Mike Sweeney

Edit out that May 4th announcement. That's not happening.

But then.

You could tease two old late night writer favorites.

Made appearances, memorable appearances. Yeah.

97.

Yeah, I don't know. And we could tease. David Letterman was at the dinner throwing rolls at you. And maybe he showed up for the big award night as well. We'll never know until you see it.

Go ahead. Well, you were so distracted. Well, not distracted. You were consumed by doing the Oscars. And then the Oscars were over. And all of a sudden, they were planning another travel show.

To go to Austria.

I just want to mention that then when you finally... The week before the Twain Prize, you were like, whoa, this is coming up. You wrote your whole speech. Every part of it was written by you. It was a fantastic job. Well done, including the serious part, which is out already. Yeah. And has already been nominated for a Grammy, spoken word Grammy. But anyway, yes, great job.

Best Skeleton.

Also, Andy was great at the dinner.

Well, he reminds me of Sona in that he doesn't give a shit either. He doesn't, yeah. Which is unusual in a performer. Yeah. No, no, no. I interrupted you. I'm sorry.

You were going to say you loved having them.

Sorry, there was only one American humorist, apparently. I'm sure if you lived in Britain, there's probably like a humorist award every three weeks. We've only had one.

Right, right, right.

I only know Charles Schultz.

Wow.

Hey, I thought that 20 minute bell was going off.

All right. It went off when you said Rizzer boat.

Also some great fun video surprises during the show. Yes.

So that wasn't self. That's true. That's true. But of course, I'm an employee.

Value my paycheck.

And this edit, the show's edit, it's due tomorrow to HBO Max. So it's insanity.

It's a very, very funny show and very sweet at the same time.

I went to school with her, so it was a nice perspective.

You are an amazing. You just hit it. You were hilarious.

I was never knowing that. those comedians would be there.

Plus, I had to say nice.

I did. And I was like... Maybe, you know, maybe David Letterman won't really show up. And, you know, it's like, yeah, he's sitting right there, table 18, throwing bread at Conan.

Yeah, late 90s. The previous century.

Yeah, it's not pompous at all. It was a very specific moment that this event occurred and that you had all these great comedians there and you had this change situation at the Kennedy Center that was so dramatic and was in the news all week. I mean, dramatically in the news. And so, yes, it's something that

Well, while fetting you at the same time, everyone in their own way, you know, acknowledged what was going on.

Well, let's get this thing started. John Mulaney was so good. I was like, you know, as just thinking in terms of comedians in a show order. Yeah. You're like, everyone has to. Everyone was great.

But watching Mulaney, you're like, whoa, I would not. If I was watching him and I knew I was in the on deck circle or further down the.

I'd be scared.

Did we say Stephen Colbert?

You gave them a shout out and that was the biggest, that got a standing ovation. Yeah, it did. Because the whole audience was employees. No, that was a really nice moment.

I do think, and this might sound shallow too, but when you're younger and you lose a job, that is an incredible... I feel like everyone here has probably been fired or... I talk about, in my speech, I start my speech with... Right, yes.

You've had birch beer before.

Yeah, it's a Northeast thing. More when Conan was growing up, too.

Yes. Yes. Oh, you know what? Better yet, put my face on it.

I think if we put your face on it, everybody would want to buy it.

So I know what's yours.

Okay, so Conan, why have you not used the Adirondack chair for the Subway S'mores then?

I want it to be courtesy of the Team Cocoa machine, which means basically it ends up coming out of my... I know some people who make Adirondack chairs, so if you decide to go with it.

About 10 years ago, I founded a company called The Forest Farmers. We and my business partners, we own 10,000 acres of forest land here in the Adirondacks and Vermont. And we collect sap from lots of different tree species and turn it into syrups and sugars and all sorts of beverages and delicious food.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

You're in the maple syrup business. Not just maple syrup, but other tree syrups as well, yes. Maple syrup is our number one thing. I didn't know there were other tree syrups. What other tree syrups are there? We do birch, beech, and walnut, and there's another five species that we could do, but we're not in the right part of the country to do that.

