Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook of The Rest Is History Podcast

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Hi, my name is Dominic Sambrook, and I feel surprisingly aroused about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

You understand that?

Hi, my name is Tom Holland, and I feel chuffed about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

Okay, looking that up now on UK Slang.

Fall is here, hear the yell.

Back to school, ring the bell, brand new shoes, walk in blues, climb the fence, books and pens.

I can tell that we are gonna be friends.

Yes, I can tell that we are gonna be friends.

Hey there.

Welcome to Conan O'Brien.

Needs a friend.

Shocking, shocking revelation today.

Sonoma Obsession is not with us.

Her chair, like Tiny Tim's little stool in the corner, is empty.

Just a crutch.

She's not here.

No.

Instead, it's just Matt and I, which is nice because this is a different dynamic for us.

There's none of that, her braying laugh.

Yeah.

She's a nice icebreaker, though, because isn't it a little awkward?

It's just you and me, you know?

Reminds me of an old Norm McDonald joke.

He said, Yeah, I went to

went home for Thanksgiving and

saw the family.

And

my dad and I accidentally made eye contact.

And I thought, God damn it, I relate to that.

So now we have to look in each other's eyes.

No, no, you can't, you can't do it.

No, I can't do that.

I can't do that.

But do you know where Sona is?

I don't.

No one told me where she went.

You're going to love this.

Okay.

She is speaking, I think, a featured guest speaker at an assistants convention.

No, she's not.

Is that a bit?

I swear to God.

This is not a bit.

This is true.

Yeah.

I can just see your eyes.

No, I'm glowing.

Is it a how-to or like a cautionary tale?

I don't know.

You know what I mean?

No, I think she is, you know.

Is it a scared straight?

She turns the chair around backwards and sits down.

Look, guys, if you want to be an assistant, don't do what I did.

Wow.

So she's telling people how to be an assistant, ostensibly.

I don't know if it's a QA or she's doing a speech about it, but she is.

It's gonna be a trial

of war crimes.

Maybe it's an entrapment.

She's like Buckman, she's in a glass booth.

She's wearing headphones.

People are coming up and testifying against her.

We may never see her again.

No, we're not going to see her because I know what the verdict's going to be.

Wow.

That's incredible.

She also found out recently before going to this that it's for a bunch of tech company assistants yeah so it's not even like industry entertainment right assistance this is specifically tech oh this is a disaster i mean i wish we could find out where it is and quickly drive over there in a van let's find out when she's when she's back remind me we have to dig down deep on what happened.

We'll do a whole segment on it.

Yeah.

We got to find out more.

It's just astounding to me.

But, you know, we love our sona.

We do miss her.

We do.

Rest in peace.

Yeah.

Well, no, please.

She's fine.

Oh, you always go to right to rest in peace.

Well, that was a good meal.

Yep.

Rest in peace.

No.

How are you?

Oh, this is a chance for us to really drill down.

How are you, Matt Gorley, as a person?

How's your life?

It's good.

Look at me.

I'm right here.

No, I can't.

Look me in the eyes.

Look at me.

Right past you.

Oh, wow.

I'm good.

I'm good.

Thank you.

How are you?

Wow.

You didn't say anything, and then you put it right back on on me.

How am I going to find out about you?

What do you want to know?

I'm an open book.

You aren't.

You aren't an open book.

How are things at home?

How's everything going?

Good, good.

My daughter's cracking me up daily.

How old is she now?

She's going to be four

by the time this comes out.

Okay.

Yeah.

Very good.

Yeah, this doesn't air for three years.

So that's great.

Yeah.

Is she funny?

She's really funny.

Yeah.

She's a character, man.

She rules the house.

uh she's a like beta to the rest of the world but it's just a horrible alpha to me yeah yeah yeah that's what happens is it they're like lovely to other people and then they come home and they're absolute mussolinis you're not kidding yeah even when it comes down to play like she gives me my lines for when we're playing oh yeah she dictates them to me yeah yeah well it sounds like you're miserable at home

i'm having some struggles

Well,

feel free to, you know, talk to me anytime about anything that's going on in your life.

I'd rather not.

I'd rather you didn't either.

You know what you should do?

Schedule it with David Hopping.

Now, there's an assistant.

I could talk to him.

You know who's not going to go to an assistance convention?

It's David Hopping.

Yeah.

How are you?

I got to ask David.

Okay.

David keeps my schedule and he tells me how I am.

I'm doing very well.

Thank you.

And I am going to head east to New York very shortly to help.

This is a new experience for me promote a film that I know.

Oh, this is exciting.

Yeah.

And

this is a new thing for me to say, you got to go check out my picture.

See?

I mean, that's nothing I've aspired to or ever thought would happen.

You should come on this podcast.

I should come on this podcast.

We should take, you know what we should do?

We should take me talking and asking questions and then switch it around and I'll do the other side.

It's a good idea, actually.

No, I have a video program.

I mean, actually, it's an idea that I said

by definition is a good idea.

Yeah.

It's an idea that I said.

Nice tune, Mozart.

Not necessary.

Not necessary.

God, what a prick.

I don't know why anybody talks to me.

Oh, right.

That's why I'm trying to get out of here.

You're being paid.

Yeah.

No, I do like talking to you, and I can look you in the eye, and I am happy.

Well,

you're blinking in Morse code.

Please save me.

Yeah, so that's my story.

I'm

in the pictures.

Let's end this.

We should get to this because this is a really fun.

No, okay.

Okay.

I want to get into it.

Will you read the intro for Christ's sake?

Okay.

Wow.

Religious.

My guests today are two historians who co-host one of the most successful history podcasts in the world.

The rest is history.

I listen to these gentlemen all the time.

They're always always in my ear and they are brilliant.

Tom Holland and Dominic Sambrook, welcome.

Gentlemen, I'm going to begin by saying that it is quite a come-down for me to have you on the podcast and I'll explain why.

I have a very large ego

and for a while I believed that I had the greatest podcast in the world.

I really did.

I really thought I cannot be touched.

No one can come close.

And then one day, several years ago, I heard someone mention this podcast called The Rest is History.

And I'm a history buff.

I listened to one episode.

I listened to two.

I listened to three and four.

I've now listened to possibly 300 or 400 of your 800.

I'm working my way through.

And I have to concede that you have the greatest podcast.

That's gracious.

You will always have the greatest podcast.

I'm loving this podcast.

There is.

I am an addict.

I'm here to confess my addiction.

And

you're in my ears all the time.

