uh, he, he starts to uh, he's like looking for a solution and he, he kind of, he sees this ad for this place called the Institute of Men and he decides to sign up and then he goes to this place and it's a little unorthodox. There, there's some strange questions they ask him and it's a very odd procedure that he has to kind of sign away to and then it's one of those monkey paw situations. He, he gets hair, but there's a price that comes with it.

• 46:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, but he also love, there's little things in it that remind me of some of the sort of comedy slash horror things we've been talking about where, you know, he has to fill out, you know, when you're getting, gonna get a medical procedure, you have to fill out a questionnaire and the questions are just really.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:13Conan O'Brien?

  They're, they're not things that you would normally see on a medical questionnaire.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  It should have been the first red flag. Yeah, they're, they're asking him things like how many friends he has and the last time he cried.

• 47:23Conan O'Brien?

  When was the last time you cried?

• 47:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, when, when have you been in a fight?

• 47:29Conan O'Brien?

  It's so funny because I've had ideas over the years for a little strange things. It's like, it's not a comedy sketch, it's just a concept. It's kind of freaky, but I'd like to expand on it more and write it out, but um, you know, I've never, I don't know, never, I've never done it. It's, it's why, I mean, I've been a massive fan of yours and then when you did this, I was like, well, this man, this man, this man did the thing that I have never been able to do.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  If an idiot like me could do it, Conan.

• 47:59Conan O'Brien?

  That's, that is not how I, that is not how, that's not how I think about it. But uh, it's, it's really exceptional and, and also it has to just feel, to have a book on the shelf. I mean, there's, there are a lot of celebrity famous people. Toss off books and it's that's not what this is. Do you know what I mean?

• 48:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I I worked as hard on this as I would on any of this, any of the shows I've worked on. I mean, I was like living and breathing it for the last year. And you know, the craziest part about it is like you you finish it and then you turn in. And then it's like the rewriting it where it's like, you know, you rewrite an episode of TV. It's 30 pages like, ah, I can get through this in a day or two. You get the notes and you look at it like this is like a 400 page document. I gotta rewrite this. Where the hell do I even start? I don't even know if I can read this fucking thing in a month, you know? But then you you do, you get down into it where you do just start. It it just happens. I just, I went away and just left my computer on and just sort of like would just pace back and forth. Like just approach it sentence at a time, Danny. Like, don't get intimidated by the by the weight of it. And then it does start to strip away.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  You do start this like you're like Neo in The Matrix, like get rid of that, put that in, change that. You can just start doing it, yeah.

• 49:14Conan O'Brien?

  I've never had that.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  I'll show you.

• 49:16Conan O'Brien?

  I've never been Neo in the, I'm Keanu in Point Break. That's who I am.

• 49:26Conan O'Brien?

  So what is, okay, this, what are you working on now? Because this this project is done and I hate to say, okay, what else you got?

• 49:34Speaker 04

  You know what?

• 49:34Conan O'Brien?

  What have you done for me lately?

• 49:35Speaker 04

  I've been working on something I'm pretty excited about. You know, I I approached Paramount last year about trying to relaunch G I Joe for them as a feature. Yeah, talk about cartoons, dog.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  It's so, yeah, the guys I write gemstones with Jeff Rowley and John Cachory. We jammed, we we've jammed out this script that Paramount's excited about and we're gonna try to. That's what we're trying to make next year.

• 50:00Conan O'Brien?

  Wow, you can't say anything, huh?

• 50:04Speaker 04

  I can't say, you know what? It's not a comedy. It's like a grounded action movie.

• 50:08Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my God.

• 50:09Speaker 04

  You know, in the comics, there's this town Springfield that is like secretly Cobra lives there.

• 50:15Conan O'Brien?

  I have that original comic.

• 50:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I loved it. And so our our story takes place there and.

• 50:21Conan O'Brien?

  I realize that Matt's gonna follow you home.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, you gotcha.

• 50:25Conan O'Brien?

  Make sure you watch the gate close behind you. When you get home, but don't, don't just assume that no one's walking in after you.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  But don't worry, I'll be dressed like Duke from G.I. Joe.

• 50:35Conan O'Brien?

  You're gonna go to shut the refrigerator tonight. That, that was there.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  That was like the Halloween thing of like feeling like insane writing the shape. This was like I, when I'm like right in the climax of it and we're sitting here and I'm putting things like Cobra Commander and Snake Eyes fighting. I just had to like stop and like go downstairs with my wife and I'm like, this is nuts. I used to do this when I was a kid. Every day I would make these guys fight each other. Now I'm writing that shit.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  You're living my life.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  I'm so excited. This is amazing.

• 51:09Conan O'Brien?

  Tears of blood from that Gourley. The, I, I, um, I do think that, and I chuck it up to pure luck, but there are so many times now where I'm doing something. I realize this is how I goofed around as a kid. And now I'm doing it and people are saying, and cut, nicely done.

