He also did sort of a version of The Most Dangerous Game where he's the hunter. Fantastic. Oh, he's great playing evil. Yeah. I think you'd be very good playing evil. I'd love a shot at it. Seriously, would you? 100%. Who would want to play? Everybody I interview who's like, well, you're the bad guy. They always go, it's much more fun to play the bad guy. Yes. It's much more interesting.

When I worked on The Simpsons, all I wanted to do was write for Mr. Burns. I didn't want to write for anybody else because writers love to write mean. We get to go, or in comedy, to get to play that is to get to do something that you feel you can't do in your real life but if it's part of the job sure and if i can play the worst guy in the world

that's what i kind of liked about doing the colbert report is that i got to pretend that his ego wasn't mine yes

It's

great. You know what I mean? Like, I got to pretend like, ah, well, that's the character. But, and also like his appetites, because he was just a creature of pure appetites. And, you know, why shouldn't I be the model American? Of course, why shouldn't I be? Why shouldn't I be? And that was great to like invest him with all my secret, dark, I don't think of the right appetites, but to, like, invest him with all of those secret desires and appetites that put yourself first and everybody should love me and all that kind of stuff. And just to ride that train for, that was a lot of fun.

I'll say this, because I think about comedy probably way too much and not enough about threesomes. But I... There are different comedians that I can identify who have really beautifully inhabited a crazy egomaniacal character, and I'm thinking of, like, Alan Partridge, the Alan Partridge character by Steve Coogan, and there are certain characters here and there, and, you know, Ricky Gervais on the original Office, and there are characters that have done it. I am hard-pressed, I can't think of anybody else who created a character like that, committed to it, and did it every night for 11 years, flawlessly. That is an, no one else has done that. Thank you. That is a huge. Thank you, I really enjoy doing it. I

still liked it when I stopped, which is nice. No, I still like doing when I stopped and I stopped. I, I decided to stop doing a two years before I actually stopped doing it. I didn't tell anybody, but Evie knew, like my wife knew my manager was like, I'm going to stop on this day, December 18th, 2014. I already decided, but cause I want to stop when I still liked it. Yeah.

And that's, I can relate to that as well. I loved doing my thing every night, and I realized I want to stop doing it while I still really love it, and it's meaningful to me, but I don't. There are other things I want to try. I still want to be in comedy, but I don't want to do this. It's been a long time. But that, I think, is an unrivaled achievement in comedy, what you managed to do. I really do. I think it's an absolutely incredible feat. Oh, that's

lovely to say. I knew it would be hard. The, I remember, I remember right before we put the show on, not to talk about the ancient days, but literally 17 years ago, right around now, was right before the show went on the air. And maybe further, maybe longer than that. But Dave Cross, we said, hey dave we'd like you to be my foil we'd like you to come on and be occasionally be this character named russ liber and he's a super liberal and he'd come on and he spends his weekends working at the mifflin street co-op in madison wisconsin you know you know stocking the kohlrabi and you know and a lot of very you know thirsty roll neck sweaters and stuff like that it's okay that's, that's great, great. So we started working on the script and everything. He was like, well, what do you want to do it? And I said, well, we could do it any day next week. And he goes, but what night, I mean, record it, yeah, but what night are you guys on? And he was standing, he was sitting in front of the couch that had the strip on it, like the whole two-week run of shows behind him. And we hadn't been on the air yet. And we said, well, I any any any day next week we could do when are you available and he goes what do you what do you mean and then he looked behind him and he goes wait this is you're gonna do this every night and i said yeah and he goes holy shit i said yeah i'm already past that well already gotten past that.

My first show, we did our first taping of Late Night was September 13th, 1993. And we did it. And we really liked the show that we did. And we put all of our weirdness out there. And the crowd was hot. And there'd been all this pressure for months. Who is this guy? What's going to happen? We did it. And we, like idiots, went out and had a massive party. Oh. And it was a Monday night. And we partied and partied and partied and hugged each other. And I told people, I love you. And we hugged and we drank. And it was Tuesday. And I didn't know then that I had 28 years to go.