And whenever people ask me what podcast do you listen to, I don't give them a list.

I say it's the rest is history with Tom and Dominic.

I was starstruck.

When I heard your voices and I was in the room upstairs in my Larchmont, this is a palace, really.

I heard your voices.

I couldn't believe that you were here.

So

not since I met George Harrison back at Saturday Night Live back in the day, have I been this excited?

And you met Paul McCartney.

Yes, I've met Paul McCartney.

But way more exciting.

Yeah.

You guys are.

No, no.

I'm going to put you on the same level.

Okay.

What's that care?

You're on the same level.

So, gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

Really?

Thank you.

That's all the time we have.

It's been lovely having you.

It's fun.

You've said enough for us.

Let's end it there.

It's not going to get better.

I love history, and my favorite thing about your show is that the history is brilliant, and I feel it's very well researched, and you're both very knowledgeable, but it's funny.

And I'm a big believer in

keeping two opposing ideas in your head at the same time.

You guys will talk about some of the grimmest things in the history of the world, like World War I, but there'll be sections where you can't stop laughing.

And I'm laughing with you.

And I love that because both things are true.

World War I might be the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.

It's absolutely terrible and a war that was fought for no reason.

And then I will find myself, you two will get talking about the Kaiser and what a ridiculous man the Kaiser was.

And I will be crying.

I'm laughing so hard along with you.

Is humor the way into this?

No, actually.

So the story is the way in.

Did you disagree with me?

I did.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let me explain where you are right now.

You're in America.

Former Former colony.

Okay, go ahead.

You've actually got 250 years of back taxes to pay, Google.

Oh, yes.

Come on.

You knew that was coming.

I knew it was coming.

I think the story is the way-in always, and the characters, but the humor emerges naturally.

So

we don't try to impose the humor on the story.

But, you know, you're doing the Kaiser, who's a ridiculous man who's coming up with all these mad schemes to invade places and whatnot, and is basically smoldering with fury because he thinks his British relatives despise him.

And that's what drives him.

And you've got all these generals generals with gigantic moustaches and whatever they've all got emphysema yes and all of that that i mean that's true to the history it's not us imposing it on it yes and if you you can blind yourself to that and say no history is terribly serious and very desiccated but the humor is part of the human condition i think that um there's a case for seeing the whole sweep of human history as a very dark comedy Yeah, because history essentially is the record of people not getting what they want, people

over-inflating their own sense of worth.

And so there is a kind of inherent strain of comedy that runs throughout almost every period of history that you look at.

And I guess that

even the very darkest episodes, it's a comedy in the sense that Dante wrote the divine comedy.

It's the sense that

sometimes

you have to laugh so that you don't weep.

Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, I think

to me, reference one of my favorite British comedies of all time, Black Adder.

There's a sense of so much of the humor from Black Adder and also from the Python films was just Bring Out Your Dead, Bring Out Your Dead in Holy Grail,

and so much of the comedy and life of Brian.

The British are uniquely very good at doing this, seeing the dark and the absurdly comical at the exact same moment and holding both molecules together as they bounce off each other.

Yeah, people are funny, right?

Yeah.

Human beings behave really funny.

Many aren't, by the way.

Well, I have footage to prove that.

But

often the people who take themselves incredibly serious seriously are the funniest

and history is you know the the great figures of history invariably take themselves very very seriously yes yeah i mean um you have your obsessions you are obsessed with facial hair and you will is that unusual who is uh no and and what i love is you'll talk about again i'll go back to the world war one example but this goes throughout your entire podcast any subject you take up if someone has absurd facial hair,

you two start cackling.

Yeah, and and and most of the generals you introduce Russian, British, French, anyone from Austria, Austria-Hungary, Hungary, you are you know Serbia, Croatia, you're you're saying, oh my god, and this next one, an insane, an insane, this beard is, is, is greater than the previous beards.

I mean, now you mention it, I'm thinking, actually, the Americans,

they have very poor moustache action.

Don't they?

So we've got a bit of peace.

Obviously, we've got a bit of a wait for the Americans to arrive.

Yeah, they turned around.

They're late for a World War.

They peaked too early, though, no?

The Civil War, they've got that black.

So we were really

at beards.

Civil War, we had great beards.

I mean, I'm not going to sit here and listen to you run our beards down.

We are huge admirers of the Civil War.

19th century Civil War beards.

I mean, insane, our Secretary of War, Stanton, had an insane beard.

Several men were living in it.

Your current Secretary of State for War, which I gather is now what it's called,

he's banning facial hair.

Yes, yes.

Does he not know

Pete Hegseth said, I won't have,

there'll be no beards, there'll be no individuation, there'll be no,

and he said, we won't have any hippies, cut your hair, shave your beard.

And we know he's a true patriot because he wears an American flag tie, which is what every true patriot does.

Of course.

And

he went after anyone wearing beards.

And I had the same thought, which is, excuse me,

some of our greatest generals had incredible beards

back in the day.

They did.

And they did not affect their fighting ability at all.

And if you're Custer, very long hair.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Long golden locks.

They were thinning, though, weren't they?

When he scalped.

Yes.

He was trying to compensate for his loss of virility.

Yes.

Yes.

Do you think that because Custer was losing his hair, he felt I need to attack this village that's 100 times larger than my fighting.

But also, I mean, imagine the surprise of

the brave who scalped him.

Disappointment.

Huge.

Disappointment.

They called him long hair.

So he's long hair.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

He's losing it.

He looks like Larry David.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Larry David should play Custer in that final battle.

When 100,000 hostile natives come over over the hill, he should frown and you hear, wump, wump, wump, wump, na-na-na,

woman, woman, woman, he loves the Civil War, doesn't he?

Yeah, he does.

There's the famous photo of him with his daughter looking at

Gettysburg.

I'll be listening to you, and we're on Custer now, so this is a good example.

I'm listening to your long multi-episodes about

the,

you know, who is this Custer?

What's happening?

How did this whole thing come about?

How do we get to this battle?

The pre-story, and beautifully told.

And then you're talking about one of the people who's fighting alongside Custer underneath him, Benteen.

And you two,

you despise Benteen.

No, Ben Teen's a great man.

I thought you hated Benteen.

I know.

He's very like Dominic.

Oh, well, I hated him.

So by extension, I hate you.

So your opinions on that maintenance.

I now hate, well, this is sad.

I now hate Dominic because I'm not a fan of Benteen.

Because what about you?

What was the

well?

I obviously respect and

the line was.