• 51:29Conan O'Brien?

  I'm not getting yelled at.

• 51:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're not telling you to clean up your toys. They're paying you handsomely. Yeah.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  That's all fine. Let's get back to G.I. Joe.

• 51:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Walton Goggins, I, I have to ask you about Walton Goggins because you know, I know him a bit and he's been here. He's just a fascinating creature.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  He really is.

• 51:49Conan O'Brien?

  He really, I mean, uh, and I mean, you must have, the second you saw him do anything thought like, oh, I gotta know that guy.

• 51:56Speaker 04

  A hundred percent.

• 51:57Conan O'Brien?

  Because he's such a, he's like a, Walton Goggins is a character you would create. I mean, the person Walton Goggins.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  The universe pushed us together. I, I love him so much. He's one of my best friends and, uh, yeah, I mean, since the very first time we worked together in Vice Principals, him and I have just had such a fast friendship and, you know, we went to, we took our families to Greece together last year and, uh,

• 52:20Conan O'Brien?

  Just hilarious.

• 52:20Speaker 04

  He, yeah, he's just so funny and so good.

• 52:23Conan O'Brien?

  He was here to do the podcast. I don't know if you remember this, but they, he, he got here a little bit early and then his, one of his people said, Walton's very tired. He's gonna take a power nap for five minutes. And he went into that little office where you were sitting, that little green room with the couches, uh, and the sliding door that goes outside and, um, I walk by and he's asleep on the couch. But he looked like Dracula sleeping in his casket. He was like, like this, and his eyes were closed. And he slept really hard for exactly five minutes. Wow. And then came in here and he gave us a full blast of the Goggins.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 53:05Conan O'Brien?

  He gave us full Goggins. Full metal Goggins. Full metal Goggins, yeah.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  When we went to Greece last year, it's like, you know, I mean, he is, he's a force and it was awesome walking around Greece. Everyone, uh, recognized him. He had such a stellar year with White Lotus and everyone was coming up. And Walton was dressed for it. I mean, what we would go out and Walton is like in full white linens. And then, you know, I'm there with my kids, they're wearing like Crocs, you know. We'll take this photo, we'll take the photo for you.

• 53:34Speaker 04

  We go to these beach clubs and like everyone in his family are just like finely dressed. It just looked like they're off the mag- a magazine. I just got my little redneck kids in there.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Sitting there with bad suntans.

• 53:47Conan O'Brien?

  So he's like Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Onassis, walking around Greece off the yacht. And then you guys-

• 53:54Speaker 04

  And I'm like, you know, Randy Quaid in, you know, Vacation, just like, wait for me.

• 54:02Conan O'Brien?

  You're like, I'm gonna get them Duke boys.

• 54:06Conan O'Brien?

  Wow, uh, I wish I could have, again, I would just wanna shoot that. We just wanna see the B-roll of you guys walking around, having a killer time. Unbelievable. Well, I, uh, this has been a huge shot in the arm. I didn't even need a shot in the arm today, but I was, we're, I do this sometimes. I'll be driving in and I think, hey, I get to see Danny McBride today and I love his book and so happy for him and, and, uh, just, I just love talking to you and getting any time to hang with you. And I will take you up on your promise to, uh, just the three of us. You, me, Sturgill Simpson.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  I'll coordinate it.

• 54:45Conan O'Brien?

  I'll pay for the meal. You guys, you guys pick the Outback Steakhouse.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  I'd love that.

• 54:51Conan O'Brien?

  And, um, and we'll go there and if Goggins wants to drop by at some point.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  We'll bring him too. He might, we might have to change what we're wearing if he comes. We're gonna up our game.

• 55:05Conan O'Brien?

  Well, Danny, thank you, uh, for dropping in and congrats on the book. I love it. Thrilling Tales of Modern Men.

• 55:11Speaker 04

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 55:13Conan O'Brien?

  This won't air.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  Great, that's fine.

• 55:22Conan O'Brien?

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

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:25Conan 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.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 55:40Conan 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.

• 55:48Speaker 01

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

• 55:53Conan 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?

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Hello!

• 56:13Conan O'Brien?

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

• 56:46Conan 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?

• 56:51Speaker 01

  My kids.

• 56:51Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Or Oki.

• 56:52Conan O'Brien?

  You gotta get them your stuff.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Or my dog.

• 56:53Conan 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?

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:03Conan O'Brien?

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

• 57:39Conan O'Brien?

  Owning a car or home comes with responsibilities. Sure, it's fun, but sometimes it makes you wonder why you ever longed for adulthood in the first place. I do that all the time. I'm like, oh, these bills, these bills. What am I gonna do?

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:52Conan O'Brien?

