Liza Powel O'Brien Chats About "Significant Others" | Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend

my wife liza is here in studio little applause please you sound like little you sound like little church mice uh and liza's here because she's been working on a project that i love this project and people say well you're biased but i'm being make it clear i am not a fan of my wife oh okay yeah we just we are we don't i know everyone else is everyone i know you're only the only what your favorite my favorite thing about you is liza yes there you go yes yeah yeah um and that's the sentiment that i get from most people is they say um you're annoying but we love your wife i'm like okay um and i'm fills you with rage fills me with rage because it's my parents that are saying it but uh but i am thrilled because uh liza welcome first of all to our little studio thanks yeah nice to be here it's nice to have you not at all weird yeah i just love that we're not we can't shout at each other uh because you know there's there's company here give us a minute give us eight seconds um i think we should leave yeah uh no you um liza you're here today because you've been working on something that i really love and i'm excited about it and very proud as your goofy partner in life that you have made this really cool podcast that we're going to share with people called significant others that's right yep i'm so afraid to make a mistake why got this buddy what's that you got this well because you know later on i might hear about it uh likewise yeah exactly absolute best behavior yeah i know um so fun i promise you use your i statements always say i feel don't accuse anybody of anything hug a pillow if you need to there's water [Laughter] well i think that uh you've made this very cool nonfiction podcast my favorite podcasts often are that i listen to because i don't listen to this one [Laughter] not a fan of mine but i love any podcast where i can learn something whether it's history or literature and you came up with a very cool idea which i will throw to you so you can explain what significance others is all about basically is about sort of um looking at people who are just outside the spotlight of history essentially so um i've always been really interested uh even before i was married to uh conan about what it was like for people who are married to you know the people we read about in history books so what was it really like to date and be married to uh president lincoln for example um that's sort of the genesis of it and as i started collecting more and more of them and asking people is this anything that anyone else would be interested in besides me conan was one of the first people to say absolutely i would absolutely listen to that which was i mean if you hadn't done that i don't know if i would have you know pursued any of this so either thank you or it's your it's my fault it's my fault it's your fault um you cover all these great people uh and things that i didn't know because i knew about obviously i think i knew somewhat about gandhi i certainly knew about lincoln um i thought i knew about virginia woolf and then you find out about these other people in their lives that were pivotal not always for good which is fascinating this is not the story every time of someone uh who is um saving the day in any way a secret hero it's both they they help and they don't help and they influence the whole game as everyone does no no one is an island so i've been listening to them i think i've listened to all of them except i think there are a couple that i haven't burdened you with but um no you've been my first uh reader of the script often and first listener to the scratch tracks and um you're a very good editor i would say that that's nice i know i know this is like sober you guys are like this is also so similar i want to know about the bad stuff is there a murder oh in the in the podcast yeah oh i thought you meant in our lives oh is there more i feel very entitled when it comes to like cleaning up the kitchen i've gotten a little better you're you're much better much better than i used to be but it is i used to say well i'm done and now let others handle things was my declaration at the end of every meal now the now the dishes end up near the dishwasher still not in it they're moving clothes not in it but near it they're moving closer okay they're moving so much closer progress you talk about the tolstoys gandhi uh you mary lincoln uh nabokov's wife vera maya angelou and james baldwin who i didn't even realize had this incredible connection molly d thatcher and elia kazan virginia woolf dr spock i mean gandhi is someone who i i mean i just i don't even think of gandhi as being in a relationship because he's been he's become such this holy revered figure that he's almost you know beyond that godlike and the gandhi one was the one of the uh one of the only ones that i didn't have in my head before we started it was actually a suggestion of nick liao who's a team coco person and i'm so grateful for that suggestion because like you i was like he had a wife there's a national holiday named for her in india um which my friend who voices uh kasturba and then also talks to me afterwards about it um you know grew up knowing basically that was all she knew so that's interesting too that like you can even be from the culture and know of the person and still not know anything more and she was massively important in his life so there's a lot of my favorite thing like yours is that it's um not all good or all bad that these are really complicated people and complicated relationships