All right.

Welcome to 'Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Konan? Visit teamcoco. Com/callkonan. Okay, let's get started.

Hi, Margaret. Welcome to Konan O'Brien needs a fan.

Well, hello there. Matt, 'Conan', 'Sona'. Is that Sona?

Yeah, that's Sona. Hi. Is that Sona? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. It's a Sona lookalike we hired. This is amazing. On the occasion.

Sona hasn't been seen in months.

I had my face in front of her Yeah, we called a bar mitzvah entertainment place.

We said, We need a Sona lookalike. They said, We've got seven. Okay, your name is Margaret. Can she hear us? Can you hear us, Margaret? Did you lose us, Margaret?

Margaret, can you hear us?

Yeah, I can now. Did you black out there for a second? We had a lag there, but it's... Yeah, I did. But now I got you. Okay, let's start at the beginning.

Hello there, Margaret. How are you?

I'm great. Thank you, Konan. Good to see you. Sona, Matt.

I love the way you said my name. How did you say my name again?

Oh, God. I'm like such an improviser.

Konan? Yeah, that's it. Oh, that's it. The last time she said it, didn't it sound a little different? Was it a little Konan. Konan?

Konan? Yeah.

Did I say Konan?

Yeah. I might have said Konan. Yes.

Where are you coming from? Emotionally, no. Where are you in the world right now?

Emotionally, I'm above my head, emotionally. Is there a place out of your head? I am in Calgary, Canada.

Okay, so maybe that's what I was hearing. Maybe there's a little bit of a Canadian- Oh, yeah, eh? Oh, yeah, eh?. You're in Calgary, Canada. Tell us- I'm told that my kids say you're not supposed to make fun of accents. Oh, I wasn't making fun. I was, of course, just showing- She was making fun.

She was saying eh and stuff. Not you.

Oh, well, then you're a terrible person. I would never speak to you again. You're a terrible person, Margaret, and I think your kids are right. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, obviously, I'm a mom. I'm a recent empty nester. Oh. No, no, no. I emptied the nest a bit. I'm one of those unusual It's funny.

I was- Did you murder your family? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Time for this nest to be emptied.

It's close. My kids were away, and then I sold my townhome. Wow. So I sold the nest.

Wait a minute. How old are your kids? Like seven and eight? How old are they?

They're 19 and 21.

Okay, that's still pretty young.

It's still pretty young. Well, okay, so the serious side of the story is I have elderly parents. I'm the youngest of four, and I'm the only single divorced one. And so when we thought it was getting to be the time where it felt like my parents could use some eyes on the ground and someone in there that could really just be there and make sure they don't need more support. So my daughter happened to be in au pair in Italy at the time, and my son was living with his dad. So I was like, All right, guys, go and make a life.

Go and make a life.

I gave you the first 19 years.

That's nice. I have said to Sona many times, Hey, could you do me a favor? Go and make a life. And she made two. She made two.

Well, she's got more on me then and my kids.

I don't know. You seem formidable, Margaret. And tell us, did you grow up in Calgary? Tell us about your life.

I did. Well, it's funny. I was born here, but my parents came from... Well, eventually, they were in Oklahoma when I was conceived, but they're New Yorkers and moved around a ton. And so when I was three, we moved back into the US for a few years. So long story short, I'm Canadian. I grew up here mostly other than living in the States for a few years here and there. But I don't feel super Canadian because I was raised by Americans. Understood.

And I see that there's a- And there's a big difference. There is a big difference, yes. I notice that there's a piano right behind you. There is. Is that just a coincidence or are you...

Oh, wow. I took advantage of the moving in with my parents thing, and I took this career I've had. I've been a piano teacher and early childhood teacher for almost 40 years now. I'm in my early 50s, but I started young. And I did this now or never thing and thought, okay, if I don't have to pay my mortgage, if I don't need quite as much financial support, I'm going to go for it. And I started a couple of unusual musical offerings. So I'm a pianist, obviously. I hope with that. I just made that clear because I'm not super concise in this setting.

No, that's okay. No, you put the main information at the end, but that's fine. In editing, we can put the main information up front. I'm a pianist, but then I also... So you're a pianist, and do you teach kids the piano, or do you teach them all kinds of music?

Well, I do teach piano because it's the easiest place to put up a sign and say, Hey, help me with my career and allow me to connect with kids. So that's really important. Then I also do this thing called Intuitive Composing, where I compose personal soundtracks for people based on, I guess, my intuition, my years of studying and being immersed in music.

Are you saying that you could talk to me for a little get a sense of who I was, and then compose a song about me?