  You know, when you own a house, you gotta fix it yourself. Sona, you, you see this to be true, right?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, your garage door breaks and you're like, well, I have to fix it.

• 57:59Conan O'Brien?

  Probably at first you said, hey, I'll get the super to fix it. It's your house, dude.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  It's mine, dude!

• 58:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance to save you money. In fact, they work overtime to tailor your insurance policy around what you actually need. The only thing they can't do is get that liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty jingle out of your head.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Liberty, liberty, liberty.

• 58:17Conan O'Brien?

  Liberty, liberty. It's in my head all the time.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Liberty. Yeah, me too.

• 58:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Start your quote at libertymutual.com.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Here we are, we're talking about Blay's tax saga. This is part four, and maybe an ongoing series, and hopefully it doesn't, you know, hopefully it ends well.

• 58:38Conan O'Brien?

  Blay, along with his mother, are part of a criminal gang where Blay was able to write off his various nerd collections of swords, lightsabers, Darth Vader helmets, whatever you, whatever else he can think of. He was writing them off because he was bringing them up on the podcast. And if the Internal Revenue Service is listening, and I think they should be, I think he should be investigated. And now you were a stranger to all of this, Matt.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  I edited this.

• 59:12Conan O'Brien?

  Because you were out on a, I think a nine-month fraternity leave, which is fine.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Well, we began with conception.

• 59:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  And then ended with delivery.

• 59:20Conan O'Brien?

  And ended with her starting at a very good college in the Northeast.

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:26Conan O'Brien?

  But now you, so you have a fresh approach to all this. We haven't heard your opinion, so you speak. You listened to what Blay was up to, and what'd you think?

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Well, God, you know I love you, Blay.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  And this only comes out of concern.

• 59:39Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, boy. You know it's not gonna be good when you hear that stuff.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  I'm just concerned that you're doing things backwards. That, you know what I mean? That you're coming on and saying that I should- After you've purchased these, like, oh, I'm gonna mention them now-

• 59:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  As opposed to having an actual solid reason for bringing them on the show, which I think would justify a write-off.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  Well, how can I bring them up if I don't already own them?

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  Well, I think they have to be organically-

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  This was organic? He talked about the pens!

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  No one needed to mention the brand. But you didn't need to mention the brand.

• 1:00:14Conan O'Brien?

  Why'd you say, is it called, what's it called again?

• 1:00:16Speaker 03

  No, it's called, it's called, it's called the Kindle Scribe.

• 1:00:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  By Amazon.

• 1:00:21Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 1:00:23Conan O'Brien?

  I find it suspicious that you give lots of labels. You give a lot of, this is how, what is, what is, what it's called? This is where it's available. I think it's a really reasonable price. Get yours now. Click to proceed to cart.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  You said what kind of pen you had. You said it's an Aurora pen, and it's really nice. That, didn't you say the kind of pen?

• 1:00:42Conan O'Brien?

  I did say that.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  But I don't think he's writing it off.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  How is that different?

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  I don't, maybe you want an Aurora pen.

• 1:00:48Conan O'Brien?

  It's a, it's a gif, no, I'm not-

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  Maybe Jeff's writing it off.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  But I think the difference is if I was to say like, oh, I was taking out the trash last night, hefty trash bags, uh, and-

• 1:00:56Speaker 03

  They are good trash bags.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:00:58Speaker 03

  The fourth flex, odor killing?

• 1:01:02Conan O'Brien?

  Blay, you know the difference, which is, I just said, this is a nice pen, it's an Aurora. I'm not expecting anything from Aurora. Were they to give me something, which would be very nice, if I got a free pen from Aurora, I would accept it, but I would never mention it on air.

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  No, I know.

• 1:01:13Conan O'Brien?

  Although I might, I probably would, Aurora. But anyway, that's not what I would- Very good pens, it's just a pen that I use, and it's a pen that I have right now on camera.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Even though you can't write with it normally.

• 1:01:23Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, well-

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  You have to write on an angle. No offense, Aurora, but what the fuck? Also, it's squirting everywhere.

• 1:01:30Speaker 03

  You're right, throw that thing into a hefty trash bag.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  It's squirting all over the place.

• 1:01:33Conan O'Brien?

  When I watched how you tried to write with this, I was appalled. Because, listen, you're, uh, you just came right down, straight. It was a 90-degree angle. Uh, it was completely perpendicular. Uh, and I felt, I was like, oh my goodness! And 11-year-old me was appalled.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Oh, no!

• 1:01:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. That is that how one holds a pen in pen!

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  The one with the, the one who wants the stamp? That, that 11-year-old version of you? A staff one?

• 1:02:02Conan O'Brien?

  All I wanted was a void stamp.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I really wish I could, you know, impress that 11-year-old version of you.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  Will you go out with me, Stamp, while we kid?

