Matt Groening

My name is Matt Groening, and I feel honored about being Conan O'Brien's friend. And why? Because, Conan, you are the Bob Hope of the 21st century. Oh, my God. So I'm going to have a huge deal with Texaco. Yes, exactly. I'm going to stick around and show business for a really long time and confuse the younger generation. Fall is here. Hear the yell. Back to school. Ring the bell. Brand new shoes. Walking blues. Climb the fence. Books and pens. I can tell that we are going to be friends. Yes, I can tell that we are going to be friends. Hey there. Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Sona Misesian, hello. Hello. And Matt Gorley, how are you? Hi, boss. Driving to work today, I saw so many Waymos driving around. Oh, yeah. I saw, I think. In one minute, I saw six different self-driving Waymo cars zip by, crisscrossing, going this way and that. I started imagining that they were ghosts commuting. Oh, my God. I like that. And it made me really happy. Oh, wow. It made me really happy because I just thought, okay, there is an afterlife and you're a ghost, but you still have to get around Los Angeles. You have shit to do. Do you know what I mean? And they have to sit in traffic. They have to stop and get gas. And, man, it's costing a lot right now. Straits of Formosa are closed. And so that, yeah, they're just invisible. They don't fly? No, they don't fly. Okay. Yeah. What are their ghost jobs that they're going to and from? Well, you know, I saw one. It was probably a podcaster. I saw another one who works at Lowe's. Oh, wow. You know, in the gardening department. So, yeah, they just have jobs like anyone else. And it's funny because sometimes they get into. You know, there's a little road rage and the ghost will flip someone off, but nobody knows. You were just thinking this on the way in? I was thinking all of this while I was driving around and it was making me happy because then I'd see another one pass by and I'd go like, oh, there's a ghost. He looks like he's late. But they're still on their phones, so there's just a phone floating. Yeah, there's a phone floating there. They're watching their phones. They're buying shoes on the Internet when they can't wear shoes. It's just sad. I was on my way to work here one time on one block. I saw a Waymo and then one of those Coco delivery bots. And then I. I shit you not, an Orthodox Jewish person on a hoverboard. You know, those one-wheeled little things. Stop. Sure. All on one block. But wait, if you're an Orthodox Jew, you can ride a hoverboard? I think some things. I thought there was so. Oh, maybe that's a certain. That's just on the Sabbath. Just on the Sabbath, you can't ride a hoverboard. Right. It says that in the Old Testament. It does. No hoverboard on the Sabbath. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. You know, those little robots, those. Cocos. Yeah, Cocos. They. I'm just going to admit that I'm. Whenever I see one of those, I want to hit it with a bat. Come on. I don't have any hostility towards it, but it does look like you just want to give it a whack. Because it's going. It's making it. He's just doing his job. Is he, though? Yeah, he's delivering stuff. I have a lot of. Yeah, a ghost just ordered some tacos. I love those little robots. I have a lot of sympathy towards them. But it can't work. Does it work? I can't believe it's still going. It's still going. I know. I just think that, you know, it's so hard to get people to follow the social contract and not spray paint over something or not park terribly or not smash something that's nice, that's sitting out. It's very hard to get people just to follow that rule. But once you have a little tiny, little robot machine going, excuse me, excuse me, you know, I just, I mean, I'm a law-abiding citizen, but I want to smash that thing. You know, you're not alone as the former operator of. Of a moving trash can. I can tell you, a lot of people's instinct was to kick that thing. No. Not just kids. And just back it up in case people aren't aware of your origin story. Yeah. You. Uh-huh. This is your origin story. This is your being bit by a radioactive spider. Your job at Disneyland was to control a robot trash can that would walk around and say, you know, feed me litter. Yeah. And you were sort of in the background with a remote control in your pocket. Yeah. And a lot of little bully kids would come up and just start. Start wailing on the thing. Of course they would. And to the point where I would say in the trash can voice, like, where are your parents? Why aren't they doing anything? Somebody please help me. And he has a nerd voice. Did you ever say, oh, the humanity? I did. I literally did. Did you say that? I swear to God. Of course you did. All the time. Wow. Am I not a man? If you cut me, do I not bleed a pound of flesh? Oh, my God. That's incredible. I truly did, yeah. I would say that all the time. If I had that gig, the things I'd be doing would get me thrown out and maybe Disneyland shut down. Yeah. Because I would say things like, I'll murder you. I wasn't far off. I was always hitting on the other trash cans and, you know, saying, like, don't divorce me and things like that to the other trash cans. Like, they had a prior relationship or something. Or why won't you talk to me? Did people. Did they have to have conversations with you if you crossed a line? Was there, like, a manager? Like, a trash manager? Yeah. No, no. He had. He weren't. Goofy. Goofy was. Oh, I gotta talk to you. He's got his arms crossed. The Anaheim Department of Sanitation would come in and give me acting notes. No, they left us alone because it was just a one-person job. They often forgot about us. So I was just out there on my own for the most part. It just occurred to me, let's try and do something where we have a little Cocoa Bot, call a Waymo, and then get in. Wouldn't that be great? Wait, the Cocoa Bot calls a Waymo? Yeah, we call. Or we call a Waymo for a Cocoa Bot, and the Waymo pulls up, and then the Cocoa Bot. And we put a little ramp up, and it gets in, and it goes. You tell the Cocoa Bot it has to deliver something inside the Waymo, so that's why it thinks it has to get in. And it goes in, and then. I mean, I would just love. Yeah, then it's a robot driving a robot around. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, my boys are at the age where they're always just gonna know robot cars existed. It's crazy. Isn't that nuts? I think about that all the time. Yeah. I would say that to Glenn. Just, look, no one's driving the car, and she's like, big deal, granddad. Big deal. You're not my real father. Where's my father? Who's this guy? Yeah, you talking trash can. That she respects. I love Glenn bullying you. She does. I think that'd be fun. She does. Were there other trash can guys? Yeah. Were you guys a crew? Well, we never worked together, because it was always, you know, it was a solo job. Were you friends? Yeah, we were friends. Did you watch, and were, like, judging? Was there one guy who was better at it than you, and you ended up being a man? You're looking at him. The best one? It's the only brag I can do. You were the best at it. No, I'm kidding. I wasn't. No, but. Was it a brag? I don't understand. There were other people that you knew that also operated trash cans, and you would watch them do it? No, we had to originally to learn. The guy, a guy came from Florida that built this thing and showed us how to do it, but I think we all here on the West Coast went a little loosey-goosey with it, you know what I mean? Yeah, sure. We were really let loose. You're in Anaheim now, bitch. Yeah. And the thing would break down all the time and just die. The battery would die in the middle, and it would be left, so you, like, the voice was losing battery, so it'd be like, oh, please, please, somebody save me. So, wait, then could you, you'd blow your cover if you walked over