Stephen Colbert & Conan O’Brien on Religion & Spirituality

This article follows yesterday’s piece about taking inspiration from podcasts.

Last month I listened to Stephen Colbert on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and was struck by their conversation about religion and spirituality. I clearly recall listening to it during an evening dog walk. The walk around my block takes around 15 minutes. It was dark out. I rewound and played and made my usual screenshot to capture the parts of the podcast that I wanted to reference.

Conan O’Brien has lots of friends.

Here are a few of my takeaways from this discussion:

1. The inherited feeling that one needs to suffer

Said O’Brien,

I believed that anything good had to come from suffering. I really believed that you have to be miserable.

So Colbert and O’Brien had a wonderful conversation about Catholic guilt and suffering like “Christ on the Cross.”

In expressing his agreement of O’Brien’s comments about suffering, misery and subsequent statements, Colbert replied,

I am also a Roman Catholic and 11-year altar boy, and very devout household and…