Stuff You Should Know - Episode 1,000: The Simpsons Spectacular Part II

Episode Date: October 26, 2017

Today concludes our two part celebration of one of the greatest TV shows of all time - The Simpsons! It also officially marks our 1,000th episode. Can you believe it? We sure can't. So join us today as we wrap up our tribute to America's favorite TV family and hit the 1,000 mark. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Chuck here with a tour show announcement. We're going to be back at Sketchfest this year in January in lovely San Francisco.

We don't have the firm date on that yet, but stay tuned for details. But we do know when we're going to be in Seattle and Portland. We're going to be in Seattle on January 15th and Portland the next day, January 16th. Set the Moore Theater and Revolution Hall respectively, and there is a pre-sale going on today for the Seattle show. Use the code HippieRob. You can either go to the Moore Theater website or just go to HTTP colon slash slash bit dot do slash Seattle live and use the code HippieRob to get your pre-sale tickets.

Portland goes on sale tomorrow, and that would be bit dot do slash pdx live. Come out and see us, everybody. We're looking forward to these. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast again to the actual real episode 1,000 of Stuff You Should Know, the 1,000th episode of Stuff You Should Know. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

There's Jerry over there. Chuck, episode 1,000 is upon us right now. You know what my mom used to always say when I was a little kid? What? She said, son, if you live your life right, one day you're going to have a four-digit podcast. Oh wow. You know?

She had some real predictive powers. Absolutely. I'm going to take her to the horse track. You should do that, and we should probably just get right into this since we left everyone with the cliffhanger, huh? Yeah, agreed, agreed. Everyone's like, shut up. I almost feel like we should apologize for splitting this up, but there's no way to

get this done in one episode. Nope, there really isn't. All right, so you may remember us from certain podcasts as Simpsons tribute. When we left off, I believe we had told our writer's room story. We had. So that's as far as we got. No, we got to the table read part. Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant.

Sorry, table read story. So once the table read happens, then all of the, is everybody with us? I guess they've had a few days for this to stew, right? To disco stew. Yeah, that is another great one too. So after the table read, everybody's kind of got their ideas down. The notes get sent out, edits get made, that kind of thing. And then the voice actors all go do their parts.

And I think a lot of people think that they're all in the same room together acting off of one another. That is not at all the case. Yeah. I mean, this, this is no surprise. Like people know that's how animation works. You don't all get in a big room and read to each other. Well, you're in a booth by yourself.

Right. And it's really up to the director now at this point. So once the, once the show or the episodes get divided up or whatever, they get handed off to directors. And there's multiple directors for the Simpsons, right? Correct. And so the director, or I should say in this case, I think it's the producer who would be handling the audio bit at this part.

And the director really is working on the animation part. With the, they go off and they record the audio, the dialogue and the sound. And they hand it off. And at the same time, there are animators who are working very closely with the director to bring the script to life. And to do that, this is totally different from a live action show. Yeah. Right.

Because at a live action show, you write the script and then people mess with the script or whatever and you rehearse it and everything and then you shoot it. This is different. You have to draw everything out. There's several extra steps for any animated show. And from what I understand, the Simpsons do far more than any other animated show on television today. It's way more expensive.

There's way more steps, but you could argue it produces a really polished, finished product. And the steps really begin as far as animation is concerned by creating a storyboard slash story reel. Yeah. And this whole process, soup to nuts, can take about six to eight months from pitching the episode to having a completed episode. So they're constantly working this process. Like as soon as they have recorded those lines, there's already writers working on the other

episode, just like a constant cycle going basically. Right. There's different groups of writers. There's different groups of directors and producers and animators and they're working simultaneously on multiple episodes. All right. So we're at the story reel. And what the story reel does, it sort of just sets the basics down for each scene, how you

position the characters, what kind of expressions they're making, what's going on in the background. And then this goes on to more artists who refine that storyboard and story reel. Right. And so apparently they used to do storyboard and then story reel, which is like the storyboard is just like a bunch of stills. I've seen it compared to like a picture book maybe. Yeah. It's like a comic strip.

A story reel would have a little more movement and animation and motion to it. Apparently they've combined those now in their process. Okay. And then there's also another step called layout. And I think layout is, takes the longest of all of the parts of putting an episode together. Because again, if you compare it to like a live action television show, when you shoot a rehearsal, the director and the producer and the writers can go back and watch and then make notes.

When you're animating a show, you have to animate that rehearsal. You have to animate the rehearsal so that the director and the head, the show runner and everybody else can get together and then make those notes. So you have to kind of animate it first. And you want to get it to a certain level of completion so that you know what's going to come out ultimately in the end. That you stop short of actually animating the entire thing. Because apparently the Simpsons shoot their show in like 24 frames per second.

And what they're doing say as far as layout, which is about the most finished product they're going to do in-house, is maybe a third of that or a quarter of that. That means somebody has to go and fill it in. And once they've got everything set, and we'll talk more about that, they send it overseas. Yeah. And with this layout, like we talked earlier about the style guide in the show Bible, and this is where that really comes into play. Because you have different people drawing, and everyone has their own style unto themselves.

But you have to remain true to the show. So that show Bible and style guide are really sort of the rules of the show that everyone can refer to and say, no, when Homer yells, literally like, his lips do this. Exactly. Like, that's how it works, and we can't deviate from that. It's got to be consistent. Right. And I saw a couple of style guides.