and started. You had to. You had to, because by then the people were, like, about to light it on fire, you know? Oh, my God. It was bad. You know what? Everyone's instinct is to trash a robot. Yeah, it is. It just is. Yeah. Why? Because I think their instinct is to trash us. You know? What? It's kill or be killed. Oh, I don't know. It's a dog-eat-dog world. They just want to deliver food and drive you places. That's what they want you to think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I heard the Waymo cars are being controlled by people somewhere else. Wait, where did you hear this? I don't know. They're autonomous. No one's controlling them. I thought someone was controlling them. You think there's a guy in a helicopter saying, take a right, take a left. Why is your conspiracy, like, not the opposite of a conspiracy? It's people are controlling them, like radio cars. Yeah, the food delivery robots, the cocoa robots. The food delivery robots are controlled by people, and the Waymos also can't have people take over when there's an issue. Yes, yes, they can have people take over. Wait, so I can get a job? No, but that's different than what you said. Okay. The food delivery robots are controlled by people. Oh, wow. But what do you mean they're controlled by people? Where is the person? It doesn't matter. It's remote. It's crouched in there. It's remote. That's why, like, if you wave at it and say hi, the person will say, like, hello, and it'll wink and stuff at you. Really? Yeah. So someone's sitting at a terminal. Yes. And they're seeing. They're seeing a blinking dot that says it's going down, or do they have a camera in there? They have a camera. It's like a remote control car. So now I can't trash one. No. No. Because there'll be footage of me on the internet. Yes. Of me saying, hey, little bitch bot. It's time for you to taste Louisville Slugger, ka-chang. And then that's all over the internet. Yeah. Those Waymo cars, too. I mean, what's stopping people from just, like, taking off their pants in the backseat? What? Who would want to take off their pants? Sounds like you've got a little fantasy. What are you talking about? Who the hell likes to ride pants like this? Oh, my fantasy is to have my bare ass on a commonly used car seat. I can't wait. And I think people that want to do that prefer a driver in the car. I don't know. Or, like, you know, just, like, do drugs or, like, do sex stuff. Maybe they do. Right? Is that, I mean, like, who's stopping you? I think, well, I think they have, like, a spray that activates. I don't think there's a spray. People start to go at it. Yeah. I don't know. It's a calming, soothing gel. I don't know. Makes the penis shrivel. Oh. That's true. i've heard that a calming soothing gel that then makes the penis shrivel yeah well first it calms you and soothes you okay then it makes your don johnson take a little holiday um turns your don johnson into an arty johnson yeah exactly an arty johnson reference god bless you is that a rap god bless you yeah i think your rap sign was an arty johnson reference for you that was your rap sign all right let's do this thing my guest today is an emmy award-winning writer and animator who created one of the most iconic animated series of all time i'm gonna say the most iconic i'm gonna go out on a limb yeah i don't have any skin in this game or do i that's right the simpsons he also created the hulu series futurama which is currently airing its 14th season having him on the podcast is uh well it's just been so long overdue i am ecstatic that this gentleman joins us today matt graining welcome it is so great you're here thank you because uh the fans are gonna freak out um you're a big part of my life changing in this amazing way my origin story for people that don't know is i was working on saturday night live i was in a funk i loved that job and i loved everyone there but i thought i need to go i'm just in a bad place in my life so i walked away from snl with no job two of your writers i think it was a recent gene heard that conor o'brien might be loose and available so the next thing i knew i was submitting i don't know some of the sketches i had written on snl and then i was told you've got a job on the simpsons and you need to be here like in four days and it really saved my life wow it was as a magical part of my life so i thank you god do i thank you i don't know where i'd be if i hadn't gotten here i don't know where i'd be if i hadn't gotten here i don't know where i'd be if i hadn't gotten here i want you to know that your old office has been preserved it is used for storage and it's right next to my office and yesterday i asked my assistant violet i said let me let me see conan's old office so i can talk about it yeah and uh she said no no no no no don't you can't you can't i said i'm and you cannot mention it and i said come on just let me see it goes please don't talk about it please i i beg you and i and i open the door and it is floor to ceiling with simpsons merchandise oh wow yes in fact these this is the merchandise that um that popped out oh my god mr sparkle oh my look at this these are amazing this is oh my god that's that's that's after your time this is 1997 but those are i love mr spark is it like lose all its value if i open it yes don't okay you know what i love on the back homer's head with bubbles coming out the back is saying mr spark first of all is this it says mr sparkle i guess in is this japanese and it says mr sparkle is disrespectful to dirt i love these translations that never make sense and this is what homer's saying join me or die can you do any less this is a children's toy for lucky what it is homer found a japanese detergent box in the in the in the springfield dump and he didn't understand why his name was uh or his face was on the on the cover of the box i just love it it's one of the great episodes um uh for lucky best wash use mr sparkle i'm disrespectful to dirt can you see that i am serious um this is fantastic thank you so much i didn't mean to tell you not to open it we should see one i think i'm gonna open mine i'll open mine keep ours pristine yeah you guys keep yours pristine but i want you to sign this what i oh sure i know what you're gonna do it'll be on ebay tomorrow um okay here's a really uh people always ask me working at the simpsons what's it like matt graining what can you tell us and i have a very clear memory of one of your your fun things that you did was in your travels you would seek out illegal like bootleg simpsons merchandise not to like let's nab them and sue them but just because it amused you and i remembered i think you were in mexico you i remember sitting around we were working on a script you came in it had there's a screen door to the writer's room at the simpsons it had this you know you think it's like the biggest show in the world it had this rusty screen door kind of creaky so you heard and pop like pavlovian we would all look up maybe food's here you know maybe lunch is here because that's what you would hear when they would bring in the fried food that we lived off of and you walked in and you were carrying something you purchased in mexico and you were like oh my god that's what i'm going to do i'm going to eat it and i'm going to eat it and i'm going to eat it and i'm going to eat it and it was a very crude attempt to make bart's head out of wood bart looked like he had swelling of the brain like fluid buildup and it had been clearly the person had taken didn't have real stain so it polished it with shoe polish and it's one of the most upsetting things i've seen in my life and you were cackling and i guess you collected i collected those yes and uh yeah now there's too many of them what is it can you think of one of the more horrible ones bart bart sanchez was uh was the name on the on the bust of bart yeah and he had a he had a sombrero and yeah it's