By Robert Scucci
| Published
Conan O’Brien, like most Golden Era Simpsons writers, is a rare breed. He’s made a career out of a unique brand of low-brow humor that somehow could only come from an Ivy League education. Between his upbringing, education, and naturally unhinged comedic sensibilities, he’s brought us “Marge vs. the Monorail,” the best Hot Ones interview of all time, and decades of late-night television that, in hindsight, makes me realize he was always at his best when broadcasting after midnight.
I could spend the rest of my life talking about every hilarious Conan O’Brien moment, but there’s one from 2007 that may very well be the crowning jewel of his entire career: his interview with overtly enthusiastic and egregiously eccentric bread expert Steven Kaplan. For years, the segment was so perfect that I genuinely thought it had to be staged.
It wasn’t staged, but I’m about to unpack why it feels like it was, and why it may very well be the funniest moment in television history.
Good Bread Is Back, Baby!
In 2007, Late Night with Conan O’Brien brought Steven Kaplan on as a guest for one of its segments. Kaplan is an Ivy League scholar with multiple degrees from Princeton University, Université de Poitiers, and Yale University. He has spent decades studying (and teaching) multiple aspects of the French Revolution, with a primary focus on bread, grain trade, and provisioning. In other words, he’s a total bread nerd.
Conan O’Brien, who served as president of The Harvard Lampoon during his college years, clearly didn’t know what he was getting into when a man who was arguably more educated than him sat in the interview chair to talk about his one burning passion: good bread. Kaplan was there to promote his then-new book, Good Bread Is Back, but instead we got a masterclass in improvisational comedy.
At first, the interview starts out as normally as it possibly could. O’Brien asks Kaplan why he got into bread studies, and Kaplan immediately sets the tone for the rest of the segment. He explains that if you want to understand a country’s history, you need to understand its dietary habits and the way people congregate around food, pointing to breadmaking as a perfect entry point.
Things completely go off the rails after Kaplan compares the breadmaking process to a sexual act, explaining that you need to mount the dough, fondle it, and yes, even inseminate it with live yeast. Conan, being the formally trained comedian that he is, immediately leans into Kaplan’s eccentricities, and Kaplan, an Ivy League academic who very clearly shares similar comedic instincts despite his career path, catches on almost instantly and commits to the bit as aggressively as humanly possible.
What starts as O’Brien antagonizing Kaplan quickly turns into Kaplan getting the upper hand, especially once they start comparing loaves of bread and Kaplan produces a comically large bread knife that he just so happens to carry on his person at all times.
That Is The Tautology In Which Non-Believers Are Locked Into!
What makes the Steven Kaplan interview feel so surreal is that it plays out exactly like the kind of written sketch you’d see on SNL or I Think You Should Leave. Kaplan walks on set, Conan asks what he’s about, Kaplan passionately explains bread, Conan pokes fun at him, Kaplan leans into sexual innuendo, Conan becomes visibly horrified, Kaplan starts aggressively fondling loaves, and Conan completely loses control of the interview.
After all the buildup, they finally taste the bread, which prompts Conan to shrug and admit, “Yeah, it’s good bread.” The final punchline comes when they explain that professional bread tasters are categorized as either spitters or swallowers. A visibly defeated O’Brien, who only learns this terminology after already gulping down his bite, quietly realizes he’s a swallower.
It’s a masterclass in escalation that only two incredibly smart guys with a shared love for absurdity could pull off. O’Brien, one of the funniest men alive, immediately recognized the opportunity to create something memorable with a fascinating guest, and Kaplan, armed with an intimidating academic resume and surprisingly sharp comedic instincts, recognized exactly what Conan was doing and ran with it completely unprompted. It becomes a battle of wits devoted entirely to going as low-brow as possible.
It’s been nearly 20 years since Late Night with Conan O’Brien aired the Steven Kaplan segment, and not a single week goes by that I don’t think about it. To this day, it still might be the funniest moment in television history.