For example, if you look closely, I never noticed this, but the nose always overlaps the eye. The eye is never drawn over the nose. Their teeth are never square or pointy. They're always slightly rounded, but not too round. So you'll see examples of these things. And you'll see examples of yes and no kind of thing. And here's a bit of trivia for you, especially if you're an animation nerd.

Bart's body minus his shoes, but from his shoes up is two heads high. So his body and his head are the same size. Oh, interesting. And then you have his shoes. And if you put all those three things together, you have a correctly proportioned Bart. That's pretty good. Yeah. All right.

So once you have the layout done, you have moved on to something called an exposure sheet. That is a pretty complicated chart basically that really breaks down in super, super precise detail, each frame and everything in the entire episode. So think about this, Chuck. The Simpsons shoots 24 frames per second. And let's say that the average episode is 22 minutes of actual content, right? So if you'll allow me to pull out my Texas Instrument Pocket Calculator, as I am doing right now, we're going to do 24 times 60 times 22 equals 31,680 frames in say a 22 minute

episode. Okay. Amazing. Amazing indeed. So get this, man. With those exposure sheets you were just mentioning, every single one of those 31,680 frames is accounted for. Everything that's going on in every single one of those frames is written down and accounted

for, like not just like the movements of Homer's eyes or what Homer's doing, but also what the background characters are doing, how wispy, patty or Selma's cigarette smoke is. And you do this for every single character, whether foreground or background, in every single scene for every single frame of every single episode. For 30 years. Isn't that insane? Yeah. They break down words into phonems so everything just matches up in time's outright for not

only to be realistic, but for comedy. Right. Exactly. And the whole reason they're doing this is for what I said earlier, that the people who actually do the animation, the people who draw those 31,860 frames for every episode, they're located overseas. I think with the Simpsons in particular, they work with ACOM, which is a South Korean company, and they do the actual animation.

Most animation from here in the States is actually done overseas in Asia for the most part. Yeah, like the final, final animation. Right. The ones who, the people who do the actual like animation of every single frame. So up to the point here in the United States, in-house, they've gotten it pretty close. But again, they've just maybe animated a quarter or a sixth of the actual frames that are going to be animated for the episode.

And they've gotten it as far as they have because they're trying to work out the acting, the comedic timing, making sure that all the facial expressions are right and the movements are right, but then the people actually go through and animate those frames based on that frame by frame Bible for every single episode. And it serves as a blueprint for both the animators and for the Simpsons creators because they can point to them and be like, no, we didn't want this, you guys need to reanimate that. Supposedly, and this is like the most mind-bendingly detailed process anyone's ever done, supposedly

the Simpsons kept it up longer than anybody, but even they have moved to almost all digital process now. Yeah. I mean, they use software that has streamlined some of this. But it's not like they plug things into a computer and it animates things, you know? Right. No, no, they're just using it to say like, rather than using a film stock to slowly capture each phoneme frame by frame, now it's all digitized, like they can upload the audio,

upload the layout, and put them together in time at like that, which is, I'm sure the productions assistants' lives are so much better now. Yeah. And of course, once it's animated, it comes back from ACOM in South Korea and then it's sent to the editor and producers. They're going to add all the music, of course, the iconic score from Danny Elfman. And it's edited all together and you slap it on the television. Slap it on the behind.

Wow. I know, and each one of those takes about six months, right? Yeah. To get an episode done. And again, like I've read, South Park can be done in a week. Well, yeah, that's how they, there's that great documentary about South Park, how they put together a show and they do that so they can stay super, super current. Right.

Which is how that show works, you know? Yeah, for sure. Different beast. And I mean, it looks good too, especially once they've made their mark on this is what this style of animation looks like now. It's just like you're totally absorbed into their world the moment you see it, you know? Yeah. All right.

So let's talk a little bit about Springfield. The beloved Springfield USA where the show is set. It has been a running joke over the years. Graning picked Springfield because there are many, many Springfields in the country here in the United States. And one of the running jokes is that they have never named where exactly what state Springfield is in and shall not. No, although supposedly in, I don't know, the last couple of years he gave an interview

and said that he named it after Springfield, Oregon, because he's apparently from Portland. And so everybody's like, oh, that's where Springfield is. And I think the next episode they released Bart's chalkboard gag said, Springfield is in any state that's not, yeah, but yours is true. Yeah. And I mean, I think he might have named it because a lot of the streets in Portland are in the Simpsons as well, but as characters. But I don't think he was saying, and this is why they did that.

I don't think he was saying, hey, it's in Oregon. That's just where it got the name originally. Right. I think, yeah, the reason he chose that name was just to make it as generic as possible. And as relatable as possible to any small town. And the Grabster makes a pretty good point that Springfield is, you could mistake it for any small town. Everybody knows everybody else's name.

Everybody knows everyone else's business. It's just a small town. But then just to keep the plot going, and this is one of the great benefits of making it an animated show, it also has a gorge. It has not one, but two mountains. Yeah. It has like world-class museums. It's got a volcano.

An airport. Yeah, a volcano. It has a squid port, like the water side area that they redeveloped. It has malls. It has a casino. It's got like all this stuff. And so it's a relatable small town, but at the same time, they just played with it and made it as big as they want it to be too.