like yeah they're all over the place uh there was a russian coloring book where it obviously whoever had done the coloring book had seen the simpsons for five seconds and then said do a whole coloring book and that will kill you by the way speaking of the creaking door and the food yep you did a bit one time oh my god i'm so proud of this so every single day a production assistant would come up the stairs clomp clomp clomp outdoor stairs making a lot of noise and then bang open the screen door with a stack of boxes of food and the food would come around one and i noticed one day we're all sitting around it's george meyer and reese and gene and jeff martin and everybody's there i noticed people were starting to say like oh man where's the food it's 130 and then hey it's 145 where's the really unhealthy hamburgers that we order from um island oh islands islands islands where is it and we always get the same thing every day but we were like dogs that knew we got fed at one and it wasn't coming so i quietly excused myself to use the bathroom and i went downstairs and i found a big cardboard box and i waited a while and then i clomped up the stairs opened the screen door and backed in backwards so you just see a gened ass and a t-shirt so that it's and i start struggling with a big box like it's filled with food and everyone like yay and then i i turned around with an empty box and i went nothing and people were irate but it made me happy because it made others sad we were like pavlov's dogs you'd hear that noise and you start to salivate you knew that the food is coming here do you remember you wrote uh homer goes to college and i recall you pitching this one line that you were so attached to yeah a b bit my bottom and now my bottom's big yes homer by the way homer homer is saying that homer's the only one are you talking about the greek poet yeah yes this is but not only did you pitch it in homer's voice yeah you were so delighted by it you pitched it repeatedly then you got up and acted it out you bent over yes but and homer gets it's homer has to everyone's and everyone there is trying to think of you got the smartest comedy writers you'll ever see he's really brilliant people and they're all trying to think of a really clever smart line for homer or something just like perfect like a gem in that moment i don't know why but i just because homer gets bit by a b which is i think one of the reasons why stung yeah sorry in your line it was bit that's right he got stung by a b but homer would say bit and so and i like the alliteration yeah b b b and so i just i don't know these things come to me i just said to the whole room a b hit my bottom i mean a b bit my bottom now my bottom's big and people were laughing but also like we can't do that it's too stupid but then it ended up in the script and um i was you know it's one of those things that follows me around every now and then and his big ass is big to begin with but the way the animator is animated one cheek is very big yeah it really was swollen yeah and i was you know so did i contribute sure i did um you know what i loved one of the things and you can talk to this which is it's a phenomenon that the simpsons did so beautifully which is and we did this with homer a lot but homer's not the smartest guy in the world but if it's funny for him to have a certain knowledge of something or turn a phrase suddenly he has it yes and one of my favorites of that is he's sitting around the table and lisa's despondent something didn't go well for her and she doesn't think she's going to get to go to a good school now and she's sitting on the table and she said oh no now i'll never get to go to an ivy league school i'll have to go to vassar which is just like by the way my wife went to vassar it's a very good school but it was just this thing where in lisa's little world oh my god i've been i've been ruined i'll have to go to vassar and homer likes slams the table and says, there'll be no Vassar bashing in this house. Homer would never know what Vassar is. If he did know, he wouldn't care. He's got no stake in this, but suddenly this is where he draws the line. And I loved that in a given moment, Homer or any character can know something they wouldn't normally know. And there's Barney at once. I think Mr. Plow, which is a John Vitae episode, Barney's at the bar and he and Homer are competing to have the better plow business. And Homer thinks he's ahead when suddenly a commercial comes on in Moe's and it's Barney promoting his plow business with Linda Ronstadt. And so it's Barney and Linda Ronstadt. And I was like, hey, Barney, hi, Linda. And then they go ahead and do this commercial and it ends with them singing a song. And Homer says, Barney, how did you get Linda Ronstadt? And he says, we've been looking for a project together for a long time. What I loved is that doesn't fucking explain anything. How do you, what do you mean? Like, I just love that. Oh, Linda and I have been looking for something for a long time. And this, this, it finally came together. That's something Sammy Davis Jr. would say about Frank Sinatra. But characters that speak not of themselves, but for a moment of beautiful clarity. Thank you. We went through a phase when you were there and you helped a lot, making Homer dumber and dumber and dumber, right? We're trying to top ourselves. We finally drew the line and he could not ever forget his own name. Okay. There's, there's one, there's one where Homer is saying to himself, a policeman is asking him for an explanation and Homer is saying something akin to say something good, say something good, say something good. And then Homer says, I'm watching pornography. And you cut to his brain, I guess, saying, say something good, say something good. Homer says the exact wrong thing and you cut back to his head and his brain says, that's it, I'm out. Then you hear footsteps and a door slam. And this opens up, wait a minute, his consciousness got sick of him, but he is his consciousness. So there was all kinds of shit like that. And I always credit, you'd be in the room saying, guys, come on, you can't go too far. We were like kids that just wanted to eat chocolate all day. And I was the school marm, shaking my finger going, no, no, that's too much. And of course that only encouraged you guys to do more. But when you, that thing about I'm out, you did that to yourself when you pitched a joke that didn't, that you felt didn't land. I remember once you pitched something and you mimed getting into a tiny invisible rocket ship. And shutting the door and taking off into space. Oh my God. I do, there was a long time where I thought my only job here is to entertain the other writers. Like I do believe that I was, I would do things sometimes where I'd put a bunch of Coca-Cola in my mouth and then start vibrating violently. And what it does is it foams and comes out of your mouth and I'd be going, oh! And they would have me get up and do it in front of everybody. You're like a convention sex worker. Yes, yes. That they bring in. Yeah, I was, they'd be like, hey, do this, soda, soda, soda. I'd be like, all right, guys, if you want. How is this moving the piece forward? Well, you know, the writer's room, the table was very long. Yeah. And you were on one corner of the table and literally you would be doing a little puppet show for the writers around you that the other people at the other end of the table didn't, couldn't hear. And they were all leaning over saying, come on, do it for us too. Do it for us too. You had a great, you had a great saying there, which was things can be improbable, but not physically impossible. And I thought that was a great rule, which we, of course, tried to chip away at that. Your point, I think it was really very wise, was this is not, this is not a Roadrunner Coyote situation where the coyote can explode and fly into 75 pieces and then they