No, no. So every different tree syrup tastes a little bit different. Some are very different than others. And it has to do, you know, a lot of types of sugars that are present in the sap and then how you boil it down. Right, right. Beach syrup tastes similar to maple, but with more like a raisiny fig type of complex to it.

This is fantastic. So I had sent syrups for each of the three chill chums. So then you can each have a syrup. Oh, look at this. This looks like Jager bombs. That is each, you know.

I am in Lake Placid, New York, up in the Adirondack Mountains. I don't know if you've been here before, but it's a beautiful spot. I've been here for about 20 years. I'm raising three wonderful kids, and I get to work out in the woods of the Adirondack Mountains all day.

Let's wait. Let's wait. Okay.

There's a pure maple, which is the traditional one, and then a maple walnut. Okay.

Not just the 60s and 70s. We're continually being lied to. Like, the vast majority of people in the U.S., consume the fake stuff. You know, the Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth, log cabin, all that stuff.

What is it? Well, it's corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, and an artificial maple flavoring.

What happened to this country?

1980 and 1932.

I think you're going to blame it on Eduardo or Sona.

Potentially 2026 for the sliding sports. We're going to find out.

Is it the winter? Well, actually, the best time is right now. We're in the middle of maple season. Let's taste it right now. No doubt about it, yes.

That is, I mean, the taste, the texture. Well, because it's not the fake stuff, right? So the fake stuff is what people are used to. But when you get the real thing, it's, you know, that much better.

I'm going to go home. You have two others to try, Conan.

Well, okay. Okay, so birch is much different than maple. Maple walnut is very similar to maple. It's just a little... Let's do that next. I can't talk about it because you guys are supposed to... Okay, let's do maple... Are we supposed to clear our palate?

Take a little water. Just take a little sip of water.

Yeah, nuts. That's for Gourley, because everybody loves Gourley.

Who were you asking? Thank you, Mike.

Jesus, look at her go.

I hope so, if I have a great spokesperson. Somebody doesn't like it. Nope.

Oh no. Oh my. No. This is me? No, you're not supposed to have birch syrup on its own. So I was going to try to warn you that people just don't drink birch syrup. You wouldn't just drink a balsamic vinaigrette. You know what I mean? Okay, so it's used in cooking. It's not like something you pour on pancakes and just take shots of.

Why did you tell us that afterwards? Well, because you cut me off and didn't let me say it.

It's a very common reaction. But when you have birch syrup on salmon or pork or chicken, it is delicious. Oh, I could see that. It's how you use it. You have to use it in cooking. It's not something you would just drink. Nobody would just drink, like I said, balsamic vinegar. Yeah, you'd have to pour it into cups at a tasting.

It was always supposed to be slightly acidic. Not fully acidic.

The Conan one. Yeah, the Conan one. Let's move away from it.

Yeah, we do. Yeah, blow it up. Blow it up. No, I'm just saying. Just blow it up. We do. Big blow up. Big blow it up. Explosion. We do put most of our effort into maple. That is our number one thing. Good, good. Yes. But the birch sap runs after maple, and we have a lot of customers that do actually – appreciate Birch for its unique flavors, that use it in cooking.

Lots of different chefs that use it. I can imagine.

No ants would come around. Anybody who just has it by itself. It's not just something you normally just drink. And then we also have a lot of people that buy it for just the sap as a beverage because that's what's been used for centuries. People drinking birch sap in the springtime is like a spring tonic. It's delicious just as a sap right out of the tree.

Birch beer, there's lots of different types of birch beer, but the birch beer that came out of America was actually the distillate of sweet birch or black birch in Pennsylvania. It has like an oil of wintergreen that's grown in the trees. And that's what they made the birch beer from.

He literally was 40 minutes away and we totally left him at a gas station. And he was in a wheelchair.

So very musical. And you encountered really great fans there as well. And that's part of our homework, which is finding the people that you get to see when you get to the country.

We went back specifically to have you record in Vienna because we had done other parts of the country already. And then we paused it when we were in Linz and you got the word about your dad. And I remember you came down to the breakfast area and it was just you and me and you said, there's no easy way to say this, but my father passed away. And then Mike Sweeney and Jeff Frost came in and

You just said, I know one thing, I won't be taking a yodeling lesson today.

So you were a more evolved sociopath than you took a car to the airport and you went home.

But we went back specifically to get the capital city, which is what we had sort of— Yeah, Vienna waited for you. Exactly. Nice. Nice, nice.

And it worked out great. And he was wonderful.

I was going to say it was cold and it was cold up on that mountain.

You lowered the hem of your lederhosen by three inches.

Or was it, oh, it was Chalemi. It was Jason Chalemi, perhaps.

Some should not be on that playlist.

Out right now as we speak. It's amazing. I loved it. I actually saw it just to prepare for this.

Shout out to Bex, our fixer in New Zealand as well.

The Kia Bird. You were hilarious in many different ways.

Okay. And I saw it.

That's how it works. So how does it hold up? It holds up really, really well. Your voice went up. Sorry. No, go ahead. No, no, it holds up really well. And it's just, you jump from the North Island to the South Island. You cover, we covered a lot of ground.

Yeah. But you stayed here.

Very quickly, we dove right into Maori culture and the haka. Me at a stadium.

Jesse, how dare you suggest that that's what happens. It was hard to edit because there were so many good chunks in there.

Abby mentioned that that's one of the sort of national pride of New Zealand is how...

It's a documentary cruise style.

They said, would you want to host the Oscars? Why were you laughing? Because the timing of it. We were so busy. You got really sick in Spain along with a few other people. And also, it just seemed random out of left field. It was not on our brain.

That was so cool. It was really cool. They had a trap door, an Oculus had opened to reveal the orchestra. It was neat.

Yeah, kind of. And they had a Bond tribute for no good reason other than I assume it was for you, Matt Gourley. I have some notes.

Headed up by John Max.

Who works on, man, he's, he worked on every award show. It's incredible. He's working on one right now, I'm sure. He is, he is. The Soul Train Awards. He's working on the Mark Twain Awards. I said Soul Train. Okay, but I'm just- I'm a stickler for accuracy.

Not on the radar. And that's why it hit me funny.

Yeah, that's true. Right, but... Yes, this... So it's like, oh, well, okay, you know how to do that. But then, I don't know, they're just... It was a different level of getting scared before something.

Well, after... I wondered, I'm like, why are you so out of your mind and waking up at 3 a.m.? And then afterwards, you're like, oh, that's why. Because it really is highly scrutinized.

Back into the tent with the writers.

We were. It's kind of a black duvetyne kind of roped off area. And we had monitors and we had a, you know, we had the scroll of the script. And so we would like after Flo won, Brian Colley had a joke about. You know, it's the first one for Latvia. Yeah.

Yeah.

There was this... producer named Rachel was right in the room with us, and she really helped with the script along the way. She's great. During the show, our script guy, John Croteau, who we could not have done any of this without. Yeah, he's a hero. He came out from New York just to work on the show, which was amazing, because he worked on the world show. He walked the whole way.

He walked the whole way. Because we wouldn't give him bus fare. Right, and he's right now only in Iowa. He's still on his way back home. Yeah. But she so we tell Jot, you know, OK, let's do this. And then she talked to the prompter person and it would come right up and he'd read it and be like, OK, you've got 10 seconds to get out. There was one a couple of times.

I mean, you were very loose, you know? I had a few pills in me. Well, whatever. They worked. Yeah. Because you were as loose as a goose, and it... It was perfect.

Michael Bearden, the conductor, the musical director. Great, who worked out the song with me. He was a great collaborator, right?

Like, oh, okay, let's try D flat.

And then I kept putting off ordering it up. I'm like, I'm like, is this, we're going to have a sandworm. First, the sandworm was sitting in the audience and I'm like, uh, all right, a sandworm.

And then we realized that- Then it was going to come down upside down and talk to you.

For a while.

But when he came out, the first time we rehearsed that song, rolled out on the panel, it was such a great reveal. Such a great, almost as dramatic as you coming out of Demi Moore's back. It was just like, whoa, that's a great tableau. Because you're singing in the foreground and there's this... A worm is pounding away at the keys.