That's the thing is that even if you have a really great show, like if you're doing one of these nightly shows, it takes an hour, it takes a lot out of you, and you got to care about each one. Right. And the thing is that you got about five minutes to feel good about it. Yep. Or, thank God, only about five minutes to feel that bad about it because you got another show tomorrow. Right. And five minutes, you got five minutes, like, Hey, that was a really good show. And then you go into the postmortem and go, okay, what's tomorrow. And then, but you also have to kind of like that part of it. That's the part that separates from the people who can do it for a long time or really enjoy it is you kind of got to like the work. The work itself has got to be the thing that's your reward. Right.

If whenever someone in show business over the years, a couple of times people would say, you know, Conan, that talk show thing looks sweet. I've been, you know, in movies and stuff, and I've been kind of an action hero here and there. But getting one of those must be pretty sweet. And I said, I don't know what you're talking about because it's every day. And it's a great job, but it's also it doesn't. So I love it, but it's also it never stops. It's incessant. And I know because I have the same experience, but it's hard not to bring it home, too. Because my wife could tell. I would come home. I was never a drug person in any way, but I would get so hyped up by doing the show. And then I would come home and be bouncing off the walls, and my wife and kids would just back away. Like I had been working in a nuclear reactor core the

good thing is though i say the the plus side like yeah it's constant work and you're never really off you get you get off long enough to kind of recover then you're doing it again because you know it's you know what are you 200 shows a year when you start out and but you know where you're going is the thing you know where you're going every day and if you were willing to set a schedule you kind of know when you're coming home. And you can be there for the school play or whatever like that. Oh, I never went

to those. Okay. They're

not as

good as professional plays. You're like, this is shit. These costumes aren't good. That kid can't sing. Why is he the lead? Why? I walked out of, the few I went to, I walked out of. You know what? Tough love. Yeah. Yeah. They need to know that this is

crap. But it's mildly normative compared to the people like, that movie star doesn't know where he's going to be next month. Uh-huh.

No, it's true. I used to envy when you're, it's always the, the grass is always greener, but when your job is, you know this very well, you're one of the few people I can talk to about this. When you're behind a desk all the time, if anyone has a job that involves, yeah, I, you know, I got to go to Iceland for this meeting. You're like, you're going to Iceland. You're so, you know, because if your job is to sit behind a desk and it's the greatest job in the world, all you're thinking about is other people going places, which is why I started to scam those travel shows. It was just like, it's a show. What happens? I go other places. I leave the desk and go places. You went to Greenland, right? Yeah. I

went up there. We haven't shown it yet, but I went up to the north end. I went to Thule Air Base, which is the northernmost air base. Did you go up that high? I can't

remember if we went up that high. I'd have to ask somebody because it's all a blur. This place is

700 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It's so far north that you can't see the northern lights because they're south of you. Oh, my God. So it's so

far north. I get it. Compass is point

west. Right. And

were you shooting a thing?

They were shooting a thing. It was a USO. We did a USO show up there for the airbase up there. And it's starkly beautiful. You really feel like you're the end of the world. I got to go into the room, because it's the airbase. It's where they track the Russian missiles coming over the top.

Right. Because they're so far north. If they're coming over the top. That's right. Well, they are coming over sound like they're constantly flying over.

No, no, no. When they come. When they come over the top. That makes me feel better. No, because they're about as far, you know, like, they're like from here to Raleigh, North Carolina, is how far that place is from Russia. Yes. And they've got these massive five-story buildings on the outside of which is all basically like open microwave ovens just shooting beams over the top of the pole to the point where they said, don't stand in front of that building. I said, what happens? And they said, your organs would boil within a minute. And they literally have things thrown out into the gravel in front of it to say, don't walk inside that because that's basically the cone of it. Don't walk inside front of that area. I you wouldn't die instantly there but it wouldn't be good for you and i'm like it's just a piece of wood out there you just threw a like a log out there and he goes well we can't throw metal because

it's an open microwave oven it literally is the same thing but you can throw a potato and then eat it you could have it on a string and then reel it

in. Throw some popcorn in. I got to go to the big room. I got to go to the room, like the big board room. Oh, you saw it? Yeah, I couldn't bring cameras in there, but I got to go see the big room. What do you think it looks like? I'm

obviously thinking of Dr. Strangelove.