Yeah, let's do this.

I can, yes. It's crazy. I know.

It's not crazy. I absolutely believe you could do it. What song would you... What would the song sound like?

The Jaws theme.

No, not the Jaws theme. The Halloween theme. Okay, everyone has... Yay. That's That one's actually... I think it's actually a combination of the two. The sick thing is- Can you play the bass and the... Oh my God. Yes. Oh, my God, Margaret, that is me. Amazing. That is me. That is me, menacing and clownish at the same time. Wow. That is amazing.

It's funny because I really worked not to write it or create anything for you guys, even though I knew I was going to be on the show. And the weekend, it just came to me. And Konan, I'll be honest. Now, I don't know if I should say Konan or Konan. No, no.

As long as it's said with respect and love, I'm fine.

Is Bugs Bunny, Carl Stalling. I just kept thinking. What does that sound like? Do you guys know?

I know Carl Stalling. Yeah, I know Carl Stalling.

Did you watch Bugs Bunny?

Yes, but which tune specifically?

Well, any of them, because I feel like you could be followed around by a... Because you do it in your podcast.

Yes. Margaret, it's funny you say that about Bugs Bunny and how the Bugs Bunny themes and background music remind you of me, because I've always thought I was a cartoon character. I've felt that way my whole life. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So that's a very apt perception, and I will take it.

I was an avid cartoon watcher, and your Bugs Bunny was the thing. And when you You tend to do those like, da, da, da, da, da, da, and you go into the funny accents like, here, see, I don't want to... You live in that. I swear you live in a live world of Carl Stalling.

Yes, I do, Margaret. You just showed me myself, and now I'm filled with dread. Oh, no. I don't want to be near that guy. Are you kidding? But you know what I love, Margaret? I love that you're working with kids and you're making this music and you say intuitive music. So are they always using instruments or are they using stuff other than instruments sometimes to make music? Okay.

So the intuitive composing is one of the things I'm offering. And the other thing, when I'm working with early childhood, so children that are five and under, it's called music in nature. And the intuitive side of that is just working with what is around and following the children as they explore and then creating activities based on that. For example, we're out in a natural park. If we find sticks, we're using the sticks and we're playing drums on the trees or we're playing a graded fence xylophone, and we're touring the park. I obviously have a lot of songs I've created and activities to lead. But if something occurs to a child or even sometimes a parent, then I just change gears and try to follow their lead in that respect.

That sounds fascinating because what you're doing is taking anything around you that's found and then showing kids this can be music, or if not music, we can make noises with this. And then it's actually probably the most simplest form of creativity and a great thing for kids to learn, I would think.

Well, yeah, I think so because, I mean, arguably just in any art, Any sound is music, right? And so what's fascinating, too, is you can teach children so many things. We spend a lot of time at the river. And so right now in Calgary, we've got a lot of ice on the river's edge. So if we can yank pieces of ice off and we can hit the rocks with them, they make these incredible exploding sounds. But at the same time, children, their little brains, they're learning about the physics. If we throw things, how things land, I have to stop.

I hope they're also learning, Stay away from an icy river. Are there parents that get worried about the kids? And you're saying, Hey, jump into that canyon and try and see if you can find something to make music out of?

This is the woman that also sent her kids packing at 7:00 AM.

Let's walk on this really thin ice and see how many cracks we can make.

Yeah, I know. Matt just pointed out you're told your kids to get lost at 17. I'm pretty careful.

There's a guest room here for them.

Oh, yeah. Always nice to have a guest room. Sort of.

A couch. There's a couch.

You're a five-year-old. Hey, five-year-old. We got you a guest room for when you're not working at the docks.

I'm busy writing intuitive music, so you're going to have to sleep in a guest room. Yeah. But so say today, we're in a It's a tree's melt pattern, the extremes, right? And so today I had little kids that were in their rubber boots and rain suits and holding my hands. We were literally walking in the river. The temperature is, I guess it's in the high 50s right now, speaking your language of Fahrenheit.

Well, we are the- Which is very warm. We are the dominant empire. Oh, my God. Oh, right. I'm sorry. We're like the Rome.

The one country.

Well, You're welcome to your strange methods, Celsius and such.

Yeah, we really have our shit together. Well, we do.

We invented the Ringding.

What's a Ringding?

What? It's a cake. It's a cake. You know what a Ringding is? Have you ever had a Ringding before?

You mean a ding-dong?

You mean a Ringpop?

No, there's a Ringding, isn't there?

I don't know what a Ringding is.

A Ringding? I know a Ding-dong.

