Conan O’Brien on What Can Go Wrong at the Oscars

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Wnyc, Books, Yorker, Remnick, New, David, Storytelling, Arts, News, Society & Culture

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The hit podcaster and host of next month’s Academy Awards ceremony on the collapse of late-night television, and the deaths of his friends Rob and Michele Reiner.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.4	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Redneck.
0:13.1	Please welcome four-time Oscar viewer, Conan O'Brien.
0:21.7	Hosting the Academy Awards is not an easy gig.
0:25.4	Everybody delights in panning it.
0:27.6	It's always endlessly long.
0:30.7	And it's often a parade of self-congratulation and sanctimony and the musical numbers
0:35.8	are Busby-Bur Berkeley on acid when they succeed.
0:40.5	And yet, as host of the Oscars last year,
0:43.1	Conan O'Brien really nailed it.
0:45.2	It's Hollywood's biggest night
0:46.7	that starts at four in the afternoon.
0:51.8	Everyone here just had brunch.
0:54.2	O'Brien's resume starts out as president of the Harvard Lampoon
0:58.1	and goes right through writing for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons.
1:02.2	And then, of course, he was host of The Tonight Show.
1:05.2	The years have gone by, and now he's one of comedy's wise elders.
1:08.9	Ironic, self-deprecating, zany.
1:11.9	His sensibility translated perfectly to podcasting, too,
1:15.0	on his show Conan O'Brien needs a friend.
1:18.1	And yet you can still imagine Johnny Carson
1:20.3	or Bob Hope delivering some of O'Brien's
	...

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