Is Conan O'Brien Smart?

Comedy writer, television host and all-round nerdy looking guy, Conan O’Brien is best known for hosting late-night talk shows. He’s the longest-working current talk show host in America, but is he smart?

Conan O’Brien is considered to be one of America’s smartest celebrities, with a reported IQ of 160. The TV personality, who began his career as a comedy writer, was valedictorian at high school and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1985.

Read on to learn more about the famous TV host, his intelligence and his ascent to fame.

Clever Cookie

Conan O’Brien was born April 18, 1963 as the third child of Thomas O’Brien, a medicine professor at Harvard Medical School, and Ruth O’Brien, a retired attorney. Some pretty high expectations to live up to.

Raised in Brookline, Massachusetts as one of six children, Conan grew up in a big Irish Catholic family, and his middle-child status forced him to grow up honing the skills of observation and communication.

After attending high school, where he served as the managing editor of the school paper and graduated as valedictorian, Conan began his college career. It seems that Harvard blood ran through Conan’s brains, and he graduated magna cum laude from the elite school with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature, in 1985.

His thesis was titled “The ‘Old Child’ in Faulkner and O’Connor” and was a staggering 72 pages long, but studying wasn’t all O’Brien invested his energy into at college.

Whilst a Harvard student, O’Brien served as president of the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret organisation that published a comedy magazine. Elected in his sophomore year, O’Brien was the first leader of the magazine to hold the presidency for two terms.

Clearly, O’Brien’s intelligence and charisma meant he was destined for big things, as his college friend Mark Ganem attested: “I always thought that of all the talented people I knew in college, Conan was the most likely to appear on the cover of Time magazine”.

Conan The Writer

With a reported IQ of 160, Conan O’Brien is undoubtedly a very, very smart guy. After graduation, the young O’Brien moved to Los Angeles to start his career and was hired in 1988 as a writer for Saturday Night Live. 

Conan burnt out at Saturday Night Live and so moved on to his second wildly impressive gig, penning Simpsons episodes. Conan said of his good fortune, especially as he had never written a sitcom, “everyone wanted to be on that show, but they never hired”.

Conan wrote and produced Simpsons episodes from 1991-1993, when he was picked as the new host of Late Night and catapulted into national fame. 

Conan The Talk Show Host

O’Brien’s hosting career didn’t exactly start with a bang. The star himself, ever the comedy writer, wrote a satirical and self-deprecating piece for the New York Times reviewing the show’s premiere as a “flop”: “as much as this writer would like to root for Mr. O’Brien, one can’t help but have grave doubts about his prospects”.

Slowly but surely O’Brien’s popularity grew and he hosted ‘Late Night with Conan O’Brien’ until 2009, when he briefly became the host of NBC’s ‘The Tonight Show’. His contract came to an end over a scheduling disagreement with NBC, who wanted to move the time of the show. 

Reflecting on his brief career at the Tonight Show, O’Brien said, “I have had too many good things happen in my career to end on any kind of bitter note.”

That wasn’t the end of Conan, who’s self-titled talk show began airing in 2010. of his new show, he said , “at the end of the day, it’s going to be me doing whatever is in my power to entertain people for an hour. I’ll use dangerous chemicals if I have to. I will meddle with the laws of God.” Clearly, that formula has worked.

Watch the YouTube video below to see Conan O’Brien’s talk show debut – his very first episode of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

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