Transcript of Jon Stewart

My name is Jon Stewart, and I feel honored, honored to be a Conan O'Brien's friend, although I read it wrong.

You weren't sure about the name.

Well, no. Here's where I fucked up. That hurts it. It was my verb subject agreement is where I fucked up.

Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brand new shoes, walking blues, climb the fence, books and pens, I can tell that we are going to be friends. I can tell that we are going to be friends. Hello, it's Cohnen O'Brien. We are here with Cohnen O'Brien Needs a friend. It's a juggernaut. The podcast. Yeah, it's a juggernaut. Do you know what juggernaut is? Yes, I know what a juggernaut is. Unstoppable. Yeah, but- Unstoppable. Is it big? I don't know. I don't know. We're talking to microphones. I don't know who's listening. It's massive. I I got stopped at the library the other day, and the girl- Wait a minute. You were in a library? Okay. Were you looking for directions? Where's the dispensary? Hello? I'm looking for the dispensary. I'm sorry. I shouldn't pretend that you don't read. You read a lot, don't you? Shut up. No, you do, right? I'm Matt Gourley, by the way. You fooled everyone. I know, but I shouldn't act like you're someone that doesn't care about books. Because so many people know about our They saw my kids, they were like, Oh, it's Mikey and Charlie.

Then at one point, they're like, I can't believe I'm talking to you. I'm like, I didn't know that people... I know people listen. It's just we're in a room with five... Not five. How many of us are? Six people? I don't know who's listening. It was good that you correct it from 5:00 to 6:00. That was important. No, I'm constantly running into people, as I've said, that are listening to the podcast as they encounter me. It's a juggernaut. Yeah. Just this morning on the way into work, I was waiting at the light and a guy was like, Oh, hey, I'm listening to the podcast right now, and pointed at his phone, and I was like, Oh, cool, man. How's it going? And he literally just turned and then walked away and then just stood faced away from me and stood waiting to cross the street. Oh, you wanted to talk to him more? I was like, Oh, hey, that's good. And he was like, and literally walked away from me and looked the other way. Yeah, he didn't want to talk to you. He just wanted to go and listen to the podcast. Yeah, he would rather listen to you guys on a phone than talk to me in person.

Okay, this reminds me of something that happened to me years and years ago. I got on a flight, and it was some flight. I don't know which airline it was, but one of those airlines that was showing- That's important to know. The late night show. Sorry, you got on my case about 5:00 to six. But please, figure out which airplane you were on. Okay, I guess I deserve. You know what? I deserve that. I deserve that. Okay? I deserve that. I won't retaliate. I won't go after anything about you. I apologize. I'm looking at my denim jacket. I know. It's horrible. It's quarter on. No, it's awful. Anyway, you could fix that refrigerator for me when you get a chance. I mean, just dress up a little bit for work. Come on. But anyway, I got on a plane. We started flying. What was the airline? Spirit Airlines, I believe. No, the little monitors where people are watching television and the person who was sitting across the aisle and ahead of me had their monitor on and the plane takes off and they get service, and they start watching my late night show. Of course, it's silent because they have headphones on.

I can see it through my mannerisms that I'm coming out, I'm greeting the crowd, and then I can see through my mannerisms that I'm doing the set up to the first joke, and then I do the first joke, and the guy laughs, and he turns to me, and he gives me a thumbs up. I'm like, Oh, this is cool. Then I start to think, I just tape this. I just tape this a couple of hours ago. What's the second joke? I'm trying to think. I know the first one was good. I can't remember what the second joke was. I see myself gesturing, and then I deliver it, and the guy doesn't laugh and turns to me and does that. And just as he did it, I remember it. Oh, right. The one about the pineapple. Oh, yeah, that wasn't good. I'm like, Shit. Am I going to be getting a blow-by-blow critique of the show as I watch myself in silence to this guy who's wearing his headset? It was hilarious. Oh, my God. Never forgot that. Second joke. That's amazing. I was like,. The pineapple joke. I don't remember what the joke was.

But anyway, these things happen. It's very strange. But yes, Sona, you encountered some people in a library. Were you taking the kids there? Yeah. Okay. Did you get a book while you were there? I sometimes read. Okay. I'm not an avid reader. You used to make fun of me for reading all the time. The books you read are enormous. How many books about Lyndon Johnson do you have to read? You have to read all the ones by Caro. Then there are other books by Lyndon Johnson. But you know it's not just Lyndon Johnson. It's American history. I know. But then, of course, you got to know your French history. You've got to know about World War I and World War II. Then you got to learn more about World War I and World War II. Then you got to learn more about World War II and World War I. It doesn't stop. No. And Stalin It's always up to no good, so you got to read about him. What's going to happen this week? Yeah. There's just so many. I read some books, but you just constantly read. Just give it a rest. Give reading a rest.

We get it. You know how to read. We get it. You know it'd be great if you did a PSA. Hey, kids, give reading a rest. And Sona says, Give reading a rest. Turn on the TV. The more you know, the more you know. Yeah, exactly. All right. My Today is an up and comer. He's getting there. He's an Emmy Award-winning writer and comedian who hosts and executive produces The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Thrilled. He is here today. Jon Stewart. Welcome. There's so much I want to talk to you about.

And I, you. And I, you, sir.

It's just turning to a Senate subcommittee here. The mics are right. First of all, I will congratulate you. You're rarely out here in LA. Almost never. Although sometimes you're here and you reach out. No, you don't.

If I knew how- There are Stuart sightings.

It'll be across the street and I'll be like, John. And then he just steps back into an alley. From his people, he's not in LA.

When I see him, I just fade into the room and go, I'm excited about being your friend in the future.

In the future.

Then I go into the hedges.

He's like the way a vampire rolls backwards. That's John going back into the shadows. That's right. I want to start off by congratulating you. I don't know when this airs, but I will say you just won an Emmy the other night. This may not air for seven years. When I do something with John, I like to hold on to it for seven years because then it really- It has to age. It has to age like a fine wine. But I congratulate you. Thank you.

I accept it. There was some question of whether or not I would accept it. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to say- You accept my congratulations. I accept it, and we can to move on from that.

I wanted to talk to you because there are many things to talk about. But one thing is I feel like we have this kinship both coming up at around the same time in very different ways. Very much so. But early '90s, and it's It's so hilarious to me now that at the time, that was very much it was the present, it was the early '90s. Now, Sona, to you, it probably sounds ancient. The '90s. They had TV back then? They had just developed a television.