I heard they had to get rid of the shark from Jaws to make room for the Sandworm. The Sandworm. Priorities. But I think they have the right. The sandworm ate the shark because he's above it in the food chain. We mentioned Scott Gardner. He directed The Substance. We did an ad parody, Cinema Streams. Did a great job of that. And then he shot our two Jeff Bezos arriving at the Oscars.

And yeah, Matt Schar, our travel show editor.

We were working on the travel shows during, well, like we had to come in on the weekend and edit and I didn't even tell you because I thought you'd be like, what do you do? Why are you working on anything other than the Oscars?

different writers managers because initially it was often funnier than the writers yes the managers were very they got great ideas they're great to chat with in Salzburg yeah and that was all coming together over there yeah But then we ended up, you know, we reassembled our old team and it's the best move. They're the funniest. Yeah, it was so much fun. It was great.

No, you were on your feet the whole time.

You know, while you were gone, you left Austria and we had to stay there another few days.

Sure, of course. Very quickly. So the first thing I learned about is everyone's replaceable. What's next? So you better show up to work.

That must've been tough for you. Well, yeah, we had to go on to Vienna.

And you're Hindi and you're Chinese.

Yeah. I've got to say. Well, great job. I know I haven't said that until now. No, you really nailed it. Fantastic.

There's work to be done. There's work to be done.

Can I talk to you for a minute about you?

One of the crown jewels.

Yeah. Just so you understand, it wasn't just you that had a difficult journey.

So then... The van was kind of cramped. But we shot... We were like, what do we do? So we... I don't even know if we talked to you about this.

Amazing writers. We just laughed. I missed being in a room with this crew and we all assembled downstairs in this building. It's a big conference room there and we just would laugh all day.

But, I mean, do it.

Jesse Gaskell and Jose Arroyo, who also work on the travel shows. Yep. Skylar Higley. Yep. And did we mention Brian Kiley? Oh, and by the way, yes, twice. Brian Kiley was also there. And then also Brian Kiley.

Scott Gairdner was a writer, yeah, on the TBS show. Josh Comer's? Josh Comer's? Josh Comer's, fantastic. Did we mention Kylie?

Yes.

For halfway through the Oscars.

We had so many ideas that you can't get too attached to any idea because you just know that things are going to get cut. For example, we had a whole big That we loved. It was not the substance cold open that we ended up going with. No, it was a different one. And it was basically hammered out before the fires, the idea of it before the fires happened. And then even after that, we...

kind of honed it, and it would have been like three or four minutes long, and it was you starting out in Wicked, so you're in a scene from Wicked.

Yes.

Yeah.

said we're opening because of the fires with this big yes that's true musical tribute and that we were like wait you you can't go five minute musical tribute and then go into a five or four minute so we needed something quick we needed something quick so i was obsessed right always obsessed with coming out of demi moore's back right since i was a child

That was incredibly helpful. And I think also just, you know, for just confidence in that, oh, no, these jokes are good.

Right, right.

Well, the other landmine, which I didn't think about, I wasn't really aware of, is like I've heard the term award season, but it never – I was like, what award season? There was a different award show. Once we were going to go to a club and they're like, oh, sure, you go on after so-and-so who's hosting the – You know, Judd Apatow's hosting the DGA Awards. He's going to do his monologue first.

And you're just like, wow, there's so many award shows.

It's gone, so... We had a couple of areas where we're just like, ah, no, we can't do that now.

Yes.

Promos. Promos to run on ABC.

There was whispering.

And we tried to put an apron when it was serving you leftovers. And they're like, no clothing on Oscar.

The day we met them, they were so nice. I was like, oh, this is the classic. Rope-a-dope. Yeah. This is a trick. The first time we asked for some, you know, and they were amazing, right? Yeah. Every step of the way.

It was the day after we got back from Spain.

I talked to a few others, some of the writers, and I was waking up at three thinking of things that either were still up in the air or that I forgot to do that day. They came to me at three in the morning. And then I couldn't go back to sleep until this week.