June 7, 2025

Conan O'Brien's Travel Hacks

Show Notes
Transcript

Johnny Mac dives into a fascinating interview with Conan O'Brien about his travel packing tips, recommending versatile clothes and practical necessities. The episode also includes stand-up comedy insights from John Mulaney, Iliza Shlesinger, and Mark Watson, and touches on a controversial joke by Paul Foot about diabetes. Additionally, it highlights the BBC's new comedy lineup and discusses the impact of AI on the comedy industry.

00:00 Conan O'Brien's Travel Tips
00:51 Conan's Packing Essentials
02:19 Conan's Travel Toiletries and Tips
03:18 John Mulaney
03:43 Iliza Shlesinger's Comedy Advice

04:19 International Comedy and Mark Watson's Show
06:16 Controversial Comedy and Paul Foot's Diabetes Joke
07:33 Comedy Awards and Industry Critiques
08:40 AI's Influence on Comedy
09:34 Conclusion and Subscription Information

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Caloroga Shark Media. Hey there, I'm Jenny Mack with your

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daily comedy news. Wirecutter caught up with Conan O'Brien about

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how he packs when he travels. I just found this fascinating.

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A conin opened up with a joke, telling Maria Adammant,

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who writes for Wirecutter, that he does travel with fake beard's,

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fake mustaches and a weird don Keyxote costume. Those are

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props that gets sent ahead. But more seriously, when Conan

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travels alone, it's carry on or bust my kind of guy.

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Conan pro tips from Conan O'Brien underpack, bring versatile and comfortable,

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multipurpose clothes, stick to a singer color palette. Pretend you're

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Steve Jobs. He suggests two pairs of jeans, one blue,

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one black, that takes care of ninety five percent of

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the situations you'd be in. According to Conan, his favorite

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brand makes stretchy pants with a dash of krag. Conan says,

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you could do yog in these, but they look just

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like regular jeans and they're incredibly comfortable. That's a good tip.

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Conan was even wearing one during the interview. He pairs

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his jeans with a classic T like his favorite dark

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blue T shirt from sun Spell. He explains it's not

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a cheap T shirt, but they hold up pretty well

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over time and they don't start to look ratty. They

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actually look kind of nice. Conan also brings a dark

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blue cashmere Brunello zip up hoodie, which he's had for

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years and explains, I've noticed you can wear that with anything.

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It can go to almost any climate. You can just

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wear it. You can wear that and be a chill,

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relaxed dude headed down to the gym, or you can

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wear it underneath an overcoat. You know, you look like Sting.

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On his way to the Grammys, Conan says, though you

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don't need a luxury version, literally could get something similar

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at Banana Republic. Also in the bag a versatile dark

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blue suit from State and Liberty. He likes it because

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it's made with a light stretching material and says he

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can attend a funeral, we're under a jiu jitsu tournament,

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and neither way you're set. He always travels with a

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good pair of black running sneakers. If you're squinting, it

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kind of looks like a shoe. That's my go too

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as well. I'm actually you hear that. I'm wearing black

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sneakers that kind of look like a shoe right now.

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You know, if you're wearing dark pants, it's cone and

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no one's really banging attention. You can also walk for

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like twenty miles. You can go to the gym if

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you're crazy enough to go to the gym while traveling. Also,

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you're Conan O'Brien's and nobody's gonna be like, eh, I

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don't know it was going to give him the Oscar's job,

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but he showed up in sneakers. You know, It's not

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like he's going for a job at the bank. He

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wears glycerin GCS twenties from Brooks. I have a pair

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of those, not in black. My black ones i'm wearing

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are Nikes, but my current running sneakers are Brooks. Wow,

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all right, Conan, get it done. I like this next

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part about his toilet trees. He says, I always make

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sure the containers are approved by the Heathrow Airport website,

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but as even so, the bottles will still be thrown

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out in front of me by a delighted TSA employee

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from Manchester. I followed every single rule that he throw has,

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and they still hold it up in front of me

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like it's rat feces and dispose of it. They then

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get into there's a lot of Aaron wirecutter, if you

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want to read it. They get into which razor he brings.

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He talks about adapters, has been here, done that. I

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always like to bring the wrong adapter for the country

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I'm going to. It's the correct adapter for the country

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I previously went to. And that's true every time, and

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I'm not even kidding. Don't cover your passport, Conan said,

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I used to think it was cool to have a

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little cover for your passport. Don't do it. Everybody in

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every country treats it with disdain. They make you remove

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your passport for a little cover. They had the cover

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back to you like, here's your affectation. He uses an

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air tag and his luggage. It tells you that your

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luggage is in these zories, but no way helps the

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situation other than that. The air tag is just a

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way of laughing at you, mocking you. It's like a

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kidnapper who says we have your relative and you're never

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getting him back. You'll find that in the New York

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Times wire Cutter, that's pretty good. During a recent episode

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of the Town with Matthew Beloney, matt asked John Mullaney

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what cities he thought were best for playing stand up.

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Mulaney said Dublin and then switched to Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham

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was just great. I just walked around. My son was

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probably twelve months old. I was pushing him around the

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city and a stroller, and Everybody's like, we're coming to

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the show tonight, And then everybody was at the show.

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It was that kind of town. Golderby dot com, you're

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home for comedy News asked Eliza Selessinger. What's some great

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comedy advice should pass on? She said, honestly none. I

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hear about comics have mentors when they start, but I

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never had that. After take years, I thought I knew everything,

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but then you realize how much you don't know. The

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biggest thing is that comedy, and really any career was

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a marathon, not a sprint. You have to keep working,

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keep evolving, and be grateful for the chance to create

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a body of work over time. I want to look

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back and see my audience growing with me and not

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be a flash in the pan who in the comedy

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world inspired you, Eliza Selessener her answer, Adam Sandler was

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huge for me growing up. I always loved sketch comedy,

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which shaped my storytelling style. Wasn't until much later I

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realized how much that influenced me. Often on the weekends,

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I'll do international stuff, and I've got a whole bunch

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of international for you here. And if none of that

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interests you, you are dismissed. I understand. I'll see you tomorrow.