Yeah, and of course, aside from all the big, huge things, The Simpsons has gotten a lot of comedy over the years from the names of the businesses. A few of my favorites, there was a pastry shop called The French Confection. Their museum is Louvre American Style. Did you ever watch that show Love American Style? Oh yeah. It was so great. The soup kitchen was called Helter Shelter, and there was a seafood restaurant called

The Fry and Dutchman. Yeah. And those are just a few. That's like sort of a long running gag is to get good pun names out of the businesses. So in addition to Matt Groening saying that he chose or named it after Springfield, Oregon, there's an episode that certain purists point to is the tipping point where The Simpsons went from good to bad. It was the end of season 10.

And the episode was like a behind the laughter or behind the music parody. Yeah. It was called Behind the Laughter. Yeah, I remember that one. And in it, at the very end, the narrator references them as a Northern Kentucky family. But they knew that, yeah, and I was like, well, they just said it. But then apparently for reruns, they had the narrator also record a couple of other states. So it's just totally up in the air.

One of them was apparently Lanai, like Lanai, Hawaii, Springfield, Lanai, Hawaii apparently is a place. But it's not, of course. And then just to kind of, they took that fact that they never identified Springfield and they managed to use that as like a running gag as well, right? So there's a referential humor that the show is deeply involved in. Also a self-referential, too, in that like anytime somebody went to point to a map where Springfield was, somebody would get in front of the camera and between you and the camera.

Or would suddenly talk over somebody who was about to say what state Springfield was in. So it just became kind of an in-joke for people who watch The Simpsons as well. Yeah. And I think Ned, even at one point, said the state borders Kentucky, Maine, Nevada and Ohio. So no one knows where Springfield is, but I think that Bart Chalkboard thing was the closest we'll ever get to it. And who wants, why would you want to know where it is?

You know what I'm saying? No, I get that certain nerds might be like, I want to solve this, but to me that's just part of the charm of the show. Sure. You know? Agreed. So I want to say something. I mentioned museums and you mentioned the Louvre American style.

I wonder if that was the one, but there was one episode where The Simpsons went to a museum and they took the audio tour and the audio tour was hosted by Melanie Griffith. But rather than like talk about the paintings, the whole thing consisted of her going, ooh, this one's nice. Ooh, look at this one. Oh, this painting's nice. Let's see what's in the next room. Oh, this room's nice.

Like that was the audio tour. That's great. It was great, man. So aside from the multiple universities, the sports teams and stadiums, the International Airport, the Tirefire, the Mystery Spot, and all the huge landmarks in this small town, you're going to see The Simpsons spend a lot of time at places like Quickie Mart, Moe's Tavern, Power Plant, where Homer works, Springfield Elementary, where Bart and Lisa have been going to school for 30 years, which is, I think that he decided early on he didn't want

to age the characters at all. Yeah, it was a good choice. Yeah, because you can go on forever. Pretty smart move. Bad news for Maggie, because she doesn't have many lines. Yeah, that's true. And I think Matt Groening does the pacifier suck. I saw that too.

Yeah. And of course, next door to Homer lives one Ned Flanders with his family. And here's another little tidbit that I did not know. I don't know how it got past me, but apparently Ned Flanders is 60 years old. Yeah. He's kept his youthful looks with the healthy dose of vitamin church. Yeah, it always cracks me up that Ned just looks like a normal guy until like in the skiing episode where they were skiing when he's all buff and his buns are all tight.

Or in the streetcar named Marge episode, he has to take his shirt off because he's playing Stanley Kowalski, I think. And he's like ripped. It's so funny. Yeah. All right. Well, let's take a break here. Okay.

We're going to come back and talk a little bit about the odd episode numbering code right after this. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia, who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too.

Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca-host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best

decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia

starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. All right, so if you're a Simpsons fan, you might say, what about season 7, episode 3? That's good enough for us.

That is good enough for us, but you'd be mistaken because they have a very, what's the word, not obscure, but just a very convoluted way of numbering their episodes. Yeah, they do it. So remember they're working on multiple episodes at once. And not all of those episodes make it into the same season, so the way that they keep track of their episodes is by batch number. And I didn't see anywhere how many can be in a batch, did you? No.

But let's say between six and a baker's dozen. Okay. That's my guess. Sure. Stab in the dark. And maybe Matt Groening will write in to correct us one way or another. I hope so. But the batch number and letter is the first two digits or whatever you want to call them.

Number and digit, or number and letter, sorry. Right. That's what I was having problems with. So like for example, season 4, episode 6, that would be 9F03. And the 03 is the number that the episode had in the batch. So it really has nothing to do with release date or where it fell in the season. It had to do with when it was assigned and entered production. Yeah.

I think what's important is that they get it. Yeah. And then they even switch later in the series to letter codes only. Isn't that right? They changed the... Well, no, not letter codes only because season 10, episode 13 would be AABF09. Right. So they changed the batch code to letter...

Oh, okay. All right. And God knows what AABF09 stands for. But even Chuck, as far as I'm concerned, if you are referencing an episode and you say something like season 4, episode 6, I don't know what episode that is. Yeah. So... I go by title.

I don't even go by title. I just go by the one about this. Well, yeah. I mean, let's say I go by title when it's obvious like March versus the Monorail. But yeah, I usually will go by the one where Homer did blank. Right. Exactly. That's what Friends did.

