Matt Groening

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: (323) 362-2295.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Conan O'Brien?

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• 0:05Speaker 01

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• 0:06Conan O'Brien?

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• 0:11Speaker 01

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• 0:12Conan O'Brien?

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• 0:19Speaker 01

  The way you said that thinly and thickly was uncomfortable.

• 0:22Conan O'Brien?

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• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:43Conan O'Brien?

  Look it up in history. It never has. Never has.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Can you?

• 0:47Conan O'Brien?

  Check out wonderfulpistachios.com to learn more about Wonderful Pistachios chocolate products.

• 0:52Speaker 02

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• 1:25Matt Gourley?

  My name is Matt Groening and I feel honored

• 1:30Matt Gourley?

  about being Conan O'Brien's friend. And why? Because Conan, you are the Bob Hope of the 21st century.

• 1:36Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my God. So I'm gonna have a huge deal with Texaco.

• 1:41Conan O'Brien?

  I'm gonna stick around in show business for a really long time and confuse the younger generation.

• 2:08Conan O'Brien?

  Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. Sona Asessian, hello.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 2:12Conan O'Brien?

  And Matt Gourley, how are you?

• 2:13Speaker 04

  Hi, boss.

• 2:13Conan O'Brien?

  Driving to work today, I saw so many Waymos 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.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 2:31Conan O'Brien?

  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 of Hormuz are closed. And so that, yeah, they're just invisible.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  They don't fly?

• 2:56Conan O'Brien?

  No, they don't fly.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Matt Gourley?

  What are their ghost jobs that they're going to and from?

• 3:01Conan O'Brien?

  Um, well, you know, I saw one, it was probably a podcaster. I saw another one who works at Lowe's.

• 3:08Matt Gourley?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:09Conan O'Brien?

  You know, in the gardening department. Uh, 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...

• 3:23Speaker 01

  You were just thinking this on the way in?

• 3:25Conan O'Brien?

  I was thinking all of this while I was driving around and it was making me happy because then I'd see another one pass by and go like, oh, there's a ghost, he looks like he's late.

• 3:32Matt Gourley?

  But they're still on their phones, so there's just a phone floating.

• 3:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, there's a phone floating there. They're watching their phones. They're buying shoes on the internet when they can't wear shoes. It's just sad.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  I was on my way to work here one time. On one block, I saw a Waymo and then one of those Coco delivery bots. And then I shit you not, an Orthodox Jewish person on a hoverboard. You know, those one-wheel little things. All on one block.

• 3:54Conan O'Brien?

  But wait, if you're an Orthodox Jew, you can ride a hoverboard?

• 3:58Speaker 04

  I think some things...

• 3:58Conan O'Brien?

  I thought there was so... Oh, maybe that's a certain...

• 4:00Speaker 01

  That's just on the Sabbath.

• 4:02Conan O'Brien?

  Just on the Sabbath, you can't ride a hoverboard?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:05Conan O'Brien?

  It says that in the Old Testament.

• 4:09Conan O'Brien?

  No hoverboard on the Sabbath.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:11Conan O'Brien?

  Um, that's incredible.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:13Conan O'Brien?

  You know, those little robots, those...

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Kokos.

• 4:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, Kokos. They, I'm just gonna admit that I'm, whenever I see one of those, I wanna hit it with a bat.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Come on!

• 4:25Conan O'Brien?

  And I don't have any hostility towards it, but it does look like you just wanna give it a whack because it's going... It's making it...

• 4:32Speaker 01

  He's just doing his job.

• 4:33Conan O'Brien?

  Easy though.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's delivering stuff. I have a lot of sympathy.

• 4:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, a ghost just ordered some tacos.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  I love those little robots. I have a lot of sympathy towards them.

• 4:45Conan O'Brien?

  But it can't work, does it work?

• 4:47Speaker 04

  I can't believe it's still going, I know.

• 4:48Conan O'Brien?

  I just think that, you know, it's so hard to get people to follow the social contract and not spray paint over something or not park terribly or not smash something that's nice, that's sitting out. It's very hard to get people just to follow that rule. But once you have a little tiny little robot machine going, excuse me, excuse me. You know? I just, I mean, I'm a law-abiding citizen, but I wanna smash that thing.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  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.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Not just kids.

• 5:24Conan O'Brien?

  And just back it up in case people aren't aware of your origin story.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:27Conan O'Brien?

  You, um, this is your origin story. This is you're being bit by a radioactive spider. You were, your job at Disneyland was to control a robot trash can that would walk around and say, you know, "Feed me litter." And you were sort of in the background with a remote control in your pocket.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, and a lot of little bully kids would come up and just start wailing on the thing.

• 5:49Conan O'Brien?

  Of course they would.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  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.

• 5:59Conan O'Brien?

  Did you ever say, "Oh, the humanity"?

• 6:01Speaker 04

  I did, I literally did.

• 6:03Conan O'Brien?

  Did you say that? Of course you did.

• 6:05Speaker 04

  All the time.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 6:06Conan O'Brien?

  "Am I not a man? If you cut me, do I not bleed?"

• 6:11Speaker 04

  "A pound of flesh." Oh my God.

• 6:15Conan O'Brien?

  That's incredible.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  I truly did, yeah. I would say that all the time.

• 6:18Conan O'Brien?

  If I had that gig, the things I'd be doing would get me thrown out and maybe Disneyland shut down.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:24Conan O'Brien?

  Because I would say things like, "I'll murder you."

• 6:27Speaker 04

  I wasn't far off. I was always hitting on the other trash cans and, you know, saying like, "Don't divorce me" and things like that to the other trash cans, like they had a prior relationship or something. Or, "Why won't you talk to me?"

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Did people, did they have to have conversations with you if you crossed the line? Was there like a manager, like a trash manager?

• 6:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. No, no, he had, he weren't goofy. Goofy was...

• 6:49Speaker 04

  "Oh, I gotta talk to you."

• 6:51Speaker 01

  He's got his arms crossed, just tapping his...

• 6:53Speaker 04

  The Anaheim Department of Sanitation would come in and give me acting notes.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:07Conan O'Brien?

  It just occurred to me, let's try and do something where we have a little Coco bot, call a Waymo and then get in. Wouldn't that be great?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Wait, the Coco bot calls a Waymo?

• 7:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, we call, or we call a Waymo for a Coco bot and the Waymo pulls up and then the Coco bot,

• 7:25Conan O'Brien?

  and we put a little ramp up and it gets in and it goes...

• 7:27Speaker 04

  You tell the Coco bot it has to deliver something inside the Waymo, so that's why it thinks it has to get in.

• 7:32Conan O'Brien?

  And it goes in and then, I mean, I would just love, yeah, then it's a robot driving a robot around.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  That's pretty cool. I mean, my boys are at the age where they're always just gonna know robot cars existed.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  It's crazy.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Isn't that nuts?

• 7:44Speaker 04

  I think about that all the time.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  I would say that to Glenn, just, "Look, no one's driving the car." And she's like, "Big deal, granddad."

• 7:51Conan O'Brien?

  Big deal.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  You're not my real father. Where's my father? Who's this guy?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you talking trash can. I love Glenn bullying you. I think that'd be fun.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  She does.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Were there other trash can guys? Were you guys the crew?

• 8:05Speaker 04

  Well, we never worked together because it was always, you know, it was a solo job.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Were you friends?

• 8:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Did you watch and were like judging?

• 8:13Conan O'Brien?

  Was there one guy who was better at it than you?

• 8:15Speaker 04

  You're looking at him, man. You're looking at him.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  You're the best one?

• 8:19Speaker 04

  It's the only brag I can do.

