Hi, my name is Tig Notaro,
and I feel gay about being Conan O'Brien's friend.
That's a first.
I'm clocking that laughter as hate crime.
Did you see that I did not laugh?
I solemnly nodded.
Do you see how I'm not looking over there?
And it was Matt Gourley who laughed,
and laughed at the idea that someone could even be gay,
which I thought was terrible.
Yeah. Oh, wait.
You're gay?
I am dabbling.
I've been dabbling for decades.
Okay. Not sold on it.
When are you going pro?
(Conan laughs)
You've been in the minor leagues of gay.
Why are you laughing at that, Conan?
Oh, hate crime.
I was laughing at the whole concept-
And don't point at me.
I was laughing at the whole concept
of minor league teams.
I don't think those people are paid enough.
Was gay involved in that at all
because I find that to be a very solemn issue.
Solemn is the word I would use.
About being my friend?
No, I don't, look, sexuality.
I feel gay about being Conan O'Brien,
and I think that's a good thing, I really do.
I love me and I'm attracted to me.
When I catch a look at myself in the mirror,
or any kind of shiny surface, I'm entranced.
I really am.
I think I'm a good-looking tall drink of water.
Yeah?
I think I'm a fun raconteur.
You don't hear that often.
I don't.
I don't hear it nearly enough.
Well, I'm gonna say it a few more times.
I am a raconteur,
and I think an absolute delight, right, Sona?
No, I would disagree. (laughs)
I would disagree with-
The tension in here is incredible.
Yeah.
Tig, I'm gonna preface everything I say now
by telling you how much I adore you, which you know is true.
Yep, I sure do.
Wow, you're just checking things off a list, aren't ya?
Compliment, check.
And you're a hilariously funny person.
Yep.
And I have very much enjoyed every time
I've had a chance to perform with you or talk to you.
Yep.
(laughs)
Yet I feel like there's a lot of shit
you and I need to straighten out between us, you know.
I think there's some bad vibes,
and we need to get this stuff out on the table,
and we need to talk about it.
That's why I'm here.
Okay.
You walk in here with some, I don't know-
Sparkling water with hops in it.
Yes, it's sparkling water with hops in it,
and this is not an ad or anything,
but it's Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher,
and it's got a very sort of niche appeal.
It feels, um, very hip-
Gay. It feels very hipstery.
I would not say gay, I would not say gay.
I would not. Okay.
Bi-curious, has a bi-curious vibe to it?
It does, okay, I'll say it,
it has a bi-curious vibe to it.
Bi-carbonated vibe.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Both bi-carbonated and bi-curious,
and so I thought we'd start there,
we'd start on this drink that you introduced,
which felt like an aggressive move.
You came in here with this aggressively cool drink.
Yeah.
Hipstery drink and you're sipping it,
and you're really enjoying it.
Is it hipstery, why?
It's hopstery.
Don't worry about that, he doesn't understand.
Anything he doesn't recognize is hip?
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Yeah, exactly.
If I'm presented with any kind of math problem,
I say, "Oh, this hipster jargon."
It's just 'cause I'm not good at math.
I don't understand it.
Well, you should hang out at my house
because my son Finn is obsessed with math.
That's a good thing.
And it comes from his obsession with sports,
and he wakes up every morning, gets on Stephanie's phone.
Stephanie, of course, is my husband.
Gets on Stephanie's phone, checks stats.
Five in the morning. Whoa.
Right when he rolls out of bed.
I think that's cool.
That's great when they have an interest like that.
I wasn't saying it was uncool.
I'm just trying to move the conversation along.
You felt it needed moving?
I thought we were rolling along nicely.
Oh, okay, you felt we had a flat
and were stuck in a ditch,
and you got out, rolled up your sleeves,
and got the car going again,
so I guess you're the hero of this situation.
God, I'm so enraged and I don't know why.
I'm talking to someone I adore.
Would you like some hop?
No, I will not have your hoppy, hipstery drink.
My son has, I mean, I just love that,
when you have kids, I have two kids.
Yeah, two, there's two.
My son is just so talented
and good at math and coding,
I don't know where that comes from.
It doesn't come from me.
I don't think it comes from my wife,
but it was present when he was
like one and a half years old.
He just wanted to push buttons.
You remember, I'd bring him by the office, Sona.
I do, I remember he's always liked it.
Yeah, and he just always wanted to get near a keyboard
and start just pushing buttons,
and then accidentally he'd, you know,
program a missile to fire into Russia,
and it caused a lot of problems,
but, actually, we visited the White House once.
Yeah.
And they took us a tour of the Situation Room,
and he pushed a button in the Situation Room,
and a guy came in and went, "Is everything okay?"
Oh my God. And we were like,
"What do you mean?" How old was he?
He was like five.
Wow.
And he had pushed a button in the Situation Room,
which is in the basement of the White House.
That's cool.
And a guy came in and said the, you know,
we're in trouble button was pushed,
and my son was there and he's like,
"It's a button, you push buttons."
Also, why are they letting you in the Situation Room?
Also, why are they calling it the we're in trouble button?
(laughs)
Let's take these one at a time, okay?
Okay.
They call it the we're in trouble button
'cause everyone immediately knows what it means.
And there's a lot of, here's the problem,
it's a lot of writing.
It's a pretty long sentence on a very small button,
so you can't really make it out.
