I was one of a few thousand people at Radio City Music Hall (RCMH) on Tuesday night that gathered to see Conan O’Brien’s “The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour.” It was an evening filled with comedy, rants about NBC, and special guests. Here’s what I took away, in addition to the image of Stephen Colbert and O’Brien in a hysterical yet rather uncoordinated dance-off:

-Team Coco wants you to tweet

Last month when I took my stepdaughter to see “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, we were reminded to turn off our cell phones and pagers (really, the announcement said pagers). For years now, audience members at shows and performances of all kinds have been asked to turn off wireless devices. So I thought it interesting that upon entering RCMH I was greeted with a sign instructing audience members who planned to tweet about the night’s events to use the hashtag #triumph (as in the insult comic dog).

It’s a new world. One where people are compelled to share whenever and wherever they may be. Encouraging tweeting – at a sporting event, performance, etc. - especially with a suggested hashtag, is a smart way to build trackable buzz and create a sense of camaraderie amongst audience members.

-Shtick journalism really resonates

Tuesday’s show was jam packed with special guests – Colbert, Vampire Weekend, John Krasinski, Paul Rudd, Bill Hader and Jon Stewart, clearly the crowd favorite. The applause the “Daily Show” anchor received rivaled when O’Brien first took to the stage. Nearly a year ago, a Time.com poll named Stewart “the most trusted news man in America,” beating out Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams, and Katie Couric. Judging by the crowd’s uproarious reaction to Stewart’s appearance, I’d stay he still ranks number one – at least with folks in their late teens to early 40’s.

I’ve liked Stewart since his days on MTV. He’s funny but beyond that he is articulate, expressive and appears well-informed. He’s addressing important stories in a way that makes people smile and think. Like Mary Poppins sang, “a spoon full of sugar makes the makes the medicine go down.”

Last Friday, I was sitting in the aisle seat of a Northwest flight headed from Detroit to LaGuardia when an older woman approached our row and said she’d rather sit in my spot than shimmy her way to the window seat she had booked. The guy sitting in the middle realized as soon as he moved over to the window seat that this turn of events was less than fair for me. It’s a quick flight (I know it well as we have a client in the Detroit area); it wasn’t worth making them both get up, so in the middle seat I sat.

As soon as she sat down, the woman said in a spirited tone, “What kind of ship are we on?” I looked at the safety card and reported it was an Airbus 330. She then told us she worked in the airline business before we were born. It turns out she was a flight attendant in the mid-1940s.

The remainder of the flight felt a little like talking to Gloria Stuart’s character in the movie “Titanic.” She spoke of the soldiers coming home from WWII on her planes and how she had no way of reheating passengers’ meals, so the food was served quickly and often cold. She said the airline, which was later sold to one of the big players, forced her to quit when she married her husband. Then she asked me, “Do you know where Idlewild Airport is?” She said that was the airport she used to fly in and out of in New York. I told her I hadn’t heard of it and wondered if it was once the name of the airport on Long Island used by Southwest, among others. I made a mental note to check online at home, simply to satisfy my own curiosity, but forgot as soon as the plane landed. After the woman got her things, she leaned over to me and the man next to me and said, “Well, I am glad there are at least two people who can still do business in Detroit.”

I hope I am as alive and engaged as this woman when I am 87 years old.

Fast forward to Monday morning. I picked up a copy of am New York in the lobby of our office building. As I waited for my email to download, I flipped through the quick-serve news source. When I saw the headline, “At Idlewild, books for all places,” I was quickly reminded of our conversation. A review of a new bookstore called Idlewild Books informed me that it was the original name of John F. Kennedy Airport (it’s apparently had a few names over the years, but has been JFK since 1963). The store’s collection includes travel guides, literature and non-fiction titles representing 100 countries across the globe. The moniker is a nod to the airport so many New Yorkers use to leave the country as well as a nice dose of nostalgia.

I originally chose to keep the middle seat because I figured it was easier for everyone. But doing so led to a rich conversation I won’t soon forget and ultimately learning about a new bookstore in which I am sure to spend many hours and even more dollars. It seems that every aspect of how we share and absorb information is ever-changing. But, no matter the source, storytelling remains a constant that binds our present to our past.