• 8:20Conan O'Brien?

  You were the best.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  No, I'm kidding, I wasn't.

• 8:22Conan O'Brien?

  No, but...

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Is it a brag?

• 8:24Conan O'Brien?

  I don't understand. There were other people that you knew that also operated trash cans and you would watch them do it?

• 8:29Speaker 04

  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?

• 8:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, sure.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  We really let loose.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  You're in Anaheim now, bitch.

• 8:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  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, "Whoa, please, please, somebody save me."

• 9:00Conan O'Brien?

  So wait, then could you, you'd blow your cover if you walked over and started to put it?

• 9:04Speaker 04

  You had to, because by then the people were like about to light it on fire. You know, it was bad.

• 9:09Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? Everyone's instinct is to trash a robot.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 9:13Speaker 04

  It is, yeah.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Why?

• 9:15Speaker 04

  Because I think their instinct is to trash us, you know? It's kill or be killed.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  It's a dog-eat-dog world.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  They just wanna deliver food and drive you places.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  That's what they want you to think.

• 9:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Well, I heard the Waymo cars are being controlled by people somewhere else.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  Wait, where did you hear this?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 9:31Conan O'Brien?

  They're autonomous. No one's controlling them. You think there's a guy in a helicopter saying, "Take a right, take a left."

• 9:37Speaker 04

  Why is your conspiracy like not the opposite of a conspiracy?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  It's, people are controlling them, like radio cars.

• 9:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, the food delivery robots, the Coco robots are controlled by people.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  And the Waymos also can't have people take over when there's an issue.

• 9:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes, they can have people take over.

• 9:55Speaker 05

  Wait, so I can get a job?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  But the food delivery robots are controlled by people.

• 10:00Conan O'Brien?

  But what are the people, what do you mean they're controlled by people? Where's the person?

• 10:03Speaker 05

  It doesn't matter, it's remote.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Crouched in there.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  It's remote. It's, it's just, 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.

• 10:12Conan O'Brien?

  Really? Yeah. So someone's sitting at a terminal?

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 10:15Conan O'Brien?

  And they're, they're seeing a blinking dot that says it's going down? Or, or do they have a camera in there?

• 10:20Speaker 05

  They have a camera. It's like a remote control car.

• 10:22Conan O'Brien?

  So now I can't trash one?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 10:24Conan O'Brien?

  Because there'll be footage of me on the internet?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:26Conan O'Brien?

  Of me saying, "Hey, little bitch bot."

• 10:31Conan O'Brien?

  It's time for you to taste Louisville Slugger. Ka-chang. And then that's all over the internet?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Those Waymo cars too, I mean, what's stopping people from just like taking off their pants in the backseat?

• 10:45Conan O'Brien?

  What? Who would want to take off their pants?

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Sounds like you've got a little fantasy.

• 10:49Conan O'Brien?

  What are you talking about? Oh, my fantasy is to have my bare ass on a commonly used car seat. I can't wait.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  And I think people that want to do that prefer a driver in the car.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I don't know, or like, you know, just like do drugs or like do sex stuff?

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Maybe they do.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Right? Is that, I mean, like, who's stopping you?

• 11:11Conan O'Brien?

  I think, well, I think they have like a spray that activates.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  I don't think there's a spray.

• 11:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:16Conan O'Brien?

  It's a calming soothing gel.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 11:19Conan O'Brien?

  Makes the penis shrivel.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  No. Oh.

• 11:21Conan O'Brien?

  It's true, I've heard that.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  A calming soothing gel that then makes the penis shrivel?

• 11:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, well, first it calms you and soothes you.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 11:29Conan O'Brien?

  Then it makes your Don Johnson take a little holiday.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  Turns your Don Johnson into an Artie Johnson?

• 11:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly. An Artie Johnson reference. God bless you.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Is that a rap sign?

• 11:40Conan O'Brien?

  God bless you.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a rap sign.

• 11:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I think your rap sign was an Artie Johnson reference. That was your rap sign. All right, let's do this thing. My guest today is an Emmy award winning writer and animator who created one of the most iconic animated series of all time. I'm gonna say the most iconic, I'm gonna go out on a limb.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:59Conan O'Brien?

  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.

• 12:20Conan O'Brien?

  Matt Groening, welcome.

• 12:25Conan O'Brien?

  It is so great you're here.

• 12:26Matt Gourley?

  Thank you.

• 12:27Conan O'Brien?

  Because the fans are gonna 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.

• 13:08Matt Gourley?

  Wow.

• 13:09Conan O'Brien?

  It was, 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.

• 13:16Matt Gourley?

  I want you to know that your old office has been preserved. It is used for storage.

• 13:27Matt Gourley?

  And it's right next to my office. And yesterday, I asked my assistant Violet, I said, "Let me, let me see Conan's old office so I can talk about it."

• 13:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Matt Gourley?

  And she said, "No, 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." She goes, "Please don't talk about it, please, I beg you." And I, and I opened the door and it is floor to ceiling with Simpsons merchandise.

• 13:50Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:51Matt Gourley?

  Yes. In fact, this, this is the merchandise that, that popped out.

• 13:57Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my God.

• 13:57Matt Gourley?

  Mr. Sparkle.

• 13:59Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my, look at this.

• 14:00Matt Gourley?

  And I got you one too.

• 14:01Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you. These are amazing.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 14:05Matt Gourley?

  That's, that's, that's after your time. This is 1997. But those are...

• 14:11Speaker 01

  I love Mr. Sparkle.

• 14:12Conan O'Brien?

  Does it like lose all its value if I open it?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yes, don't.

• 14:15Conan O'Brien?

  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?

• 14:27Matt Gourley?

  Japanese.

• 14:28Conan O'Brien?

  And it says, "Mr. Sparkle is disrespectful to dirt." I love these translations, it 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.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  For Lucky Best Wash.

• 14:44Matt Gourley?

  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, on the cover of the box.

• 14:54Conan O'Brien?

  I just love it.

• 14:55Matt Gourley?

  It's one of the great episodes.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 14:58Conan O'Brien?

  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.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  I didn't mean to tell you not to open it.

• 15:09Speaker 04

  We should see one.

• 15:10Conan O'Brien?

  I'm gonna open mine, I'll open mine.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  We want to keep ours pristine.

• 15:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, you guys keep yours pristine, but...

• 15:15Speaker 04

  I want you to sign this.

• 15:16Conan O'Brien?

  What I, oh, sure. I know what you're gonna 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 Groening, what can you tell us? And I have a very clear memory of one of your, your fun things that you did was in your travels, you would seek out illegal like bootleg Simpsons merchandise. Not to like, let's nab them and sue them, but just because it amused you. And I remembered, I think you were in Mexico. You, I remember sitting around, we were working on a script. You came in, it had, there's a screen door to the writers' room of The Simpsons that had this, you know, you think it's like the biggest show in the world. It had this rusty screen door, kind of creaky.

• 16:00Conan O'Brien?

  So you heard "eh" and Pavlovian, we would all look up, maybe food's here, you know? Maybe lunch is here, because that's what you would hear when they would bring in the fried food that we lived off of. You said "eh" 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 stains, so had 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?

• 16:39Matt Gourley?

  I collected those, yes. And, yeah, now there's too many of them.

• 16:43Conan O'Brien?

  What is, can you think of one of the more horrible ones?

• 16:45Matt Gourley?

  Bart, Bart Sanchez was, was the name on the, on the bust of Bart.

• 16:51Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Matt Gourley?

  And he had a sombrero. And, yeah, it's like, 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."

• 17:07Conan O'Brien?