Second of all, why was I in the Situation Room?
Yeah. Consultation.
Come on.
I am brought in occasionally,
I was during the Obama administration,
still in the Biden administration.
I am brought in to consult on foreign matter affairs.
Role-playing the catastrophe?
Oh, okay, everyone's really laughing up a storm.
None of that's true.
But you could see that, they want to get Conan's hot take,
so they bring me in, and I've done that many times.
No, that never happened.
I did it for Truman.
I did it for Eisenhower.
Okay.
Did it for Kennedy.
I've done, you know, whatever.
I do my part for my country.
But, anyway, he was always obsessed with that.
And we salute you.
Well, how come you're not saluting?
Your arms are folded-
Well, it's a podcast.
So you say, "We salute you," yet you refuse to salute?
That's right.
You let the listeners at home
imagine all the saluting that's going on.
(laughs)
Well, I would like to say that
your arms are folded very defiantly.
It is the opposite of a salute.
It's as far from a salute as I can possibly imagine.
Well, you know my delivery is slow,
so this is the beginning of a salute.
It takes a little while for my arms to uncross,
and then the saluting, it goes haywire.
This is like watching a flower bloom.
You can speed up the footage
and we'd see, if we sped it up incredibly,
we'd see an actual salute.
That's right.
But if I actually wanna see it play out,
it's gonna be like 15 hours,
and you have to be in bright sunlight.
Mm.
That's funny because a flower
has to be in bright sunlight to bloom.
That's why that's very funny.
Wow, oh, wow, oh.
Oh, wow.
Is there a way to add laughs later?
Is there a way that we could add just people going crazy?
I'm such an easy laugher, too, sometimes.
I laughed at everything Tig has said so far.
I can extend the silence, if you want.
It's just crickets.
You know what I always think when I hear crickets?
That the crickets are at the show and they enjoy it.
They're laughing, that's the way a cricket laughs?
The crickets are showing their appreciation.
Isn't that the way they mate?
So you're making them wanna mate.
Yeah, my comedy has always led
very quickly to people doin' it.
Do your kids think you're funny?
Do you clown for them,
or do you give them the sort of dry,
classic Tig Notaro delivery?
Well, if it matters to anyone, it's Notaro,
(laughs)
Oh, God.
There's some laughs.
She's been on your show so many times.
I just think it doesn't matter.
I know, that's why I said, "If it matters."
It doesn't matter.
Look, if you'd call me-
How many times did Regis Philbin call me Co-nan?
For all of his entire life, he called me Co-nan.
Who did?
Regis Philbin. Okay.
You mean a Re-gise Phile-bin
Okay, here we go.
But I had never complained,
and this is my way of showing dominance.
I'm not complaining, I said, "If it matters."
It's Tig Notaro.
Yeah I know.
And is it Tig?
Yeah
Just T-I-G?
That's right, three Gs.
There was a while there
where I was calling you Chog, remember?
I do.
I really, I swear to God,
I thought that you were from the Netherlands,
and I was saying, it's Chog No-taro,
and you said, "Please."
And then I worked my way to Tig.
Now we're at Tig Notaro and we're right where we need to be.
Right. That's real progress.
That is right.
My children, at times, think I'm funny.
I think.
You know, we have laughs as a family.
I'm not from social services.
(laughs)
I feel like I'm here with a clipboard,
"And are there occasional laughs?"
There are occasional laughs.
We do smile.
We feel glad.
There are things that make us feel glad.
Yeah, they know that I fly away and tell jokes,
but they're so, they're not even six yet,
and so their sense of humor is,
you know, it's a little silly,
and so we get real silly at the house.
That's good. Yeah.
They like my, I have an animated stand-up special on HBO,
and they've watched that over and over again.
I think they really enjoy the animation,
and I talk a lot about Stephanie in it,
and so they love that, too.
They must be, I mean, that's a kid's dream
is to see one of their parents as a cartoon.
Yeah. I would think.
It seems like that's what they are most interested in.
If my other specials pop up or something on a platform,
they call me Tig, they'll say, "Oh, there's Tig Notaro,"
and what they call me is Mere, which is French for mother,
but when they see me in anything professional,
they say "There's Tig Notaro,"
and then with "Star Trek,"
they wanna fast forward through anything
and just see the spaceship fly by.
They fast forward past your scenes
just to see the spaceship flying?
Yes, I think a lot of people probably do that, too.
It's hard to compete with a spaceship.
Yeah, yeah.
They look so cool. Right.
You know, when they're sort of arcing around in orbit.
You get to look at the planet and the ship,
and kind of look at the little twinkling lights.
I do it, too, I'm just being honest with you.
You fast forward through my parts to the spaceship?
I've never seen you on it,
I just see the ship over and over.
Sona, isn't this true, I had you once
go through all of those episodes of "Star Trek"
and remove all the scenes so it was just spaceship.
We halted production for a few days
just so we could get our crew
to edit out all of your scenes,
just so we could get the spaceship.
$600,000 in cost.
It's very expensive.
Yeah.
Is that a lot of money?
Nicely done, very nicely done.
I'm told that's a lot of money.
You know, people say we live in a bubble,
and I say, "No, we don't,"
'cause I happen to know $600,000, that's like, what is that?
That's like four meals or something.
I mean, it's ridiculous what people have to go through.
Yeah. It's insane.