land on the highway and the next scene he's been reassembled. Right. So if Homer falls into a gorge and falls all the way down, he doesn't just reappear magically a second later and say, okay, I'm going to try this now. He has to be bruised, bloody, and he went down a, you know. Yes. Yes, maybe in real life he'd have died. Yeah, you weren't supposed to show blood in cartoons, it turns out. Yeah, and we made Homer very bloody many times. Yes. Yeah. And he fell down the gorge and that was one of the, that was very early on. He tried to skateboard across Springfield Gorge. Yes, yeah. Right. And he defied physics for a moment. A second. And then fell. And then fell. And then the next shot was him being raised on a gurney. You know, his head all bandaged. He's being raised on a gurney to the ambulance and his head is banging into the side of the cliff all the way up. And then they put him in the ambulance. The ambulance goes 10 feet, hits a tree, and he slides out and goes over the cliff. All the way down again. And that's when I knew we had a show. Yeah. That was the, that was, yeah. Also, I loved that if a four-wheeled vehicle of any kind crashes, it has to explode into flames. Like a car from a 1970s, you know, detective series where it just has to go into a fireball. So there's all riddled through The Simpsons are an Amish guy driving a cart. Homer doesn't see him and drives by too fast. The guy goes, whoa, the cart and the horse go over the cliff. It's a huge fireball. And so there were these things where it's like, okay, that wouldn't really happen, but we can allow that. It's not impossible. It's not impossible that that wood was soaked with kerosene and that the horse had maybe eaten a bomb. But I remember when I did the monorail episode, there was a bit in it where we were initially trying to get George Takei. That was my first idea is that George Takei will play this part. And then George Takei said no, because he said, I'm on the transportation board in San Francisco and it was all about a monorail and being a bad idea. And he said, I can't in good conscience. And I was crushed because I thought, oh, he's the guy I want to be in this. And then I think Al Jean came to me and said, we just heard that Leonard Nimoy will do it. And I was like, wait, what? That's better. He outranked Sulu. This is great. And so the joke at the end of the episode, which I got to go and record the voice, a bunch of us went and meet Leonard Nimoy. And it was just a dream come true. But he, at the end of the episode, when everything's sort of been resolved and the monorail, people didn't die. And it's the end of the episode. Leonard Nimoy says, well, I guess my work here is done. And Barney says, you didn't do anything. And Leonard Nimoy says, didn't I? And then beams out. Now I remember this being a big discussion because I remember, I think Al said, well, no, the rule is nothing impossible can happen. No one can beam out. And I was like, yeah, but it's Spock. Spock can beam out. And we got into it and you said, no, it's okay. But I remember thinking, oh, I hope we get this. Yes. I hope we get this. You can, you know, for the sake, if the joke is good enough, there was an episode in which Homer is somehow on a Christian relief plane flying to a distant island. Yeah. And he's trying to get off. And he says, but I don't even believe in Jebus. And then they take off and he says, save me, Jebus. Yeah. He does that too. And I think there's a segment where it's sort of about how out of shape he is, but he's driving through the night and he sees a big sign, lit up sign. And it says, Jim, G-Y-M. And Homer looks up at it and he goes, Geim? And then he's wondering and he goes, Geim? And then he parks the car and it's nighttime and he goes up, I think, and he looks inside and sees all the people working out and the exercise. Equipment. He goes, Geim. You're so unhealthy that you don't even know it's called Jim, which you've at least heard a billion times, but yeah. By the way, so you were, you were one of the new guys. Yeah. And I was like the first, I think there was the original crew. Everybody wanted to work on that show. And, you know, I'm just this poster boy for crew. Crazy. Good luck. At the moment I became available, George Meyer had just decided to take some time off and there was an opening. George Meyer, one of the legendary Simpsons writers. I mean, just spectacular. Hall of Famer. And, you know, our assignment at the Simpsons was someone would go off and write a script. We would all pitch jokes for it and they would structure it and there'd be an outline and then that writer would go off and work on it alone. Fascinating. For a couple of weeks and then come back. Yeah. Oh, it'll get better. And hand in the script and then we would all go through it page by page and make it better. And then George Meyer would turn his in for like Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington and we'd all look at it and go, uh, I see nothing. We would change here. VD was like, I mean, just these incredible, absolutely incredible writers. Well, do you know one of the, you were around for John Schwarzwalder, right? Oh God, yeah. So John Schwarzwalder, another one of the great writers, and he would turn in scripts that were so insane. And we just cut out the craziest things and they would be absolutely brilliant. All we had to do was cut a couple of jokes here and there. It was so good. Let me paint the picture for you. John Schwarzwelder. The rest of us look like what a comedy writer in their 20s looks like, a caricature or early 30s. We all had that same kind of look. And then suddenly there's this guy in the corner who is much older than us and he's got this incredible mustache. He looks like the handsomest policeman you'd see in 1890. Imagine a real man and he's smoking cigarettes and he's not saying much, but when he does say something, it's brilliant. And I remember this clear as day. I get this insane opportunity to audition for Letterman's Slot, thinking this will never happen. And I'm asking Reese and Gene, they want me to go to the Burbank lot and audition and I don't know. And should I? Should I even be doing this? I mean, I have no experience. I can't. So even if I got it, I don't think I could do this. It's an insane idea. I'll never. And I was sort of, the room started asking me questions about it. And I'll never forget. I said, I know they want me to audition to replace Letterman, who's, you know, genius and invented this new form. And I can't. And then I remember Schwarzwelder took a long drag of a cigarette and he never spoke. He didn't say much. And he exhaled and he went, I'd watch your show. And that was the first time someone, like, endorsed the concept. Because most people I would say that to, like, you're a funny guy, but what the fuck are you talking about? And Schwarzwelder was like, and he said it with this conviction of like, maybe no one else will, but I'd watch it. And I was like, thank you, John. He's never watched one. I don't know about, I just want to say about Schwarzwelder, I like him, but when Clinton was in office, he bet everybody on the staff that. Yes. Oh, he's completely wrong. Clinton would be hanged while in office. He said, yeah, he was. Oh, I remember. I remember when. He also drove the world's biggest Cadillac, whatever, the 1956 Caddy. And he would be the last one in the parking lot while we are driving away. He'd be going, and we'd leave and he'd still be trying to. If it rained, it wouldn't run. And then he wouldn't be there the next day. So he obviously made it. And I always heard these stories that he, like, saved every dime he made. I think he, at the time, anyway, he lived in like a very modest house. And I think he lived with his, he and his brother, like, shared a house. And I remembered asking him once, so what do you, like, the rest of us are going to go for the weekend and, oh, I've