  I will kill you.

• 17:08Matt Gourley?

  By the way, speaking of the creaking door and the food?

• 17:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 17:12Matt Gourley?

  You did a bit one time.

• 17:13Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my God, I'm so proud of this.

• 17:15Matt Gourley?

  So every single day, a production assistant would come up the stairs, clomp, clomp, clomp, outdoor stairs, making a lot of noise? And then bang, open the screen door with a stack of boxes of food.

• 17:26Conan O'Brien?

  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?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Islands?

• 17:47Conan O'Brien?

  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 1:00 and it wasn't coming. So I quietly excused myself to use the bathroom. And I went downstairs and I found a big cardboard box. And I waited a while and then I clomped up the stairs, opened the screen door and backed in backwards. So you just see a jean'd ass and a t-shirt so that it's, and I'm start, struggling with a big box, like it's filled with food. And everyone went, "Yay." And then I turned around with an empty box and I went, "Nothing." And people were irate.

• 18:31Conan O'Brien?

  But it made me happy, because it made others sad.

• 18:34Matt Gourley?

  We were like Pavlov's dogs. You'd hear that noise and you'd start to salivate.

• 18:38Conan O'Brien?

  And you knew that the food is coming here.

• 18:40Matt Gourley?

  Do you remember, you wrote Homer Goes to College? And I recall you pitching this one line that you were so attached to.

• 18:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Matt Gourley?

  "A bee bit my bottom and now my bottom's big."

• 18:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 18:56Matt Gourley?

  Homer, by the way, Homer, Homer's saying that.

• 18:58Conan O'Brien?

  Homer's the only one.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  Are you talking about the Greek poet?

• 19:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Yes, this is, this is in the Odyssey.

• 19:04Matt Gourley?

  Not only did you pitch it in Homer's voice?

• 19:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Matt Gourley?

  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 and...

• 19:13Conan O'Brien?

  Homer gets, it's...

• 19:16Conan O'Brien?

  Homer has to, everyone's, and everyone there is trying to think of, you've got the smartest comedy writers you'll ever see. It'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 bee, which is, I think, one of the reasons why-

• 19:38Matt Gourley?

  Stung, stung.

• 19:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, sorry.

• 19:41Matt Gourley?

  In your line, it was bit.

• 19:42Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I didn't even think about that. That's right. He got stung by a bee, but Homer would say bit. And so, and I like the alliteration. Yeah. BBB, 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."

• 19:58Matt Gourley?

  A bit.

• 19:59Conan O'Brien?

  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 then.

• 20:17Matt Gourley?

  And his big ass is big to begin with, but the way the animator's animated, one cheek is very big.

• 20:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 20:24Matt Gourley?

  It really was swollen.

• 20:25Conan O'Brien?

  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.

• 20:51Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 20:52Conan O'Brien?

  And, one of my favorites of that is he's sitting around the table, and Lisa's despondent, something didn't go well for her, and she doesn't think she's gonna 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 Vassar bashing in this house." Homer would never know what Vassar is. If he did know, he wouldn't care.

• 21:32Conan O'Brien?

  He's got no stake in this, but suddenly, this is where he draws the line, and I loved that, that in a given moment, Homer, or any character, can know something they wouldn't normally know. There's Barney at one, I think Mr. Plow, which is a John Vitti episode, Barney's at the bar, and he and Homer are competing to have the better plow business, and Homer thinks he's ahead when suddenly a commercial comes on in Moe's, and it's Barney promoting his plow business with Linda Ronstadt. And so, it's Barney and Linda Ronstadt, and it was like, "Hey Barney, how are Linda?" And then they go ahead and do this commercial, and it ends with them singing a song, and Homer says, "Barney, how did you get Linda Ronstadt?"

• 22:14Conan O'Brien?

  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? Like, 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. Yeah. But, characters that speak not of themselves, but for a moment of beautiful clarity.

• 22:46Conan O'Brien?

  When it comes to my policy, Farmers gives it to me straight, so there's no surprises.

• 22:51Speaker 06

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• 22:55Conan O'Brien?

  You hear that? An insurance provider with a conscience.

• 22:58Speaker 06

  We're a choir, but yes, we have that too.

• 23:01Conan O'Brien?

  Straightforward coverage you can literally understand. That's what you get when-

• 23:06Speaker 06

  You have Farmers.

• 23:09Speaker 04

  Learn more at Farmers.com. Underwritten by Farmers Truck or Fire Insurance Exchanges or Affiliate. Products not available in every state.

• 23:18Conan O'Brien?

  Did you know that one in four Americans targeted by scams end up falling for them?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:23Conan O'Brien?

  You fell for it.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  I fell for a scam.

• 23:25Conan O'Brien?

  Now, you didn't lose too much money, but you did lose.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  I did lose, and it was very inconvenient, and now they put protections on my account like I'm, uh, dumb.

• 23:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I don't know where they got that impression. Criminals are now using AI to make scams look more realistic than ever. In 2025, AI fraud spiked 1,210% and cost Americans $893 million. That's incredible. Well, with AI, it can get so smart now.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:54Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Maybe I should start scamming.

• 23:56Conan O'Brien?

  No, that's not the point.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Oh, no, that's not the point of this.

• 23:58Conan O'Brien?

  That's not the point.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  It's so much money.

• 24:00Conan O'Brien?

  One accidental click, Sona, can expose your information, putting you at risk of identity theft. Luckily, this is the point. Not that you should start scamming, but that everyone should get LifeLock.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 24:09Conan O'Brien?

  LifeLock has live, US-based restoration specialists who will be with you every step of the way to fix your identity theft, from first alert to full restoration. This is fantastic, how do you not have this?

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:22Conan O'Brien?

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• 24:40Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, I wanna try something different.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  What?

• 24:43Conan O'Brien?

  I like to change it up, I like to learn things, so I'm gonna try and make apple cider-

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 24:47Conan O'Brien?

  -every morning-

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:48Conan O'Brien?

  -this fall, just to see if I can do it.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, fall's the perfect season to try something new, like joining T-Mobile.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Oh, that's good.

• 24:55Conan O'Brien?

  See what I did?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:56Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, there are 250 reasons to join T-Mobile right now, you wanna hear what they are?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:00Conan O'Brien?

  They're America's best network.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:02Conan O'Brien?

  True story. Plus, T-Mobile has got off-grid satellite coverage. That comes in really handy, I like to just wander in the woods sometimes-

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Oh, that's weird.

• 25:10Conan O'Brien?

  -when I'm thinking about, like, making apple cider, and that's when it comes in handy. Here's another reason. High-speed data in over 215 countries and destinations. I travel a lot for the-

• 25:19Speaker 01

  You travel a lot.

• 25:20Conan O'Brien?

  -travel show that I do.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:22Conan O'Brien?

  Stream this podcast while ignoring local landmarks, that's always fun to do. Like, "Oh, look, there's the Mona Lisa." Yeah, check it out, I'm in the Louvre, I should, but I'm listening to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  That doesn't seem like a good idea.

• 25:33Conan O'Brien?

  It's a great idea.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:34Conan O'Brien?

  You know, you can see art anytime, but how often can you listen to this podcast?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  My god.

• 25:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  What?

• 25:42Conan O'Brien?

  Now, all these reasons make T-Mobile a great choice.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 25:44Conan O'Brien?

  T-Mobile is stacking up reasons to join, go to T-Mobile.com and find yours best, based on analysis by Ookla of speed test intelligence data, first half of 2026, can't believe I read that, T-Satellite, with capable devices in most outdoor areas in the US, where you can see the sky. High-speed international data with qualifying plan, visit T-Mobile.com, consult a physician, I just threw that in there.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 26:15Matt Gourley?

