Letterman was the best. So glad he's stayed pretty visible and relevant in his retirement.

Dave changed the game. Johnny was the king but Dave made it ok to be silly, smart and freaking funny.

Good for you Neal for seeing that Letterman can’t take a compliment. Good for you Neal for exposing the humanity of a rough industry.

Neal is a great interviewer. Looking forward to all your future episodes

Thank you for sharing your humor and yourself. Love you and David Letterman, always. Grateful for you & for helping us laugh & keep finding the laughter. Survival of the Nurtured, In Oneness

My God these guys are just first ballot all stars of laughter!! Love them both!! I remember Dave having a morning show....he was a riot then and I love his new shows!! Neal you are crazy funny.... Loved 3 mics and all your stand up....I know you have pain which is upsetting to me....but the joy you give folks is a blessing to all who listen and watch!!! Love and best wishes to both of you!!!! Thank you!

Neal Brennan is a gift. Dave is too, of course. But when he says he wasn't angry about not getting the Tonight Show? I don't believe him.

It would be so cool to see letterman and Leno do their own episode of cars and coffee at Jay’s garage. They are both guys who love cars and that would be the best tension breaker for them to just talk about a bunch of cool cars first, and then start telling great stories from back in the day.

Good to hear Dave admit that he had been something of a whiner. His resentment over not getting "The Tonight Show" had always seemed quite apparent. Holding grudges is not something to admire or emulate.

Love listening to David Lettermen

Most people shouldn't be doing podcasts, but everyone is. The game really needed you Brennan, someone who can actually fucking "interview". Thank you.

TV poppa is such a class act. Love the show Neal!

Great 1st pod. Couldn’t have asked for a better guest.

Loving this

I really like the older, wiser version of Dave. I actually really enjoyed the younger, occasionally snarky version of Dave, too, but it's nice to see he eventually realized that appearing to be the smartest guy in the room isn't nearly as meaningful as being a decent human being.

Great first guest!

I would have never guessed that David Letterman would become addicted to watching Duck Dynasty

It was just NBC trying to keep gold in both time slots.....

Craig Ferguson FTW

Nice to hear someone calling out Bert for what he is. Couldn't be more leashed.

Interesting commentary about friendship.

Dave tortured himself about everything. He did deserve The Tonight Show. I still can't understand why Carson didn't insist upon it. Carson loved Dave.

That story about the headline has Helen Kushnik written all over it.

Hey Neal! How can I send a gift to you? Is there a good contact on your website?

the suits at nbc were not going to give it to letterman. he disliked them and refused to cooperate them when he had the late night show. one exec said he asked him for some tickets for his son to come to the show and dave refused. years later that exec told jay that there was no way he was going to put up with that attitude for the next 20 years.

Johnny had no say?? He wanted Letterman to take over

He needs to put those backgrounds into the normal map channel.

When Letterman was interviewed by Oprah, he told a completely different story. He said, in that interview, that he had a meeting with the execs and everything but they decided not to go with him and picked Leno instead.

A new pod? Where's LaBinx?? Does she have her own pod?

That is The iconic classic talkshow david letterman now? Wow.. it's kinda felt like another person will that beard! Till i heard his voices! Cool! i do not know if one day I'll decided to let my beard grew widly like that.. I'll try with the goatee first

Get conan on

Jay was a better standup. Letterman had the better show

Will only have guests named Dave/David now. thanks.

Things have a way of working out and they did.

Noooo!!! Bert also has the maaaachine story that he's told once...maybe twice?

he is so damn cool

Is Neal Brennan healthy? Is he well?

I love letterman but nahhh man he was PISSED

Hope you get Dave Chappelle on the podcast, Neil!

Leno wasn't and isn't as happy, nor as easygoing as he seems. He was a cunning individual, or certainly could be. He could be highly, highly manipulative. He was obsessive about writing jokes but even admitted many times himself that Dave was the better broadcaster. Leno's manager for decades was Helen Kushnik, and, although i don't like to speak ill of the dead, she was aggressive, volatile, coercive, a blackmailer, and most comfortable when she was in conflict with others. She'd endured immense trauma and pain throughout her life too. But she helped Jay get the Tonight Show, in very large part, constantly campaigning on his behalf, and even leaking hurtful, demeaning stories about Carson to the press to get Carson to retire. She didn't like Carson or his associates and producers, and when producing The Tonight Show herself as she did for a number of months after Leno got the show, and destroyed formerly good relationships between executives, bookers, and talent. Leno knew what she did and how she operated but pretended, wilfully, to be ignorant of her methods. As she herself put it, he only wanted to eat the steak but ignored the way she was slaughtering the cattle. When she became useless to him, and an impediment, by jeopardising his own relationship with NBC (who were so annoyed with Kushniks antics that they banned her from the Burbank lot, and threatened to fire Leno too) he, within hours, ceased his relationship with her. The woman who had taken him from doing small club shows to television, who got him booked on Letterman and thereby nationally famous, with whom he'd spent decades - and who, when Kushniks husband was on his deathbed due to cancer, the woman Leno promised he'd look after for life. Once he had his objective, The Tonight Show, he had no use for her. He exhibited equally bad behaviour during the Conan fued, promising to leave NBC and hand rhe Tonight Show to Conan then reneging on thst promise some years later. Lots of people blame the NBC executives alone but Leno had a choice as to how he conducted himself, and he conducted himself poorly. It became quickly apparent that his personality was a front. He has few interests outside of comedy (or specifically writing jokes) and cars. He and his wife took separate vacations. They spent little time together. They married due to convenience, because of the tax and orher benefits each would receive. Anyone who has ever dealt with Leno closely or for long periods says the same thing, that he despises emotions, and purports to feel none himself - stressed, for instance, is something he claims is alien to him. So is "feeling down". When asked by a staffer what he did when he was feeling down, he replied, "I've never felt down". Yet he was sneaky enough, during the Letterman conflict, to hide in a closet at night to monitor a high level executive meeting about whether he should stay on as the host of the Tonight Show, or whether he should be replaced by Letterman (in the early period when his ratings did comparatively poorly). He proudly called those se NBC executives, reading verbatim back to them what they'd said from hand written notes he'd taken. He was proud of that, and his actions caused executives to believe there'd been some sort of major security breach. So when Letterman called him "kind of a brat", he was right. Leno is obsessive and driven, and has never had problems disposing of people who got in his way - he just tended to operate in a very passive aggressive way. He's never been assertive enough to admit his own emotional issues, in the same way Letterman or Conan have talked at length about their insecurities.