got a date or I'm going to go here. My wife and I are going to go there. And I asked John, he said, well, do what I always do. I'm going to go home. And my brother and I are going to play catch with a softball in front of our house for, you know, like a couple of hours. And then we're going to hit a diner. And I was like, wow, wow. Old Cadillac? Because he's just from the fifties. No, he was, he was from out of time. I mean, if anyone has, ever been from another time, it was John Schwartzwelder and brilliantly funny writer, but very wrong sometimes about things. When Clinton was first running for president, people would be like, oh, he's doing really well in the polls. And, oh, he's, and he would tell us with, no, Bush will defeat him. Bush will defeat him. This is the guy that would say he'd watch your show. Yeah, exactly. Wrong about everything. So we go back so far. This was in the era when you could actually smoke in diners and Schwartzwelder, what was it? What's the big diner on Ventura Boulevard? That's no longer there. We were famous one. Is it Dupar's? Is it? Not Dupar's. It's the other. Anyway. Norm's? Norm's. Yeah. Schwartzwelder had a booth that he would sit in and smoke and write Simpson scripts. And then they made smoking illegal. And so he had a identical booth built in his house. Yeah. Yeah. Totally believe that. Yes. He was that guy. He was that guy who like, definitely going to march to his own tune. And now he's a novelist. Oh, his novels are really funny. He self-published his craziest novels. The, um, he writes these sort of hard-boiled detective mysteries, but they're insane. I think the title of one, which I loved was The Robot Did It. And I've read these and they were just, you know, uh, spectacular, but you have one of the best, for lack of a better term, rags to riches stories that I can think of in all of show business, because. And I saved my rags. And those rags are now worth a fortune. I see your rags on eBay all the time. Um, yeah, you moved to LA in 1977 to become a writer. You, while you're waiting to accomplish that, or even while you're doing it, you're washing dishes at a nursing home, clerking at the Hollywood licorice pizza record store, landscaping in a sewage treatment plant and chauffeuring and ghostwriting for a few years. And you're a writer. And you're a writer. And you're a writer. And you're a retired director of Western films. That's right. It's just incredible. You know, so that the last job was I wanted to be a writer. So I looked, of course, looked in the LA times wanted ads for help on it. And it said, wanted writer chauffeur. And so I applied for the job and I was the writer chauffeur for this old, uh, movie director who you've never heard of. And, uh, and my job was to drive him around during the day. And we'd look at the sites, go through Beverly Hills and whatever. And he'd say, that's Tom Mix's house. And then we drive by the same house the next day. And he goes, that's where Laurel and Hardy lived. And I said, I don't think they live together. Shut up. And then I would listen to his stories. And I, at night I would work on his autobiography, which was this high because there had been a number of previous writer chauffeurs. And in fact, there was one guy while I was out driving around, there was a guy sitting at his house. On the dining room table, you know, typing it up. And I just remember reading these. And the guy was obsessed with his mother. He goes, today was the day I met Cecil B. DeMille. Immediately I ran home to tell mother, mother, I said, I met Cecil B. DeMille. It was odd. This sounds like Sunset Boulevard. Yeah, it is very much. Yeah. Wow. At the age of 88, mother lost control of her bowels. So that was the lead sentence of one of the chapters. I thought that was a whole chapter. But getting back to Schwarzweller, one of my favorite lines in, in one of the detective novels is they attach the detective up to a lie detector and they say, does it hurt? And he goes, yes, a little. And they say, you're lying. They're unhinged. They're unhinged in the very best way. And, you know, I think one of them starts with like the detective just getting the classic thing, getting beat up. But then it turns out that he like shows up for his beatings because that's his job as a detective, you know, in an alley. I mean, it's just, it's. The first line was, my story begins with me getting punched in the face. Yes. You know, what's interesting to me is everyone knows, of course, you do, you know, your, your first goal was to be a journalist. Right. And what's fascinating to me is part, one of your gigs was if someone was getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, if I have this correctly, your job was to, okay, you know, Don Knotts is getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You'd do some research about that, but then you would go out and try and find out exactly where the star was going to be and what business it would be in front of to let people know. Right. Which no one did. Right. You'd say like, oh, it's going to be in front of this tobacco shop on Vine and. I tried to get the most degrading store that was closest to the, to the, and there's plenty of them. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sure. Fredericks of Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, all sorts of tattoo parlor. Yeah, dildo emporium. Right. And you would say. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. This, you know, Miss Mayfield will be getting her star in front of the dildo emporium. And you kind of got in trouble for that. Yeah. Well, they called me up and asked me, please don't say what stores the stars are in front of. Yeah. And of course I never stopped. So what's interesting is, again, these moments fascinate me. You time travel to, you get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And you could never have imagined back when you were writing those stories, well, someday I'll have. I don't know. It's ludicrous. Well, what's really fun is to take visitors from out of town and walk down Hollywood Boulevard and say, oh, look. You know, as if I. Who knew? Yeah. You were up all night polishing it, scraping urine off of it. There's a lot of Hollywood stars now. There's a lot of them. Like, they sort of doubled it up. It's not just, you know. Oh, no. There's. Do you have one? I do not. No. And nor will I. Oh, and nor will I ever have one. I'll see to that. I'm going to work on that. Oh. Please do not do that. Promise me you'll never do that. So many great memories for me. But you couldn't have been. You couldn't have been prepared for the success of The Simpsons because you make a show. You hope it just stays on the air at the time. Primetime animation. That's, you know, the brainchild of a underground, you know, subversive comic artist. This isn't going to work. Maybe it will work a little bit. But then it becomes a phenomenon. Yes. And how quickly did you realize that you've hit one of the biggest gushers of all time? The first indication was the little, the cartoon started on the Tracy Ullman show. And they were, they told me at the beginning, they brought me in and they said, we want you to do a two minute cartoon for the Tracy Ullman show every week. And I went, oh, you can't, you can't do anything in two minutes. That's, that's not enough time. And then they called me and said, no, I'm sorry. We went, it's one minute. And then they said, it's four 15 second cartoons. So the whole thing began with 15 seconds. in cartoons. And so my, my feeling was, well, side gag, that's all we, you know, really quick, quick, quick side gags. And what made me think that we really had something going is they put some of those cartoons on the, uh, in the beginning of Fox movies and they got applause when the titles came up and I go, Oh, so people are watching already. So that, that was the first indication. And then when