  We went through a phase, when you were there, and you helped a lot-

• 26:18Conan O'Brien?

  Sorry.

• 26:19Matt Gourley?

  -making Homer dumber and dumber and dumber.

• 26:21Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Matt Gourley?

  Right? We're trying to top ourselves, we finally drew the line, and he could not ever forget his own name. Okay.

• 26:28Conan O'Brien?

  There's, there's one, there, 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.

• 27:11Conan O'Brien?

  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.

• 27:24Matt Gourley?

  And I was the, the school marm, shaking my finger, going, "No, no, that's too much." And of course, that only encouraged you guys to do more.

• 27:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 27:31Matt Gourley?

  But when you, that thing about, "I'm out,"

• 27:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 27:34Matt Gourley?

  You did that to yourself when you pitched a joke that didn't, that you felt didn't land. I remember once you pitched something, and, and you mimed getting into a tiny invisible rocket ship, and shutting the door, and taking off into space.

• 27:48Conan O'Brien?

  Oh my god. I do, for, there was a long time where I thought, my only job here is to entertain the other writers. Like, I do believe that I was, I would do things sometimes where I'd put a bunch of Coca-Cola in my mouth, and then start vibrating violently, and what it does is it foams and comes out of your mouth, and I'd be going, "Ahhhh!" And, they would have me get up and do it in front of everybody. You're like a convention sex worker. Yes, yes! That they bring in. Yeah, I was, it'd be like- Just to keep morale up. "Hey, do this, soda, soda, soda." I'm like, "All right, guys, if you want-"

• 28:21Conan O'Brien?

  How is this moving the piece forward?

• 28:24Matt Gourley?

  Well, you know, the, the writers' room, the, the table was very long.

• 28:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Matt Gourley?

  And you were on one corner of the table, and literally, you would be doing a little puppet show for the writers around you-

• 28:36Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 28:37Matt Gourley?

  -that the other people at the other end of the table didn't, couldn't hear, and they were all leaning over, saying, "Come on, do it for us, too."

• 28:43Conan O'Brien?

  Do it for us, too. You had a great saying there, which was, "Things can be improbable, but not physically impossible." And I thought that was a great rule, which we, we of course tried to chip away at that. Your point, and I, I think it was really very wise, was this is not, this is not a Road Runner 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.

• 29:14Matt Gourley?

  Right.

• 29:14Conan O'Brien?

  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 gonna try this now," he has to be bruised, bloody, and he went down, you know.

• 29:28Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 29:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, maybe in real life, he'd have died.

• 29:30Matt Gourley?

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

• 29:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Matt Gourley?

  Yeah, he fell down the gorge, and that was one of the, that was very early on, he tried to skateboard across Springfield Gorge.

• 29:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Matt Gourley?

  Right? And, and he defied physics for a moment-

• 29:48Conan O'Brien?

  A second.

• 29:48Matt Gourley?

  -and then, and then fell.

• 29:49Conan O'Brien?

  And then fell.

• 29:50Matt Gourley?

  And then, 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, all the way up. And then they put him in the ambulance, ambulance goes 10 feet, hits a tree and he slides out.

• 30:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, he goes all the way down again, all the way down again.

• 30:12Matt Gourley?

  And that's when I knew we had a show. Yeah, that was the, that was, yeah.

• 30:15Conan O'Brien?

  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 um, it just has to go into a fireball. So there's all riddled through The Simpsons are an Amish guy driving a cart. Uh, Homer doesn't see him and drives by too fast. The guy goes, whoa, the cart and the horse go over the cliff. It's huge fireball.

• 30:45Conan O'Brien?

  And so there were these things where it's like, okay, that wouldn't really happen, but we can allow that.

• 30:51Matt Gourley?

  It's not impossible.

• 30:53Conan O'Brien?

  It's not impossible that that wood was soaked with kerosene and that the horse had maybe eaten a bomb. But what I remember when I did the monorail episode, um, there was a bit in it where we were initially trying to get George Takei. That was my first idea is that George Takei will play this part. And then George Takei said, no, because he said, I'm on the transportation board in San Francisco and I cannot, 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, um, we just heard that Leonard Nimoy will do it. And I was like, wait, what? That's better. He outranks Sulu. This is great.

• 31:37Conan O'Brien?

  And so the, 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, uh, when everything's sort of been resolved and the monorail, people didn't die and it's the end of the, of the episode, uh, Leonard Nimoy says, well, I guess my work here is done. And Barney says, you didn't do anything. And Leonard Nimoy says, didn't I? And then beams out. Now, I remember this being a big discussion because I remember, uh, 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

• 32:21Conan O'Brien?

  thinking, oh, we, I hope we get this. I hope we get this.

• 32:24Matt Gourley?

  You, you can, you, you know, for the sake, if the joke is good enough, there was an episode in which Homer is somehow, uh, on a, a Christian relief plane, flying to a distant island.

• 32:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Matt Gourley?

  And he's trying to get off and he says, um, but I, I don't even believe in Jeebus.

• 32:45Matt Gourley?

  And then they take off and he says, save me, Jeebus.

• 32:48Conan O'Brien?

  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, gym, G Y M. And Homer looks up at it and he goes, guy? And then he, he's wondering and he goes, guy? 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, guy?

• 33:19Conan O'Brien?

  You're, wait a minute. So you're so unhealthy that you don't even know it's called gym, which you've at least heard a billion times. But yeah.

• 33:32Matt Gourley?

  By the way, so you were, you were one of the new guys on, and

• 33:35Conan O'Brien?

  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, there was an opening.

• 33:52Matt Gourley?

  George Meyer, one of the legendary Simpsons writers.

• 33:55Conan O'Brien?

  Just spectacular, uh, Hall of Famer. And, um, you know, our, 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.

• 34:10Matt Gourley?

  Fascinating.

• 34:11Conan O'Brien?

  For a couple of weeks and then come back. Yeah. Oh, it'll get better. And hand in the script. And then we would all go through it page by page and make it better. And then George Meyer would turn his in for like Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington and we'd all look at it and go, uh, I see nothing. We would change here. V D was like, I mean, just these incredible, absolutely incredible writers.

• 34:34Matt Gourley?

  Well, do you know one of the, you were around for John Schwarzwelder, right?

• 34:37Conan O'Brien?

  Oh God, yeah.

• 34:38Matt Gourley?

  So John Schwarzwelder, another one of the great writers, and he would turn in scripts that were so insane.

• 34:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 34:45Matt Gourley?

  And we'd 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. They were so good.

• 34:53Conan O'Brien?

  Let me paint the picture for you. John Schwarzwelder, you know, the rest of us look like what a comedy writer in their twenties looks like, a caricature or early thirties. 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

• 35:35Conan O'Brien?

  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, 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, uh, and then I remember Schwarzwelder took a long drag of a cigarette and he never spoke, he didn't say much. And he exhaled and he went, I'd watch your show. And that was the first time someone like endorsed the, the concept. Cause most people I would say that to like, you're a funny guy, but what the fuck are you talking

• 36:20Conan O'Brien?

  about? And Schwarzwelder was like, and he said it with this conviction of like, maybe no one else will, but I'd watch it. And I was like, thank you, John. He's never watched one.

• 36:30Matt Gourley?

  I don't know about, I just want to say about Schwarzwelder, I, I like him, but when Clinton was in office, he bet everybody on the staff that

• 36:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yes. Oh, he's completely wrong.

• 36:38Matt Gourley?