I read it out on the podcast.

The line from the book.

It said, beneath his chubby-cheeked cordiality lurked cold and sinister intelligence.

That's you.

Yeah.

And I read it out to Tom, and Tom said, that's not you.

And then I was so offended by that.

I read it to my wife, and she said, you're literally describing yourself.

Right.

So the villain, one of the villains, or as history has often miscast him.

No, he's not a villain.

He's a great man.

Please.

I'm saying as history has miscast him.

Yeah.

He's often been seen as the villain of the Battle of Little Big.

But you say, no, this man's terrific.

I like the cut of his jape.

I do like the cuts of his jape.

So initially he lets himself down a bit, doesn't he, by being difficult and not helping Custer.

But then at the end, when they're trapped on the hill with Major Reno, Major Reno, who's in a massive funk, who's sobbing and has to be trussed up like a hog.

Like a hog.

You know, I will say I had sympathy for Reno.

And if anyone's lost at this point, we're talking about the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Everybody's lost.

And please, this is my podcast, and these are the only two people left in the world that I really want to talk to.

And I'm taking this ship down right now.

But one of the reasons I sympathize with Reno is I think if I'm ever in a difficult situation, a life and death situation, I will lose my nerve and I will have to be trussed up like a hog by my friends to keep myself from hurting myself.

Yeah, this is what you described.

You compared Reno to yourself.

Do you remember?

Yeah, I said I would run away.

Yeah.

You said you compared him to yourself at our live shows.

Yeah.

So Tom has to be trussed up like a hog before our live shows because he's gibbering the nerves.

Whereas I, having behaved poorly all day,

then Kom will calculate the intelligence.

Yeah,

yes.

This is, I mean, so first of all, I think I'm more in the Tom camp.

Right.

I will be gibbering.

Right.

It's a word I love.

Were you gibbering before your shows, before your talk shows?

I gibber all day long.

I don't think you understand.

You're gibbering during those days.

I speak in tongues.

I have whatever Irish disease we have where we speak mostly in babble.

That's me all day long.

And then they occasionally record it and we seem to be able to sell ads.

That's what's happened.

I love the podcast.

I want to say

my only problem is occasionally you two,

and I understand why you're doing it.

You're very proudly British.

You will throw out the name of some minor member of parliament in the late 80s or early 90s, and you'll both start cackling about Cecil Biddlebarter, and you'll be giggling.

I will be driving my car, and I will turn it into the nearest tree,

chilling myself.

I've been reincarnated many times.

Yeah, no, just rage that you two are having so much fun about Cecil Beetlebarter, and I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

So, he will have very thick glasses,

he'll have a kind of silvery hair,

and

he'll have dandruff, massive dandruff, he'll have a pinstripe suit.

He'll look an utterly unmemorable figure.

But he will have been insanely brave during the Second World War and taken out three German tanks.

That's so that you'll be taken the MC.

And it'll be a contrast between them.

And then he'll be caught in a flat

wearing stock

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Yeah.

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No, I'm taking one asleep.

You know, I've had a lot of trauma in my life.

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Man, football season's here.

I love Smeve some football season.

I really do.

I like gathering around the TV set and cheering on my team.

Go, team, go.

Yeah.

Advance the ball.

Yeah, you guys chest bump a lot, you and your homies.

I do.

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You know what I mean?

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Okay, I have to ask

how you two met because the chemistry between the two of you is perfection.

And

that's a big magic of the show.

And I'm curious, how did these two

guys come into each other's orbit?

We were thinking of lying about this.

Yeah.

So actually on the way in, Tabby, our producer, said you need to make up a new origin story because it's not very good.

So we can, I'm happy with the lie if it's a good one.

No, it's not a good one.

We haven't had time to think of one because we're not very imaginary.

You want me to think of one for you?

Well, let's tell you.

You're in combat together in the grenade.

You're in Grenada.

I'm guessing, right?

Grenada.

And like when the Americans invaded.

Yeah.

No,

we're fighting the Americans.

Yeah, surely behind the Commonwealth.

On behalf of the Commonwealth, yeah.

Okay.

Because

you disgraced yourselves invading Grenada.

You let yourselves down invading Grenada.

How did we let ourselves down?

Because it's a British.

British colony.

Yes, British colony.

You needed a little help.

I don't know.

But this is good.

Anyways, we didn't meet you.

Sorry, I'm sick of, I mean, we've helped you out a few times, I believe.

Late.

Right.

Hey, we show up late.

Yes.

We showed up late in Commonwealth.

We showed up late in World War II.

Yeah.

And, but that's the way we are.

We like to show up late.

And I like to arrive late at a party because people notice me more.

It's my ego.

And I think that's what Americans love to do historically is show up when the tide has almost turned.

It's almost too late.

And then we supply you with tons of mediocre equipment, but lots of it.

Yeah.

And of course, the trouble with World War I is we were both on the wrong side.

So we should have joined with the Germans to have a crack at the French.

You smashed the French once and for all.

Now, let's talk about this, Dominic.

You are so through and through a British

citizen.

You loathe the French, and you're always going after them on the podcast.

I actually lived in France.

I speak French.

Listen, I'm very impressed with.

I love that you took the time to learn the language of people you despise.

You could be passive-aggressive to them in their own tongue.

Do you ever, did you grow up?

Is this just you playing a part or is there real animosity there towards me?

Probably initially playing a part, but it's entered.

I've forgotten who I am, and it's entered.

The mask.

The mask has blended into your flesh.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

I think it's beautiful.

You like the French, though, don't you?

I do like the French.

You don't have any when that whole period when Napoleon's trying to

destroy the English islands, you're okay with that?

I like them because I think they're the coolest of enemies.

They are a very, very classy enemy to have.

And I think because we always beat them, that redounds to our credit.

So, I mean, I wouldn't in any way underestimate the French.

Right.

I mean, for most of England's history, and indeed Britain's history, they were much richer, much more powerful, much more sophisticated.

And so the pleasure of thrashing them

becomes all the sweeter.

But they do have those desserts.

Those desserts are fantastic.

Yes, and I mean show me.

Do you have some great...

I mean, your desserts are fine.

The French don't do a pudding, though, do they?

They don't have a pudding.

Yeah, we do pudding.

Yeah, but I don't think they want to do a pudding.

They do a tart.

They're letting you have the pleasure.

Because quite,

frankly, no one really wants a pudding.

No, no, you're wrong about that.

I love a pudding.

Yeah, you've got to have a pudding.

