Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Matt Groening

Episode Date: September 7, 2026

Writer and animator Matt Groening feels honored about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.   Matt sits down with Conan to discuss fond memories of The Simpsons writers' rooms of yesteryear, keeping track of jokes over 800+ episodes, and mining the future for endless comedy with Futurama. Later, Sona reports on a mishandled attempt to have Conan’s food delivered.   For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone]. Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My name is Matt Graning, 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. 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. I can tell that we are going to be friends. Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien needs a friend. Sona Massessian, hello. And Matt Gourley. Hi, boss. Driving to work today, I saw so many Waymo's driving around.

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. And it made me really happy. 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. You know, they have to stop and get gas. And, man, it's costing a lot right now. Straits and poor moves 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, 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.

And so. You were just thinking this on the way in? I was thinking all of this while I was driving. And it was making me happy because then I'd see another one passed by and I'd go like, oh, there's a ghost. He looks like he's late. But they're still on their phone, so there's just a phone floating. Yeah, there's a phone floating. 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 Waymo and then one of those Coco delivery bots. And then I shit you not an Orthodox Jewish person on a hoverboard. You know, those one wheel little things all on one block. But wait, if you're Orthodox Jew, you can ride a hoverboard? I think some things. I thought there was so, oh, maybe that's a certain after certain traditions.

Sabbath. Just on the Sabbath, you can't write a hoverboard. Right. That says that in the old testament. It does. No hoverboard on the Sabbath. Yeah. That's incredible.

Yeah. Those little robots, those... Cocos. Yeah, Cocoes. 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, l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-l.

He's just doing his job. Easy, 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. 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, blah, blah, you know, I just, I mean, I'm a law-abiding citizen, but I want to smash that. You know, you're not alone as the former operator of a moving trash can. I can tell you a lot of people's instinct was to kick that thing. Not just kids. And just back it up in case people aren't aware of your origin story.

You, 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 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?

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. You should have. 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 all. 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 the line? Was there, like a manager, like a trash manager? Yeah. No, no. He had, he weren't. Goofy. Goofy was. Oh, I got to talk to you. He's got his arms crossed his tapping. 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, what's trying to do something where we have a little cocoa bot, call a Waymo, and then get in? Wouldn't that be great? 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. 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 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 going to know robot cars exist. I know. 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 talk trash can. I love Glenn bullying you. She does.

She does. Were there other trash can guys? Were you guys the crew? Well, we never worked together because it was always a, you know, it was a solo job. Were you friends? Yeah. Did you watch and we're like judging? Was there one guy who was better at it than you and you're looking at him, man?

You're looking at him. You know, the best one? It's the only brag I can do. You were the best. No, I'm kidding. I wasn't. Is 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 somebody's

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, it was bad. You know what? Everyone's instinct is to trash a robot. Yeah,

it is, yeah. Why? Because I think their instinct is to trash us, you know. It's a killer 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 so much. You think there's a guy in a helicopter saying, take a right. Get a left. Why is your conspiracy, like not the opposite of a conspiracy? People are controlling them, like radio cars.

Yeah, the food delivery robots, the Cocoa 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. Okay. But the food delivery robots are controlled by people. But what do you mean they're controlled by people? Where is the person?

It doesn't matter. It's remote. 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 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. Because there'll be footage of me on the internet of me saying, hey, little bitch bot.

It's time for you to taste Louisville slugger. Cachang. 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 got a little fantasy. What are you talking about? 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. Yeah. 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. Turns your Don Johnson into an Arty Johnson? Yeah, exactly. An Arty Johnson reference. God bless you. Is that a rap sign? Yeah, that's a rap sign. Yeah, I think your rap sign was an Arty Johnson reference.

That was only 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 going to say the most iconic. I'm going to 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, well, it's just been so long overdue. I am ecstatic that this gentleman joins us today. Matt Graney.

Welcome. It is so great you're here. Thank you. Because the fans are going to freak out. 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 Reese and Gene, heard that Conan 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 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 gone there. 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 see Conan's old office so I can talk about it. And she said, no, no, no, no, don't. You can't. You can't. I said, and you cannot mention it. And I said, come on, just let me see it. You goes, please don't talk about it.

Please, I beg you. And I opened the door, and it is floor to ceiling with Simpson's merchandise. Oh, wow. Yes. In fact, this is the merchandise that popped out. Oh, my God. Look at this. Oh, my, look at this.

I love Mr. Sparkle. Thank you. These are amazing. Oh, my God. That's after your time. This is 1997. Oh, my God. I love Mr. Sparkle.

Does 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. Sparkle, first of all, 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 makes sense. And this is what Homer's saying, join me or die. Can you do any less? This is a children's toy. Well, what it is, Homer found a Japanese

detergent box in the, in the Springfield dump, and he didn't understand why his name was, or his face was on the cover of the box. I just love it. It's one of the great episodes. Yeah, it's awesome.

For Lucky Best Wash, use Mr. Sparkle. I'm disrespectful to dirt. Can you see that I am serious? This is fantastic. Thank you so much. I didn't mean to tell you not to open it. We should see one.

I'll open mine. We want to keep ours pristine. Yeah, you guys keep yours pristine. I want you to sign this. What I... Oh, sure. I know what you're going to do. It'll be on eBay tomorrow.

Okay, here's a really... People always ask me, working at the Simpsons, what's it like? Matt Graning, what can you tell us? and I have a very clear memory of one of your fun things that you did was in your travels you would seek out illegal like bootleg Simpson's merchandise not to like let's nab them and sue them but just because it amused you and I remember I think you were in Mexico you remember sitting around we were working on a script you came in

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 of creaky. So you heard, like Pavlovian, we would all look up, maybe foods 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 on the street. 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 yeah, now there's too many of them. Can you think of one of the more horrible ones? Bart Sanchez was the name on the on the bust of Bart. And he had a sombrero. And yeah, they're all over the place. 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 was really. Or we'll kill you. By the way, speaking of the creaking door and the food, 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, plump, clomp, clomp, clump, 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 1.30. And then, hey, it's 1.45. Where's the really unhealthy hamburgers that we order from Island? Oh, islands? Islands. Islands. Where is it?

And we always got 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 excited. excuse myself to use the bathroom and I went downstairs and I found a big cardboard box and I waited a while and then I clumped up the stairs, opened the screen door and backed in backwards so you just see a jeaned 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 I went yay and then 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'd start to salivate. You knew that the food is coming here. Do you remember you wrote Homer Goes to College? And I recall you pitching this one line that you were so attached to.

Yeah. A bee 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? Yes, this is...

But wait, 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 and stuck out your butt. Homer gets... Homer has to...

And everyone there is trying to think of you've 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. Stung. Yeah, sorry. In your line, it was bit. Yeah, yeah. Oh, right. I didn't even think about that. 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 bee hit my bottom.

I mean, a bee 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 I was, you know, it's one of those things

that follows me around every now and that. And his big ass is big to begin with. But the way the animator is animated, one cheek is very big. It really was swollen. Yeah. And I was, you know, so did I contribute? Sure, I did.

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. favorite to 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 this 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, like, slams the table and says, there'll be no. 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. There's Barney at once. I think Mr. Plow, which is a John Vita episode, Barney's at the bar, and he and Homer competing to have the better Plow business. and Homer thinks he's ahead when suddenly a commercial comes on in Moes.

And it's Barney promoting his plow business with Linda Ronstat. And so it's Barney and Linda Ronstadt. And it's like, hey, Barney, how are Rinder? And then they go ahead and do this commercial care. And it ends with them singing a song. And Homer says, Barney, how did you get Linda Ronstat? And he says, we've been looking for a project together for a long time. And what I loved is that doesn't fucking.

explain anything. How do you? What do you mean? I just love that, well, 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. 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 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, 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 encourage 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 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 did a thing sometimes where I 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. They'd bring in. Yeah. They'd be like, hey, do those soda, soda, soda. I'm 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 put in here. And they were all leaning over saying, come on, do it for us too. Do it for us, too. You had a great saying there, which was things can be improbable, but, you know, not physically impossible. And I thought that was a great rule, which we, of course, tried to chip away at that.

Your point, and I think it was really very wise, was 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, you know. Yes. Yes, maybe in real life he'd have died.

You weren't supposed to show blood in cartoons, it turns out. Yeah, and we made Homer very bloody many times. 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. Yeah.

Right? And he defied physics for a month, moment and then fell. And then fell. And then the next shot was him being 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 all the way down again, 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. 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, 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 decay. That was my first idea, that George decay will play this part.

And then George decay 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, 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 die. 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. I hope we get this. You can, you know, for the same, 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 Jeebis. And then they take off. 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, gime. And then he's wondering.

And he goes, Gime. 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, gai. You're, wait a minute, so 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 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 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. 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 for a couple of weeks and then come back.

Yeah. Oh, we don't get back. 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 would you know one of the you were around for John Schwarzwolder right oh god yeah so John Swetzwith another one of the great writers and he would turn in scripts that were so insane. Yes. And we just cut, 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. You know, 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. Like imagine like 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 Jean, like they want me to go to the Burbank lot and audition. And I don't know. and 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 Swartzwolder 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 endorsed the concept. Because most people I would say that to like,

you're a funny guy, but what the fuck are you talking? And Schwarzweller 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 Schwartzweather, I like him, but when Clinton was in office, he bet everybody on the staff that.

Yes. Oh, he's completely wrong. Clint would be hanged while in office. He said for, yeah, he was. Oh, 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, r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r- 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. Yeah. 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, 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. The old Cadillac is he's just from the 50s. No, he was from out of time. I mean, if anyone has ever been from another time, it was John Schwarzwelder 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 he's, uh, 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 Schwarzweld, what's the big diner on Ventura Boulevard that's no longer there? A famous one. Is it Dupars? Is it? Not Dupar's. Anyway.

Norms? Norms. Yeah. Schwarzuela 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.

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. They're really funny. 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, 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 where they're fortune. I see your rags on eBay all the time. You moved to L.A. in 1977 to become a writer. 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 Lickish Pizza record store,

landscaping in a sewage treatment plant and chauffeuring and ghostwriting for 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 wanted, and it said wanted writer chauffeur. And so I applied for the job. And I was the writer chauffeur for this old movie director, who you've never heard of.

And my job was to drive him. him around during the day, and we'd look at those sides, go through Beverly Hills and whatever, and he'd say, that's Tom Mix's house. And then we'd drive by the same house the next day, and he'd go, that's where Laurel and Hardy lived. And I said, I don't think they lived together. Shut up. And then I would listen to his stories, and at night I would work on his autobiography, which was this high, because there had been a number of previous writer-sophers. 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. DeMill. Immediately I ran home to tell Mother, I said, I met Cecil B. de Milo. It was odd. This sounds like Sunset Boulevard. Yeah, it is very much. It is very much, yeah. Wow.

At the age of 88, mother lost control of her bowels. Oh, no. That was the lead sentence of one of the chapters. Oh, I thought that was a whole chapter. But getting back to Schwarzwiller, one of my favorite lines 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 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, Don Nott's 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.

Fredericks of Hollywood and, you know, all sorts of... Yeah, titherto. Dildo Emporium. Right. And you would say, 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.

Of course, I never stop. No. 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 my star. It's, 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. Who knew? You were up on, like, 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, and they, Have you? Have you? I do not. No. And nor will I ever have one. I'll see to that. I'm going to work on that. 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, prime time 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 Elman show, and they were, 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 Elman show every week. And I went, oh, you can't, you can't do anything in two minutes. That's not enough time. And then they call me and said, no, I'm sorry, it's one

minute. And then they said, it's four 15-second cartoon. So the whole thing began with 15-second cartoons. And so my feeling was, well, sight gag. That's all we, you know, really quick, quick, quick sidecags. 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 wanted to do one show. And we, Jim Brooks, uh, refused and said, no, we want to do 13. and they did it.

And 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 all the animation. And so we lucked out. That's all. 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 so, but even with 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 the- Yeah, I think probably second or third episode. Yeah, you just knew this is the best thing ever. And 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 just a phenomenon. And it's, you know, when I leave, I remember thinking, I mean, I 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, and then it will find its natural end point. 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? I think 38 seasons. Oh, my God. We've done more than 800 episodes. That's a lot of pencil mileage. How do you think? 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. Yeah. We do repeat. We do repeat. Our motto now is try not to repeat recently. Yeah. Yeah.

No, 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 one goes in and one goes out. Very Homer Simpson style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people like Al Jean and the Internet help us say, did we already do that, Joe? Yeah.

And yeah. I mean, now it's going to be easier and easier to track it down. Yeah. Because of a little amazing thing called AI. Oh. Hey, AI. Just a quick plug for it. No, no.

Oh, okay. Stop. As an AI son I can use. And now we are, because of the Internet, we are being congratulated for predicting the future. 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, And how is it you guys were able to predict the future?

And I'll say, 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 have been so many of them now. Well, Dan Greeny, the writer of that line about Trump being president, we've done in like 2002 or something. And then Elisa was president. So we don't get everything right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And he's taken that to heart. And now he dresses up like a prophet.

Dan does? And he's running for president. So I mean, I hear Dan Graney was running for president. Well, I'll vote for him. Yes, of course. Sure. I want to see the outfit first. 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. Let's talk about Futurama because I've always believed that there are two really fun things to write.

One is someone who has unlimited wealth, which is why writing for Mr. Burns was my favorite thing. and I think all of us loved it. 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 and, yes, yes, Simpson, eh? 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 I'd be like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I thought we pitch in the voices. And I'm like, no, you don't pitch in the voices. No one does that.

I loved writing from Mr. Burns because it's a kind of silly writing you can do where he can, 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, all kinds of sinister things can happen. The other fun one I always thought would be writing about the future because one of the 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 the Jetsons, which has the greatest theme of all time. Yes, yeah. He said it's all of these, these apartments and stuff that are on stilts. And you never see the earth. And I thought, well, let's do the future. Like, what's going on down there? Yeah, yeah. It's got to be pretty bad. Yeah.