  Clinton would be hanged while in office. He said, yeah, he was

• 36:43Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I remember when

• 36:44Matt Gourley?

  He also drove the world's biggest Cadillac, whatever the 1956 Caddy. And he would be the last one in the parking lot while we are driving away. He'd be going, and we'd leave and he'd still be trying to

• 36:57Conan O'Brien?

  If it rained, it wouldn't run.

• 36:58Matt Gourley?

  He wouldn't be there the next day. So we, he obviously made it.

• 37:02Conan O'Brien?

  And I always heard these stories that he like saved every dime he made. Uh, I think he, at the time, anyway, he lived in like a very modest house. Uh, 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 were gonna go for the weekend and, oh, I've got a date or I'm gonna go here and my wife and I are gonna go there. And I asked John, he said, well, do what I always do. I'm gonna go home and my brother and I are gonna play catch with a softball in front of our house for, you know, like a couple of hours and then we're gonna hit a diner. And I was like, wow, wow.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  The old Cadillac, cause he's just from the 50s.

• 37:39Conan O'Brien?

  No, he was, 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 oh, he's, and he would tell us with, no, Bush will defeat him. Bush will defeat him.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  This is the guy that would say he'd watch your show.

• 38:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:10Conan O'Brien?

  Wrong about everything.

• 38:12Matt Gourley?

  So we go back so far, this was in the era when you could actually smoke in diners. And Schwarzwelder, what, what's the big diner on Ventura Boulevard that's no longer there? We will famous one.

• 38:24Conan O'Brien?

  Is it Dupars? Is it?

• 38:25Matt Gourley?

  Not Dupars, it's other, anyway.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  Norms?

• 38:27Matt Gourley?

  Norms.

• 38:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Matt Gourley?

  Schwarzwelder had a booth that he would sit in and smoke and write Simpsons scripts. And then they made smoking illegal. And so he had a identical booth built in his house.

• 38:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Yeah. Totally believe that. He was that guy who like definitely gonna march to his own tune.

• 38:45Matt Gourley?

  And now he's a novelist.

• 38:46Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, his novels are really funny.

• 38:48Matt Gourley?

  His craziest novels.

• 38:50Conan O'Brien?

  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.

• 39:04Conan O'Brien?

  And I've read these and they were just, you know, uh, spectacular, but you have one of the best, for lack of a better term, rags to riches stories that I can think of in all of show business because

• 39:18Matt Gourley?

  And I saved my rags, so.

• 39:20Conan O'Brien?

  And those rags are now worth a fortune. I, I see your rags on eBay all the time. Um, yeah, you moved to LA in 1977 to become a writer. You, while you're waiting to accomplish that, or even while you're doing it, you're washing dishes at a nursing home, clerking at the Hollywood Licorice Pizza record store, landscaping in a sewage treatment plant and chauffeuring and ghostwriting for a retired director of Western films.

• 39:44Matt Gourley?

  That's right.

• 39:44Conan O'Brien?

  Just incredible. You know?

• 39:47Matt Gourley?

  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.

• 40:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Matt Gourley?

  And, uh, and my job was to drive him around during the day. And we'd look at the sides, go through Beverly Hills and whatever, and he'd say, that's Tom Mix's house.

• 40:14Conan O'Brien?

  Hmm.

• 40:14Matt Gourley?

  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.

• 40:25Matt Gourley?

  And then I would listen to his stories and I, I, at night I would work on his autobiography, which was this high. Cause there had been a number of previous writer chauffeurs. And in fact, there was one, while I was out driving around, there was a guy sitting at his house at, on the dining room table, you know, typing it up. And I just remember reading these, and the guy was obsessed with his mother. He goes, today was the day I met Cecil B. DeMille. Immediately I ran home to tell mother, mother, I said, I met Cecil B. DeMille. It was odd.

• 40:56Conan O'Brien?

  This sounds like Sunset Boulevard. Yeah, it is very much. Yeah. Wow.

• 41:01Matt Gourley?

  At the age of 88, mother lost control of her bowels.

• 41:04Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no.

• 41:04Matt Gourley?

  So that was the, the lead sentence of one of those chapters.

• 41:08Conan O'Brien?

  I thought that was a whole chapter.

• 41:11Matt Gourley?

  But getting back to Schwartz, whether one of my favorite lines in, in one of the detective novels is, um, they attach the detective up to a, a lie detector. And they say, does it hurt? And he goes, yes, a little. And they said, you're lying.

• 41:26Conan O'Brien?

  They're unhinged. They're unhinged in the very best way. Um, 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 cause that's his job as a detective, you know, in an alley. I mean, it's just, it's.

• 41:42Matt Gourley?

  The first line was, my story begins with me getting punched in the face.

• 41:46Conan O'Brien?

  Yes. Um, you know, what's interesting to me is everyone knows, of course you do, you know, your, your first goal was to be a journalist.

• 41:55Matt Gourley?

  Right.

• 41:55Conan O'Brien?

  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, um, you know, Don Knotts is getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You 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.

• 42:19Matt Gourley?

  Right.

• 42:19Conan O'Brien?

  Which no one did, right? You'd say like, oh, it's going to be in front of this tobacco shop on Vine and.

• 42:25Matt Gourley?

  I tried to get the most degrading store that was closest to the, to the, and there's plenty of them.

• 42:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:32Matt Gourley?

  Fredericks of Hollywood and, you know, all sorts of.

• 42:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Dildo Emporium.

• 42:38Matt Gourley?

  Right.

• 42:39Conan O'Brien?

  And you would say, yeah, whatever. Yeah. The, this, uh, you know, Miss Mayfield will be getting her star in front of the dildo Emporium. And, and you'd kind of got in trouble for that.

• 42:48Matt Gourley?

  Yeah, that, well, they called me up and asked me, please don't say what stores the, the stars are in front of.

• 42:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Matt Gourley?

  And of course I never stopped.

• 42:55Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 42:57Conan O'Brien?

  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.

• 43:12Matt Gourley?

  Well, what's really fun is to take visitors from out of town and walk down Hollywood Boulevard and say, oh, look.

• 43:19Conan O'Brien?

  Who knew? You were up all night polishing it, scraping urine off of it.

• 43:26Matt Gourley?

  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.

• 43:31Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no, there's, and they.

• 43:32Matt Gourley?

  Do you have one?

• 43:33Conan O'Brien?

  I do not, no. And nor will I, nor will I ever have one. I'll see to that.

• 43:39Matt Gourley?

  I'm going to work on that.

• 43:40Conan O'Brien?

  Please do not do that.

• 43:44Conan O'Brien?

  Promise me you'll never do that. So many great memories for me, but you couldn't have been, you couldn't have been prepared for the success of The Simpsons because you make a show, you hope it just stays on the air. At the time, primetime animation, uh, that's, you know, the brainchild of a underground, you know, subversive, uh, comic artist. This isn't going to work. Maybe it will work a little bit, but then it becomes a phenomenon.

• 44:12Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 44:12Conan O'Brien?

  And how quickly did you realize that you've hit one of the biggest gushers of all time?

• 44:19Matt Gourley?

  The first indication was the, the, the little, the cartoons started on the Tracy Ullman show. And they were, they told me at the beginning, they, they brought me in and they said, we want you to do a two-minute cartoon for the Tracy Ullman show every week. And I, oh, you, you can't, you can't do anything in two minutes. That's, that's not enough time. And then they called me and they said, no, I'm sorry. It's one minute. And then they said, it's for 15 second cartoons. So the whole thing began with 15 second cartoons. And so my, my feeling was, well, side gag, that's all we, you know, really quick, quick, quick side gags. And what made me think that we really had something going is they put some of those cartoons on the, uh, in the beginning of Fox movies.