Okay.

Anyway, listen, I don't have to have a pudding.

And you may think this is a cul-de-sac we've gone down.

This is a dead end.

I say, I'm going to go hard on this pudding thing.

I think you guys have disgraced yourself with your puddings.

Okay.

Wow.

And there we go.

This is punchy stuff.

It's unbelievable.

I mean, the French, of course, would agree with you.

Yes.

That's the one.

I jump in with the French on that one.

You guys, you have your obsessions.

And I love that.

And you also have your heroes.

Dominic, I know for you,

it might be Admiral Lord Nelson.

Is he your all-time favorite?

who's your all-time favorite because i want to get from both of you i think for both of us nelson nelson yeah i have a i have a do you know i have a tandrest use a french word for uh richard nixon i like richard nixon yeah i find him very entertaining he's fascinating well

my show here in the states began in september of 1993 and a reporter asked me who would your favorite comedy guest be right and i said richard nixon because richard nixon was still alive he was the face of comedy for about a good 12 years in our country.

All comedy, comedians were obsessed with him.

He was a very

fun guy to have sport with.

And I mean, he obsessed every comedy writer for, you know, a huge chunk of modern American history.

So I wanted to talk to Richard Nixon.

And then he passed away, I believe, I started in September.

I think he died in maybe March.

And I thought, there goes my chance.

Do you you know what AI?

They can bring back some kind of Nixon avatar sweating aggressively at you.

Yeah.

Nixon does appear on this podcast many times.

I morph into Nixon, even when he's not appropriate.

And it's a very cartoonish over the top.

We went to Disneyland and they've got an animatronic version.

We've got a Lincoln and Disney.

So I'd have thought that Nixon would be

Nixon on the list.

Nixon himself was an animatronics.

Yeah, there may be may not have ever been.

I mean, we love him as well.

We're very keen on inappropriate footwear, people wearing the wrong shoes at the wrong time.

And Nixon was brilliant at that because he, what was it?

He wore

the shoes.

Black shoes on the beach.

And

we like that in a.

Yeah, promote that in a ma'am.

I, okay, as a little tidbit, and I'm going to brag here for a moment.

One of Nixon's biographers who knew him is a woman named Monica Crowley, who's written a lot about Nixon in winter, late in his career.

she told me

that

Nixon, at the end of very end of his life, was flipping around.

He wanted, he was interested in television.

He liked to watch television.

And I premiere and he watched our first episode.

And then she said that he liked it and told her, I like it.

It's madcap.

I'd say me.

It's madcap.

And I thought, I love that Nixon.

Now, I want Monica Crowley to write that down so that it's part of the official record.

But she told me that he watched it probably with his shoes on over his pajamas

and watched it at 12.30 at night here in America and said, I like it.

It's mad cow.

Yeah, but he would say it without smiling, wouldn't he?

No, he would.

There'd be no flicker of amusement on his face.

So basically, you had six months where you could have.

Leveraged that.

Yeah.

I think, yeah, well, first of all, very quickly, critics turned on me and Nixon's advisors probably would have said, well, no, his advisors were famously terrible.

They would have said,

they would have said, double down, double down.

You should, you should break into the DNC for no reason at all and pay the burglars out of your own pocket.

And you should immediately go on Conan O'Brien's late night show.

So Admiral Lord Nelson for both of you.

Yeah.

I think so.

You've got to throw in somebody ancient though, Tom, though.

No, because people in antiquity

are terrifying and terrible.

I mean, they're astonishing.

I think almost without exception, yes.

Well, I think back then, your average person was grabbing someone who

walked by their house and thrusting them over a large sharpened stick.

Yeah.

You know, and impaling someone.

There's going to be a lot of that going on.

Yeah.

I think that they,

the further back in time you go, the harder it is to relate to people

because they are so different.

I mean, think of someone like Alexander or Julius Caesar.

They are terrifying.

because they move to kind of moral rhythms that are very, very strange and remote to us.

So I can't kind of love any of them or admire them.

So I think it has to be kind of more recent because then you can understand them.

Well, my all-time favorite is Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, because

he's the one figure

that

is more impressive the more I learn about him.

The more I think he's, I think he might be one of our greatest authors, also one of our greatest humanitarians, and an incredible statesman funny.

And what's your take on his wife?

Yeah.

Because we had a disagreement about this.

We got into trouble.

I got into trouble.

Was married to trouble

saying she was a monster.

I don't think that's right.

I think that's too simple.

I think it's too simple to say she's a monster.

I think she was unwell.

That's a good question.

Listen and learn.

I think I'm literally never coming and learning.

Well, you weren't coming again anyway.

You said that before we even started.

I'll do this once.

My people tell me I have to do it.

Right, exactly.

I didn't realize you were listening directly.

Let's hear about why Mary Lincoln is not a monster.

She is

crucial, I think, to Lincoln's rise.

She comes from a connected family.

She's very ambitious on his behalf.

My wife, who's also a massive fan of

both you gentlemen, massive fan and regular listener,

she did a great podcast called Significant Others, and she talked about Mary Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln and talked about the complexities of what's good about Mary Lincoln.

But it's her podcast and the research was that she did a lot for him.

She was very ambitious on his behalf.

In some ways, she was a good partner.

She was highly flawed, but I think to dismiss her as a monster isn't fair.

Did she not, though, steal all the spoons in the White House when she left?

Who hasn't done that?

I've not been to the White House three times.

Did you steal the spoons?

How many did you steal?

I stole a flat-screen television.

I mean, I need spoons.

I don't need a fucking spoon.

Who needs a spoon?

If you're going to go, go big, I say.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Yeah, but she stole something like 6,000 spoons or whatever.

Come on, get over it.

And not think, you know,

what did Margaret Thatcher take when she left power?

I do have a question.

I do have a question.

This is a serious question that has confused me somewhat over time.

I sometimes have a take on a British figure that's completely out of step with what British people think of that figure.

Say, like, who?

Well, Margaret Thatcher's one because I feel that you almost can't.

I've been in circles where you almost can't bring her up.

Oh, yeah.

And she has been canceled.

And

I've seen books of great women in history, and Margaret Thatcher isn't even in there.

And she's this highly significant person.

And I understand

that there's complexities there, and there are things that she did, but interesting to me that

she isn't held

in more esteem.

Dominic has written a 7,000-page book on her.

Yeah.

So I didn't know that.

He's absolutely the man to take this on.

Do you think, am I correct that I've been around Brits and I've said, what do you guys prefer?

Brits?

Lime's?

What do you like?

I think with Englishmen.

Yeah,

Englishmen.

Officers and gentlemen.

Okay.

Admiral.

Yeah.

Just sir.

Commander.

Just sir is fine.

Yeah, okay, sir.

Your Highnesses.

I have noticed that you have to have her as part of the conversation, and it's as if she didn't exist.

And that doesn't feel right to me.

Am I correct?

I think kind of liberal opinion, for want of a better word, or better phrase, still holds her in very low regard because she was a, you know, she was a right-of-center politician.

yep uh a lot of people suffered under yeah and the thatcher government because of de-industrialization yes um she was a very very strident and partisan politician you know you were you were one of hers or you were one of the opposition

and she drew the battle lines very clearly so it's understandable why people hate her right yeah i get i completely get that i mean i i'm sure Tom would probably agree with me on this.

She's an incredibly impressive person.

So if you look at photographs of her government, she's often in the room with 40 men and she's the only woman.

And she's made her own way.

She's fought her way up the ladder.

She's incredibly well prepared because she thinks she has to work harder than any man because she thinks she'll be dismissed at any moment.

So that, and she feels she has to become harder than hard to prove that she's not a soft and sensitive woman.

All of which maybe makes her quite unlikable.

I think she probably wouldn't have got on with us because she had very little sense of humor.

And she was harsh, you know, hard company, difficult company.

But she is a, I mean, certainly compared with Britain's recent prime ministers.

So that, I think, I think that there's a kind of kaleidoscopic quality to people's reputations in history.

And I think the fact that how long was she?

10 years?

She was prime minister for 10 years.

Seven years.

And basically, we, you know, we, current prime ministers last about a week.

Yeah.

They're like fruit flies.

Yeah.

They have the same life expectancy and same intellect.

They're so terrible.

But they're nourished on the blood of others.

Yeah, they are so terrible that I think her reputation can only improve by comparison.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the comparison between her and Liz Truss, Keir Starmer.

I mean, Rissy's not that.

I mean, names that

no one listening will ever have heard of any of them.

Yeah.

They just enter the front of Downing Street and they go out the back without breaking stride.

Yeah.

I'm also

a big churchophile.

I really love Churchill, and I know that.

I've talked to

British people who, oh, well, you know, he behaved poorly here.

He behaved poorly there.

There's a lot of it that maybe doesn't age well.

And sometimes I am impatient.

I think, oh, my God, you know, this was the perfect person at the perfect time with the perfect wit and the perfect eloquence.

That alone should protect him.

Am I wrong?

He got one massive thing right.

And I think essentially that cancels everything he got wrong.

Yes.

Yeah.

Also, I mean, you've got to give him a thing.

I'm going to say one massive thing right, just for anyone who's, you know, he,

people were trying to appease Hitler, appease Hitler, appease Hitler, and he said enough of that.

So he's right about that, but I think specifically, it's the moment when the Nazis are on the French coast.

There's a serious prospect that the British government may open negotiations with Hitler.

Yep.

And had that happened,

then the history of Europe and of the world would have been radically different.

But it doesn't happen

is massively bad.

Because of one man who said no, right?

I mean, there's an amazing pinch point, amazing story about him addressing his MPs and saying to them, If this Long Island story of ours is to end, let it end only when we are choking in our own blood on the ground.

Yeah.

And that kind of stirring stuff.

I mean, nobody says that outside movies.

He says that he galvanizes the English language, the English people.

I have a theory that,

again, I'm just going to go with Brits because I don't know what else to say.

That the British people are famously afraid of or wary of puffed up language.

Or it, you know, I know it's certainly true of the Celts.

The minute someone starts to say, everyone is going, oh, get over yourselves.

That

all the rhetoric I love of Churchill's sometimes is slightly embarrassing.

Well, the thing is, too,

he speaks like that from about the age of four.

Yeah.

And it makes him

a very comical figure.

So what is it?

The age of 10.

Yeah, I know.

He's at school.

I love him at four saying, anyone who will not give that toy and put it back in my pram will choke on their own blood.

But the thing is, he's, I mean, he, at the age of 10 or something, when he's at school, he's writing essays about how he is going to save Britain from foreign invasion.

And he, in a sense, you know, his whole life has been preparation for 1940 when he

stands alone.

He got loads wrong.

He made loads of terrible, terrible mistakes.

And some of his, you know, more intemperate statements statements don't stand up very well today to our scrutiny.

But when you look at his life, he had an amazing life.

Oh, my God.

He is Zealig.

I mean, that Woody Allen movie, Zealig, where he's in every

moment.

He's in Africa and he escapes from a Burr prisoner of war camp.

He's in Cuba when the Americans are fighting in Cuba.

He's fighting in India.

He's hit by a cab in New York City in the 1930s.

He's crazy.

He's everywhere.

This extraordinary life.

Plus.

He is such a likable personality.

He's so abiliant.

He's such fun.

He's He's a great laugh.

If he was sitting next to you at dinner, you know, you wouldn't get a word in Edguay's.

Oh, I would.

You know who you're messing with.

Hey, Winston!

Who left this Irish idiot in here?

When I visited, I have my frequent stops when I'm in London, Imperial War Museum.

I always have to go.

I witnessed an argument.

This is in the late 80s.

I was at the Imperial War Museum and I witnessed

there was a British half-track there, and two old German men were saying, this was not the best design.

And two British guys said, well, it was bloody well good enough, wasn't it?

And they got into it, and I thought, what was the accent that that British person had?

I sailed, chat.

Dick Van Dyke taught me how to talk to you guys.

Bloy me.

Hello, Governor.

I did that to Hugh Laurie's face once, and I think he struck me,

but it's all a blur now.

We have an episode on Mary Poppins coming up.

Oh, really?

Yeah, we do.

Terrific.

Well,

Dick Van Tyke, he was taught his Cottony accent by an Irishman who'd been appointed by Walt Disney.

It was the ultimate act of the IRA.

It's the sabotage.

It changes a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He has apologized many times.

I had him on the show and I asked him about that.

And he said, I'm sorry.

That's what I was taught.

He was terrible.

But it was cool.

To his credit, he's Dick Van Dyke.

He's a national treasure for us.

And

he apologized.

But what were we talking about?

I've drifted to the

Imperial War Museum.

Oh, yes.

And then Chartwell.

I went to Chartwell, which I

and I just looking at the Chartwell's the country estate that Churchill bought when he didn't have the money to buy it.