So, yeah. I love that. It did feel like it allows you to use a whole other area 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 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 piece of advice, if you're doing science fiction,

fish and 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 you see over and over again, make sure you can live with it. When the series begins, who were you creating it with? It was David X. Cohen. Yeah, that's right. I know David Cohen. Yes. He's called David X. Cohen because there are other David Cohen's in the Writers Guild. Is that why he put the X in there? I always just knew him as David, David Cohen, but then he put an X. 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. Yes. I'm sure there are other Conan O'Brien's 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, 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 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, 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. Now, Marge's hair, I know 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. And my dad loved the Simpsons except when Homer was mean to Marge. He did not like, he called me up. He called me up after, there was an episode in which the Simpsons car breaks down in the desert. 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 got it. Oh, you know, and I think that went away at a certain point. No. No? It went away in that we get tired of repeating the same joke.

Yeah, okay. But then... It wasn't out of concern for chimp of safety. No, you know what? We wouldn't do spanking because that's too real. So the strangling was very... It's true. 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 Homer gets his come up and there was one episode, in which Homer went, oh, you little, and he comes over very slowly and strangles him.

It was so freakish that we cut it. It's only for some impulsive. So 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. He was hitting him in the face,

and they're back and forth and really harsh. harsh animation. And I remember coming to the sound mix, and it's just, 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. The show, this was on a Thursday.

The show was being 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. And just let, let, let, sounds of pain, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And that made it funny. So that is my comedy tip there. Pain is funny. 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,

the traitor. But my thing was that he's so weak that he's going, ah, and that bat is just barely touching the guy, and the guy just says, uh, what are you doing? And Mr. Burns says, I'm thrashing you 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 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. It's, you know, that it's, it's, it's, two stories and there's a staircase that goes to the second level. It looks kind of dilapidated. And I push through the same old creaky door. And some of the same faces from when I was there,

but everyone's got gray hair and they look up and they go and lunch yeah lunch and 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 no I'm going to go shoot a travel show I'm going to you know Paris fellas I'll see you later oh

kill me kill me before you go but I showed my 10 year old at the time old episodes of Andy Griffith. And he liked him, 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 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. Orcs 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 Kavana. 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, jub. And I remembered Al went, okay, jub, and then it's one of those things where people, real Simpsons fanatics will come up to me sometimes and go, jump, jab, and I'm like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. But I, but I, but you started using that phrase all the time. All the time. You had a fictitious product or something called jub, job, Yes, I built a whole religion around Jub-Jub. That's right.

I was saying Jub-Jub 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, Jub, 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. grab 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 scratch 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 he was dressed. Yeah, I'm like Homer. I often forget completely who I am and what I'm doing. He 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 of the Simpsons. It was really perfect. Well, you were great in the room, and I wasn't surprised that you went places. In fact, when it was announced that you were going to be the host, New 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 out on the front page because I was the only. 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, that quote because I was desperate for anything that would keep people at bay.

You came in and came back to the lot. Yes, I do. It was a beautiful thing to do. He's very, he's very appreciative. And congratulations. And I know, I've, I have. I, I have. I've seen everything else you've done. Yeah. No, but anyway, thank you for your service. Oh. You know, and also, again, about the Simpsons and Futurama and everything else, it's a collaborative effort.

You know, you can't, you know, it's a combination of great writers and great actors and great animators and great musicians and 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 which relates to us, Sona. A couple 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 do 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, which is the kind of text you send me if I've got to go to the airport.

Right. You know, 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, because I was your assistant for such a long time and 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.

he's up to. 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 wearing 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 from me. Let me see if I can find this. Where is this going? Okay. 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 four, like question mark, like to take me where? And for a second, I'm just thinking, Sona just decided I need to go. So your driver is running a few minutes late.

Sona, four. Sona. 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 he suddenly pipes up.

That's weird. And then I text, feels like a kidnapping plot. 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. What? You go and then I'll read the text I had with the guy. Okay.

So Sona writes, 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 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 thread. 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 that's what she ordered. And David Hopping writes, Gwyneth really knows what she's doing. with that kitchen. Yeah, 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 then 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 headed to Vegas to see Kelly Clarkson and Sona's 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 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 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's a few minutes late. And then why is it? Why do you have no idea? But you didn't remember that you had just ordered food? I completely forgot. And then the guy he sent me a taxi 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. Oh, my God. Left food. 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 food. You know what you...

Which made me feel really stupid. A strength of Sonas is that 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. But you didn't do that.

No, yeah. And they're a really good car company, so I don't, I wouldn't want to. Okay. Well, anyway, good to see that you're on it. Yeah. Boy, are you on it. You're welcome. How is the Goop Kitchen?

It's good. It's really good. I don't know. Oh, 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 it 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 sonum of sessian and mac goarly produced by me mac goarly 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.

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