• 45:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Matt Gourley?

  And they got applause when the titles came up and they 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, uh, refused and said, no, we want to do 13. And they did it. And the whole thing, the whole run was built on those first 13 episodes, which we had never seen the results of the animation before they were all written because it takes six months.

• 45:33Conan O'Brien?

  Sure.

• 45:34Matt Gourley?

  To do, to do all the, uh, animation. And so we lucked out. That's all. It was, it was an incredible lucky situation. And then there was the Fox network, brand new, which didn't even hit the entire country. It was regional.

• 45:46Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 45:46Matt Gourley?

  And, and so, but even with the, the fact that it wasn't in every market in the U.S., it was still extremely popular. So that was amazing.

• 45:56Conan O'Brien?

  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 at Saturday Night Live when The Simpsons debuted and we were all aware instantly that this was.

• 46:11Matt Gourley?

  Yeah, I think probably second or third episode.

• 46:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. We just knew this is the, this is the best thing ever. And, uh, I think every comedy writer was just, oh my God, I wish I was over there. That's the place to be. And that's as much as I loved SNL, it was, it's just a phenomenon. And it's, you know, when I leave, I remember thinking, I mean, I didn't even think about it, but part of my experience has been I leave a show and think this probably goes, runs for a little while longer, you know? Uh, and then it will find its natural endpoint. I thought that 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.

• 46:57Conan O'Brien?

  And The Simpsons is just, is it, how many?

• 47:00Matt Gourley?

  38 seasons.

• 47:01Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my God.

• 47:02Matt Gourley?

  We've done more than 800 episodes. That's a lot of pencil mileage.

• 47:06Conan O'Brien?

  How do you?

• 47:06Matt Gourley?

  In animation terms.

• 47:07Conan O'Brien?

  How do you guys guard against repeat jokes or even themes? Is there someone cataloging like an archivist who can come in and?

• 47:15Matt Gourley?

  Well, if I were Conan, I would mime an invisible gun.

• 47:18Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Matt Gourley?

  We, we do repeat. We do repeat. We, our, our motto now is try not to repeat recently.

• 47:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Matt Gourley?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Matt Gourley?

  Well, no, we try, you know, Al Jean is sort of the living brain.

• 47:31Conan O'Brien?

  He's a living encyclopedia.

• 47:33Matt Gourley?

  I, I can watch episodes from last year and I don't remember a single moment from them because they just, one goes in and one goes out.

• 47:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Matt Gourley?

  Very Homer Simpson style.

• 47:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:42Matt Gourley?

  And, um, people like Al Jean and, and the internet help us say, did we already do that joke?

• 47:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And yeah, I mean, now it's going to be easier and easier to track it down.

• 47:52Matt Gourley?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Conan O'Brien?

  Because of a little amazing thing called AI.

• 47:54Matt Gourley?

  Huh.

• 47:55Conan O'Brien?

  Hey, AI, just a quick plug for it. No, no. Okay. Stop. There's an AI persona I can use.

• 48:03Matt Gourley?

  And now, and now we are, uh, because of, of the internet, we are being, um, congratulated for predicting the future.

• 48:11Conan O'Brien?

  Just, that was the next thing I was bringing up, which is I've had people ask me, how is it that you guys, meaning any Simpsons person, how is it you guys were able to predict the future? And I'll say, are you, you're not being serious. They're totally serious. They think.

• 48:27Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 48:28Conan O'Brien?

  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 of the future will be real estate asshole, Donald Trump. And it's just a quick laugh in the room. And then later on, it's a chilling omen of what will, but there've been so many of them now.

• 48:51Matt Gourley?

  Well, Dan Greeney, the writer of, of that line about Trump being president was done in like 2002 or something. And then, um, at least it was president. So we don't get everything right.

• 49:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 49:03Matt Gourley?

  And, um, and he's, he's taken that to heart. And now he, he dresses up like a prophet and, and.

• 49:10Conan O'Brien?

  Dan does?

• 49:11Matt Gourley?

  Dan does. And he's running for president. So I'm.

• 49:14Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I did hear Dan Greeney was running for president.

• 49:16Matt Gourley?

  Yeah.

• 49:16Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I'll vote for him.

• 49:18Matt Gourley?

  Yes, of course.

• 49:18Conan O'Brien?

  Sure. I'm, I want to see the outfit first.

• 49:20Matt Gourley?

  We're not predicting he wins, by the way.

• 49:26Conan O'Brien?

  These days I would think anyone would have a chance. That's the world we're in right now. Um, let's talk about Futurama because I've always believed that there are two really fun things to write. One is someone who has unlimited wealth, which is why writing for Mr. Burns was my favorite thing. And I think all of us loved it and.

• 49:48Matt Gourley?

  You like doing the voice.

• 49:50Conan O'Brien?

  I love doing the voice. Yeah. I mean, I used to pitch.

• 49:52Matt Gourley?

  And you also tinted your fingers.

• 49:53Conan O'Brien?

  I've tinted my fingers and yes, yes. Uh, Simpson, eh? Um, and I loved, I used to pitch in the voices and I thought that's what people did. And people were like, what are you doing? When I first showed up and I would do the different voice, I don't know, homie, maybe. And they'd be like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I thought, I thought we'd pitch in the voices and like, no, you don't pitch in the voices. No one does that. I loved writing for Mr. Burns because it's a kind of silly writing you can do where he can, if you, 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.

• 50:36Conan O'Brien?

  They can, uh, all kinds of sinister things can happen. The other fun one I always thought would be writing about the future because one of the miracles of the Jetsons, I think, that made it so much fun to watch was the world's your oyster. You know, you can just, writers are completely free to imagine anything. And to me, that's why Futurama always made so much sense. Was that part of the initial appeal?

• 50:59Matt Gourley?

  Well, part of it was, you know, looking at, at the Jetsons.

• 51:02Conan O'Brien?

  Hmm.

• 51:02Matt Gourley?

  Which has the greatest theme of all time.

• 51:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yeah.

• 51:06Matt Gourley?

  He said it's all of these, these, these, uh, apartments and stuff that are on stilts.

• 51:11Conan O'Brien?

  In the cloud.

• 51:12Matt Gourley?

  And you never see the earth.

• 51:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Matt Gourley?

  And I thought, well, let's do the future, like what, what's going on down there?

• 51:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Matt Gourley?

  It's got to be pretty bad.

• 51:18Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Matt Gourley?

  So, yeah.

• 51:19Conan O'Brien?

  I love that. It did feel like it allows you to use a whole other area that, that, you know, The Simpsons can dabble in every now and then if someone's imagining the future, but Futurama just felt like.

• 51:30Matt Gourley?

  It was, it was really fun. And it turns out that science fiction and comedy don't necessarily work together. I mean, you, you can make it funny, but if you're, if this is just a, a, a piece of advice, if you're doing a science fiction comedy, don't have the rocket ship be shaped like a salt shaker, for instance. It's funny the first time, maybe.

• 51:51Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 51:51Matt Gourley?

  It's irritating the second time and it's infuriating the third time. So anything that, that you see over and over again, make sure you can live with it.

• 51:59Conan O'Brien?

  When the series begins, who are you creating it with was?

• 52:04Matt Gourley?

  Uh, David X. Cohen.

• 52:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, that's right. I know David Cohen. Yeah.

• 52:06Matt Gourley?

  Yes. He's called David X. Cohen because there are other David Cohens in the Writers Guild.

• 52:11Conan O'Brien?

  Is that why he put the X in there? I always just knew him as David Cohen, but then he put an X in.