And he was making, I mean, to his credit.

earning his living, writing articles and probably spending money he didn't have, but he bought Chartwell.

And there are a few homes that tell you who the person is.

Most of them have been redone.

The person isn't really there.

My two favorites are Chartwell

and

Teddy Roosevelt's house, Sagamore Hill on Oyster Bay.

How do you mean that?

Oh, you have to go because Teddy Roosevelt's there.

They didn't touch it.

His wife kept it exactly the same.

When she passed, it became a museum.

Nothing's been changed.

It's filled with stuffed heads and bombast and hyperactivity.

They're quite similar, I think.

Yeah, Roosevelt and that's the other thing.

They're very similar.

Who T.R.'s hero was?

Well, Kipling?

Who?

Oliver Cromwell.

Oh, that's Oliver Cromwell, yes.

His hero.

One of my heroes, actually, Karen, sorry.

Not so much of the British.

I mean, it'd be Irish.

I once, my grandmother lived with us growing up, and she was

she had been born in 1890.

And the movie Cromwell was on in her room.

She was room on the side of the film.

Richard Harris filmed.

Richard Harris.

And I'm crossing her room and the door is slightly ajar and she's the flickering image, she's watching it and it's a scene where the British are

under Cromwell or something's going on.

I can't remember, but it was something about the Irish.

And my grandmother's watching and she just said, the bastards.

Yeah.

Well, you know,

we grew up on these children's books, they're called Ladybird Books, and they were...

books about great lives.

So there was

Oliver Cromwell was one of them.

And it has kind of famous summing up.

And it says, Oliver Cromwell, brackets, except in Ireland, was a kindly man.

Connor Brian, except for two staff and friends, was a kindly man.

Yeah,

which I think

sums up perhaps.

What was that saying from Cromwell?

He was robust in Ireland.

Yeah.

He was robust.

Robust, yeah.

Robust is a very useful word on the podcast.

He had sometimes pungent views.

Pungent and robust.

They carry a lot of weight.

You know, the larger, to Google Earth out of this, all these little areas for a second, one of the things that sustains me, and I know that you have a lot of young listeners, which I love, because

the role that history plays for me in my life, my knowledge of history and my enthusiasm for it, is it often reminds me that we've been here before

and that the history of mankind is a lot of things constantly going wrong

and

good people in the mix trying to right the ship.

But I get a lot of satisfaction out of all the things that are happening today that

can seem so dire.

And of course, unlike anyone that you're talking about in your podcast, we're being bombarded with bad news constantly through this new technology.

A lot of young people just think, well, this is the end of the world.

And I try and remind them and things have been worse.

Oh, no.

And I keep telling them: do you think 1914 was great?

How about 1861 in the States?

I mean, even in our recent history, the 60s was a dreadful decade, 70s, 80s.

I mean, it's hard to locate a time when we all didn't think.

When I was at university, as you call it, when I was in college, we all thought Reagan is going to blow up the world.

And this is the late for the first two world wars.

Yeah.

Early for the third.

Yeah, exactly.

Will, Will.

There we go.

Oh, there goes Moscow.

Oh, there goes Will.

But I mean,

and I'm just constantly reminded that we have

a moment of optimism when the Berlin Wall fell, which quickly turned to cynicism.

And then things seem to have just gotten much worse in Russia.

And we see what's happening in the world.

And I think, well, this is the way it's been.

It's always been this way.

So I would say a couple of things.

One is that people always behave badly.

History keeps happening and people will continue doing bad things because human nature doesn't change.

And yet, most people alive today live longer, healthier, you know, more comfortable, warm, you know, warmer as in shielded from cold lives with more opportunities, more cult, you know, the broader cultural horizons, all of that kind of thing.

That's not to be complacent, but we're, you know, you'd rather be here than at any previous point in history.

And the other thing is dentistry, which is always mentioned.

And antibiotics.

Antibiotics.

My father was a microbiologist and studied antibiotics his entire life.

Never went to the dentist, though.

Face of just broken tombstones in his mouth.

Oh, British.

Like George Washington.

Like George Washington.

He walked around with other people's teeth in his mouth.

That's right.

Poor from Washington.

That's right.

We knew he was a bad man, but that was the confirmed section.

Had to eat, you know what he ate because of his bad teeth?

Can I tell you?

Go on.

He would have tripe.

Tripe was all he would eat, which is cow's.

Really going down in a house.

Happy, isn't he?

Cow's stomach mashed up and then boiled.

And this man who might be the greatest American of all time through his rotted jaw would suck tripe into his mouth.

That makes me feel so happy.

You know, the worst teeth.

The worst teeth.

Won't you forgive us?

No.

Ramesses the Great, the Pharaoh,

they found

his mummy,

and he'd lived to about 97.

And they inspected his jaw.

And because the sand, you know, it's Egypt, so sand gets into the bread.

90 odd years of chewing on bread had worn down the teeth, had worn down the gums, had exposed the nerves.

He was Pharaoh.

He was one of the greatest figures of ancient history.

His, I mean, every minute would have been excruciating agony.

There was nothing that he could do about it.

Nothing he could do.

So

just say that to cheer people up who may be depressed.

You think you're doom-scrolling.

Yeah, exactly.

If you're depressing what's happening right now in global warming, remember there's not sand in your bread.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And there's been

the world has been convulsed by terrible examples of climate change before.

Say the sixth century AD.

Possibly the worst year in human history.

There's a kind of great climactic event.

The world cools.

The crops fail.

There's plague.

There's war.

Everything collapses.

And

I, again, offer that as a reassurance that things may seem bad now, but honestly, they have been so much worse.

Yeah.

And I think I go back to that all the time is there's also a,

this is not just a uniquely American thing, but it's very popular in our politics to can't we return to that golden old time?

And as a history, as a as a not a historian like you gentlemen, as an amateur, I always say, tell me when that was.

What is this golden time?

And you, you know, they'll try and say things like, well, you know, in the 1890s, you know, the thing that's always recreated when someone opens an ice cream shop and people have arm garters and wax mustaches.

And I think, no, that was no good.

Lynching.

Yeah.

No, no.

I mean, exactly.

There is no golden past.

And I think that's one of the things that sustains me these days is I listen to your podcast and you tell these great stories.

And I love the stories.

And I learned so much, but it informs how I live today.

It informs how I read the news.

It informs how I take what's coming.

And

I'm usually a little, I think, calmer.

And I work with a lot of young people who are convinced.

