Tonight, TBS will air an hour-long special called Conan Without Borders: Made In Mexico. [...] “With all of this week’s negative news about the relationship between the United States and Mexico…I thought I’d try and do something positive,” he said on Conan. America’s longest-serving late-night host, O’Brien has distinguished himself by filing more field pieces than his peers, particularly from areas of the world that have experienced tension with the U.S.

TBS’ late-night talk show Conan secretly sojourned to the island nation, becoming the first American late-night program to broadcast from Cuba in over 50 years. [...] O’Brien’s second travel special, Conan in Armenia, proved to be not only another boon for ratings, but also a powerful example of cultural and public diplomacy.

The Havana excursion, which Team Coco’s editors are still furiously cutting together, represents a new form for him, an hour-long episode set to air March 4 where he is the perpetual “fish out of water” — an attempt to use comedy as a kind of diplomacy. “Maybe it's not a bad form of diplomacy. Maybe it's not bad to send a comedian over,” Conan said of the thawing U.S.-Cuba relations spearheaded by the Obama administration.