• 52:14Matt Gourley?

  David S. Cohen, but there was another David S. Cohen too, so. And X is pretty kind of futuristic.

• 52:19Conan O'Brien?

  Change to Conan X. O'Brien.

• 52:21Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 52:22Conan O'Brien?

  I'm sure there are other Conan O'Briens out there trying to, your wife would like to change into an X. O'Brien.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Nice. Yay. Congrats.

• 52:30Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, you're fired.

• 52:31Matt Gourley?

  You're fired. Um, by the way, I, you know, Homer Simpson seems like a pretty random name, but it turns out it's not the most random name. And we did get a letter once saying, thank you for ruining my life.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 52:43Matt Gourley?

  I can't order pizza. I can't do this. I can't do that. Signed, fuck you. Signed, Mrs. Homer S. Simpson.

• 52:49Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. There's a documentary about all the real people named James Bond and what they have to live with as they walk through the days. Terrible.

• 53:01Matt Gourley?

  Well, the other thing is that I, you know, I named the characters after my family.

• 53:05Conan O'Brien?

  That's right.

• 53:05Matt Gourley?

  My father's name is Homer. My mother's name is Marge. I have a sister Lisa and I have a sister Maggie. And I kind of wrecked their lives, you know?

• 53:12Conan O'Brien?

  Now, Marge's hair, I know it's, it's kind of modeled on Bride of Frankenstein, but also did your mom?

• 53:18Matt Gourley?

  My mother had a very tall beehive when I was a kid. And from the angle that I was looking at her, it really seemed big. And she always denied it, but I do have photos, so. And my dad, my dad loved The Simpsons, except when Homer was mean to Marge. He did not like, he got, he called me up. He called, he called me up after, there was an episode in which, uh, The Simpsons car breaks down in the desert and while the, the family is sitting under the shade of a big boulder, uh, Marge has to carry a tire back to town.

• 53:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:50Matt Gourley?

  And my dad was so mad that Homer made Marge carry the tire.

• 53:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Matt Gourley?

  And I said, he strangles his kid. And my dad said, I don't care about that.

• 53:59Conan O'Brien?

  Did they make you stop the strangling at a certain? Cause I know early on there was, you know, Homer would really throttle Bart, grab him around the neck and go, ah, you know, and, um, I think that went away at a certain point.

• 54:11Matt Gourley?

  No.

• 54:12Conan O'Brien?

  No, didn't?

• 54:12Matt Gourley?

  It went away and then we get tired of repeating the same joke, but then, but then.

• 54:16Conan O'Brien?

  It wasn't out of concern for children's safety.

• 54:20Matt Gourley?

  No, you know what? We wouldn't, we wouldn't do spanking because that's too real. So it's the strangling was very, yeah, that was very silly.

• 54:26Conan O'Brien?

  It never bothered me.

• 54:27Matt Gourley?

  And by the way, it's always impulsive.

• 54:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Matt Gourley?

  It's always, why you little? And then in general Bart tries, you know, reaches for a frying pan and hits him and gets it. Homer gets his comeuppance. There was one episode in which Homer went, why you little? And he comes over very slowly and strangles him. And it was so freakish that we, that we cut it. It's only if it's impulsive. So impulsive anger.

• 54:50Conan O'Brien?

  Impulsive anger is funny.

• 54:52Matt Gourley?

  We did, we did an episode in which, um, in which Homer and Smithers got into a fistfight. And they were hitting each other, uh, Smithers had an old fashioned rotary phone. And he was, he was hitting him in the face and then back and forth and really harsh.

• 55:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Matt Gourley?

  Harsh animation. And I remember coming to the, the sound mix and it's just, uh, uh, uh, 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's gonna be airing on, on Sunday. And, uh, we tried, okay, let's make the sound effects funny. You know, boing, you know, no, it made it not funny at all. And so finally, as an experiment, we took out all the sounds of exertion. Uh, duh. And just letting, let sounds of pain. Uh, you know, all that kind of stuff. And that made it funny. So that is, that is my comedy tip there. Pain, pain is funny.

• 55:48Conan O'Brien?

  I, 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, uh, it'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, uh, on one of the guys who's a 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, and Mr. Burns says, I'm thrashing you to the nits of your life. But he's incredibly exhausted. So my way out is that he's incredibly violent and homicidal in that moment.

• 56:32Conan O'Brien?

  But he can't, he can't do anything. Um, 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 writers' room, which is, it, it looks like an old 1940s hotel motel. It's, you know, that, it's, it's, uh, two stories and there's a staircase that goes to the second level. It looks kind of dilapidated and I pushed through the same old creaky door. Eh, and some of the same faces from when I was there, but everyone's got gray hair and they look up and they go, eh? And lunch, yeah, lunch. Still nothing. But no, I would hang out and chat with them a bit and then I would say, well, I gotta go. Please.

• 57:19Conan O'Brien?

  No, I mean, I 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, uh.

• 57:30Matt Gourley?

  So I showed, I showed my, my 10 year old at the time, old episodes of, uh, Andy Griffith. And he liked them, but he said he really liked Gomer Pyle. And I said, well, Gomer had his own show. And he goes, wha, what?

• 57:43Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 57:44Matt Gourley?

  And so we watched like 150 episodes of Gomer Pyle USMC.

• 57:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yep. Huge hit.

• 57:50Matt Gourley?

  And in the background is that writers' building as a barracks. There you go. Yeah. They filmed it on the, on the Fox lot, or at least part of it.

• 57:57Conan O'Brien?

  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 gonna 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.

• 58:20Matt Gourley?

  I heard that story.

• 58:21Conan O'Brien?

  No idea if that's true.

• 58:22Matt Gourley?

  I don't know. It's either.

• 58:23Conan O'Brien?

  Or it's where Laurel and Hardy got together to have sex.

• 58:28Matt Gourley?

  Sadly, that room is still where we watch animatics.

• 58:32Conan O'Brien?

  Is it really?

• 58:32Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 58:33Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 58:33Matt Gourley?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Conan O'Brien?

  So nothing's changed?

• 58:35Matt Gourley?

  Nothing, nothing has changed.

• 58:36Conan O'Brien?

  And then these little odd things pop up. I remember, um, we were writing an episode and everyone's sitting around. It's Patty and Selma, uh, Marge's sisters. And they're voiced also by Julie Kavner. And one of them, I think it was Patty or Selma, has a, 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, jub jub. And I remembered Al went, okay, jub jub. And then it's one of those things where people, real Simpsons fanatics will come up to me sometimes and go, jub jub. And I'm like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. But I.

• 59:19Matt Gourley?

  But you started using that phrase, phrase.

• 59:22Conan O'Brien?

  All the time.

• 59:22Matt Gourley?

  All the time. And you, you had a fictitious product or something called jub jub.

• 59:26Conan O'Brien?

  Yes. I built a whole religion around jub jub.

• 59:29Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 59:29Conan O'Brien?

  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 jub. And they're like, okay. But yes, that's actually the way it happened.

• 59:45Matt Gourley?

  Yes.

• 59:46Conan O'Brien?

  Something was wrong with me. Glad it all got fixed.

• 59:49Matt Gourley?

  Oh, boy. Well, there are throwaway jokes that then become part of the vernacular. I think it was George Meyer. I may be wrong, but he reached over and grabbed something and said, yoink.

• 59:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 59:58Matt Gourley?

  And, and so now that became a thing where you say the sound effect.

• 1:00:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yoink.

• 1:00:02Matt Gourley?

  Of the thing that you're doing.

• 1:00:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 1:00:04Matt Gourley?

  And, and then George got sick of it, but we still use it.

• 1:00:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Um, first of all, there has to be a part two. If you've got the time, you're welcome here anytime you want to come in because we barely scratched the surface. There is so much to talk about, so it's an open invitation anytime you want to come.

• 1:00:20Matt Gourley?

  Thank you so much. It's really nice to see you, uh, relaxed. The last time I saw you, I visited the office here and you came out dressed in a German sailor suit.

• 1:00:30Conan O'Brien?

  I do remember that.

• 1:00:34Conan O'Brien?

  I have a very strange life. I really do.

• 1:00:37Matt Gourley?

  And you didn't acknowledge it.

• 1:00:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. Hey, man, how's it going? Never acknowledge.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  He, he didn't know. He didn't know he was.

• 1:00:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, exactly. I'm like Homer. I often forget completely who I am and what I'm doing.

• 1:00:47Matt Gourley?

  He joined the German Navy.

• 1:00:48Conan O'Brien?

  Um, 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, that time at The Simpsons. It was really perfect.

• 1:01:06Matt Gourley?

  Well, you, you were great in the room and I, I wasn't surprised that you went places. In fact, when you were, it was announced that you were going to be the host. The New York Times called me up and said, is, who is this guy? Is he funny? I said, he's funny. America will love him. And, and they printed that on the front page because I was the only guy who knew who you were.

• 1:01:27Conan O'Brien?

  That's right. This is back when every other quote was him, you know, he looks like an idiot. And so the fact that I.

• 1:01:34Matt Gourley?

  They, the knives were out for you.

• 1:01:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, they were.

• 1:01:37Matt Gourley?

  Because you were a writer.

• 1:01:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. But I remember that, that quote because I was desperate for anything that would keep people at bay.

• 1:01:44Matt Gourley?

  You came back to the, to the lot and.

• 1:01:46Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, I did. It was a beautiful thing to do.

• 1:01:48Matt Gourley?

  He's very, he's very appreciative. And, and, and congratulations.

• 1:01:54Conan O'Brien?

  Oh.

• 1:01:54Matt Gourley?

  And I know I, I've, I've seen everything else you've done.

• 1:02:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Matt Gourley?

  No, but anyway, thank you for your service.

• 1:02:05Conan O'Brien?

  Oh.

• 1:02:05Matt Gourley?

  You know, and, 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, 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.

• 1:02:20Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, well, sir, I thank you and I'm desperate to get you back here anytime you want to be here.

• 1:02:28Matt Gourley?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:02:28Conan O'Brien?

  For any reason.

• 1:02:29Matt Gourley?

  Thank you, guys.

• 1:02:30Conan O'Brien?

  Good night and God bless.

• 1:02:38Conan O'Brien?

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• 1:03:19Conan O'Brien?

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• 1:04:03Conan O'Brien?

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• 1:04:32Speaker 06

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• 1:04:52Conan O'Brien?

  Hey, I have something to talk about, which relates to us, Sona. Couple of days ago, I'm hanging out at my house. It's a weekend, everything's chill. And all of a sudden, Sona sends me a text. I looked at it, and what did the text say, Sona?

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  The text said, "Hey, your car is gonna be a few minutes late." And it's very matter-of-fact.

• 1:05:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. "Oh, your car's gonna be a few minutes late."

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Conan O'Brien?

  Which is the kind of text you send me if I've gotta go to the airport.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:16Conan O'Brien?

  You know, I'm supposed to go to some function. I'm gotta do some work thing, and a car is gonna take me there, you know?

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  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. So without even thinking, when I get a text about his cars, like either coming or information from his thing, from his drivers, I just text it to David and Conan without checking. I don't even know what he's up to.

• 1:05:45Conan O'Brien?

  So it's really funny, because Sona,

• 1:05:50Conan O'Brien?

  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 hotwiring a car. Or it's to tell me that a car is waiting for me out front. And then I go, "Oh, okay, yeah, I'm supposed to go to the airport, or I'm supposed to go make an appearance on this show or that show, and they've sent a car for me." Let me see if I can find this.

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  Where the hell is this going?

• 1:06:19Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, hold on. So I get a thing. I'm gonna read it to you now. "Sona, your driver is running a few minutes late." I text back, "For?" like, question mark, like, "To take me where?" And for a second, I'm just thinking, "Sona just decided I need to go." So, "Your driver is running a few minutes late." Sona, "For?" Sona, um, I, she wrote, texted, um. Um, comma, "I don't know. I just got a text." And I texted back, "I ain't going nowhere." And Sona texts, "This is fun." Now, David Hopping is on the thread, and he suddenly pipes up, "That's weird." And then I text, "Feels like a kidnapping plot."

• 1:07:06Conan O'Brien?

  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."

• 1:07:16Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  You go, and then I'll read the text with the guy.

• 1:07:20Conan O'Brien?

  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?"

• 1:07:36Conan O'Brien?

  Then, listen to this. Then Sona texts, "Oh, wait, I ordered food, and it's about my food."

• 1:07:45Conan O'Brien?

  Then Sona texts, "I'm sorry, but this is hilarious." Then David Hopping texts, "This is my favorite text thread."

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:52Conan O'Brien?

  I text, "That's great. David Hopping, what did you order?" And then I text, "We gotta read this on the pod."

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Conan O'Brien?

  Then Sona writes, "This might be the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  It was awful.

• 1:08:03Conan O'Brien?

  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."

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:15Conan O'Brien?

  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."

• 1:08:33Conan O'Brien?

  And then Sona said, "I'm proud of you for typing ovaries. I know it's difficult for you."

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:38Conan O'Brien?

  I wrote, "I cried twice." Sona said, "I enjoyed picturing that." David wrote, "Hashtag growth."

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Conan O'Brien?

  And then I wrote to David, and I wrote it to both of you. "David's 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."

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  What were you doing in the yard?

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:08:59Conan O'Brien?

  And then Sona says, "What were you doing in the yard?" And I say, "I go into my yard to manscape."

• 1:09:07Conan O'Brien?

  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.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  It's just, I was like, "Oh, okay, I'm doing my job." Like, your car's a few minutes late.

• 1:09:22Conan O'Brien?

  But why is it, why are you even on these threads?

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  But you didn't remember that you had just ordered food?

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  I completely forgot. And then the guy, he sent me a text. He goes, "Your driver is on their way now, but it's running a few minutes late." And so I go, "Okay, I'll let him know. Thank you."

• 1:09:39Conan O'Brien?

  Let who know? Yeah, exactly.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  How many edibles have you had?

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  None, 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 delivery, which made me feel really stupid.

• 1:10:11Conan O'Brien?

  A strength of Sona is that she's honest. 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."

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  No, yeah, I know. No, yeah. And they're a really good car company, so I wouldn't want to, but...

• 1:10:25Conan O'Brien?

  Okay. Well, anyway, good to see that you're on it. Boy, are you on it.

• 1:10:29Speaker 04

  How was the Goop Kitchen?

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  It was good. It was really good. I don't know, man. It was good. I was just embarrassed. It was, and embarrassing myself in front of Conan is the worst type of embarrassment.

• 1:10:40Conan O'Brien?

  Slash best thing. It's the best thing that ever happens.

• 1:10:42Speaker 04

  Good for the show.

• 1:10:44Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I think we all learned a lesson.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Which is?

• 1:10:46Conan O'Brien?

  Trust, but confirm, you know? Or verify.

• 1:10:52Conan O'Brien?

  Terrible. Just terrible.

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sona Movsesian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

• 1:11:17Speaker 04

  Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnik. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. You can also get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at siriusxm.com/conan. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

• 1:12:04Speaker 06

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