and in this era of sort of re-examining historical heroes um i sort of love that when the re-examination can be incredibly complex and nuanced and that it's not just hey guess what this guy was secretly an guess what a lot of them a lot more and it wasn't a secret publicly an right exactly and i think that's where i've got everyone fooled uh i i you mentioned that you had someone a friend voice you've got a lot of people yes uh voicing things uh nick offerman is leo tolstoy megan mullally sophia tolstoy tim oliphant uh rita wilson jamila jamil darcy cardin lisa kudrow paul f tompkins i mean it's uh we're very lucky yeah i called in every possible chit that i could i don't think anyone's ever going to take our call again so you're welcome yeah well yes including matt gordon oh that's right what what part did you play i play a reporter in the lincoln episode when you're describing in great detail mary lincoln's uh the shape of her head yeah it's a really really misogynistic sort of slam of lincoln or mary lincoln yeah yeah it's crazy and we naturally thought of you yeah you were perfect i love that they brought you in eliza brought you in to be the creep yeah lincoln episode yeah i do play a lot of creeps i'll edit that out what was uh was there one thing that you learned that just really shocked you other than that gandhi had a wife yeah that would take well that was that was surprise number one i mean there are a lot of really fascinating moments i i don't really want to spoil anything um but and and one of them and you didn't know lincoln was shot it's true guys i really learned how to did you know he went to a theater so hey spoiler man yeah exactly um yeah i don't wanna i mean noth everything was you know surprising at a certain point i think the dr spock episode might be the most surprising to me a lot of your fans might not even know who he was because he's so excited about that because i was raised on that board yeah yeah and it's a real generational divide like i bet you could you know find the exact number above and under where people do or don't know about him but um it was a big oh dr spock was the uh child care guru yeah not the vulcan yeah his book yeah and it was um i think in the it was 50s 60s in 1946 same year my mother was born wow and it revolutionized there's a great quote um by a guy who wrote a profile on esquire in like 86 when spock died in 98 so it was like toward the end of his life but not all the way at the end and he was like this this had such a profound influence in such a quiet way because it was these articles that he was writing in women's magazines that were lying around you know hair salons and nothing else has affected so quickly and so vastly how the world regards babies and handles them and raises kids and you know so there's all this stuff about like he created the hippies he was the responsible for the me generation there's been a lot of backlash the feminists hated him for a while and then he changed some stuff and got back in their good graces and meanwhile you know his own family was kind of a disaster yeah but whenever someone writes a here is how to parent your child you're asking for trouble yeah within 10 minutes and he just could start killing people and who wasn't like he wasn't a big um like he didn't have the kind of ego that a lot of experts have he was very ready to revise what he had written and to collaborate and he didn't want to own it and be right all the time but then there's this just point where he couldn't take his own advice you know like there's just you can't fix what gets put in the hard drive kind of so anyway it's it that one to me is really fascinating he's playing dr spock un cast as of now just to be intentionally confusing well he's passed on it was just funny to me if we got zachary quinto who plays spock now and got him to play dr spock but but then do a lot of disclaimers up front zachary quinto will be playing dr spock it's not that dog we know he plays him just un i love unnecessarily confusion i'm going to ruin your podcast no and so his his son one of his sons said that when dr spock from star trek became a thing he was so relieved because suddenly there was another when people would see his last name and they would say are you related to dr spock you know and he would ugh i don't wanna because he's then the living test of his dad's you know work and so when they would say are you related to that's why you can he'd be like yes exactly that's what i'm related to that's that's why i root for conan gray you know i just want him as to our children yeah exactly i'm tired of being that conan so it's root so root for conan gray yeah of course yeah because i can't take the burden anymore too much yeah i feel that same way about the matt gourley that's a contractor in northern california you know i can't get uh out of his shadow well he's just a really good contractor he's because he's gonna be playing dr spock yeah yeah uh okay let me make sure i get the word out significant others is available right now it's uh it's already out a new episode of significant others drops every wednesday with bonus episodes the following day so be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast

Channel: Team Coco

Views: 728,806

Keywords: team coco podcasts, team coco podcast, podcast, conan obrien needs a friend, conan needs a friend, conan o’brien needs a friend, needs a friend, conan o’brien podcast, conan o’brien needs a friend podcast, celebrity interview, comedy podcast, conan podcast, matt gourley, sona movsesian

Id: 8V1nenWY11w

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022