the show came on, we did 13 episodes without a pilot and, um, Fox first, they want to do one show. And we, we, Jim Brooks, uh, uh, refused and said, no, we want to do 13 and they did it. And the whole thing, the whole run was built on those first 13 episodes, which we had never seen the results of the animation before they were all written because it takes six months to do it, to do all the, uh, animation. And so we lucked out. That's all it was. It was an incredible lucky situation. And then there was the Fox network brand new, which didn't even hit the entire country. It was regional. Right. And, and so, but even with the, the fact that it wasn't in every market in the U S it was still extremely popular. So that was amazing. I mean, was it the first episode of the Simpsons or the second or third? At what point does it become clear that, I mean, I don't remember how quickly, but I remember it was very fast. I was writing it Saturday night live when the Simpsons debuted and we were all aware instantly that this was probably second or third episode. Yeah. Yeah. We just knew this is the, this is the best thing ever. And, uh, I think every comedy writer was just, oh my God, I wish I was over there. That's the place to be. And that's as much as I loved SNL. It was, it's just a phenomenon. And it's, you know, when I leave, I remember thinking, I mean, I didn't even think about it, but part of my experience has been, I leave a show and think this probably runs for a little while longer, you know, uh, and then it will find its natural endpoint. I thought about SNL when it was like, when I was there and it was, you know, 14 years old, we had a 15th anniversary special and I thought, well, you know, this, this pony is going to be put down soon. I think they just had the, now it's 51 or 52 years. And the Simpsons is just, is it how many? 38 seasons. Oh my God. We've done more than 800 episodes. That's a lot of pencil mileage in animation terms. How do you guys guard against repeat jokes? Or even themes? Is there someone cataloging like an archivist who can come in and? Well, if I were Conan, I would mime an invisible gun. We do repeat, we do repeat. We, our, our, our motto now is try not to repeat recently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We try, you know, Al Jean is sort of the living brain. He's a living encyclopedia. I can watch episodes from last year and I don't remember a single moment from them because they just, one goes in and one goes out. Yeah. Very Homer Simpson style. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And people like Al Jean and, and the internet help us say, did we already do that joke? Yeah. And yeah, I mean, now it's going to be easier and easier to track it down because of a little amazing thing called AI. Hey, AI, just a quick plug for it. No, no. Oh, okay. Stop. That's an AI sonar I can use. And now, and now we are, because of, of the internet, we are being congratulated for a prediction. That was the next thing I was bringing up, which is I've had people ask me, how is it that you guys, meaning any Simpsons person, how is it you guys were able to predict the future? And I'll say, are you, you're not being serious. They're totally serious. They think that wizards work at the Simpsons as opposed to it's a volume business. You throw out a lot of things. Maybe you make a joke about, yes. And the president in the future will be real estate. Asshole Donald Trump. And it's just a quick laugh in the room. And then later on, it's a chilling omen of what will, but there've been so many of them now. Well, Dan Greeney, the writer of that line about Trump being president was done in like 2002 or something. And then, um, at least it was president. So we don't get everything right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, um, and he's, he's taken that to heart and now he, he dresses up like a prophet and, and Dan does. And he's running for president. So I'm here. Dan Greeney was running for president. Yeah. Well vote for him. Yes, of course. Sure. I want to see the outfit. We're not predicting he wins by the way. These days, I would think anyone would have a chance. That's the world we're in right now. Um, let's talk about Futurama because I've always believed that there are two really fun things to write. One is someone who's a writer. And the other is someone who's a writer. And I'm someone who has unlimited wealth, which is why writing for Mr. Burns was my favorite thing. And I think all of us loved it. And you like doing the voice. I love doing the voice. Yeah. I mean, I used to pitch. And you also tented your fingers. I've tented my fingers. Yes. Yes. Um, and I loved, I used to pitch in the voices and I thought that's what people did. And people were like, what are you doing? When I first showed up and I would do the different voice. I don't know, homie. Maybe. And be like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I thought, I thought we'd pitch in the voices. And I'm like, no, you don't pitch in the voices. No one does that. I loved writing for Mr. Burns because it's a kind of silly writing you can do where he can, if you have, if a character has unlimited wealth and is evil, they can have anything, anything that can be built by man can exist in that person's dungeon basement. They can have hyperbaric chambers. They can have escape pods. They can, uh, all kinds of sinister. Things can happen. The other fun one I always thought would be writing about the future because one of the miracles of the Jetsons, I think that made it so much fun to watch was the world's your oyster. You know, you can just, writers are completely free to imagine anything. And to me, that's why Futurama always made so much sense. Was that part of the initial appeal? Well, part of it was, you know, looking at, at the Jetsons, which has the greatest theme of all time. Yes. Yeah. Um, he said, it's all of these, these, these, uh, apartments and stuff that are on stilts and you never see the earth. And I thought, well, let's do the future. Like what, what's going on down there. It's gotta be pretty bad. So, yeah, I love that. It did feel like it allows you to use a whole other area that, that, you know, the Simpsons can dabble in every now and then if someone's imagining the future, but Futurama just felt like it was, it was really fun. And it turns out that science fiction and comedy don't necessarily. Work together. I mean, you can make it funny, but if you're, if this is just a, uh, a piece of advice, if you're doing a science fiction comedy, don't have the rocket ship be shaped like a salt shaker, for instance, it's funny. The first time, maybe. It's irritating the second time and it's infuriating the third time. So anything that, yeah, that you see over and over again, make sure you can live with it. When the series begins, who are you creating it with? It was, uh, David X Cohen. Yeah, that's right. I know David Cohen. Yeah. Yes. He's called David X Cohen because there are other David Coens in the Writers Guild. Is that why he put the X in there? I always just knew him as David Cohen, but then he put an X in. He's David S Cohen, but there was another David S Cohen too. So an X is pretty kind of futuristic. I should change to Conan X O'Brien. Conan X O'Brien. I'm sure there are other Conan O'Briens out there trying to, your wife would like to change into an X O'Brien. Nice. Yay. Congrats. You're fired. You're fired. By the way, I, you know, Homer Simpson seems like a pretty random name, but it turns out it's not the most random name. And we did get a letter once saying, thank you for ruining my life. I can't order pizza. I can't do this. I can't do that. Signed, fuck you. Signed, Mrs. Homer S Simpson. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, wow. There's a documentary about all the real people named James Bond and what they have to live with as they walk through the days. Terrible. Well, the other thing is that I, you know, I named the characters after my family. That's right. My father's name is Homer. My mother's name is Marge. I have a sister, Lisa, and I have a sister, Maggie, and I kind of wrecked their lives, you know? Now Marge's hair, I know it's, it's kind of modeled on Bride of Frankenstein, but also did your mom? My mother had a very tall beehive when I was a kid. And from the angle that I was looking at her, it really seemed big and she always denied it, but I do have photos. So, and my dad, my dad loved the Simpsons except when Homer was mean to Marge. He did not like, he got, he called me up. Wow, that's interesting. He called, he called me up after, there was an episode in which the Simpsons car breaks down in the desert and while the family is sitting under the shade of a big boulder, Marge has to carry a tire back to town. And my dad was so mad that Homer made Marge carry the tire. Yeah. And I said, he strangles his kid. And my dad said, I don't care about that. Did they make you stop the strangling at a certain, because I know early on there was, you know, Homer would really, throttle Bart, grab him around the neck and go, you know, and, um, I think that went away at a certain point. No, no, it went, it went away. And then we just got tired of repeating the same joke, but then, but then it wasn't out of concern for children's safety. No, you know what? We wouldn't, we wouldn't do spanking cause that's too real. So it's the strangling was very, that was very silly. It never bothered me. And by the way, it's always impulsive. Yeah. It's always, why you little? And then in general, Bart tries, you know, reaches for a frying pan and hits him and gets it. Yeah. Homer gets it. He gets his comeuppance. There was one episode in which Homer went, why you little? And he comes over very slowly and strangles him. It was so freakish that we, that we cut it. It's only if it's impulsive. So impulsive anger. Impulsive anger. Impulsive is funny. We did an episode in which Homer and Smithers got into a fist fight. And they were hitting each other. Smithers had an old-fashioned rotary phone. Right, right. And he was hitting him in the face and back and forth and really harsh, harsh animation. And I remember coming to the sound mix and it's just, ugh, ugh, ugh, and just horrifying. And it was not funny at all. And we could not figure out how to, you know, we're stuck with the animation of the show. This was on a Thursday. The show was going to be airing on Sunday. And we tried, okay, let's make the sound effects funny. You know, boing. No, it made it not funny at all. And so finally, as an experiment, we took out all the sounds of exertion. Ugh, ugh. And just let sounds of pain. Ugh, ugh. You know, all that kind of stuff. And that made it funny. So that is my comedy tip there. Pain is funny. I think in one of my scripts, I wrote that Mr. Burns wants to kill someone with a baseball bat. It's sort of that thing that's, it's that old trope where Al Capone is walking around the table with a baseball bat. And we got teamwork. We need teamwork. And then he lets loose on one of the guys who's a traitor. But my thing was that he's so weak that he's going, ugh. And the bat is just barely moving. Ugh. Barely touching the guy. And the guy just says, uh, what are you doing? And, and Mr. Burns says, I'm thrashing you to within an inch of your life. But he's incredibly exhausted. So my way out is that he's incredibly violent and homicidal in that moment. But he can't, he can't do anything. And the other thing I remember is going back to the Fox lot. A couple of times I've gone and I'll, you know, walk up to the old writer's room, which is, it looks like an old 1940s hotel, motel. It's, you know, that it's, it's a two stories and there's a staircase that goes to the second level. It looks kind of dilapidated. And I pushed through the same old creaky door. And some of the same faces from when I was there. Everyone's got gray hair and they look up and they go, eh? Lunch. Yeah, lunch. Still nothing. But no, I would hang out and chat with them a bit. And then I would say, well, I got to go, please stay here. No, I'm going to go and shoot a travel show. I'm going to, you know, Paris, fellas. I'll see you later. No! Kill me! Kill me before you go! So I showed my 10-year-old at the time old episodes of Andy Griffith. And he liked them, but he said he really liked Gomer Pyle. And I said, well, Gomer had his own show. And he goes, what? Yeah. And so we watched like 150 episodes of Gomer Pyle USMC. Yep, huge hit. And in the background is that writer's building as a barracks. There you go. Yeah, they filmed it on the Fox lot, or at least part of it. And someone told me across from where we did on the Fox lot, across from our sort of old rickety building, there was a little bungalow and we would sometimes meet over there. We would look at animatics. We would look at, oh, now the color corrected versions come back. We're going to look at that. We'd have meetings. We'd have meetings over there sometimes. And someone told me that that was once Marilyn Monroe's dressing bungalow on the Fox lot. Yeah, I heard that story. No idea if that's true. I don't know. It's either. Or it's where Laurel and Hardy got together to have sex. Sadly, that room is still where we watch animatics. Is it really? Yes. Okay. So nothing's changed. Nothing has changed. And then these little odd things pop up. I remember we were writing an episode and everyone's sitting around. It's Patty and Selma, Marge's sisters. And they're voiced also by Julie Kavner. And one of them, I think it was Patty or Selma, has a iguana, a pet iguana. And at one point we needed to know the name of the iguana. And so Al Jean just said, oh, no, we need a name for this iguana. And I remember the whole room was just like thinking. And I like having a spasm. I just said, jump, jump. And I remembered Al went, okay, jump, jump. And then it's one of those things where people. Real Simpsons fanatics will come up to me sometimes and go, jump, jump. And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah. But you started using that phrase all the time. You had a fictitious product or something called jump, jump. Yes. I built a whole religion around jump, jump. Yes. That's right. I was saying jump, jump a lot. And then it's one of those things where it's annoying to everybody all the time. And then the one situation came around. What do we call this iguana? And I just went, jump, jump. And they're like, okay. But yes, that's actually the way it happened. Yes. Something was wrong with me. Glad it all got fixed. Oh, boy. Well, there are throwaway jokes that then become part of the vernacular. I think it was George Meyer. I may be wrong, but he reached over and grabbed something and said, yoink. Yes. And so now that became a thing where you say the sound effect of the thing that you're doing. Yes. And then George got sick of it, but we still use it. Yeah. First of all, there has to be a part two. If you've got the time, you're welcome here anytime you want to come in. Because we barely scratched the surface. There is so much to talk about. So it's an open invitation anytime you want to come. Thank you so much. It's really nice to see you relaxed. The last time I saw you, I visited the office here and you came out dressed in a German sailor suit. I do remember that. I have a very strange life. I really do. And you didn't acknowledge it. Yeah. Hey, man, how's it going? Never acknowledge. He didn't know. He didn't know. I'm like Homer. I often forget completely who I am and what I'm doing. You joined the German Navy. No, you, I mean, clearly you've brought the world so much joy, but me personally, you changed my life. And so I will never thank you enough. I honestly don't know. I don't know if my life would have unfolded the way it did if I hadn't had that time at the