Nope. It looks like a middle school computer lab. I knew it would be like that. There's three PCs, three people in their early 20s, basically first jobs out of college, and they're like paying off the college fight. They're all just the nerd patrol up at the Thule Air Base too. Everybody there is tech. And he goes like, that shows where all the satellites are. That one shows if anything larger than a softball going Mach 2 or more, we can pick up all the way down to like Beijing. And then this one is just cascading numbers like it was the matrix. And I said, how, you know, like what, how long if you saw something, what would it, what would it happen? I said, oh, about 15 minutes before it's overhead. These things are going really fast. And I said, what happens after that? Why is there a wedge behind you on the screen? I don't see anything behind you. He goes, well, once it's overhead, it's not our problem. It's your problem. And I said, so who do you tell? He goes, oh, we tell Central Command. And then they tell other people, you know, continuity of government and all that kind of stuff. And I said, what do you tell us? When do you tell us? Like New York, how long before it gets to New York? He goes, half an hour before it gets to New York. And I said, well, when do you tell us? He goes, we don't tell you. He goes, you'll find out. Well, what a great way to, what a great piece to show on your comedy show.

Oh my God. Yeah. There you go. Do you like, I have found that, and this is on the same topic, but I have found that if you go and you do any entertaining at all for any group that's in the military serving, they are as great as this crowd is. And people always say, you're the best crowd in the world. They're the best crowds. They are so grateful

that you're there and you remembered and you give a damn. They're really fantastic. And there had been no USO club up there ever. I was there for basically the ribbon cutting and the base first opened in 1951. And it's super secret because it's where they keep all the rooms, where they're tracking the missiles. And I was looking, I was like, this is really super secret base, but I can walk anywhere and do anything. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of security around here. And they said, who's going to sneak up on us because there's literally literally there's the there's a fjord on one side yep and north of the fjord the ice sheet goes all the way the ice cap goes all the way to the water and south of us it goes all the way to the water and then about a you know about three or four miles away to the east is the greenland ice sheet that's where it starts And it's 1,000 miles wide, and it's two miles thick. And they go, well, you can't sneak us. You can't get us over there. You're not going to sneak over there. And it's 1,600 miles south. And it's one of the most starkly beautiful places I've ever been. And what they do there is they have fun. Yes, well, they have to, and I'm guessing I know how they have fun. Yes. So plenty of drink. Yes. There's plenty of drink up there. But evidently the Danes, because the Danes own Greenland. Yeah. Yep.

People will woo anything.

Evidently, however hard they party, no one can keep up with the Danes. That it's almost frightening how hard the Danes, who are the civilian contractors party up there. I

spent some time in Finland. Thanks for the woo. And they have a drink there because there's not much to do called Korskinkova. And I drank it and I, I, I spit it out. And I said, this is sometimes you make the joke that this is rocket fuel this is rocket fuel and they were laughing what they do is they all drink it and then they get naked and they go into a sauna and then they jump into ice cold water and have massive strokes and that's their way of having fun and it works for them yeah I suggest you try Yeah. Stephen, you've been a gentleman. You've been a prince among men. You did a show. What did I do today? I wandered around. You

got jizzed in the face. I guess,

okay. You look fantastic. Do you know Conan? You know Conan. I don't know how much they were

charging, but you could make your own. I don't know. There's something about this other jizz that's... Well, isn't that nice? We brought that ship around really beautifully. We

did.

Stephen, God bless you. My best to your lovely wife and family. And also, thank you so much. I do not take it for granted that you made the time to be with us tonight because you work really hard and you do incredible work. And, uh, I doff my invisible hat to you. So thank you, Stephen Colbert. Thank

you, Conan O'Brien. Thank you, Sona. Thank you, Matt. Thanks, everybody. Yes! And now, Steely Dan!

Steely Dan. Wow, he was fantastic. He is a consummate professional. I love him so much. All right, we'll take it easy. He's great. He's no one better.

No better late night host.

Really? Okay. No, really. He's charming. He's nice. Yeah, he's got it all. Okay. All right. Well, anyway, he's a solid B+. Something that no one's ever said about Stephen Colbert. That man's a solid B, B+. Yeah, he's a delightful fellow. And so I was so glad that he got to be here. I think we have, it's time for

a more intimate part of the show. That's right. It's where we get to kind of talk to the people. Yeah. We take, yeah. We take voicemails, which is, if you don't know what a voicemail is, someone will call and they'll leave a message. That's really rude. What? We

do a thing on the podcast where we listen to voicemails occasionally and we hear what people are thinking. We actually haven't done it in a while. We should do it more often. But we do a version of it here on these live shows, but obviously it's got a twist. So people get to ask questions or make comments. I hope they're questions more than just comments.