IMO nbc made the right call with jay leno over David. Was it shady, maybe but the industry was cut throat at the time. Everyone was hungry.

I could watch Leno on NBC, or Letterman on CBS. I almost always watched Letterman even though I recognized I was watching a guy with character problems. But I found Letterman to be funnier than Leno. If I had a situation where I had to pick one of them to save my life, I'd choose Leno. But Letterman was more entertaining.

LOL Bimptbutburnt got a complete slam from the man.

Does Dave have something against Bert Kreischer?

NBC always wanted him to stay on after Leno so he was the one who quit.

Letterman 👓 will always be the best Late Night host 📺

At the end the host said" you're a showbiz animal," but the subtitle said "you're a Jewish anima."

Funny I don’t see people reminiscing about Leno on the Tonight Show but there are tons of people who reminisce about Dave.

As smart as David Letterman is I think he mispronounced Burnt Chrysler

My favorite was Chris Elliot as Jay Leno.

Spit out the question already.

He's full of 💩, he was pissed. Go back and watch all the clips from that time

buzz buzz gang gang

oh man dont do these click baity sound byte juicy clip things. it cheapens what was a lovely conversation.

Letterman was and continues to be the best. And he went to bat for Conan and spoke up when he got screwed.

Letterman was upset back then that he didn’t get the Tonight Show. There’s no doubt about that. Nobody should have felt sorry for him as he got a parallel show anyway. Jay Leno was the right guy for the job. He won all the head to head ratings as well.

Oh wow! Dave Letterman vs. what Dave Letterman would look like if perfectly embalmed at age 11. Just kidding Neal, we love ya

Just saw of the back of this. That Jay and Jimmy Kimble also had a feud. Almost like nobody can get on with Jay. I have no issue with Jay BTW.

I happen to like Letterman and Leno. But I’m not buying what he saying here because every chance he got he made nasty digs at Jay Leno whenever he could. Especially when the Conan thing came up, he was always being very mean and nasty about it. Don’t get me wrong I like letterman, but I don’t believe what he’s saying here. He was hurt and mad when he didn’t get the Tonight Show.

Nobody likes to admit it when a bunch of suits get it right, but in this case, they were right when they picked Jay. He consistently beat Dave in the ratings for 30 years, and that's what the suits wanted. They gave Conan a shot, and his ratings tanked, so they turned to Jay again, and the ratings went right back up. Simple as that. But I'm one of those weird old farts who never thought Carson was all that funny. Too much emphasis on sex, and that's a big turn-off, at least with me. I still miss the real brainy guys like Steve Allen and Jack Paar, who'd do shows with Nobel laureates and such. America has severely dumbed itself down in the last 50 years.

Showbiz is a lady. Showbiz is a laaaaaadyyyy.

Congrats on the show Neal. Please don't have Dave Chappelle on. I'm sure you're tired of the name association.

Letterman was a BABY. Later, Conan was a BABY.

Why is such a big celebrity sitting In this dude's basement? Why does the dude have 29k of followers 🤣.

Old news.

This is BS. He’s been mad about it for decades.

Multi millionaires problems 😂 ooo how sad.

There was no rivalry, Leno wore the late night crown 👑 his whole career.

Jay got the gig because he asked for less.

Dave always talks about how Jay was funny (or the funniest), and I can´t see it. I think Dave is a lot funnier than Jay. A lot.

Letterman is very funny, but seems to be a very small man compared to Leno.

Jay may have been funny early in his career, kind of, but that was only short lived because on his talk show, he was terrible. All he did was laugh, make faces, and snear, rarely funny. He was also a terrible host with softball questions that poorly set up guests for a response. Everything he did was forced. How his talk show ever succeeded is beyond me.

My theory is that the guys like Jay Leno and David Letterman saw the writing on the wall when it came to the new surge of political correctness and wokeness(sorry) and decided to leave the industry before they were forced to be too PC and tame.

Both Leno and Letterman are overrated. Conan was the best, hands down.