Conan O'Brien

Conan O'Brien says Jack Handey was a stunning genius who didn't need anybody else. He'd go into his room and type, then come out and say good night while the other writers settled in for nine more hours. The next morning his sketch would be the funniest thing at the table, and Conan says his sketches killed about 95 percent of the time.

Saturday Night Live premiered in October 1975, and Chevy Chase immediately became the biggest star in America. About a year later, as it's told on the episode, he faced a choice between staying on the show and making a movie, so he left to make the movie. It's a different world now: cast members can go make a movie and come back, doing both.

Conan O'Brien says he made a promise to himself long ago: there will be things he gets and things he doesn't, and he'll just be happy he got to do what he did when he did it. When a recent Saturday Night Live sketch gets traction online, like Chris Redd as Kanye West, he looks it up and often finds it really funny, since things usually catch on for a reason. He reminds himself the show isn't worse or better now, just different.

Adam Sandler was 23 when he joined the show, and Conan O'Brien says people at the network weren't thrilled and didn't get him, so Lorne Michaels was probably getting pressure along the lines of "what's with the Adam guy?" Conan says the same revisionist history applies to Norm Macdonald, whom everyone loves now but who got fired. Looking back, everything seems inevitable, like Franklin Roosevelt becoming president, but at the time it could have gone a million different ways.

Conan O'Brien says if he could change one thing, it would be that nobody knew where he went to college. He doesn't think his sense of humor comes from there, but people would write him off as "the Harvard guy." As he puts it, it's not Hogwarts or a magical place, just a school where he met some really smart people and some pretty dumb ones.

Conan O'Brien says the read-throughs are the memories that stay with him most because they carry a kind of PTSD, the good and the bad. A sketch that kills at the read-through is a delight, but negative moments hit harder than positive ones, like gambling. And in the room you don't notice the people who are laughing; you notice the ones who aren't.

Dana Carvey says Conan O'Brien has produced more funny material than almost anyone in American comedy history, pointing to all the Team Coco content. Because Conan stayed out of the intense politicization of comedy, Dana says, everything he does stays evergreen. Dana's wife and son are obsessed with Conan's travel shows and watch them over and over.

Lin-Manuel said that the song initially made him "burst into tears" and caused him to consider it much more critically than an ordinary pop song. He concluded that the song's wild introduction, featuring Mercury's "borderline insane" vocal gymnastics, masked David Bowie's powerfully emotional reprise at the conclusion of the song. That reprise appears to continually ascend a musical scale and clarifies that Under Pressure is about caring for people going through very difficult times on the "margins of society".

On the Nicole Byer episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, Conan says the fun is making someone react when you do not already know what they will do. He torments his assistant, Sona, and says he loves her and cannot stop. As a child he worked the house for reactions from his brothers and sisters. He would park at the end of the driveway so his father could not get the car out, then run at him in slow motion yelling. Around age eight, if his mother asked him to fetch lemon wafers for guests, he would answer "yes, directly" and scurry out, so her friends thought she was a harsh disciplinarian. Getting the reaction was the game.

Ultimately, it is what citizens must do. Regardless of beliefs, the number of citizens voting is woefully small. The next generation must be educated on the importance of decision making.

Michelle Obama tells Conan O'Brien that public office is an honor and also a hard, thankless government job, not a prize on a reality show. She compares the way people talk about the presidency to handing someone the rose on The Bachelor. Campaigning for Hillary Clinton, she wanted voters to hear that the job is serious. It takes a knowledge of history, patience, reading, the ability to handle stress, and care with words, because those words can start wars and shift markets. The Supreme Court fight during their years was dicey, she says, and Barack Obama made a job that is not easy look easy. Voters have to pick people who are ready, passionate, and skilled.

Michelle Obama tells Conan O'Brien that parenting in the White House meant a cocoon of normalcy. A parent-teacher conference could arrive with a 20-car motorcade, police telling a teacher to move, and people on the roofs. For eight years she and Barack answered the way a parent does when a toddler bumps their head: it's okay, go to school, you are safe. They still went to the conferences and the games and hosted sleepovers at the White House. Michelle praises the girls' poise, grace, and resilience. They met the pope and the queen, and they lost ordinary childhood, including Malia being recognized by fifth graders in a museum on a class trip.

When facing hurts and disappointments, it is not the job of the President and First Lady to be psychoanalyzed and in need of immense support. Rather, they are "parents" to the nation and have responsibilities that must be addressed.

Michelle Obama tells Conan O'Brien that famous people cover sensitivity by trading stories for stats. In Los Angeles the question is what you drive, a Lexus or a Tesla, and elsewhere it is what school you attended or what title you hold. None of that, she says, tells you who someone is. The telling memories are smaller: what you watched as a child, what your grandfather was like, the relative who frustrated you, when you first fell. She remembers not being able to spell the word white in kindergarten, and a friend asking why she talked like a white girl, a line people still say. Those stories show the insecurity public life trains people to leave out.

Michelle Obama tells Conan O'Brien that famous people look untouched by hardship because they are taught to hide it. She walks him from a second-floor apartment on Euclid Avenue on the South Side of Chicago to the White House, and through the 1970s shows she loved: Mary Tyler Moore, who had a job and a voice and did not go home to cook, Carol Burnett, and Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, who wore pants, danced, and was as funny as Dick Van Dyke. They pretend they were supposed to be there. She calls that faking an untouchable, already-finished self, and says it cheats kids who need to see the stumbles so they do not quit.

Kristen asks Conan how he takes care of himself, what he does that is just for him and not for the show or for anyone else.

Kristen and Conan talk about how they and their respective spouses have spent time together, and Conan asks whether this could translate into a real friendship. Kristen starts by saying “I think so...”.

He was a man of incredibly power in New York City. While was never an elected official, he built 600+ miles of highways, Verrazano and Triboro bridges, apartments and parks and more. You can find out more in the book called "The Power Broker," written by Robert Caro.

Robert Allan Caro is an American journalist and author who figured out how to write historical biographies in a way that reads like a novel, while maintaining all of the facts.

Of course. Conan O'Brian was initially entirely unsure about his abilities, but with time and training and practice he's gotten better, and he's grown more confident in himself.