Yeah. That was actually the title, though, right? Yeah. So season 4, episode 6, by the way, was the one about the itchy and scratchy movie, which Bart is banned from seeing but ends up becoming a Supreme Court justice because Homer took the stand and punished him. So they have many staples on the show that they've done over the years. They mentioned the Blackboard gag at the beginning of the intro, and the intro itself

has got some long-running gags. Besides Bart writing different messages on the chalkboard during the tension hall over and over, the couch gag when the family runs in finally altogether into the living room to get on the couch, it's always something different and special and funny. Yeah. And apparently some of them are like way longer than others. Yes. And they will add seconds onto it if like an episode came in shorter than they meant

it to. Yeah. It's kind of nice to have that leeway to play with, I think. For sure. And they've actually made pretty good hay by outsourcing that, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. To guest animators like Guillermo del Toro, the Banksy did one.

So they're actually doing those. I just thought it was sort of an homage. No, no. They're either actually animating them or coming up with the idea or directing them. That's awesome. Don Hertzfeld did one, Bill Plimpton did one, John Crick-Falsy. I've never known how to say his name, but the guy who did run in Stimpy, he did one. I just can't imagine what an honor it would be to do the couch gag.

Yeah. But they've come up with some really cool stuff. Matt Groening, can we do a couch gag? What if he's been listening since he wrote that down on his script? Man, that would be something else. I would guess he would be like, I'm not even listening to this one. Or these two. Yeah.

Or what if he listened to the first and not the second? That would be the biggest dagger. Can't go on. So Maggie, when she gets scanned at the grocery store in the beginning sequence, originally in 1989, she got scanned as $847.63. Because apparently that was the price, the estimated price of raising a baby for a month. Wow. That's a lot for back then.

It is. And then in 2009, that was changed out. The groceries start with a number of $243.26. And then Maggie, when she is swiped, doubles that to $486.52. I'm not sure of the significance of that. Not either. But I bet someone knows. Again, Matt Groening, let us know.

What else? Treehouse of horror? Very classic. Was that in the first season? Did they start that in the first season? Do you know? I think so. I think so too.

But just like, what a great tradition to just throw like, they threw continuity out the window, characters could be killed off, they routinely would spoof like great sci-fi and horror movies. It was just fun to watch. Yeah. Because it didn't count. It didn't have anything to do with anything. It was just like taking the cartoon aspect of the show and just fleshing it out in the

grand tradition of cartoons. Yeah. And those are always some of my favorite episodes over time for the Halloween episodes. Many catchphrases over the years have become part of just part of American culture, part of the lexicon from Doe, from Homer. Right. Which is translated in different languages. Yeah.

Right. In French, it's toe. Yeah. With a T. And then in Spanish, it's ouch. Did you know that? I did not know that, which is weird because it's not a physical thing, but it is sort of an ouch.

Right. An emotional ouch. Well, did you know that it's in the Oxford English Dictionary? I did. And what's the definition? Did you find it? Somewhere. I did see it, but I don't remember.

Do you have it? I do. I found it. I'm expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned or that one has said something foolish. Right. It's a pretty good definition of Doe. I think everyone has had a friend over the years that said, excellent, a little too much.

Yeah. And then, of course, comic book man, worst episode ever. Yeah. That's kind of a classic one. That's a good starting point to talk about some more self-referential humor. So that was about, I don't remember what episode that was or what season it was, but that was from the itchy and scratchy and poochy episode, right? So at the time, people were kind of hating on The Simpsons.

It was becoming trendy to talk about how it had jumped the shark, although I don't think that was a term yet. And The Simpsons made fun of it by creating this episode where itchy and scratchy had become un-hip and old. And so to rev stuff up, they brought in Pucci, the talking dog who was an extreme skateboarding guitar playing ninja, I think, and just completely threw off the whole itchy and scratchy show. And that's where comic book guy says, worst episode ever. He's talking about the itchy and scratchy and poochy episode.

And Bart's like, well, you know, where do you get off saying that? And he's like, well, as a loyal fan, I feel like they owe me. He's like, what do you mean they owe you? They've given you hundreds of hours of free entertainment. If anything, you owe them. And he goes, worst episode ever. Yeah. I would say that's a subtle dig from Simpsons writers to Simpsons nerds.

For sure, and then also in the same of, so there's another great one too, if I may, like the super, super nerds, I don't remember the guy's name, but just, he's like, got the messed up hair and he's wearing like a green cardigan all the time in glasses. But there's an itchy and scratchy, like Q&A or something like that. And the guy asks the question, he says, he goes, so an episode, whatever, whatever, like itchy plays scratchy skeleton, like a xylophone, and they show him hitting the same rib twice in succession, but it plays two distinct notes. I hope somebody got fired for that screw up.

You know, so they were very much aware of the growing viciousness of their own fans. Yeah, for sure. That is just totally commonplace now. But at the time it was just developing, because that was about the time the internet was really developing. Yeah. And of course, everybody knows the internet brings out the absolute worst in humanity. Yeah.

Here's another cool thing that's happened over the years is The Simpsons has had an, in Time Magazine wrote this great article where they kind of broke it down 13 times The Simpsons actually predicted the future. It's not quite on the level of me wanting to punch Jared from Subway or Sharknado. I know man, you do have a pretty good track record. But it is pretty interesting over the years some of the things that The Simpsons has parodied that ended up happening in real life. So thanks to Time Magazine, we're going to go over some of these, maybe not all 13.

No, just the good ones. One of the best. It's very sad and tragic. But they actually did predict a full 10 years earlier Siegfried and Roy's Tiger attack. Did they correctly predict which one would be attacked? And no, I'm not sure because Roy was the one who was attacked in real life and I want to say... I think Siegfried got attacked in the cartoon.

Oh really? I didn't know if it was one or both. I can't remember. Oh, maybe it was both. But that was in 1993 and it actually really did happen in 2003 and season five episode 10, Springfield S being a dollar sign or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling. That was so great.

It was the one where Robert Goulet hits millhouse with this microphone. That's right. And that title of course is also a reference to Dr. Strangelove. Right. All right. What else we got? Let's see. Voting machine errors.

Yeah. Counting the wrong votes. I don't remember what the episode was but... Season 20 episode four, Treehouse of Horror. Oh, was it that one? So Homer was trying to vote for, I guess, McCain at first and then ends up being switched to Obama. No, he tries to vote for Obama and he does it a few times and it gets switched back to

McCain. Gotcha. Which actually happened in real life in that very election. That's right. In 2012, there was that famous video footage in Pennsylvania of people voting for Obama and it's switching it to Mitt Romney. Oh, that's right. So the next election.

What else? That one was kind of funny. 1994, episode eight of season six, Lisa on Ice. Lisa was... Or, currently actually during a school assembly, asked Dolph, this fellow bully, to take a memo to beat up Martin on his Newton. Remember the Newton, Apple's little, I guess the original PDA from Apple? It was but it had, I guess, writing the text function that didn't work that well.

Yeah, so he said to take a memo, beat up Martin and it changed it to eat up Martha, which is pretty funny. Yeah. And everyone suffers through that today with it. Well, let's get real. It's not suffering, but it gets annoyed by the smartphone. Feels like suffering. I got another one.

President Trump. Yeah. So there's this clip, apparently, of Trump announcing his candidacy that they made after he actually had announced it, but people sent it around and said, it just became an urban legend that they had made this before he actually announced his campaign. That's just false. But there's another earlier episode from, I believe, 2000, if I'm not mistaken, where it shows the future and Lisa is president and she just references President Trump.

She says, we inherited a pretty big debt crunch from President Trump, so we're going to have a lot of work ahead of us. And I guess Al Jean or somebody who was interviewed said that they asked themselves, what would represent the lowest point for America that we could possibly hit in the future? And they said to themselves, well, President Trump. So now we've hit, apparently, the lowest point as far as the Simpsons are concerned. Last one, I'm going to pick America's Ebola outbreak, and this one I'm picking because it was 17 years early.

In season nine, episode three, Lisa Sacks, in 1997, Marge offers to read Bart, but he was depressed. He offers to read him a book called Curious George and the Ebola Virus, which, I mean, no one knew at all what Ebola was in 1997. That's pretty interesting. Yeah. Not bad, Simpsons. You got any other ones?

No. All right. Check out that Time Magazine article if you want the full list. So what's up next, Chuck? Shall we talk about the success of the Simpsons, the cultural impact? I feel like we can take our final break now. We can. What a journey.

It has been a heck of a journey, buddy. All right. And we'll come back and finish up with a lot more Easter eggs, what some critics have said over the years, and kind of just a lovely summation. Hey, friends. When you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn?

So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Is that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, Chuck, so you promised Easter eggs. People want Easter eggs. I want Easter eggs. Let's talk Easter eggs. Yeah, this was compiled in M.E., put together a list of 50 Easter eggs, and we've covered a lot of them. And so we'll go over some of the faves here that remain. Did not know this, but Bart obviously is very famous for his prank phone calls to Moe's

Tavern, one of the great, great running bits over the years. And the number he dials is 764-843-77, which it's funny in itself because it's got one extra digit. But that actually spells out smithers. Perfect. Pretty good. I've got one. Everybody on the show has four fingers, four digits on their hands, right?

And there's only been one person on the entire show who had five, and that was God, when I think Heretic Homer episode where Homer decides he doesn't want to go to church anymore. That's a good one, too. Pretty good. Speaking of, originally, that was just written in the script and continues to be written in the script, unless they may actually write it as a line now, but originally it was in the script as annoying, annoyed grunt. And that's what Dan Castelloneta came up with.

Genius. Not bad. And apparently he based it on a recurring character from the old Laurel and Hardy series. Yeah. Dude, that is an arcane reference right there. Not bad. Like we said, Doe made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. So too did Meh.

Yeah. You know that? Yeah, and they didn't make up Meh, but apparently they kind of brought it back into popular usage. Right. And it was kind of big starting in the 90s. Now it's just a timeless classic, basically. But it was added in 2015 to the OED, and the definition is expressing a lack of interest

or enthusiasm. Pretty succinct. Yeah. I think Al Jean said something about it being like one of the funniest words in the English language. I think he's right. It really, if you time it outright, a good Meh is really pretty great. Yeah.

Because a lot of times it's used to very like, not sarcastically, but like if something is really great and then you say it's Meh. It just shuts it down automatically. Yeah. It is pretty great. Here's one. Principal Skinner, his prisoner uniform in Vietnam was 24601. And he shared that prisoner number with Jean Valjean from Les Miserables, from Hank Jennings

and Twin Peaks, who no doubt got it from Jean Valjean. And then Sideshow Bob also has that very same prisoner number. It's a good prisoner number. Bob, aka Robert Tawilagur. Right. Robert Underdunk Tawilagur. It's his full name. Yeah.

It's such a great name. I've got another one. And I did not know this, I hadn't even heard this, but the Do the Bartman single that actually topped the charts in the UK and I think the US too in 1990. Yeah. Not a fan. So you had, remember that we're autos listening to the Simpsons Calypso record. So apparently Michael Jackson actually produced that song.

Oh, really? That track. Yeah. He was a guest on the show too. He was. He was an uncredited guest. He made a large, white, maybe construction worker, I think, who Homer met at a mental hospital who thought he was Michael Jackson and had Michael Jackson's voice.

But they never credited Michael Jackson on the episode. Interesting. Yeah. Here's one of my favorites, Milhouse Van Houten. His middle name is Mussolini. Yeah. So good. I think one of the greatest Milhouse gags of all time was when Bart had his leg broken

and they got a swimming pool and they basically did rear window. Remember that one? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Milhouse is signing Bart's cast and he's like, I got to go Bart and he, Bart looks down at his cast and says, Milpool, because he wants to go to play in the pool rather than hang out with Bart. Yeah, yeah. It's one of those ones.

You just got to see it, I think. Yeah. It's a funnier scene than explained. And actually, isn't that the premise that it's just funnier to just go watch the stuff? Oh, yeah. I hope everybody knows that we know that. Yes. Absolutely.

Please go watch the stuff if you haven't already. Back in if you have. Here's another one. Springfield, Hillbilly, Cleetus, which we mentioned earlier, Cleetus is like Jod Yockel and his wife, Brandine, they have 44 kids and some other names. These are great. One of them's name is Incest. One of them's name is Crystal Meth, spelled like the name Crystal.

Normal head Joe. I think that's probably the best one of all. Normal head Joe's good. My favorite one is Mary WrestleMania. But normal head Joe is great because it references the idea that the other kids' heads aren't normal or that there's another one named Joe who doesn't have a normal head, you know? And that actually brings to mind, if I may, another joke that I think is possibly the best joke ever said on The Simpsons.

Are you ready for this? Yeah. I don't remember what episode it was, but Homer is reminiscing about something that happened in his past and his life. And like he got in trouble or something with some bootlegers, but luckily his friend Fonzie came and beat them up and saved the day. And Marge goes, that was happy days. And Homer says, no, they weren't all happy days, Marge.

And it says a lot. So number one, Homer is thinking that a happy days episode is an actual memory from his life. Yeah. That's funny enough. But there's also like this other nuanced joke too where he thinks that either Marge's grasp on grammar is so bad that those were happy days comes out. That was happy days.

Or his own grasp on grammar is that bad that he thought that was correct. And he fails to remember the show happy days. Right, exactly. So there's like five different things, like writhing in this perfect joke that, I mean, that was just like a throwaway joke for The Simpsons. But if you put 30 seasons of that combined, you get just an amazing masterpiece, one big masterpiece. Yeah, so I went through and looked up a bunch of best episodes of The Simpsons lists.

And I'll just rattle through those to see what different people think. And you can see a little bit of a pattern here. I'll just name like the one and two. You're going to share yours too though, right? I didn't narrow it down. Okay. I got a couple of them mentioned then. All right.

So Rolling Stone magazine says Marge versus the Monorails, their best ever with Lisa the vegetarian is number two. That's a good one. So good. Digital Spice says Homer the Great is number one, Homer the Heretic number two, IGN goes with Marge versus the Monorails number one again, and Rosebud is number two. So good. That one's so great.

It's Citizen Kane parody. Yeah. Entertainment Weekly, Monorail again is number one. And I think actually their number two is one of my top two, the Cape Fear spoof. That was great. You know? Yeah. Where Sideshow Bob comes, gets out of prison and stalks Barton and the family and they

go into the witness protection program, and Homer can't get that he has a different name now and he's supposed to respond to it. Yeah. He's like, when I call you Bob Williams and step on your foot, you say yes. Den of Geek goes with the only move twice is number one. That's the great James Bond spoof, the Hank Scorpio. And then Homer versus the 18th Amendment is number two. Oh, is that the Beer Baron episode?

Yeah, I think so. That's so great. Consequence of Sound, Homer goes to college number one, Monorail number two, and then Vulture goes with Cape Fear number one, and Last Exit to Springfield is number two. That was the one with the dental plan in Lisa and these braces. Right. Where it's all about like union organizing and union busting and all that. Yeah.

So, I mean, definitely mine are in there and I'll just go ahead and throw the stone cutters in there as well. That was a great one too. Yeah. I have a couple others to add to it if I may. Please. Homer. H-O-M Backward R, the one where it turns out that Homer has a crayon lodged in his brain,

which accounts for his sub-average intellect, right? Yeah. And he has it removed and he suddenly becomes smart. So this is like a really good example of the impact the Simpsons had on my life. I love that episode. I thought it was great. I watched it again last night. It was as good if not better than it was 10 or so years ago.

And then today as I was researching it some more, I realized, and I didn't realize this, but it was based on the premise of Flowers for Algernon and then the movie that was made based on Flowers for Algernon, Charlie, which explains the backward R. There's a backward R in Charlie in the movie title. And it's kind of roughly parallels it. There's a rat that Homer is playing a test with that I didn't get until I read up on it. Oh, yeah.

That I love and I think is hilarious, just introduced me to Charlie in Flowers for Algernon, which I did not read in middle school or high school. Yeah, I did. So I will probably go back and watch Charlie now and I will love that Homer episode even more as a result. Yeah, man. They go so deep. They really do.