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Hey, you like stamps?

• 1:02:16Conan O'Brien?

  A rubber stamp, it's really fun. And you get to like, with real authority, say, "Void!"

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:02:24Conan O'Brien?

  Remit, I wanted a remit stamp. Sona.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  What? What, me? No, Blay, remember? You just, I get it, I get it.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  Oh, your roar is a great.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Send me one, too, yeah.

• 1:02:35Conan O'Brien?

  All I wanna do is a quick shut up. And then onward to Blay.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Blay, I just don't wanna see anything happen to you, that's all I care about.

• 1:02:41Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you, I appreciate it. And I do wanna see something happen to you. I would be delighted if you and your mother, who does your taxes for reasons that still escape me, even though she's not a tax person, she gets you on the phone and then she calls, what is it?

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  She's gonna TurboTax.

• 1:02:55Conan O'Brien?

  She calls TurboTax and, you know. Calls TurboTax? You don't call, I'm doing your part for you.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:03:02Conan O'Brien?

  Calls TurboTax?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:03:03Conan O'Brien?

  Who calls TurboTax? I did that for you as a gift to you.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Thank you very much, you're right, who calls TurboTax?

• 1:03:09Conan O'Brien?

  I'm just showing you that I can do your role on this podcast, too.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  If you know you said it incorrectly.

• 1:03:17Conan O'Brien?

  I won that argument with my hubba bubba bubba.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Okay, well, do your part, you're writing it correctly, there's a needle, there's a little bit on my fingers.

• 1:03:23Conan O'Brien?

  Buy Amazon, readily available, I think it's a good price. I know what you're up to, I see what you're doing. And you leaned in and you also still do the thing we've talked to you about, which is you put your mouth over the mic, like you're eating a giant kielbasa, and you shout into it.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  You do grab it, he's grabbing it, too.

• 1:03:38Conan O'Brien?

  He grabs it. What is the grabbing about? What do you grab the mic?

• 1:03:41Speaker 03

  Well, because Eduardo and I share.

• 1:03:42Conan O'Brien?

  Boo, no one likes you, boo.

• 1:03:43Speaker 03

  We share a mic.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Eduardo's, she's separating.

• 1:03:46Conan O'Brien?

  Eduardo is not having this.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Well, no, I was just saying, we share a mic, so I, I need to grab the mic to pull it over to me.

• 1:03:51Conan O'Brien?

  And why are you yelling?

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  I don't know. I'm trying to take, can I just, in defense, the reason why I say what it is, is not to write things off, I'm not gonna write this off, it's in case people are like, "Oh, that's pretty cool, where can I get that? That's pretty, I like that product, I would like to buy it also." Uh-oh.

• 1:04:09Conan O'Brien?

  So that's where your role here is on the, on the podcast, is to direct people towards items that are in your life that they might also want.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  You have an affiliate link where you get a percentage? You know what, we could have an affiliate link.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  The podcast to make a little extra dough on this.

• 1:04:21Conan O'Brien?

  You know, can I say something? I like paper.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:23Conan O'Brien?

  And I like the idea that, and, and I'm never going to be someone that wants to doodle and then press a button and it goes into the cloud.

• 1:04:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:30Conan O'Brien?

  Because guess what? You think you're saving paper, but now server farms have to handle my doodles?

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  You're killing clouds.

• 1:04:36Conan O'Brien?

  And we're burning valuable energy. We're burning fossil fuels.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:39Conan O'Brien?

  So that somewhere a server farm can hang on to my little guy that's going bibble babble nibble.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  But you could, you could lose your doodles and this is, my notes are being saved forever.

• 1:04:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, that's important. And you know what? It's important that your thoughts are saved, Blay, for all of time. Well, I've never said anything that's more ridiculous. We're going to end there, but Blay, I've got my eye on you. I think you're up to no good. And if the IRS is listening, his name is Aaron Blair.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  I think that's the thing though, is the IRS has been gutted, so you're probably safe.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Oh, we can all just do it now.

• 1:05:09Conan O'Brien?

  And you know what? The worst criminals like Blay are going to get away with murder.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  It's like tax Fury Road right now. Just go for it.

• 1:05:15Conan O'Brien?

  Go for it. Well, if, that's the message of, of our podcast today. It's if you're thinking of cheating on your taxes, just go for it.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Do it.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

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

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

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

• 1:06:35Conan 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.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:06:45Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:06:49Conan O'Brien?

  Did we use a salary guide with you, Sona?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  No, but maybe-

• 1:06:52Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

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

• 1:06:57Conan 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.

• 1:07:19Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:07:22Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  No, but I feel like we need it.

• 1:07:30Conan O'Brien?

  Why didn't you know that, David?

• 1:07:32Speaker 05

  I know, you expect me to know everything.

• 1:07:33Conan O'Brien?

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