I think they're all questions. In fact, they're lining up now. We're going to have the first person come down to this spotlit microphone here.

Wow. Look at how powerful that looks. An empty microphone. Yeah. Doesn't that look like a symbol of democracy that somehow failed? Oh, dear. Microphone that no one... Oh, sorry. Oh, hey, how are you? Oh, is that... What happened?

What's

that? Oh, I thought you were with him or were attacking him. I didn't know it was happening. You're wearing a very colorful jacket, and I got scared. Hello, sir, what is your name? Devin. Yeah, Devin. I am Spartacus. Devin, wherever you are, I'm really sorry. Now, what is your name, sir? My name's Mitch. What's that? Mitch. Mitch, okay. And you are? I'm Conan. I'll take it. Hey, we opened the show with I've Been Jizzed On, so trust me, nothing you say can hurt me now. I like the dramatic, I love the dramatic pause before the question. That was a

deep inhale.

There was, the whole room got quiet and it's like the sixth sense, I could see my breath. There's

just an overwhelming amount of denim in front of me.

Trust me, trust me, you can't hurt me. Go for it, man. Take your shot. Okay,

okay, okay. So, back in college, I competed in timber sports. So, was a lumberjack. So Conan, do you think you'd make a good lumberjack? And if so, what

would you wear when lumberjacking off? Okay, well, was this written before this? You came here? I'm dressed like a fucking lumberjack. Did you write this beforehand? Yes. Okay, that's weird. Yeah. Because I don't know what to say other than I'd lose the tie. And I've got the boots. I mean, I think I'm ready to go. Those

aren't boots for lumberjacking off. Of

course they are. They're all lumberjacks like boots that were made in Italy. It's the first thing you learn when you're a lumberjack. Only Bruno Cuccinelli. Anyway. You're learning a lot about me today. I got some creams put on my face by a stranger on Fifth Avenue, and I'm wearing Bruno Cuccinelli. I think you're looking at it. Do I think I'd be a good lumberjack? I would say no. Because I always joke around and do bits. I am a hard worker, but when it comes to manual labor, I try and find the bit or the joke. I think the other lumberjacks would hate me because I wouldn't be doing the work. I'd be doing bits about doing the work. And I'd be turning the axe into a character whose name is Axie Axerton. And I'd be, you know, and I'd be like, Axie, come on. And they'd be standing there and eventually I'd be butchered to death by the other lumberjacks. I think I'd be a terrible lumberjack. Absolutely awful. Don't you agree? 100%. Thank you. What do you keep in that pouch that you wear on your chest? I just, I didn't, I'm just curious. Is that something you wear every day? It's my emergency lumberjack tools. Oh, very nice. Good improv. That wasn't a put down. Or was it? He's a master of passive aggression. Okay, so just make sure he doesn't put the microphone in that and then walk away. That's a for share microphone. Yeah,

Mitch, leave the microphone, please. And actually step away from the microphone.

Yeah. Well,

Mitch, I hope I answered your question. I'd be a terrible lumberjack, but I'd dress like this without the tie. You know? Yeah, I agree. I think... What's happening now? You're going to make a speech of some kind? Well, I just think the electoral college doesn't represent fairly the popular vote. What? What's Mitch talking about? It feels that in 1785 it was a good idea. But now I feel like crucial sectors of the economy. Hold

it, hold it, hold it. I

know where you were going, so. I'm

done. Okay, well,

it's nice to meet you, Mitch. Good to see you, sir. And let's move on now to the next guy. Huh. You're not the guy that ran up and got in line behind Mitch. I'm

not.

What happened to that guy? Yeah,

what have you done with him?

Did you do something to him or did something... That's very ominous. I don't think I can tell you yet. Okay, red-jacketed guy ran up and got behind Mitch and then I'm busy. I'm in the zone with Mitch.

Oh, was that you in the zone?

That was me in the zone. And then this guy, who plays guitar for Fish, gets up and you're fantastic. I love that. Noodling and all those scales for hours on end. It's fantastic shit. But then Red Jacket Guy is just gone. Yeah, who was that? It's ominous and weird, but we won't... They'll tell me later on, you don't want to know. Sir, what is your name? My name is Ben. Ben, nice to see you. How are you?

Good.