Simpsons. It was really perfect. Well, you were great in the room and I wasn't surprised that you went places. Mm-hmm. In fact, when you. When you were, it was announced that you were going to be the host. The New York Times called me up and said, who is this guy? Is he funny? I said, he's funny. America will love him. And they printed that on the front page because I was the only guy who knew who you were. That's right. No, and this is back when every other quote was him. You know, he looks like an idiot. And so the fact that I. The knives were out for you. Yes, they were. Because you were a writer. Yeah. But I remember that quote because I was desperate for anything that would keep. You came in and thanked me. You came back to the lot. Yes, I did. It was a beautiful thing to do. He's very, he's very appreciative. And, and, and. They don't see that side of me. Oh. And I know I've, I've, I've seen everything else you've done. Yeah. No, but anyway, thank you for your service. Oh. You know, and, and also again about the Simpsons and Futurama and everything else. It's a collaborative effort. Yeah. You know, you can't, you know, it's, it's a common. It's a combination of great writers and great actors and great animators and great musicians and it all comes together. So I'm the spokesmodel. Yeah. Well, sir, I thank you and I'm desperate to get you back here anytime you want to be here. Thank you very much. For any reason. Thank you guys. Good night and God bless. Hey, I have something to talk about. Yeah. Which relates to. Us Sona. A couple of days ago, I'm hanging out at my house. It's a weekend. Everything's chill. And all of a sudden Sona sends me a text. I looked down and what did the text say Sona? The text said, Hey, your car is going to be a few minutes late. And it's very matter of fact. Yeah. Oh, your car is going to be a few minutes late. Yeah. Which is the kind of text you send me if I've got to go to the airport. Right. You know, I'm, I'm supposed to go to some function. I'm just got to do some work thing and a car is going to take me there. You know, can I just say, cause I was your assistant for such a long time and I was like, I used to book all the cars for you and then David took over, but it's still my phone number. Right. So without even thinking when I get a text about his cars, like either coming or information from his thing, from his drivers, I just text it to David and Conan without checking. I don't even know what he's up to. Um, so it's really funny because Sona, um, Sona has no connection really to the day to day stuff. But then out of the blue, when I do get a text from Sona, it's either a picture of her two twins, um, hot wiring a car or, uh, it's, um, it's to tell me that a car is waiting for me out front. And then I go, oh, okay. Yeah. I'm supposed to go to the airport or I'm supposed to go make an appearance on this show or that show. And they've sent a car for me. Let me see if I can find this. How is this going? Okay. Hold on. So I get a thing. I'm going to read it to you now. Sona, your driver. Is running a few minutes late. I text back for like question mark, like to take me where, and I, for a second, I'm just thinking Sona just decided I need to go. So your driver is running a few minutes late. Sona for Sona. Um, I, she wrote, texted, um, um, comma. I don't know. I just got a text and I texted back. I ain't going nowhere. And Sona texts. This is fun. Now. David Hopping is on the thread. and um he suddenly pipes up that's weird and then i text feels like a kidnapping plot and and because why is this car waiting for me then sona texts i think it's a scam text i fell for i'm embarrassed um what you go and then i'll read the text with the guy okay so sona right right i think it's a scam text i fell for i'm embarrassed and then i wrote to sona now they have your nudes she gave that a nice double exclamation point sona wrote back who doesn't then listen to this then sona texts oh wait i ordered food and it's about my food then sona texts i'm sorry but this is hilarious then david hopping texts this is my favorite text three yes i text that's great david hopping what did you order and then i text we got to read this on the pod yeah then sona writes this might be the worst thing that's ever happened to me it was awful then sona texts goop kitchen and then um that's what she ordered and david hopping writes gwyneth really knows what she's doing with that kitchen yeah yeah yeah and i write if you charge my card i'm having you arrested and then i said they have turkey meatballs that are shaped like ovaries and that's okay sona writes i don't charge your personal card i charge your company and it's a write-off so you're welcome and then sona said i'm proud of you for typing ovaries i know it's difficult for you yes i wrote i cried twice sona said i enjoyed picturing that david wrote hashtag growth yeah and then i wrote to david david is and i wrote it to both of you david's headed to vegas to see kelly clarkson and sona is ordering goop on my dime you guys have made it meanwhile i've been slaving away in the yard for two hours what were you doing in the yard i know and then i sona says what were you doing in the yard and i say i go into my yard to manscape oh god that's pretty much the gist of it this is the bullshittery that goes on the three of us aren't doing anything separately and you it's like you set off a room full of mousetraps it's just i was like oh okay i'm doing my job like your car your car is a few minutes late and then why is it why do you even have no idea but you didn't remember that you had just ordered i completely forgot and then the the guy he sent me a text he goes your driver is on their way now but it's running a few minutes late and so i go okay i'll let him know thank you let him know yeah exactly how many edibles have you had none this is my sober state and then afterwards i was like wait who is this and he goes food delivery and i go okay thank you and then he said he's on his way and then when i realized it was the food that i ordered and the driver that i had requested that was about me i was like do i even tell conan or can i just pretend there was a mix-up and that the car company messed up but then i ended up telling you it was you know what you which made me feel really stupid a strength of sona's is she's honest yeah she's very honest i might have just said oh some kind of error i just chewed the car company out and let them have it no yeah you didn't do that no yeah and they're a really good car company so i don't i wouldn't want to but okay yeah well anyway good to see that you're on it yeah boy are you on it how is the goop kitchen it's good it's really good i don't know man it's good i was just embarrassed it was uh and embarrassing myself in front of conan is the worst type of embarrassment slash best thing it's the best thing that ever happens good for the show uh well i think we all learned a lesson which is uh trust but confirm you know or verify uh terrible just terrible conan o'brien needs a friend with conan o'brien sonam of sessian and matt gorley produced by me matt gorley executive produced by adam sacks jeff ross and nick leo theme song by the white stripes incidental music by jimmy vivino take it away jimmy our supervising producer is aaron blair and our associate talent producer is jennifer samples engineering and mixing by eduardo perez and brendan burns additional production support by mars melnick talent booking by paula davis gina batista and brit khan 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 conan call the team coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message it too could be featured on a future episode you can also get three free months of sirius xm when you sign up at siriusxm.com and if you haven't already please subscribe to conan o'brien needs a friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded