Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend XX
[0] Conan O 'Brien needs a fan.
[1] Want to talk to Conan?
[2] Visit team cocoa .com slash call Conan.
[3] Okay, let's get started.
[4] Hey, Yoris, meet Conan and Sona.
[5] Yoris, how are you?
[6] I'm good, I'm good.
[7] Thanks.
[8] Before we begin, I must say, Sona, congratulations on becoming a best -selling author.
[9] Oh, yes.
[10] That's amazing.
[11] New York Times best -selling.
[12] Yes, that's best -of -eating.
[13] You know, Matt, congratulations on inventing the chill chum.
[14] That's also a good.
[15] Thank you.
[16] Thank you.
[17] We can end now, I guess.
[18] Yes.
[19] Guess what, Yoris?
[20] I don't like you.
[21] Because you started out, complimenting these two boneheads on their accomplishments and leaving Mozart out of the equation.
[22] Oh, come on.
[23] I'm sorry.
[24] That's right.
[25] That's right.
[26] It's a beautiful new podcast studio, Conan.
[27] Hey.
[28] Thank you.
[29] He's complimented the studio.
[30] Not even you.
[31] You cover it.
[32] The guy who built the studio, Eduardo, is right.
[33] right over here.
[34] Thank you, Euris.
[35] Thank you.
[36] Good job, Eduardo.
[37] Man, Eduardo, thanks a lot.
[38] I guess I've accomplished nothing in this life.
[39] He's my favorite.
[40] I ate a whole Greek yogurt this morning by myself.
[41] Whoa, big boy.
[42] Big boy did it.
[43] Yorris, that was very nice of you to compliment everyone but me. Were you talking to us from, Yoris?
[44] Well, I'm in the Netherlands at the moment.
[45] In the Netherlands.
[46] Where in the Netherlands?
[47] The province of Limburg and in the locality of Beicht.
[48] Okay.
[49] Whoa, is that where they make the cheese, Limburger cheese?
[50] The stinky cheese?
[51] No, it's not, actually.
[52] I always assumed that it was, but it's not.
[53] It's where Charles Limburg was invented.
[54] Sorry, I watched him make that blunder.
[55] Is that where you were from originally, or did you move to that?
[56] I'm actually from, yeah, I'm actually from Belgium.
[57] Belgium, what a wonderful place.
[58] To confuse it a bit more, that province is also called Lindberg.
[59] So I'm from the Belgian Lindberg, but now I live in the Dutch Limburg.
[60] Is that where they make the Lundberg?
[61] No, it's still not.
[62] No, I'm still wrong.
[63] Can I just say this is the worst who's on first routine I've ever heard.
[64] Wait, Lemberg?
[65] No, not that Lemberg.
[66] This Lemberg.
[67] What a tongue twister.
[68] I got twice.
[69] God, yeah, you know.
[70] Oh, you wait to see the third one's a charm.
[71] It's coming.
[72] It's coming.
[73] Yorris, let me explain.
[74] My sleep -deprived friend, he has a newborn.
[75] No, congratulations.
[76] Yeah, and he's, his foot's been heavy on the, the gas pedal lately and lots of fender benders.
[77] And, but that's okay.
[78] It's good just to drive sometimes.
[79] No, it's not.
[80] No, you should really take off the seatbelt, go back in the house.
[81] Oh, I'm driving without a seatbelt.
[82] And duct tape your head to the wall.
[83] Yoris, so very nice.
[84] We've learned a little bit about you.
[85] Tell us more.
[86] Tell us, because you fascinate me. What'd you do for a living?
[87] I am a historian.
[88] Oh, cool.
[89] I primarily focus on demographic and social history.
[90] Give me an example.
[91] Well, for my dissertation, I studied the black death, which hopefully is of interest.
[92] That is fascinating.
[93] No, I, I, first of all, I'm a very morbid person, but the black death does really intrigue me. What can you tell us about the black death?
[94] I mean, everybody nowadays, because we just went through a two -year plus pandemic, people like to reference the black plague.
[95] The black plague was just a whole other scale.
[96] Am I correct?
[97] Yeah, completely different.
[98] So it wiped out about 60 % of the European population.
[99] Yeah.
[100] With some localities having about 80 to 90 % mortality.
[101] So it's massive.
[102] When I was a kid, I went into the Boston Museum of Science, and they had this three -dimensional model of population growth starting, you know, whatever, a couple hundred thousand years ago.
[103] And when it hit the Black Death, it plummeted.
[104] The whole thing plummeted in a way that even as a child, I was stunned and fascinated and scared by that.
[105] So black death, bad.
[106] That's my dissertation.
[107] I thought it was good this whole time.
[108] This is good.
[109] This is eye -opening for me. I'm still giving it a shot.
[110] The name kind of indicates a good disease.
[111] Black death, you think, oh, yeah.
[112] You know, you know, interesting thing to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but people had, of course, they didn't, unlike today where everyone has the correct information.
[113] Back then, people had wild ideas of what to do about the black death.
[114] And I remembered reading one account where they thought gunpowder, might scare it away, so they just, they would explode things.
[115] Like they would put a bunch of, I don't know, clothes that they thought had the black death on them and blow them up.
[116] Well, exactly.
[117] I don't know what they, but they just thought blow it and up will do.
[118] Fire, wouldn't that kill some of the virus or bacteria?
[119] Yeah, yeah.
[120] So there's stories of hopes that would surround themselves with, you know, fires that they would keep burning, you know, 24 -7, whenever new.
[121] plague outbreak would happen because of course the black data is just one outbreak of flake right they kept on happening for centuries and centuries yeah and people didn't really get much better at at wording off the disease than then we can do now in a sense because before you have vaccines and medical treatment before all of the vaccines start up you kind of have social distancing and quarantine which is a terminology that we have from the black data actually and people just like now had all of these crazy ideas what caused the disease as as well as all sorts of crazy treatments.
[122] All I can think is that we have not made any progress because now here we are and people were, you know, still, I mean, at that time I think people thought the earth was flat.
[123] I think you could still find...
[124] It's a common misconception.
[125] Maybe a most people didn't.
[126] 15 or 20 or 25 % of the country thinks that.
[127] And, you know, people I think back then would have stoned Anthony Fauci, probably, you know.
[128] So I don't know.
[129] I hope we're making progress, but...
[130] Yeah, I think more people now believe that the Earth is flat than they did in the Middle Ages.
[131] Because in the Middle Ages, consensus was that the Earth was round.
[132] It was quite well known.
[133] And now with the Flat Earth theory, you have a lot more people actually believing it.
[134] I would, you know...
[135] So when you say we're going backwards, we're going backwards?
[136] In certain instances, maybe we're going backwards, yeah.
[137] I see that in certain schools, evolution theory is also up for grabs.
[138] So that's interesting times we're living in, I guess.
[139] Yeah.
[140] This got real grim, real fast, Yoris.
[141] Can we go back to complimenting me and Matt?
[142] Yeah, yeah.
[143] Let's keep in mind that Sona has a bestseller and that Matt Gourley is sleep -deprived.
[144] Actually, Yoris, I have here in my notes that you know of a very interesting remedy that they use during the time for the Black Death.
[145] Could you talk about that?
[146] Yeah, I know what remedy you want to hear about, right?
[147] It's called the vicar method, and it consists of tying a life, the vicar method.
[148] Okay.
[149] It's tying a life plucked chicken to a boobo, right, which are those swellings that appear when someone has plate, and waiting for the chicken to die, and they tie the chickens to the boobo anus first.
[150] Yes.
[151] And then they wait for the chicken to die, and the idea is that if the chicken would die, it would take over the disease from the human body into its own.
[152] and when it died, the disease would be gone for the human and, well, bad luck for the chicken.
[153] Yeah, but can you eat the chicken then?
[154] Or the boobo.
[155] I wouldn't advise.
[156] Have you had boobo?
[157] I've had boobo.
[158] Oh, boobo is great.
[159] Candy, boobo?
[160] Nothing better.
[161] Yeah, a little caramel sauce over it.
[162] You bite it about boobo.
[163] I'd like to apologize to anybody who's imagining biting into a swollen boobo right now.
[164] It's got a nice caramel sauce drizzled over it.
[165] And a little pineapple ring with a cherry.
[166] You know what?
[167] Gurley, I was wrong to accuse you.
[168] If this is the product of sleep deprivation, I'm all for it.
[169] Thank you.
[170] It's fascinating because I bet if you went online, this is the gift of the modern internet.
[171] You would find someone somewhere who still thinks that the vicar method is the way to go.
[172] And for different reasons.
[173] And for different reasons.
[174] Different placement.
[175] Yeah, depending on how the chicken voted in the last election.
[176] Yeah, yeah.
[177] It's right up there with hydroxychloric, I guess, the vapor method.
[178] Oh, no. Got artillery.
[179] Wait a minute.
[180] That's a parrot.
[181] I was trying to do a chicken, and I did a parrot.
[182] That's better.
[183] That's good.
[184] I'm like Biden.
[185] Yeah.
[186] Biden, I can't use you to cleanse my boobo.
[187] Oh, Jesus.
[188] You know what?
[189] Yoris, this is all your fault when you think about it.
[190] You call us.
[191] I'm afraid so.
[192] from this province of Lindberger.
[193] God, you've got to let that go.
[194] But you call us from the Netherlands.
[195] I'm fascinated by the Netherlands.
[196] I'd like to live there one day.
[197] It must be very nice.
[198] It seems like a reasonable place to live.
[199] Is that correct?
[200] It's a very reasonable place to live, although they might have it in for you a little bit, Conan.
[201] Because in the past, on multiple occasions, you've compared yourself to an elderly Dutch woman.
[202] Yeah, what's wrong with that?
[203] I meant that as a compliment.
[204] wait a minute so you guys don't like the idea that I might look like one of your women you think that's insulting or is it because he's saying they look like him?
[205] Either way what's the problem I'm a conventionally attractive man God take that the way I just said that is not the way any convention is not something any conventionally attractive man. I'm a conventionally attractive man. Brad Pitt says that all the time.
[206] Hey, it's Brad Pitt.
[207] Brad, what's up?
[208] I'm a conventionally attractive man. You sound like Blanche de Bois from streetcarine and desire.
[209] I rely on the kindness of conventionally attractive strangers.
[210] Yoris, first of all, I don't want people to have it in for me there because I would love to visit the Netherlands.
[211] and see all of your attractions.
[212] I'd like to go to Belgium where you were from and have one of those really thick waffles that you guys have.
[213] Those are fantastic.
[214] Yeah, the Brussels waffles.
[215] Yeah.
[216] Or loads and loads of beers.
[217] Every locality has its own beer because Belgians can't stand each other.
[218] So they all think they can make a better beer than their neighbors.
[219] So we have about 1 ,000 ,000 ,500 beers.
[220] I wish that was the way, if we could replace all warfare and strife with people trying to make a better beer and being competitive about it.
[221] That'd be amazing.
[222] That'd be a much better world.
[223] Everything would be fixed and happy and everybody would be drunk.
[224] Yeah, it would be all alcoholics.
[225] Why don't they like each other?
[226] What's the beef?
[227] Why don't they like each other?
[228] Belgium is a very complex country.
[229] If you know the history a little bit, it was kind of created.
[230] Of course we do.
[231] John Claude Van Damme and Hervey Villas came from there.
[232] I know the history.
[233] Yeah.
[234] Well, I mean, why would you assume we wouldn't know?
[235] Yeah.
[236] As he said, Jean -Claude Montem and then Hervey Villages.
[237] And I brought up the thick waffle.
[238] That's right.
[239] You guys really know Belgium.
[240] So you have talked to Wikipedia.
[241] You know, a lot of, a lot of, I think a lot of Americans get a bad knock because people say that we, we don't have a good knowledge of the rest of the world.
[242] But I think Gorley and I have acquitted ourselves very well.
[243] Also, I think there's a windmill or two somewhere.
[244] In Belgium, there might be.
[245] The Netherlands is mostly known for windmills.
[246] Even I knew that.
[247] Yeah.
[248] No, I went back.
[249] I went back to the Dutch area.
[250] There's got to be some windmills there.
[251] Oh, for sure.
[252] There's a lot of wheat.
[253] Plenty.
[254] That's what I know.
[255] Weeds and tulips.
[256] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[257] We have a, they call them coffee shops, right?
[258] Where you can buy weed.
[259] They call them dispensaries, I guess, in the U .S. Yeah, but you can't, like, sit and enjoy it there.
[260] You get it and you leave.
[261] But why is that?
[262] Can I ask you a question?
[263] Why do you have to leave a dispensary?
[264] When are they going to make it in the United States where you can hang out?
[265] Is there a reason you can't do that?
[266] I don't know.
[267] I don't know.
[268] I mean, that's something we should get into here.
[269] It's important.
[270] Well, guess what?
[271] Social gathering.
[272] Yeah.
[273] Yeah, right now people go and they score their jazz cigarette and then they're out.
[274] I'm a cool guy.
[275] I'm a conventionally attractive and cool guy.
[276] I just scored a jazz cigarette and a dispensary.
[277] Now I'm off to the home of Hervey Villages.
[278] Famous Balgian, of course.
[279] What's that?
[280] Tattoo on Fantasy Island, knick, knack and...
[281] The plane, the plane.
[282] And I didn't know that Van Dam was from Belgium.
[283] Well, he's not sure anymore.
[284] Really?
[285] Yeah, he's confused.
[286] He's been hitting the head too many times.
[287] Yoris, you have taught us much.
[288] I mean, when you think about it, we now know a lot more about the Black Death, and we know pretty much all there is to know about the Netherlands.
[289] And Belgium, yeah.
[290] Yeah, and Belgium as well.
[291] But I do have to ask you, you're wearing a teenage mutant ninja turtles T -shirt, that leads me to believe you're a fan?
[292] Yes, quite a big fan.
[293] I also have some Teenage Puget Ninja Turtle tattoos.
[294] Oh, I can't really see those.
[295] Show them.
[296] Show them close up.
[297] Oh, my God, Shredder.
[298] Wait.
[299] Whoa, that's insane.
[300] That is quite detailed.
[301] Look at that.
[302] Tell us about Shredd.
[303] And who, oh my God.
[304] Okay, which one is that?
[305] I can tell you, that's Michelangelo.
[306] Is it?
[307] Yeah, thanks, Matt.
[308] That's absolutely right.
[309] So, Matt, do you really know a lot about this?
[310] I was into them when they first came out and they were these underground black and white violent comic books when I was in junior high, but I don't know like the modern version of them.
[311] Oh yeah.
[312] I'm that way about the Muppets.
[313] I like the old underground black and white Muppets.
[314] They were bloody.
[315] I'm telling you can batten up.
[316] No, no, I like the Muppets.
[317] The old Muppets I'm talking about.
[318] It was really subversive and they were all doing drugs.
[319] And R. Crum created them.
[320] And it was really only cool people knew about the Muppets then.
[321] Yeah.
[322] And it was like borderline skin flicks, too, where there was a lot of Muppet news.
[323] A very hipster thing to say, of course, that you knew them before they were cool.
[324] Exactly.
[325] Exactly my point.
[326] You're a conventionally attractive and cool guy.
[327] No, no. I think the attack now is on Gourley.
[328] Oh, yeah.
[329] I appreciate that deflection, though.
[330] Trying to pretend that he only knows that the old cool teenage mutant ninja turtles and didn't go with the crowd, the mob, if you will.
[331] It's true.
[332] I still have those comics signed by the artist Seismin and Laird.
[333] Oh, wow.
[334] Yeah.
[335] That's incredible.
[336] Well, you just talked yourself out of that hole.
[337] I now totally respect you and think you're the cruviest.
[338] Who are we of the Ninja Turtles, yours?
[339] Yeah.
[340] Yeah, that's a good question.
[341] I mean, the obvious one is Donatello, right?
[342] That would be you, Matt, because you do the machines.
[343] Oh.
[344] Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's the one.
[345] You're the engineer.
[346] In an action movie, he's the guy in a van with the headset who's burning no calories at all and clicking and figuring out.
[347] And then I would be who's the really cool.
[348] conventionally attractive jazz cigarette smoking Ninja Turtle.
[349] I guess the coolest one and also the brawler of the is Raphael?
[350] Yeah, that's me. That's not you.
[351] That's not you.
[352] And that would be Sona.
[353] Yeah, that's not you.
[354] Well, it looks like it's gone to Sona.
[355] All right, so, who's left?
[356] Is there a, is there a teenage mutant mutant Ninja Turtle that can't go out in the sun?
[357] I'm trying to, I want my own.
[358] Turtles.
[359] So I have two answers, right?
[360] One is the one you want because Leonardo is the leader of the pack.
[361] Yeah.
[362] But Michelangelo is the orange one.
[363] Oh.
[364] Who likes pizza?
[365] Isn't that Michelangelo?
[366] I just want to stick for the record that I was into the Ninja Turtles before their bandanas changed colors.
[367] Oh, okay.
[368] We get it.
[369] I just want that on the record.
[370] Yeah.
[371] Really cool.
[372] It was cool.
[373] Like the black and white ones signed.
[374] A lot of sex.
[375] Wow Incredible You're Leonardo That's cool Yeah I'm Leonardo I think let's just leave it at that Not the orange one Let's leave it at that I don't want to be the orange one Because that's demeaning So you're Michelangelo And yours because you have the tattoo Yeah Yeah I have them on my body So I want to take Michelangelo If that's fine for you guys It's fine It's fine I have a little screen here That shows me When we've lost the listener Oh God We hit this teenage mutant thing and just does it model the population from the black death yeah it looks exactly like that it looks exactly like that it gets right up to the middle ages which is we were killing it with our with john claude van dam belgroom roof and then you hit teenage mutiny into charles and we lost 80 % were we killing it though yeah all right everybody chicken butt holes to boobos let's go but save those boobos save those boobos that's good eaten um boobo was the name of the owl in the clash of the titans Yes.
[376] Is there a punishment room we can build in this podcast studio?
[377] Isn't there a place where we could, where every now and then, Gourley has to go in and we shut it.
[378] And you just have to be in there for like a naughty boy for like 10 minutes.
[379] One of the isolation booth on the quiz shows from the 50s.
[380] Yoris, I like you.
[381] You're a, you seem like an optimistic, very intelligent, funny person.
[382] Thanks.
[383] Yeah, you do seem like you'd make a good, friend of mine.
[384] Do you have a question for me?
[385] Anything I can answer for you?
[386] I do.
[387] I do.
[388] And I try to come up with a question that's really in the world you live in, right?
[389] So I know that you love two things.
[390] One is silly sounding words and the utter is history.
[391] Yep.
[392] Nice.
[393] So my question would be, if you could come up with a historical disease, what would you name it and what would the symptoms be?
[394] Oh my God.
[395] Wow.
[396] You should have found out.
[397] Okay.
[398] You know what?
[399] I love They used to talk about, like, the flux, you know, it used to be something, I think there was a, I think there was a while where they were talking about things like, oh, he's got some kind of a flux.
[400] Because they had all these old ailments, like consumption and.
[401] Well, well, there was like, he's got the palsy, he's got the flux, he's got the vapors.
[402] The vapors.
[403] Vapers are pretty good.
[404] The ague.
[405] Oh, yeah.
[406] Age, I think it's, how he's like a fever, ague?
[407] Ague.
[408] I always like ague.
[409] Like, he has an ague.
[410] So that's a good one.
[411] I like, so maybe like a flux, a flux ague might be good, you know, or an agued flux, something like that that has like just a combination.
[412] Agu flux.
[413] An agu flux.
[414] Like there's a character in Shakespeareist or Andrew Aguechik and it sounds like AguFlux.
[415] Yeah, something like, I think, so I would like some combination of old maladies.
[416] So maybe like an ague flux and we maybe add some other words in there.
[417] an agurotic flux so that there's a maybe there's some symptoms which seem like somebody sexually aroused but it's an agurotic flux I like it and I would want the cure one of my favorite things is a poultice Oh yeah You know a poultice?
[418] Do you know what a poultice is?
[419] No I don't know what that is.
[420] A poultis is like back when they used to mix up a lot of different ingredients and make kind of a mash like a paste and they would they would put it on your chest because let's say you had like a lung problem they would say oh let's put a and they thought like a mustard poultice they thought it drew out the bad vapors and ill -humors My parents did that for me when I broke my arm Oh wait a minute, wait a minute Your parents in the modern era you had a broken arm and they put some goop on it They did they put goop That's it They didn't think it was broken So they put goop on it and wrapped it up for about two weeks And then after where I was like I really can't move it They're like, let's take you to get an x -ray, and then it was fractured, and I needed a cast.
[421] Do they ask at the hospital why there's two weeks of fresh growth on this child's broken arm?
[422] And why is it covered in, why is her arm covered in onions and various crushed beans?
[423] That is exactly what it was.
[424] My mom would cook it on this.
[425] She's going to be so upset of bringing this up.
[426] Well, I don't care.
[427] She's under arrest.
[428] No, no, she's under arrest.
[429] She's not.
[430] Did she ever put a chicken butthole on your boo -bo?
[431] Yeah.
[432] Yoris.
[433] You were cooking.
[434] Put it on my arm.
[435] This is what I'm dealing with.
[436] You live in a civilized society and I'm here and this is what they did to you, Sona.
[437] Terrible.
[438] I did that when I was in sixth grade.
[439] Absolutely trouble.
[440] Well, Yoris, that's what I want to do.
[441] I want some kind of agu -a -rotic flux.
[442] That's good.
[443] And the cure is a poultice made of various balms.
[444] creams and my favorite word yet emoliance tincture tincture and you mix it all up and then ah sweet remedy or instant death probably the second one well you're really love talking to you're a cool guy you are thank you so much for talking to us this was a really enjoyable funny conversation and all jokes aside by the way I really really appreciate the podcast I mean, it got me through some heavy data inputting and archival visits.
[445] So thanks so, so much for this podcast.
[446] It really kept me saying, honestly.
[447] Yoris, thank you for saying that.
[448] And sincerely, when I run into people and they say that, it makes me really happy.
[449] This is, no one should thank us because this is a labor of love.
[450] We really like doing this.
[451] And so if it's making people happy, it's kind of a magical thing.
[452] So thank you.
[453] You're a fine fellow, Yorris.
[454] Please speak highly of us in the Netherlands.
[455] Oh, you ruined it.
[456] I will.
[457] You made it so sad.
[458] Well, I'm probably, I dug a hole.
[459] He did so dutch for it.
[460] Please tell the people of the Netherlands I, that I'm a conventionally attractive man. Bye, Horace.
[461] Bye.
[462] Conan O 'Brien needs a fan.
[463] With Conan O 'Brien, Sonam Obsessian, and Matt Gourley.
[464] Produced by me, Matt Gourley.
[465] Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Solitaireoff, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Earwolf.
[466] Music by Jimmy Vivino Supervising producer Aaron Blaird Associate talent producer Jennifer Samples Associate producers Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm engineered by Will Bechton Please rate, review and subscribe to Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.
[467] This has been a team Coco production in association with Stitcher.