I, I remember during COVID, uh, uh, someone who was waiting on me in a restaurant telling me she was very young.

She was about 20.

And she said, she's very sad.

And I said, why?

And she said, I'll never see a concert again.

Oh, my God.

I'll never see a live concert again because that's over now because of COVID.

And I said, no, no, no, we, we were here in 1919.

We've been here a bunch of times before.

These happen and they go away and we move on.

You're going to see so many concerts and so many of them are going to be terrible.

You'll be dreaming of lockdown.

Yeah, yeah.

I have to ask you, I have not listened to your Rolling Stone podcasts, your Satanic Majesties podcasts.

Beatles or stones.

I just have to ask.

For me, Beatles 100%.

Yes.

Stones.

Okay.

Well, I have to tell you, Dominic, you're wrong.

You're wrong.

Wrong about.

Yeah, Mary Lincoln.

Mary Lincoln's.

Mary Lincoln and wrong about

yourself.

Look, I love them.

An amazing three-chord band.

You're not a bit bored of the Beatles.

Not ubiquitous.

It's impossible.

It's impossible.

And look, is it their fault that their stuff is...

You're penalizing them for their penalty.

Being too good.

Incredible.

Well, wrong again.

And I should tell you, Mary Lincoln

played with the Stones for a while.

So you should really hate the Stones.

Yeah.

She was one of Peter Paul and Mary, right?

Yeah, she was with Peter Paul and Mary.

Yes.

Then she left, replaced Bill Wyman for a little while as bass player.

And then Mick got jealous.

She was getting all the attention.

Yeah, that was.

I have to ask you on a personal note, this thing has blown up.

You started as a lark.

You were having fun.

Yeah.

And now it's all this.

Yeah.

Mental.

Are you enjoying?

I mean, Tom Hanks is a huge fan.

We'll come on the podcast.

I've not been invited.

Listen, I understand.

I just have my place in the hierarchy.

I have a small cameo in Saving Private Ryan.

I'm shot.

I'm the ninth guy to be shot just coming right off the boat.

What would you like to talk about?

about?

We'd pick a topic.

You could pick a topic with me, and I would come to London.

Where do you do it?

Do you do it in London?

No, because you can do it every day.

You could have to move.

No, no, no.

I want to be there in person.

Or do you guys, are you together when you do this?

Oh, no.

We hate each other.

Oh, God.

I mean, that would be terrible.

Yeah.

No, never.

This is the first time we've been together for about four years.

Okay.

It's very unpleasant.

Well, I'd like to be with one of you live.

So I would like to be at one of your, I'm imagining a grand estate.

And I would like to be with one of you in person, and I would like to make the other jealous.

Maybe we could talk about why Mary Lincoln was a goodie or why the Beatles are brilliant.

I could do the Beatles in a second.

Let's do it.

Let's do the Beatles.

I mean, I would happily join you guys anytime.

This has been a thrill for me, and I got to talk about about 170th of the things that I would love to talk to you about.

But so it goes.

We'll leave that for another time.

If you're not listening to the rest is history

with Tom and Dominic, you're a fool.

And you don't, and you know what?

You don't even have to be a history buff.

They're stories, and they're the best stories that ever were.

And they're told by two great storytellers.

And so The Rest is History.

Please give it a listen.

And

thank you to both very much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you.

This message is brought to you by Airbnb.

Twice I've used Airbnb in the city of San Francisco.

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You know, I think the relationship I have with my team has been a critical.

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For sure.

And maybe my late night career.

David, you know, you see me with my team.

I care about my team.

You actually do.

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We have something very important to discuss right now.

Is it important?

It's very important.

If you even question me,

it's abhorrent to me.

Recently, we had a discussion about singing popular songs on the podcast.

Is that a copyright infringement?

Do we have to then pay off

these artists?

Or are we allowed to sing a popular ditty?

Do we have the freedom to do that?

And we realize there's one person we need to talk to.

He is

one of the loyal troops here in the Team Coco Army.

He's a magnificent lawyer, despite never having practiced law or graduated from law school.

He's a Jose Arroyo.

True lawyers.

But no one pretends to be a lawyer better than David Melmet.

And David, thank you very much for being here.

And I also want to say

people really like David Melmet.

I mean, everyone is just talking about it.

We're all big fans.

You know, I'm a controversial figure here in the building, but you are universally very well liked.

Yeah.

And

so, and I thank you.

You do terrific work for us in your capacity as a fake lawyer.

So, David, let's get into it.

The question is: can I sing songs on the podcast?

Can Sona sing songs on the podcast?

And Matt Gorley, is he allowed to break out into a tune every now and then?

What's the answer?

I'm going to give you a lawyer answer to that.

The answer is maybe.

The answer is maybe.

Maybe.

You're rotating in your chair a lot nervously.

Maybe.

I don't really want to know.

I got in gross.

We could actually use that as an example right there.

Okay.

That's a perfect example.

Which song was that?

Because the way you were singing, it was just awful.

Oh, what song was that?

That's Silo Ace's song.

Live forever.

Oh, okay.

Got it.

Terrific.

So that's a perfect example right there.

Thank you.

Okay.

I think there's a way to approach these questions.

I think music

is probably one of the most controversial sort of topics in all of clearance, right?

I think music, particularly with you, Cohen, your love of music.

sort of the idea of music now in podcasts has become a hot, certainly topic within the legal community.

And

now that we have an example, I think the first thing.

If you don't get more interesting faster,

I'm going to kill you.

Okay.

It's that interesting.

Okay.

I mean, it's that simple.

You have to look at all these notes.

You have.

I mean, look at the

notes.

You're not talking to the Supreme Court.

Yes, I am.

It's just us.

Damn it.

He is the most professional person in this room right now.

Yeah, I know, but that was just dreadful.

I know.

What?

He's let the man talk.

I think I did.

And it was awful.

Yes.

It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I'm sorry, David.

Continue.

And in no way,

in no way, in no way feel constrained by what I've said or intimidated.

I'm not.

As your employer continued doing that awful thing you were just doing.

Exactly.

This is.

Okay.

So

there's a step approach to that.

I think the first thing we ask is, what is the intended use of what you are trying to do?

And I think why I ask that is a lot of times I hear samples and they're really terrible.

I think

when I actually ask the person, what do you want to use it for?

They hear themselves say it and say, you know what?

We're good.

We're actually not going to use that.

Once we get to step two, say, you know what, we want to do that.

Then we get to, where do you want to use it?