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Mark Watson gets a lot of buzz. He was recently

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enjoying the Prague Fringe and spoke to English radio dot CZ,

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which normally would get tagged with your home for comedy news,

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but I already used that joke. He liked Prague. Two

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of my kids have been to Prague separately. They both

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loved it too. Mark Watson said, there's a kind of

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owe the architecture in the history and how relatively unspoiled

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it feels. There's a real grandeur. Two I've been too,

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slightly similar central European cities like Vienna, and it even

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reminds you Munich. There's certainly a joy for a British

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person with the space, with the big city squares, and

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also all the colors. It's lovely to look out the

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window and feel so far from home. It's a very

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nice city. Mark's show is called Before It Overtakes Us.

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What's it about? He says, I suppose it's a little

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bit ominous. The show's inspired by a conversation I had

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with what was supposedly a customer service person but proved

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to be a chatbot in AI. That was last year.

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The first time I'd ever been successfully condonent as you're

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talking to a non human believing it was human. Made

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me think a little bit about the changing face of

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humanity faced by all this technology. I'm forty five. I've

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seen twenty years of relentless technological change. For most of

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it I felt slightly behind the pace, but not in

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a way that's too much of a problem. Now it

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does feel as if it's getting away from me, and

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I can feel the next generation is starting to do

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things I don't understand. Welcome to Old Man Mountain, Mark Watson.

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Interesting topic here performing in English, where that's many people's

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second language. Mark says, it's a British person. You get

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complacent about that. I've performed in the Netherlands and Denmark,

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and yesterday I had performed a late night's show after

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my show and there were people on the bill from India, Russia, Romania,

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all them performing to each other in English. Were really spoiled.

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As anglophones, you can pretty much take it anywhere. Of course,

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in other countries, I can and would try to speak

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a little bit of German and Germany and French in France.

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Now I've tried to do snatches in those languages. Here,

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I've had very little time to adapt to the local language,

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so I'm going to once again rely on any checks

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there to be fluent or fluent enough. Meanwhile, an Australian

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disability campaigner has hit out at an English comedian over

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a joke about diabetes. Carmen is a Type one diabetic

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and was appalled when comedian Paul Foot went into a

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ten minute stretch on diabetes at his show at the

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Moth Club in East London about ten days ago. In

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the chunk, Foot quote made fun of people unquote who

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wear continuous glucose monitors. That's a device that diabetics used

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to keep track of their blood glucose levels. He then

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apparently mimiced a diabetic having in an episode shaking on

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stage before were suggesting that the person in the sketch

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died after suffering a heart attack. Carman shared footage on

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TikTok where she could be heard booing and calling out

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the comedian. She yelled out, that was a crap joke.

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I have Type one diabetes. That was extremely insensitive and misinformative.

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Foot shot back and said he didn't think he was

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being insensitive, continued to set Carman yelled back, I don't

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think it's up to you to decide if it's insensitive

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or not. I'll remind everyone this was happening at a

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comedy show. Foot said, due to the failure of you

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to grasp with that civil intellectual point, then went on

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to argue that comedy is subjective, and due to the

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failure of you to grasp that simple intellectual point, the

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show's ending in an awkward way. Congratulations to Sean Patrick,

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who won the Not So New Comedian of the Year award.

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Kind of like this. This award is aimed at ax

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who've been doing it for a while but of yet

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to have a big break. Was previously known as the

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Old Comedian of the Year, but they switched that around

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Julia Rayside wrote an opinion piece that I found on MSN.

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Julia is upset that the BBC's new comedy lineup is

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full of white men and says we've gone back in time.

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Julia writes, the latest late of BBC comedy commissions announced

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recently features almost entirely programs by white men. A great

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white side of testosterone is set to wash over our screens.

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I had read to you some of these shows, how

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about a week ago. Remember Mackenzie Crooks in One and

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Michael Palin's in one. Julia Wrights. Women writers have been

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almost entirely sidelined. The one exception is Diane Morgan's Android.

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They said, come about a humanoid robot design to keep

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the elderly company. But we're back to the days of

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one woman on the bill. A single female is on

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one side of the seesaw while the football team of

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white men weighs down the other end. The Christmas one

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off Stuffed Dust are the only non white man Guz Cohn,

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but it's written by Andy Milligan, another white guy. And

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Crackt wrote about the biggest gatekeeper in comedy, which is

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a piece of computer code. Eli Youwdon writes, AI has

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already taken over comedy, but just from the booker's office,

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Eli writes. At the current moment in AI has a

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massive influence over the world of stand up comedy. It's

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not writing material and it's obviously not performing it. What

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it is controlling, and heavily is if you ever see

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the material. I'm not looking to really togate for the

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thousand times how Instagram is effected the quality of comedy.

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For Instagram to exist and for the comics well suited

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to get famous off it more power too than when

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I can't stomach is success or failure on a singular

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platform being used to gatekeep the entire pursuit. What set

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me off was a post on Instagram by comedian Charles Gould.

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The post was a bit resulting from a meeting with

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an agent where he was told in plane terms that

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until he had at least one hundred thousand followers, the

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door was closed. It irked me, especially because the job

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of agents and managers and maybe my childish mind is

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to find talent and then help that talent find an audience.

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That's a good point, and that's your comedy news for today.

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