You don't have to say it like that. That actually hurt my feelings. The '90s? That was one of those where she's like, tuberculosis? Yeah. Dear God, pleurocy. I didn't know that. Is that still a disease?

Now, clear something up for me. Were you on a test show of mine or not? I was not. You were not on a test show because the test shows were as dysfunctional and insane as the early shows that were on air were. I can't remember who was on the test shows and who were not on the test shows. I remember Mickey Rooney being on a test show. Oh, dear God.

Did he know it was a test show or did he think?

I remembered him. I have a very clear memory of talking to Mickey Rooney outside that 30 Rock hallway, and I'm nobody, and he is hanging from a garment rack. His feet dangling. He's hanging on a garment rack like a chimpanzee, and he's in his white T-shirt, and he said, Konan, I used to have a full head of hair. But Harry Warner made me use this shampoo, and I lost it all. I thought, this is an amazing job I have. This is an incredible job. He blamed his hair loss on Harry Warner in 1941. Done making him use a shampoo.

More impressive as a 90-year-old man with that agility to be hanging off of- He was flipping around.

That's incredible. Doing full 360s.

For consistency's sake, we should have Sona go, Mickey Rooney.

Mickey Rooney? What? When we get to a name you know, just say Bingo. But until then, just deal with this.

As we walk through our careers, you're going to see there's going to come a moment where you're like, I remember that show, but it's going to be a while. Okay.

All right. I'll wait. I just want to know if you have the same feeling that I have about this, which is that there was this period of time where, and this might just be me, but I felt like a lobster without its shell, so young, so like, Jesus Christ, this is 1993 doing this show, so raw. It felt like it took forever to get to the point where people said, yes, now you've arrived. That felt to me like it took a thousand years. To you. To me. But hold on. But, John, let me tell you something. Let me finish this. Then there's this period where finally it felt like it gelled. It's a thousand years of feeling like, I've got to get there, I've got to get there. I've got to get there. I've got to get to the point where I'm accepted. Then it starts to gel. Then before I know it, it's, You're the old guy. No, not in a bad way. It's nice. You're the elder statement.

The time moved in a manner that was Shockingly. You know, Conan, it was only yesterday.

I'm realizing you're the narrator from- Once the fungus on the nail on your big toe begins to creep. But you know what I'm talking about?

It's so interesting to me that you thought that because you were, and this is not a exercise in smoke, but you were legend to us already at that time because of Lampoon, because of SNL. You were already, in our eyes, a made man. It's so interesting to me that you would feel- But nobody feels that.

I don't know. I think there are people that think... I've always heard that Eddie Murphy, when he was doing Stan up and was 17.

But that's Mozart. No, I know. That's a prodigy.

Please. I didn't even see- Really? I didn't even see... No, he might be the most talented human being that's ever wandered out of the planet. It's different. But what I'm saying is, I know a guy, a comedian named Ron Richards, that I worked with in another lifetime in 1985, told me that he did stand up, and he did stand up when Eddie Murphy was just starting, and Eddie Murphy was, I don't know, 16 years old or something, 17, and that there'd be nobody. There were nights where there was nobody in the club or maybe one person. A lot of people wouldn't even bother going on, or they'd go out and just phone it in. He said, Eddie would go out and to one person would do it as if the whole room was packed. This is when no one knew him. This is pre-SNL. He would do it, the whole thing. Then he'd walk off stage and he'd tell people, I'm going to be one of the biggest stars in the world. Wow. He just knew. He just knew because and that makes sense, then I'm contrasting that with my own experience of- How much of that is internal, though, because as an outside observer, and I've heard you speak about this in this idea of you felt a little bit like not the cool kid or not the dark, but for those of us who are not in that stream, like Harvard Lampoon or SNL or Simpson.

Well, Harvard Lampoon does not see... This is the other thing. I I don't think that confers coolness. That was the one thing I wish. Oh, at that time? No, that was the one thing I wished I could have changed about my bio. Really? Is that what's so cool that Dave, he comes out of the mist, he's from Ball State. That's just much better. I remember before I even went on the air, people were like, Harvard. Oh, so some intellectual is going to take over for David Lenn. I thought, well, no, I'm actually quite silly.

I'm going to make Dick Cavet look like you. No humor. Exactly. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Masterpiece Theater. Tonight, Peter Justinoff.

I have to tell you, we had a guy that did our warmup before we knew we needed to get someone to do our warmup. He was the announcement on the show, Joel Goddard. Lovely man. But we just said, We don't know who does the announcing. Who does it? Like on the Tonight show, they said, The announcement always does it. Ed McMahon always did it for Johnny. Okay, so we asked Joel Goddard to do it. I would go out and I could always tell the audience was like, I don't know about this guy. Now I think, Well, that's all on me. One night, a couple of weeks into the show, late night, '93, I'm putting on my tie and I wander out and I hear Joel talking to the crowd and he went, And of course, he went to Harvard where he wrote a thesis, literary progenia on the works of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner. This man was born with a silver spoon in his ass, and you're going to laugh. And I thought, What the fuck? Why?

Can I tell you, the angry announcement character, maybe that is an archetype. I would hope that Johnny Gilbert does that on Jeopardy. This motherfucker.

This motherfucker.

Don't think that he doesn't know the questions. He does. They're on a paper. He'll act like it's coming to him, but it's not. It's all written out. But you're talking about the broader world. So four comics, right? You probably, same as me, came of age in the '70s, late '70s or early '80s. National Lampoon was it. And those guys came out of- Doug Kenny, Henry Beard.

Right.

And they were legends in comedy. And you knew that they had created a new anarchy and a new form. And they were so idolized and knowing that you would come out of that same stream. So where the larger world might look at it and say, oh, it's Harvard. It's going to be academically removed or intellectualized. She's going to be giving lectures. You won't do a pratfall. You'll just go, And I waited three seconds and then allowed gravity to do its thing. The The way... Coming out of that was like, legend.

Well, here's the thing. I guess the larger point I'm trying to- I need a Sona. Yeah, you do. You need a sauna. You can have- That's what I need. Guess what?

No. I gift- No.

There's nothing politically- There's nothing politically incorrect about saying, I gift you this woman. I think I'm on pretty solid ground.

No question.

Sona, I gift you. I know. This is so fucked up. Oh, my God. Don't worry. This will never air. I guess what I was- I want you to know that if there's anything that you say on this podcast that you don't feel good about. That it'll come out?

You can. You know what's interesting? I will allow.

That is my rule for my guests. But Gouralier, if I fuck up, leaves it in intentionally. Yeah, he does. Oh, that's so funny. He leaves in all of the... That's great. So I don't get that courtesy. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that we finding ourselves coming... I think we came up at the same time. We're the same age. We've had these wonderful experiences. But what I'm noticing, just in general, and I'm wondering if it feels the same way to you, is that there was this period of adrenaline. I often feel like when you watch The Bear, that's what it felt like to me to put a late night show together. Early on, it felt like you have to live there. You're constantly living on the edge. You feel like you have to reinvent the menu every night. Then there's this brief, the period of, Oh, my God, people are coming to the restaurant. We got our stars. Everything's good. That felt, even though it doesn't feel this way to other people, that felt quick. Then, The eldest statesman. You better take a nap. That felt like that part It lasts a lot longer.

The new guys and the new girls come up real fast. I don't know, that's how it just felt to me. I'm not complaining. I just find it like a trick in time.

Well, there's definitely, I feel that time jump related more towards, I think, the physical manifestation of erosion that I see in the morning. I don't feel that way about necessarily the career, but I also think we followed a slightly different path in that as a stand-up, I did face a tremendous amount of, I guess, what my agent called failure. I'm unfamiliar with lack of I'm familiar with this word. But having been canceled or having done all those different things. I think I had a different expectation of what making it was. I think ultimately, and I'm sure it was a rationalization or some mechanism, that the success for me coming from where I came from was impulsively moving to New York with no money or prospects or anybody in my life mentioning that I might have ability and having a six-week sublet and saying, Fuck it. Trent, New Jersey, ain't it. And I'm not working at the bottom half. For the rest of my life, I'm putting Springsteen in there and going, It is a death trap.

It is a suicide rap. You got to get out while you're not young, What?

Yeah, you know. 24, 25.

I don't remember those lyrics at all. But you know who Bruce Springsteen is? Bingo. Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Not Rick Springfield. Similar.

Fuck.

Okay. Yeah. Not Harry Style. Different No. Then never mind. No idea. Imagine Harry Style with a bandana.

Well, different bandana placement. Harry Style would wear it like a gondolier. Harry Style would have it on here.

Oh, solo mío. Taking you- That's right.

Springsteen back pocket to wipe the working man's sweat off the working man brow. Whereas Harry Stiles would wear it as like, Where it's covering my pearls. I don't know what's happening. That's all it is. You have to cover the pearls.

That was the difference. You have to cover the pearls. But it's the same idea. That's right. Harry styles in Bruce Springsteen, it's basically the same thing. The same. Okay. That's right. If you know one, you know the other. Exactly. When I went to see Harry styles, I took my daughter to... It wasn't Outside Lands. It was Coachella. Harry Style's performed, and I saw him. At one point, he turned around and he had an H on one ass pocket and an S on the other. I thought, Why didn't I think that?

Can I tell you something? I I saw that, and the whole time I was thinking, who's S-H? I was reading it in Hebrew. That's the problem. I said, Sally Hemmings? What are we looking at here?

You know what the problem is? Why is he doing that? Also, you had your touristic out. What is the name for that goddamn stick?

I think touristic. Touristic. God damn touristic.

God damn touristic. Probably has to sound- Where's my goddamn touristic? But Whenever I've gone to concerts with John, whenever there's any reading, if they put up anything on, he always takes out his- Where's my goddamn touristic? He takes his touristic out and he goes.

He goes right to left. This checklist doesn't make any sense. These aren't even words.

Why would he start? Yes. Why would he start with Born to Run? No, no, no, no, no, John, that's the last song.

I don't know about you.

Again, I'm just trying to... I don't often get an opportunity to talk to people who've...

We did the same job.

My vintage. But I guess the other thing that fascinates me is, and again, I just want to compare notes. I found the early years, I'm very happy, I'm thrilled with everything, but I found '90s '90s and 2000s to be a time of constantly worrying, constantly fretting, constantly. Even after the early...

It took you a while to get that flow.

It took forever. But I guess I'm saying internally, I really like this period. Do you know what I mean? In terms of just how I feel, I feel like- A security. Well, maybe it's... Sometimes I think, I say to my wife, I think I've acquired some inner wisdom because I'm much more at peace. She says, No, no, actually, testosterone levels fall. What you're feeling is a loss of testosterone, which, by the way, is quite apparent in other areas of our life.

It's an evolutionary trick to get you to stop striving. What they do is, genetically, they remove your belly. You're a muted cat, young man, on a windowsill.

That's what I am.

Where your balls used to be. You're done. Give it up. You're done, son.

No, there's something there. There's a scar. There's two little scars where they used to be. If I rub them, I get some satisfaction.

It's fascinating me because, again, my observation of your track is so different than how you experienced it.

Everyone feels things.

I remember watching your show, the first week, I was like, Oh, these dudes, not only do they know what they're doing, but they're like, I remember the clutch cargo shit and the absurdest comedy. I was like, Oh, they've done... My God, they've done it. I knew that there would be, as you get used to productions and you're going to be standing, people don't realize that productions are functions of management prowess, that there's a active management that you have to postmortem. You're a comedy show with a masturbating bear. The The Bear masturbates, and then afterwards you're like, So what did you guys think? There's that part at the end.

How did it go? When he was batting at his diaper, no. It's got to be in a two shots because you need to see.

That's right.

You know what's so funny is my favorite part of when you're doing it for a while and then is, yes, there are the years where you're taking it so seriously and everything is life. It really does feel like the bear. It's one of the reasons I watch the bear. Great comedy, but I watch the bear and I'm just-Fantastic. I watch it and sometimes I think this is too much tension, and I've experienced a lot of that in my life, and I just want to watch Selling the OC, something that doesn't have that.

Well, you're watching, I imagine what you liken to is a creative pursuit where there is a certain maniacal desire for brilliance or excellence or whatever the comedic equivalent of a Michelin star that you hold yourself to that standard, and ultimately, you end up in a freezer telling your beloved, you're going to die alone and get the fuck out. That's a painful thing to watch because it is analogous to that pursuit. I can remember, I did a show that was more of a talk show on MTV, and then we went to Paramount, and we knew probably a month in, I was supposed to be the Arsineo replacement. You can imagine people at home- I've always thought of you as Arsineo. Exactly. So you can imagine that people who had been trained on that audience, I would pop up and they'd go, No. We're going to say no. So I knew like a month into it, this is fucking we're going to go down. When it happens, I don't know. And I had that same the bear mentality of, but I'm doing a silly show. So there was one night and booking was really hard because it was syndication.

So we'd appear at 3:00 AM in Atlanta, but 07:00 PM in Phoenix. It was It's all over the place. We would be there till 1:00 in the morning every night trying to squeeze every last bit of the Willy Wanker parody that we thought we were going to do. But can we really even afford the hat? If he doesn't have the hat, is he really Willy Wanker? That shit. In our exhaustion and in our frenetic energy and in our desire to save it and be great. One day, we were all in my office. Stevie Higgins was in there. He was the head writer. The door opens and it's Booker, and he looks in with a look on his face of that look that maybe doctors had two weeks into the pandemic. He goes, Hal Lindon said no. We all went, What? Barney Miller is not going to do the show? It was then that I realized, Oh, I think I'm going to jump off a building because my emotional well-being is now wrapped up into whether an actor that nobody had seen, probably in a year. It was like, Herschel Bernardi wants- He had done Circus of the Stars.

He was the headmaster on Circus of the Stars in 1980. So he was still quite relevant.

He was still quite relevant, but it was that time later.

But it was 13 years later.

Herschel Bernardi wants to see a script, and he wants to approve it, and you're like,. But it was your whole well-being was tied up in these unbelievably trivial moments that didn't matter even 5 feet outside of that door.

Right. But the other thing, too, is it was your case and was my case, too, where I used to live and die by what our rating was, and it would come out on a Thursday. All day Wednesday, the tension would be rising, and then I would go home, not sleep Wednesday night. I would come in Thursday and take the elevator up. This is back when I was on three-month contracts, and they're sinking. We've got replacement ready for Konan. He isn't quite ready yet, but we'll get rid of him soon. I take the elevator up and I would come in and I would walk to my producer's office like I was going to the gas chamber.

Yeah, you get these great- What I remember is if the number was a 2 or above, a 2.0.

It was great. If it was a 1.9, it was bad. And what I didn't realize- By the way, a 2.0.

Now is like a hit sitcom on a network at 8 o'clock.

This was at 12:35 at night. Right.

It was an amazing number.

But you know what I found out? You know what I found out was that was the demo. But what I remembered was the demo, if it was a 2.0, it was like, Hallelujah, we made it at 1.9. Then I found out much later on that the sample size, because it's a Nielsen rating for that, is literally like there's six people. If one of them has a head cold and takes some Nyquil and turns in early Really? Yeah. You had a bat. You disappointed America that week. It's so crazy. If one person didn't have a head cold and watched it, and all six people watched it, you were a hero. I always instinctively knew that I'm living and dying by this infinitesimal shit. That's called, I think, being young. You're in your late 20s, 30s, and then into the 40s, and then just It takes this erosion of, I've been disappointed and scared so much that I have none of that juice left anymore.

I can tell you, I remember the moment that that changed for me. It was- Was it getting this podcast, this booking? It was coming in here and reading this and realizing that you don't consider us friends yet. No, we aren't. This is a future designed desire.

We'll see. John, I'll let you know.

I was about to read this in the past, you bastard. We knew this fucking thing was dead. You could just see it and You could tell, two weeks into it, and I'm still thinking- This is the Jon Stewart show? Yes. It was on MTV, they loved it because it was Beavis and Butthead. It was written for seven-year-olds. It was a huge success.

By eight-year-olds for seven-year-olds. There, right.

We go to Paramount and people were like, I have no idea what the fuck this is. Two weeks into it, we do a bit. I thought it would be funny if we have Dave Attell, one of our writers at the time, dress up as Hitler and come out like he's a guest on the show. Hey, everybody wonder, what happened to Hitler? Oh, I think you brought a clip, and it's him at Nuremberg going,. I don't think anything of it. I think, oh, and we're laughing our balls off because every idea you come up with is 2:00 in the morning, and you think it's hilarious because you're sleep divine in the way that Stalin would torture people like it's 2:00 in the morning. They're like, What if Eteo was Hitler? I'm like, Love it. Let's have him come out holding a bagel with a schmeer going, I don't know what I was so afraid of. These are delicious. Boom. I'm going to kill. He comes out. Ladies and gentlemen, our next guests. It's not on the docket. It's not like you have it. We had somebody from Beverly Hills 90210, not the lead, but somebody who was just sitting at the Peach Pit.

We couldn't get guests.

Wait, so not Joe Itata?

Whatever it is. Sorry, come on.

How did you remember that name?

Is that really a person?

Joey Tata was the actor who ran the... It was the guy that ran the Peach Pit. Oh, my God. I even know that. Can I say something? I can't think of my son's name right now. But I know Joey Tata. Joey Tata, we love you, man. If he's still alive, I'll eat my head. Bingo. I know that one.

That is amazing. We've got nothing. This isn't planned. So first guests of the night, we do the monolight, do the whole thing. At that time, it's all OJ. It's all. Ladies and gentlemen, first guest, very surprising. Nobody's heard from him for many, many years. We are just so honored that he chose to do this show first. Ladies and gentlemen, Adolf Hitler. Yeah. Atel walks out in full Nazi regalia, and he's doing this, and he's got the mustache, and he's holding a bagel. Sure. What I didn't realize is the crowd would rightfully boo the shit out of him. It's Hitler. The whole thing devolves. I see in the control room, there's an immediate break. The stage manager comes out and goes, They need to see you in the control room. I go to the control. We're filming on 26th Street in New York, Paramount, our syndicator. They're watching from a lot in Los Angeles. The phone rings. It's just one guy, and he goes, That will never see the of day. That will never air. You will never do that. I actually turned it into an episode when I was writing for Sanders. We turned it into an episode, Adolf Hankler, where I had on the Wutang clan and Adolf Hankler and Rip Torn had to come in and go, No, we're not doing that.

They called me immediately. I was two weeks into a show and we're already putting reruns on. We knew this thing's going down. But I had your experience of like, this is my shot. This is it. My name is on this. This is a manifestation of who I am as an artist, as a person. If it gets rejected, I am rejected. I wasn't sleeping. I was really miserable. I was drinking like a motherfucker, all those different things. And one night in my insomnia, at three o'clock in the morning, four o'clock in the morning, I just remember thinking, You're going to have had your own talk show with your name on it where you could do whatever you wanted other than dress up David Tell us Hitler. People are going to say, Did you enjoy it? I would have to say, I hated it, and I think it nearly destroyed me. And what a dumb fucking response. And that morning, I got up and was like, I'm going to enjoy the shit out of this, and I don't care anymore. And it was revelatory. And it was such a... I felt it physically, like that relief. Now, the blow of the story is they canceled their produce for their afterthought.

I had the revelation, and the story should have been like, and I learned to enjoy it. And the show soared. And the ratings, Konan. Oh, the ratings. You wouldn't believe. I was literally shit in money. It was amazing.

It's like you're Scrooge and you woke up.

Boy, what day is it?

And you're shouting out the window and people are like, Fuck Thank you. We're the cranky old man. We liked him. What?

Boy, what day is it? It's your eviction day. You're leaving- Get out. But it was the lesson of my career And it tied into the flip side of that was when I got Letterman a couple of years prior, which had been my sole goal for five or six years of working in the close. I remember going back to my apartment and it was still a hole in the floor, and it was still one room, and I wasn't any taller. And so that summit, that Everest that had occurred by going on Letterman, I was still the same dude. And when I got canceled, I remember thinking, but I'm not any shorter, and I don't live in a smaller, and I still have the one thing that they can't take away, which is a desire to write jokes. And that's how I think I was able to, when the Daily Show came, work hard but not make myself insane.

Yeah, I think the saving Grace for me was always I was very nervous, self-loathing.

That's so crazy to me. I view you so differently.

That's so crazy. All the bullshit. But when we were doing the show and Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7 are playing and we're doing this comedy that I loved and working with and working with all these great people. I loved that part. I always loved that part. I loved an audience. I loved. I remembered thinking, If this only lasts six weeks, I got to do it for six weeks. I remember that it was the doing of the show that saved me because the doing of it brought me joy. Also, you can't do these shows unless you're in the moment present and taking it beat to beat. If you're doing comedy on stage- It got you out of your head. It got me out of my head because now it's just time to go. It was all the rest of it that I found to be agonizing.

Could anyone help you through that? I imagine somebody like Lorne who really has been through that experience of show business and ups and downs and had a longevity in that. Is that something you were able to share with him in any way or was that- Oh, he knew.

I think the thing about Lorne, no one would know me if it weren't for... I I think I would have made a name as a- You had already made a name. No, but I think if Lorne hadn't chosen me for that job, I think I would have probably, through various crimes, have made a name for myself. Pacific Northwest, roaming, and then eventually- Is that Conan O'Brien fighting in the Ukraine?

What is he doing? Is he on the front lines in Kharkiv?

Look at that hair.

But I think- So tall. What a target.

They can't seem to hit him. A nine-foot Wendy's girl is in Kharkiv and no one seems to hit him. Amazing. Lauren has an interesting thing, which is he totally put me on the map, and I owe my career to him, and I love him to death. But he is not, and he would probably admit this, too. He's a throw you in the deep end and watch you figure it out guy. In a way, I respect it because it works, But he's not a hand holder. He's not someone who's going to... I know they tore you up. Critics called him. I know that you were destroyed. I know that article came out. I mean, he used to sometimes tell me about articles that I couldn't possibly have read. He'd say, I think what the Cincinnati Post-Despatch Register said in their supermarket handout was unfair. I think someone will eventually want to mate with you. I mean, he would say, and I'd be like, What? I didn't know about... Oh, no, no. But then he'd do that. But then he'd say, But listen, he did have an institutional knowledge, and he said, You're likable and you've got a good quality, you're vulnerable quality, and it'll All I wanted to hear is your weird comedy is so cool.

That's not what Lorne was saying. I think even he early on found it off-putting and fucking crazy. That's so wild. But he did say, You're polite. You're polite and your goodness comes and that will see you through. I'd be like, What?

You're a well-mannered boy.

Yeah. No, but I mean, seriously, I think- Have you thought about wearing culottes and playing into the well-mannered boy archetype? He did tell me a couple of... I think he did an interview a couple of years into The Late Night show, and it's going really well. He said, I thought, Well, we're doing such cutting-edge comedy. I bet that's why Lauren... He said, No, I chose Konan because he has good manners. I thought, Fuck. But I could later on, I could see one of the points, or it's not a point, but a mission that I've had on this podcast that was not something I set out to do. But the more and more I talk to people like yourself, and I'm lucky enough to get to share these experiences, I like to just be honest with people about how things feel.

Sure.

I do think envy is such a big part of our culture. We are two of the luckiest people on the face of the planet. Man, say it every day. I feel that every day, and I know I wake up every day and I've just had an absurd amount of luck, and I give it up to luck, and I know that I've worked hard and have some ability, but I give it up in 90% luck. But I also want people who are listening, especially young people, to know that often-Be polite.

Be polite.

Be polite, yeah.

It's the only way to get a talk show.

Yeah, you can be so fucking unfunny and have such an off-putting quaff on your head. But no, I do try to remind people that you be doing worthwhile work even when you feel terrible and that everybody... I mean, we've subsequently been able to meet everybody we wanted to meet who influenced us and talk to them. And talk to them at length, and all of them have the same story. I think Eric Idle was here yesterday or two days ago.

The seat is still very British. I can feel it. I feel a certain floated pastiness as I sit here.

Is it imperial?

It feels that way. Has there been a twit sitting in my chair?

Has there been a colonizing twit in the chair? No, but he... Name anyone who you idolize, present and company-excluded. They will take you through a tale of darkness, woe, and insecurity. I just like to tell people, Yeah, that's what it I'm sorry. If you're in comedy, you're always, I think, potentially 20 minutes away from bombing. It's just the way it is. I always think about this when someone says, I'm doing a benefit. You can come out and I always think, Well, okay, but I got to really think about it. They're like, No, you don't. It's a benefit. People have already paid the money and they just want to know the name and then you're going to be there. I think, No, it has to be good because when it doesn't, I don't care. When I'm 90, if you go out there, and it doesn't feel right and it doesn't go well, it feels worse than anything I've ever felt in my life.

Where you feel like you've gone out there and they're there to cure. We're here to prevent cancer and you're eating it. They're I was like, It wasn't bad enough that cancer is ravaging our community. But now your set is, quite frankly, trite.

And giving us cancer.

We're finding what you're doing trite. Bombing at a benefit. There's almost an instinct at the end of it. It was like, folks, I don't have to be here. We're trying to raise some money here. You could be a little less judgmental. I'm not bringing out my best stuff.

Hey, you don't want a children's hospital? You don't have to have a children's hospital. It is what it is.

That grind on it is a newer phenomenon that I think- Say that part again. The idea of grinding on it, that sense of striving and neuroses, I think was a newer... It was a strange new manifestation in show business that didn't... Johnny was the guy who used to do these, and he'd be like, I show up at 4:30 for rehearsal, and at 4:45, I'm scheduled for my first blow job. I go back, I have my first blow job. Then I play cards with Ed. We have a couple of drinks. We tape it six, and then I go home to the blowjob factory that I live in. Until Dave came along- A blowjob factory.

Do they manufacture people there that give blowjobs? That's a great question. Or do you get the blowjobs at the blowjob factory?

Konan, it's the most common question that I get about the blowjob factory. Now, first of all, I will say this.

Do I go there to obtain someone who will give the blowjobs or get the blowjob on an assembly line?

I don't I agree that it's somewhat confusing. I will also say this. Globalization devastated our blowjob factories. Devastated them.

Now it's all outsourced.

All outsourced.

They're killing us. In China, they're eating our lunch. They're eating our blowjob lunch. They're eating our blowjob lunch.

And eating something else.

Sona, are you going to be okay? Sona, you and I have discussed at length how this country is bleeding blowjob factories, and you are suddenly shocked.

When Biden said, blowjob back better, I said, the alliteration still works.

You said, this man needs to step out of the race.

Or he could have said, build back blowjob. Either way, it works. Any word can be replaced by blowjob. Build blowjob better. I don't know. Whatever it is, it is.

There's a sticker being made right now. I hope so. A bumper sticker.

It better be.

It probably already exists.

But he really... Dave changed the nature of almost the personalities of the people that took those jobs because he worked.

It's interesting because Johnny Carson, we only knew him. He goes on the air around the time we're born. Then I don't come into consciousness, full consciousness until my 30s. But I come into when I'm seeing Johnny, he's literally and watching my dad laugh at Johnny, it's the early... Johnny's at that point, 11, 12, 13 years in, and it's set. So he may have had that period in the early '60s. You know what I mean? He may have had this period of, We just didn't see it. He was so established. He was the only game in town.

But the pace was so different. If you watch those shows, what we had to try and do every night is put on a circus. You like this entertainment? How about this entertainment? How about I'll do this? His was an hour and a half told a few lovely jokes. It was the very idea that these celebrities that you had never experienced in a less formal setting.

It's Richard Burton sitting there talking.

Telling a story, and it's charming in and of its own right. And by the time we got along, there's 10 of them, and everybody's got to turn that like, Oh, you want to hear the record at 33? How about at 78? And everybody's running as fast as they fucking can.

I've been talking about this for a while, which is, comedy and entertainment in general, keeps getting more and more and more and more compressed to the point where things get faster and faster and faster. So you can watch, just bear with me here, but you start with Steve Allen in the '50s, and then you get to Jack Parr, and then you get to Johnny Carson. What you're seeing is things are speeding up and going faster and faster and faster. Then you get to Dave, and that's feeling fast. But we look at those now. You look at a David Letterman from 1983, and sometimes Sometimes it was at the time, as we were seeing it, revelatory and spectacular, and it still is, but now it looks, this is really going slowly. Then the pace It just picks up some more, then more, then more, then more, and to the point where I think it's... I'd notice that every time I watch something on HBO or Netflix or anything, they never tell a story in a line. The story starts with the murder, then cuts back to the beginning of the story when they're showing up, but then cuts back to the police showing up because they don't trust you to sit still.

And they shouldn't.

No, and trust me, they know what they're doing.

It all started with Pulp Fiction. I remember when you watched pulp fiction, you were like, This is the storytelling is not even linear. I don't know what's happening here. This isn't fair. Now, you can't watch a cartoon on Nickelodeon that isn't like, flashback.

No, I'm shocked. When I watch most anything, and I say it's gone beyond comedy, but of course, it's in comedy everywhere, is it's just- It's all in that molecular level. It's ADD. It's all in that molecular level.

Think about on the internet, you had, and this was years ago, and it's not around now, but it informed some of it, which was Vine. Vine was basically six seconds. Give me your best six seconds. And it trained people in the atomic nature. It's like you're seeing the matrix of entertainment or comedy, where it's at its most fundamental building block. And then there were people, and you watch it, and I'm always amazed now, you'll go on an app of TikTok or Instagram. The level of creativity activity within a compressed time frame or of an event that occurs, and then the next two hours are this explosion of neural energy and content creation that takes that My favorite recent one was Donald Trump at the debate. They're eating dogs. They're eating people's pets. Five minutes after that, I'm on the thing. And it's that audio with pets looking scared. I was just like, this is the greatest. It's now at a molecular level. It's functioning in quantum comedy world.

It's also one of the things the internet giveth and taketh away. That's for sure. There's the pluses, there's the minuses. But one of the things I think has been great is it's the democratization of comedy in a way because you, me, Colbert, John Oliver, to get everybody together, and they're all thinking of the best idea they can possibly think of with their big teams. But the funniest person, the one who comes up with the best thing, is probably in a basement in Iowa, and they shoot the thing It's already out there. And by the way, it's out there seven seconds after the event happened.

We are the insurance companies of comedy now. We are the guys in leisure suits who are like, in some ways, the infrastructure of show business. There is no more wasteful business than show. I mean, I think we can all agree with that, which is why I think we need to save the planet. And I vow that my carbon- I would say the blowjob factory, you could argue, is the most wasteful business of all because we don't even know what it does. Wait, you don't know what it does?

We don't know.

Does it mania- You got to wait till the end. What's that outsource? You've been leaving too quickly.

That's the problem.

No, you got to stay with it.

I was leaving very quickly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, That infrastructure and all those things.

And what they're showing is it's the difference between entertainment is there is this legacy business, and you're seeing it change now as Silicon Valley comes in. The ethos of legacy entertainment is we've created this incredibly eccentric business, and you need an agent and a manager and a lawyer, and they're going to take about 60% of what you pay. But without them, there's nothing you can do. And you join the studio, and the studio Studio will give you a deal and you'll sit in your room. It's the most inefficient way. Silicon Valley walked in in the way that Elon Musk walked into Twitter and went like, How many people work here? Ten thousand. Make it two. Now that Apple and Amazon, they go in and they go, Writers room? Wait, you've got 14 writers, and they're with you from start to finish on the production? Well, it's important for the writers to be invested. And then also we're showing them how they're on the page because it's different about the page to the screen. They've got to understand how that works and understand how we interact with the props. They can have three weeks, and it's got to be on Zoom, and you can have four of them.

They're changing us from an analog business to a digital business. I think that's the schism, the earthquake that's been going through it. I can't function like that. My writer is like, What?

Also, it's across the business. Many comedy writers, My Vintage or younger, have trouble getting work now. Right. These companies don't believe- It's changing radically.

It's changing- They don't believe in institutional knowledge that allows people to grow and get better and create more. What they believe now is the auteur system, which has always existed within film and TV. And then this idea of ruthlessly efficient content factories where what matters is the real estate and not the individual creative.

I think the problem, if I had to guess, would be that you can't explain what happens in a writer's room to anybody who hasn't been in one.

Imagine a coffee clutch with a lot of Holocaust It's a cost joke.

But I remember- That's a writer's room. I remember when I was on the Simpsons, and it was fairly early days on the Simpsons, there was a lot of excitement in a German film company came. This documentary film crew came from Germany, and the director wanted to capture the Simpson's writing room in action. I'm sitting there with Swartswellder and Jeff Martin, and Myers, and- The legends. All these amazing people. I'm sitting in this room and they set up these cameras and the guy was there and he had the lens around his neck and he's watching us. What he saw was a bunch of guys saying, All right, we need them into the scene. Then it Al Jean would be like, We really need, it should probably be Marge that takes us out and be like, Okay. Then there'd be this, and John Veedie would go, What if? No. Long silences and you could hear the equipment. Then at one point, the guy just went, Can something happen? I'm like, This is writing. There's a famous story of, I think it's Harry Warner or something walked past the writer's the area on the lot, and he didn't hear typewriters going.

He was like, I better hear typewriters because those guys are getting paid. Well, a lot of writing is sitting and thinking and agonizing and eating a donut, and then there's this process.

People don't realize, too, that the idea of your diagramming stories. In some ways, it looks like a math problem. You're creating these kinds of tranches of A, B, and C story lines, and drawing lines, and creating arcs. It really is a little bit of beautiful mind craziness. You look at it and go, none of this seems to... But everybody is... You're putting the Jenga pieces together. Then in the edit later, the mistakes that you made with your original instinct can get corrected or shaped. You know what was the biggest change for me in content creation was the invention of the Avid. When we stopped editing in the online rooms, where if you fucked up, you had to go back to the beginning, and you could start to manipulate things digitally in space, it was revelatory because it was how more your mind works. The technology of it had not caught up with the way that you spatially see structure or plot or character or those things. When you had a tool that would allow you to work more in sync with how you think, that was... Because in the early days at MTV, I can remember we would do these bits, these parodies, and get the little razor and cut the Get the thing and put it through and tape it up and run it through again.

You feel like Charlie Chaplin on the set of the Gold Rush.

We saw that transition.

I've always liked working with young people, A, because I'm a creep. You don't have to pay them.

They're still in school. They'll work for credit.

Oh, this will help me. But no, I'm very delighted by when I see young comedic talent that really makes me laugh. I feel better. I guess there's this cliché that people in our stage are supposed to be looking at young comedians and going, I don't think that's funny. Why am I? And I've never felt that way. Mostly, I feel like, shit. The other night at the Emmies, one of the Emmies parties, I ran into the writers that do hacks, and I just stopped and said, You're doing such superb work. You started out The Great Show, and then the other seasons are each one's better than the previous one. I don't know how you're doing it, but I left feeling energized and better about things because I'm always happy when young people are killing it because I think, Oh, I think civilization is going to be okay. I'm putting that all on the writers. It happens.

It reminds me of the way that they look at athletics. When people go, You can't compare the football players of today to the legends, and you're like, Right, the football players of today, mediocre ones, would blow their fucking doors off. Yeah, Dick Butkiss was great. These guys are running a 3-2-40. He wouldn't even know that they had gone past him. I look at that sometimes with the content now that's being created by those young comics and all that, and I'm just like, they have leveled us up. They really have. People like to talk about, Oh, back in the old days, we really... That comedy was great. And you're like, Well, it was flat-footed and racist. But other than that, you're right. Right. No, I'm always impressed by, and especially in the stand-up world, the level that young comics come into it. It's one of those things I see as my kids went through the college process, I was like, Oh, I wouldn't be able to get into college I did. It makes me feel that way about the Comedy Clubs. Like, Oh, I would have to end up really being a bouncer.

Oh, you'd be a great bouncer. You better leave. What are you going to do about it?

Nobody expects for you to hit Nobody expects for you to hit them low. Nobody expects that.

You go right at the knee. You know what? I would love a comedy club where you and I are the bouncer. They're different sizes and both equally ineffectual. I'll hit you high and you won't feel it. I'll hit you low and you won't feel it.

Who are the bouncer? It's Ren and Stimpy. They'll take care of it.

No problem. But it's funny. I've had this experience now where, as I said, this all started out with me talking about those early years where I often think, I honestly don't know why I did any of the things I did. I think it was all compulsion. I don't come from a world. My parents had nothing to do with show business. I don't come from a show business world. I went into an environment that was supposed to be the opposite of all that. Like a salmon swimming upstream, I don't understand why I did, made most of the decisions I made. There was some compulsive thing that was pushing me into, I think there's this thing I'm supposed to do, and I got to get there. I've got to get there. You go through that period, and then you get, Here we are, all these years later. My overwhelming feeling, and I know gratitude is a word that's thrown around a lot and it's become cliched, I'm incredibly grateful. But the other feeling I have is, and I've had this feeling, too, occasionally, you must have this, where I run into someone that graduated from college the same year I did, and I didn't know them, but they'll say, Oh, Konan, I graduated in '85, and I'm filled with this one thought, which is, Hey, we're alive.

That's my overwhelming feeling is, I'm sorry I didn't get to know you on campus. I can't believe we both went for four years and didn't know each other, but that happens all the time at these schools. But the other one is just like, We're still here. There's a lot of people who aren't, and I'm just happy about that. I contrast It's that guy who I am now with the guy in 1993 who feels like someone's got a gun in his mouth. You know what I mean?

But the weird thing is it may be just as you said, which is if you hadn't had felt that way, you wouldn't have pushed yourself to get to that other side of gratitude that it wouldn't have been. I think compulsion is a really apt description of... I think for me, I don't know if it was compulsion as much as there was a little bit of Richard Dreyfus building the potato tower. That's what I'm talking about in ET. I wasn't ET. It was- I'm sorry, Closer Encounters. Closer Encounters.

He also does it in ET. He does it everywhere. Every movie. In Jaws.

If you remember in Jaws, he builds the tower of mashed potatoes.

Also, Mary Poppins.

We're going to need a bigger plate. That's what they say.

It happens in a lot of movies, but anyway.

Always Dreyfus, always potatoes, always Devil's Tower.

Constantly covering for my blunders.

No one knows why. But I remember- I know exactly what you're talking about.

Go ahead.

This idea that I was vibrating on a frequency that didn't match my life. It didn't match. And the first place that it began to match it is I worked at this punk club in Trenton called City Gardens. And it's this legendary punk club. It's a great movie written about it called Riott on the Dance Floor. There was a little guy who was a postmaster during the day named Randy Now, who booked all these bands like Bad Brains and Black Flag and all these tremendous bands. And I was out of college. I didn't know what the fuck to do with myself. And I found this punk club with all the music that I loved and all these incredible artists that would never come to Trenton, New Jersey. They'd go to Philly, they'd go to New York, and on their way, they would end up in this shit hole neighborhood in Trenton. And working there and feeling that creative energy, I was like, these people are vibrating on that frequency. I can't follow that road because I don't feel that, but I'm going to find it. Yeah, your version of it. My version of it. And that was moving to New York.

So working at City Gardens is what propelled me to just sell my shit and move to New York in pursuit of... I didn't even really know what, but it felt like it had to be something creative and collaborative and something.

It's so funny that it's a great analogy to the making the mashed potato Mountain because in E. T, but also in Mr. Holland's opus. Thank you. Mr. Holland's Opus and Dead Poets. He just can't be be be be be be be be The Poets Society. But anyway- When each of his students came in and tasted the mountain, each one, Oh, Mr..

Holland, how I'll miss your potatoes.

But if I look at me, and again, this is some garbled... I know I have some wisdom to pass on. I just don't know that I have the eloquence to pass it on, but I- You're doing it. I didn't know, and you didn't know, we didn't know exactly what it is we were supposed to be doing, but there was something that was making pushing us in these different directions. I knew when I was around that energy for the first time in college in the Lampoon, like, What is this? I don't know what this is. I thought maybe it's second, I got to go to Second City, but I wrote them a letter and they wrote me back.

Dearest improvisational actor. Yes, I've got an emotion for you.

It's called Wanderlust. Yeah. Seriously, I wrote them a letter because I thought I was writing to a bank. I think I tell that to Tina Faye, and they just laugh at me like, No, you go to Second City, and you're like, Oh, I wrote them a letter. It didn't seem to work out.

Would you have any interest in a young Irish boy?

Oh, you'll see, there's big things coming from me. But so much of what I did, I didn't understand at the time, but I knew I had to do it. That's where I'm in doing improv and meeting all these people who are 10 years away from being super famous, and we're just putting money in a jar. I don't know why I'm doing this, and I can't explain it to anybody, but it feels like a fever. It's just a fever that you have. Then later on, you're doing your thing.

You can't force it. And not everybody does feel that in different ways. It was very clear that my friends had gone a very different route. And in some ways, I felt like, especially in the early years, they were all somewhat disappointed in me in that I couldn't get my shit together. I definitely drank too much because I was just lost. I just didn't know what to do. And also living that lifestyle at punk clubs, it's not like Steeves, Bater's, and the Lord of the New Church roll through and you're like, Have you tried this new green juice? It's phenomenal. How's your cholesterol? Those guys are vomiting on stage. It just wasn't the healthy lifestyle. But the way I've tried to articulate, I think that feeling, and maybe you tell me if you think this is aproposite, is that idea to trust your discomfort. To trust your discomfort that I'm in this situation right now and I am uncomfortable, and I've just got to find a way to articulate for myself why it's making me uncomfortable and why I need to make a change. And hopefully, the act of making change is the antidote to that discomfort and anxiety.

Now, do you know that that change will be successful? You have no fucking idea. But the act of doing it teaches you in some respect that you are not a prisoner of your circumstance, mind, situation, any of those things. Or your fate has not been written, boy.

Well, I would say if in some alternate universe, the Jon Stewart show that you started on MTV that went to Paramount and it gets canceled, if that had turned out to be the end, and whatever you were doing now, you would not regret a second of it.

That's why it takes me back to earlier in the conversation when you said, what was that moment for you. It really was the pivot point, the cleaving of the life that I was going to lead to the life that I ultimately was lucky enough to lead was one night. The I worked at this place called City Gardens, and I worked at this other bar called the Bottom Half. It was underneath the liquor store on Route One. I remember saying to them, You know what? Fuck this place. Fuck this life. I'm moving to New York. They were like, Have fun at the gay pride parade. That was the bar that it was. That moment to me was the moment. When they say, When did you know you had made it? I was like, I knew I'd made it when I hooked that U-haul up to the rental truck and just drove and just went up to the city. That was it.

I do always try to tell younger people, You have less to lose than you think. No question. If you think it, try it. Just try it. You don't know, but you'll learn something from it. I do end with, because I've kept you longer than most guests, just because I know you're parked in a one.

Actually, I have another guest coming. I'm using this room. Go ahead. By the way, thank God it's in this building. When we first drove up here, I thought we were taping out of the back of the medical spa. No. I almost pulled into that parking lot and was like, Wow. We're going to get out of the way.

This is interesting. We're going to get out of the way so you can talk to Hal Linden. Who's here? What? Yes, he's here.

Looks like we made it.

Hey, kids, look up Hal Linden. You'll enjoy it. But I'm glad you're alive. Thank you. I'm glad I'm alive. Yes. And congrats again on all your success. Guests. And thanks for doing this. This was really fun. My pleasure.

I wanted to do it for a while. I'm a huge fan of it. I love listening. There's very little now that you can listen to that elevates your endorphins and your dopamine levels in a way that your podcast does with all the different guests and so much out there that's toxic to the system. And so this is a really nice sav for all of that.

I've often thought of myself as a sav or a bomb, which is actually the word.

Always a bomb, always a sav.

A bomb. Yes. John, go with God. Whichever God you want.

I didn't have any of them. What now? I don't know what to do. I'm lost.

I'm talking about Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

The Carpenter? Yes. Oh, no.

He's seated at the right-hand of the Father, he will come again in quarry to touch the living in a dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

Who's it the way? Is it Rickles? Who is it?

It's Rickles. It's Rickles, and then Jesus.

All right. Done. All right.

Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonum of Cessian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and nick Liao. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brenda Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Brit Kohn. 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 Konan? Call the Team Coco Hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. You can also get three free months of SiriusXm when you sign up at siriusxm. Com/konan. And if you haven't already, please Konan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.