Where do you want to distribute it?

And so in that case, just I'm putting you on the spot, Corley.

Where would you want to use that within well?

I think we're talking about this podcast.

So this is, this is the, I think what we're all talking about is the same thing, which is, okay, we're having that podcast and we're talking and someone brings up Robert Palmer and Sona says, Wait, which one is he?

Because she's younger.

And I go, Might as well face it.

He's so fine.

There's no telling where the money went.

And what do you do now?

It comes across your desk.

Yes, it does.

I don't think you have a desk.

You do not inherit one yet.

But

you do sit in the corner.

You do sit in the corner.

You do sit in.

You sit in the corner.

Yes.

Well, when you get a real law degree, you'll get a real desk.

Thank you.

But David, that's the example.

That's a great example.

They come to you and they say, Conan O'Brien, joined in by Matt Gorley, uh

uh robert palm a song we just did it do you cut it out or do you let us do it i say again maybe i would say let's try to get permission to do that i think that is the goal here is to say do we need permission to do that so that again is a difficult thing because you could say look we need to release this episode next week how are we supposed to go to the record label yeah robert robert palmer's gone he has tragic past yes he has and he has an estate that's very protective of his musical.

And then, does someone get them a sample of us singing it and they listen to it?

We actually would provide the sample because you're recording this, right?

We're recording this and we bring it to death.

This is awful.

Okay.

Well, again, I mean, this whole segment is a trip.

I think it's fantastic, actually.

I think this is very helpful.

I think this is fantastic.

So we bring that sample to the record label and say, hey, look, Conan O'Brien, Matt Gorley, Sona, would love to use this sample on.

I'm okay.

You could leave me at it.

Okay, please.

Conan O'Brien.

She is tone tone death yeah

you don't have to lump me in on the robert palmer's sample yes now here's my question would you say this promotes robert palmer's discography this promotes disparages his entire

doesn't it makes you think oh i did love that song i don't love the way they're doing it but i do love that song and i'd like to go out and um immediately on spotify get get the complete robert palmer collection you would certainly use that argument in a negotiation for a fee right which is ridiculous.

I'm just, you know, the thing is, I'm not a musician who's playing the song.

I'm just saying, she's so fine.

There's no telling where the money went.

And then suddenly, a highly paid

pseudo-lawyer

who's suspiciously tan all the time.

I don't know.

You are

in the middle of winter and you've got the deepest bronze tan.

Do you use a tanning light?

I do not.

And you asked me that.

He's natural.

He's a handsome guy.

You are incredibly handsome.

Well, you asked me that two years ago.

Yeah, I know.

Well, he is.

Guess what?

It's the last time we spoke.

That is true.

Until today.

Yeah.

Conan, you came to my corner and you said, do you tan?

Do you tan?

I would love that tan.

And I said, I don't.

I actually get, I get outside.

I have a, you know, sort of glowing.

You have an incredible glow.

Thank you.

What do you attribute that to?

Is it your lineage?

Are you pregnant?

How is this

pertinent to the law?

Okay, we're we're getting to it in a second.

This is important.

What are you a lawyer?

Go ahead.

What was your question?

Sorry.

So, yes,

this is so important.

But David, explain, explain this golden hue you have.

I think genetics.

I think my I have parents in their 80s that look like they're in their 60s.

So that's the first.

But what is it?

What is your genetic makeup?

I know that's probably an incorrect question to ask these days, but what are your genetics?

I missed no.

I would say there is probably a

sort of Middle Eastern

beautiful

gorgeous.

But you're forgetting that he has these beautiful eyes, too.

Hey, can I say something else?

Listen, you have salt and pepper hair,

which is to die for.

I mean, I'm walking around with this clown dessert on my head, and I look at you, and I'm like, he may not be a real lawyer.

He may be the only thing we could afford, but God, I'd do him in a Mississippi second.

What?

Coy is your lawyer he is your lawyer yeah okay all i'm saying is you can't ask about genetics and you can't say i want to do you to the lawyer well we are

actually out of time i'm glad we covered all the legal questions to the music i'm just gonna say one thing he's so fine there's no telling where the money went uh listen so um i back to the other the initial point of this whole thing yeah which is you're very good looking wait that wasn't it back to the real point david which is

you're saying that anytime we hum any diddy, you have to get on the phone and try to buy the rights from some monsters?

Can I add?

Last, Conan, you argued that if you hummed, the worse you hummed it, the more rights we would have, right?

Like if you were off with

the melody or the tone, then we would be able to use it.

I would say, for example,

famously litigious Led Zeppelin.

No one gets to do Led Zeppelin stuff.

But if I sing it and it's wrong, but everyone knows what I'm doing, do we still have to pay?

You could.

You could.

You'd have to get the lyrics and the melody wrong, you right?

Oh, I could do the whole thing.

Now, there's a lady who knows.

Sure.

That's it.

That's that's those speakers are bows.

Oh, boy.

She's trying.

Staircase

to Nirvana.

Nirvana.

Now, that, now, would I have to pay for that?

No way.

Well, I wouldn't say no way.

Why?

You say maybe.

I would say maybe.

And I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why.

If you were in, if you were letting

the answer.

I don't think you want to hear what the answer is.

I would say in the most conservative way, yes.

Now, there are different exceptions.

For example, I think the use, the fair use word, de minimis use, is used a ton, but you've already committed the copyright act, right?

So, when I have talked to you, Sona, about this plenty of times, where, and I think I'm going to use Jeff Ross's name, he loves the word de minimis.

It's just a little bit of use that a court would never say, you know, we're not going to litigate this.

Go ahead and use it.

Conan O'Brien, he could, he can do two, three seconds of that song.

No, we're not, we're not going to even go there.

Now, De minimis.

Why does Jeff love de minimis?

I haven't heard de minimis since the Latin teacher saw me without my pants on.

That's what he said.

That's what he said.

That's exactly what Jeff said.

Pretty good, huh, Sona?

Look at her.

Look at her.

Look at her.

That is what he said.

It's not the Maximus.

A quick question.

Should we do a two-parter and continue talking?

Yes, we should do a two-parter.

Okay, we are sitting here with our, he says he's a lawyer.

We've seen no paperwork.

David Melmud, impossibly good-looking and beloved here on staff.

So stay tuned for part two.

Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonam Obsession, and Matt Gorley.

Produced by me, Matt Gorley.

Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Frost, 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 Sambles.

Engineering and Mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns.

Additional production support by Mars Melnick.

Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn.

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