Look up a Ringding. A Ringding? I thought there was a Ringding. I I don't know.

This is important. We get to the bottom of this.

I know, as long as- This is the stuff we worry about here in America, Margaret.

No, Ring Dings. That's it right there.

So it's a knockoff DingDong? Yeah.

We knew of Ring Dings, and I think that's what they had maybe in our area.

I didn't know about- Is a DingDong a- A DingDong is a legit version of one of those.

I love DingDongs.

It's a little cake- Is it like a twinkie?

Covered with chocolate, and then there's a cream filling.

Yeah, but it's the same thing as a Ringding. I think in our area, we had RingDings.

Yeah, but You're in our area now. Yeah, excuse me. Here, it's a ding-dong.

You're in the ding-dong territory. I bet they're different companies.

Hostice and then whatever. Drakes. Drakes Cakes. Dog and pony ship makes that.

No, no, no. Drake's Cakes.

No one cares.

Look, we got to the... You know what's sad, Margaret?

Hostice is the dominant empire.

At least.

Margaret? Yes. The thing I love about this interview is that we got to the crux of who Margaret is, which is that ding-dongs are made by Hostice, and Ringdings are made by Drake's Cake. Correct. That's all. I knew that that's what we were going to talk about the minute I knew that you worked-I was hoping we'd go in that direction. Doing natural music with children. Right. Well, these kids sound hardy. They get out there. Sometimes these days, parents are too... That's the hard part. Parents are too... Not Sona, but a lot of parents are too worried about their... No, a lot of parents these days are too worried about their kids and rough play. Sona, not so much. She often doesn't know where they are. No idea. That's true. I found them in the mall. Remember when I found your kids just wondering the parking lot of a mall?

Yeah, they were just in the parking lot.

Yeah, and you were giving them each a knife and told them, Go get dinner?

Yeah, they were going, Mama, mama. And I was like, Figure it out.

Figure it out. Yeah. And then you rented out their room.

Margaret. Sona probably knows that nowadays there's a huge amount of information around risky play and how important it is for kids, which makes me laugh because I'm closer to Conan's era. Risky play was just go outside and don't come back until dinner time. Yes, that's it. But nowadays, it's contrived. I happen to be in a great spot with my year-round Music and Nature program to encourage parents because everyone Resilience is the other catchphrase that parents are using right now. We want to teach resilience, which I would say as a mother of a 19 and 20-year-old that probably was too in their face. I think it's a That's a good thing that we're hopefully going in the other direction.

I was of the generation where your parents never knew where you were. You wandered around. Someone invited you to get into a van. You just did. If you were gone, now, and if you We're gone for a couple of hunts.

We'll hold out some Ringdings when you are ready.

They'd give you a ring ding and you get all sleepy, and then you'd wake up in a different state. We're having lag again. But what I'm saying is that's the world I grew up in, and it was a better time. It was a better world. She frozen. Someone's What did you put in this Ringding? I'm not taking that Ringding. I'll take the untainted ding-dong. This is the dumbest... By the way, Margaret, it's not your fault. This is the dumbest conversation we've ever had. It's gone off the track more. It's completely not linear in any way.

That's true, but still, ding-dong is better than the ringding. So much so her computer is defying to be a part of it.

I thought she was just staring at us trying to figure out. Okay, I think we can keep this part.

Well, clearly, we have more stuff we need to talk about with Ringding. Things and ding-dongs while she's getting back to us.

Margaret's Zoom froze. While that's happening, we're going to continue. I don't see any reason why we should stop, but it froze. It's probably something to do with, look, I'm not saying it's because of the connection in Calgary. It could be something's wrong with the telecommunications here in Los Angeles. I'm not going to assume that it's one or the other. I just do know that this is Eduardo's job, and he's not doing it. Maybe they are in for her. Yeah, who knows? The important thing is that we're together, and while she I have a ding-don story. Hold on. I bet you do. I want to hear this. What I'm saying is this gives us a chance to talk about ring-dings and ding-dongs while Margaret's not on. Go. Tell your ding-dong story.

It's not a good story.

I like it. My dad worked- Okay, I'm back.

No.

Hold Margaret, just pause for a second.

I want to hear the ding-dong story.

It's not even a story. It's a really quick thing my dad used to say. He used to work in a catering warehouse for lunch trucks, and we'd always call him and be like, Can you bring us some ding-dongs and donuts? And he'd always say, I already have two ding-dongs That's what I think of every time I think of ding-dongs.

That wouldn't work with ring-ring or whatever.

No, Ring-Dings.