Because also it's not just that like if they didn't just leave it at, well, here's a parody of Charlie or Flowers for Algernon and you'll love it for that. It's also the premise of the episode is it's an examination of anti-intellectualism, you know? Yeah. And the whole basis of it is like, hey, no, actually, it's pretty great to be smart. And that it's hard to be smart, too, especially in a world of dum-dums. As for Matt Groening, his top 10 and this was, I mean, it's hard to believe this was

done 17 years ago, but a lot of people look at the 90s as sort of the golden age of the Simpsons. Yeah. You know that golden age, Groening's top 10 or Bart the Dare double, Life on the Fast Lane, Much Apu About Nothing, A Streetcar named Marge, that one was so good. In Marge, we trust Homer's enemy, Treehouse of Horror 7, Natural Born Kissers, Krusty Gets Busted, and There's No Disgrace Like Home. I don't, oh, is that the one where the child services maybe comes?

Oh, I don't know, but that one's good if that is the one. If you don't have, keep your milk in a refrigerator or barring that in a cool, wet sack. Oh, man, maybe we should just launch a side podcast. On the Simpsons? Yeah, just called Josh and Chuck Giggle a lot. Yeah, I think that's right. Can I throw out a couple more? Oh, yeah, sure.

Lisa the Skeptic was a great one where Steve and Jay Gould is in it. They find like what looks to be an angel fossil, but it's a PR stunt for the local mall. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, I remember that one. I saw it again, I think was just about as good as an animated TV show has ever gotten as far as tackling like a serious subject. Totally. And then I went back and watched it again last night and it is really great.

So it's still in my top echelon, but in Marge We Trust, which is the Mr. Sparkle episode. Yeah, and that was on Matt Groening's list. And I think, I mean, I look through the top 10s of all those sites. That one's in the top 10 of everybody's. It's just so good. But the thing is, is it's so trendy now. It's like a social signifier that you're in like a hip-in group to say the Simpsons sucked after season eight or the Simpsons sucked after season 10.

And that is demonstrably false. There are so many good episodes that you can point to that came after season 10 that you can't, like there's this whole idea that there's this thing called Zombie Simpsons. And it's this show that closely resembles the Simpsons and look and feel, but is nowhere near as funny as the Simpsons, which actually took place during the nineties. And to me, it's smacks of that whole refusal to surrender what you thought was cool or what was cool when you were young, is now not necessarily as cool as it was, which means by proxy, you're not as cool, right?

And so there's that whole side thing of aging where you want to remain relevant or whatever and you can become cursed to just hang on to what you identify with rather than branching out and looking at the world as it changes, as it changes, right? Yeah. And I think that that's part of it. And I just, I think that's stupid to just close your mind like that and be like the Simpsons sucked after season 10 end of story period. And there seems to be a lot of people out there who are more than happy to do that.

Yeah. I mean, the Grabster actually had a nice little summation about that whole attitude. And dude, what this has done is it's made me want to go back and I'm going to and start watching the show again. Well, you can. And here's a little bit of buzz marketing for FFX, FXX, sorry. They have every Simpsons episode online and you can watch it. I'm not sure if you have to pay or if you just have to sign up and submit to spam or

whatever, but it's all there. Yeah. Well, I know what I'll be doing now. Emily's like, seriously? Yeah. You're regressing. So Ed had a lot of good points as far as that, like it's not as good as it used to be. Could be a perception thing because they might be a victim of their own success, that it

was so great during the 1990s that even the slightest fall off from that might be bigger than expected. Yeah. And they addressed that in the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie episode two because Kemp Brockman reports that fans of The Beloved Show have been watching for cracks in its veneer for years now, you know? I know. And it's the same thing.

It's like, if you are that good, can you possibly keep it up? And if you even slip a little bit, people are just going to throw their hands up. Yeah. Part of it is the fragmentation of the audience. I mean, I'm 46 years old and I saw the first episode, my senior here of high school. It's ridiculous how long the show has been on. And I didn't think, oh, this show sucks now, I've got to quit watching it. I got a little busy, it fell away and never came back.

And that just happens sometimes. Sure. I think that happens with people who listen to our show. Absolutely. You know? Like, I don't think people who stop listening, some people stop listening, I discuss, mostly conservative Americans, but a lot of people, they just, like their lives change a little bit and you just end up not listening anymore.

That's fine. Yeah. I think the point about, the Simpsons was so groundbreaking and it's satire that that's being done so much, it's just not as unique as it used to be. Like they didn't create satire, obviously, but in 1989 and 1990, there wasn't a lot of stuff like this at all going on television. No. So there's so much of that now, there again, a little bit of victims of their own success

and that there's just so much to choose from satirically that it's tough to stick with something like that for 30 years and say it's just as sharp as it ever was. It may be just as sharp as it ever was, but it just might not seem that way because so many other people are doing what they started. I read this 1990 article and I think the new statesman, and it was basically saying the Simpsons is a direct challenge to the GOP's identity as the party that provides for the middle America, the middle American family because if they were doing such a great job of it, then there would be no popularity for the Simpsons or for Roseanne.

So early on, it was like a real challenge to the status quo and the established sense of wholesome American-ness. Oh yeah. And Bush even very famously said, George Bush Sr., who was a president before W, for those of you who weren't alive back then, but George Bush Sr. said, I want America to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. Yeah. And Barbara Bush said it was the dumbest thing she'd ever seen on TV.

Right. And there was a lot of that at first and especially it was because his t-shirts were everywhere and kids were saying like, don't have a cow man to their parents and stuff like that. And so part of it was the initial mistaken taking of the Simpsons and missing what it actually was. But then another part of it was America was just a different place and the moral majority was in charge and pretending like everything was absolutely perfect and shows like this came along and really challenged that.

Today, if you look at the current climate, I saw a really great description of how hard it is to be satirical. Yeah. It was in Al Jazeera and they said, in an era when Dennis Rodman is serving as a makeshift ambassador to North Korea, it's difficult to write satire that stands out. Yeah. And we have friends that write for TV and for the onion and satire and I know that it's been a challenge for them to come up with anything that seems fresh and unique in this

day and age. For sure. You know? So I'm sure that's part of it too. Here's some sanctimonious drivel from Bill Cosby, August 31, 1990, Entertainment Weekly Magazine. Mr. Cosby said TV should be, I would do a Cosby voice, but it's not funny to do that anymore.

TV should be moving in a direction from the huckstables forward, not backward. The mean spirit and cruel think this kind of programming is the edge and their excuse is that's the way people are today. But why should we be entertained by that? So and this was the time when Bill Cosby was like the moral mouthpiece of America. You know? And so in a sense, like Matt Groening took him on and took on the bushes and just took on that whole false wholesomeness.

Yeah. And today it's like now you just, it's not even a question. Like of course that whole thing is taken on like go try to find a show on prime time that even vaguely resembles major dad or my two dads. You can't find it. They're not there. Yeah. Everything is, has gone the opposite end of the spectrum and it's become, we're just

entirely cynical, but we're so cynical that there isn't room for satire like there used to be. So now I think there's going to be a backlash probably from, I don't know where it's going to come from, but I predict basically a wholesome backlash or I don't think it's going to be that whole earnest thing that didn't actually take off very well. Everybody got sick of that really quick, but there's going to be I think something a little more bonafide and genuine that will develop out of cynicism because I don't think you can keep, I don't think cynicism can be maintained for too long before everybody just kind of

commits cultural suicide, you know? I think it's already happening like shows like Masters of None and from Aziz Ansari and Tignitaros One Mississippi. Like if you've seen those shows, they're not cynical. They're very kind of sweet, warm hearted shows and they're funny and they may bring up relevant satirical things, but they're both very genuine shows and it's just done in the right way. It's not, you know, touched by an angel.

Right, and that was another reason, Chuck, that Barbara Bush and George Bush really missed the point because the Simpsons may have ultimately kind of created the groundwork for America to create the cynical shift or shift to the cynicism, maybe, or maybe that was politics, one of the two, right? But they missed the basis of the Simpsons and the basis of the Simpsons is morality, like actual real morality, like making good moral decisions, making bad moral decisions, having consequences, family coming together and actually like looking out for one another. Things actually kind of working out in the end, like Bart and Marge having their marriage

tested, but then it's surviving and being stronger on the other side, but without a hint of schmaltziness, without a hint of fake wholesomeness, they had the wherewithal to put that through those tropes or those moral ideas, through the grinder of reality and managed to get it out on the other side and said, see, you actually can be a good moral upstanding person and survive in cynical times, in times that beat you down and we're proving it every Sunday with our show. Yeah. Man, what a great show.

What a great show. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Simpsons and everyone who's ever been involved in it for making it because you've literally changed the world and for the better. That's right. And as of May of this year, The Simpsons has broadcast more than 600 episodes aired for more seasons than any primetime scripted show in TV history and by the time the 30th season will end, there will be more episodes of The Simpsons than any other primetime scripted show, finally, finally, passing gun smoke, man, man alive, Chuck, dude, great job.

Great job. Well, this was a pleasure. I think I'm going to just go back and start researching The Simpsons again, so maybe we should do that side podcast. My good. So is this it? Is this the end? Yeah.

So in lieu of listener mail, 999th and 1,000th episode, we shall give thanks to everyone out there that how appropriate that The Simpsons is our tribute, such a long running show and here we are at some place that we never, ever, ever, ever thought that we would be. Yeah. To say the least. No, we've done pretty good for a show that has rights-free theme music, you know? Yeah, like software canned theme music. Yeah, like people write in sometimes like, I heard your theme song on a mattress ad.

Are you guys going to sue them? Nope. Nope. Can't do it. Rights-free. We said it a lot over the years, but obviously we would not still be doing this if all of you were not out there downloading and listening and interacting with each other via the stuff you should know Army.

Coming out to see us live on tour, it is, man, this has surpassed every expectation that either one of us, including Jerry, ever had for ourselves. And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you forever. Yeah, thank you to not just like the superfans, but the fans, the casual listeners, basically anyone who's ever heard of stuff you should know episode, listen to it, learn something from it, laugh to themselves over it, maybe got a weird look on the subway or whatever. Yeah. Thanks to all of you.

Thank you to all of you for supporting us for this long. And Chuckers, here's to the next thousand episodes, buddy. Let's do it, brother. And then Jerry, you, are you down with another thousand episodes? That's great, Jerry. And you know what, Jerry, do you want to say a few words? Go ahead. I think she should, Chuck.

All right, let's hear it. Go for it, Jerry. Well put, Jerry. Yeah. That actually made me tear up. So in the meantime, while you wait for episode 2000, you can get in touch with us. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. I'm also at Josh Clark on Twitter, Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook.

I'm at Josh Clark, I think on Facebook, something like that. You can also visit our official Facebook page at slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email, including Jerry, dear Jerry Rowland, who I'm just going to go ahead and say it for a thousandth episode, Chuck, Jerry does in fact exist. Of course she does. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.