Whatever. But the point is, you can't even have fun with it.

I called my father once at his lab, and I said, Dad, can you bring some Ring-Dings by Drakes when you come home? And he said, Fuck you, I'm working. Isn't that a charming story, too? That's a charming story. It's just as charming as your story. That's pretty typical for the '70s. Oh, my dad, what a scamp. It's a different time.

Oh, God. Margaret, it's probably time.

This is the hardest I've seen Sona laugh in a long time.

Look, he just pushed the mic towards you.

I'm joking. I want all those laughs. Get those laughs. He runs on laughs. I want those laughs. Oh, my God. I hate when she hides from a mic when she's laughing. Oh, God. Those are golden.

Oh, my God.

Hey, we're almost out of time. Margaret, do you think you could play us out with a little Konan's theme? Sure.

I got a Konan theme. So, yeah, I thought of something.

Okay, here we go. Oh, this is a different one.

It's not going to be super long, but can I talk you through it? Sure. Yes. Okay, so C major is your key, your key. Yeah, I think so. You're a super straightforward guy, right? Yeah. Okay. And again, the Carl installing an upbeat. The theme is... If you remember, Oh, We're the Boys of the Chorus. Yeah.

Do you like our show? I'll play with that a bit, and I'll It's a different harmonic foundation.

Something like that. That's great.

I love that.

When I start developing it, we got to get the zany... The thing about you that I find having listened to your podcast, and this is I can only write what I know of you, which is the external Konan, is you'll just come out from left field with these zany things. So what I'd start doing is I take the super straightforward theme and start adding these dissonances, right? Because those now make it into... I take the straightforward C major and I'm adding some flat sevens and some flat thirds.

You know what I love is that what I'm getting from that is someone who's basically upbeat, straightforward, well intentioned, but very damaged and broken. Like the I can feel the little shards. You're open about that. Little shards of glass. Doesn't that sound like- It's just an accuracy. Yeah, little broken- It should be played on a honky-tunk piano that's detuned a little bit. It's ironic because it sounds like jazz, and you despise jazz. I don't despise jazz. Yes, you do. No, I don't know. I despise. But here's the thing. There's some jazz I really love, but there's some of it that I think is, you guys are just... Man, oh, God.

The jazz aspect of it, though.

He likes the ringdings of jazz.

Yeah, you like the ding-don.

The jazz aspect of it is to It's the intellect because Konan's got this intellect, right?

Yeah, Matt. What about my intellect? Where?

And jazz is the intellectual music, right? It's a very intellectual...

That's what I like when I listen to music, is some intellect. So you don't at me by a guy with a goatee and some bongos. You don't like the jazz? But a guy with a goatee and some bongos. I'll take the jazz out. No, I like some jazz. I'll take the jazz out. I like some jazz. We shouldn't talk about it. Eduardo takes it very personally because he's got one of those big collections of jazz, and he's always drinking his various laqueurs and going out to late night clubs. His barret. Yeah, he's got a barret.

He's like, I just put weird hunker notes in there.

No, I never had you be that. I know what you'd be. What? You know be that. I know be that? You were never the guy in the barret. You were never that hipster. You were a different guy. You were the guy that went to the Rose Bowl swap meet. You bought an Asusophone.

I'm just saying they're overlapping Venn diagram.

You had a lot of irony going on. There's less irony with Eduardo. He just loves that bad music. Anyway, Margaret, it has been very nice talking to you. And I really like the themes that you came up with me. And you know what I'd like to do someday? Meet up with you. We'll take a walk in the woods and recreate my theme using rocks, sticks, leaves.

That sounds amazing.

And then we'll go and find the children that we weren't minding who are rapidly floating down the icy River. Okay? Because you are all for risky play.

I'm all for risky play. Yep.

Well, that sounds... Doesn't that sound a little maudy? Sounds risky. I'm all for risky Yeah.

Yeah, Margaret.

Yeah, Margaret.

Yeah, Margaret. You're Canadian. You keep it close to the vest.

Oh, my God. No comment.

It was lovely talking to you, Margaret. Thank you so much. Yeah. I hope we meet someday in person. You seem like a really cool, nice person.

Thank you. Well, this was a real honor. I've lived now. I've lived.

Oh, that's... Wow. Well, I think you were living before, and if anything, we diminished a bit. But thank you.

You take care, Margaret. No, it's fantastic. Thank you, guys. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam Ofsessian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, nick Liao, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Your Wolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Erin Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Brit Kohn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Konan? Call the Team Coco Hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It, too, could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Konan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in Association with EarWolf.