Family Guy: Everything You Didn't Know

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Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows and more. I'm not even gonna come up with the old name pun intro things, because we're making up for lost time on this one, and it's my fault. I'm

I'm thrilled you did. This is a rare instance of something from our youth that I actually actively engaged in regular Okay, oh no, this was huge for me, if you were in middle school or high school during this show's run, Family Guy became like a second language with your friends, like more so than Austin Powers, more so than Anchorman. Is just endlessly quotable. And I'm really having a hard time thinking of another TV show that had that kind of impact on my social group at that age.

You no, Because well for the first like maybe the first three episode.

Yeah, actually I think I watched the premiere ya.

And then part of like Fox's Deep Free like made it impossible to watch, and then it was just suddenly gone. And then I think I caught it on Cartoon Network one night. But I remember being so struck by it that I was like downloading Family Guy bits from like Khazah and LimeWire to have the memorize Oh same.

I mean these DVDs, though, like they were ubiquitous in a way that I feel like TV show comps never

Yeah, Like it was crazy.

Yeah, that was nuts.

I think pretty much right around the time that DVD was really becoming a boom industry too, so like it had not taken over from I mean I so my benchmark is always like, I think The Matrix was the last movie I owned on VHS.

Ah, okay, so that'll be ninety nine, So yeah that sounds about right.

Yeah, yeah, well ninety nine or two thousand by the time it made it to home media. But yeah, like so for this to come out and then go out onto DVD was like the next big step. And yeah, I mean my mom, bless her got me these, like she just knew that I liked the show and just got me the box season of these for like six seasons straight.

This was like like if our parents' generation everybody's house had like Rumors or something or like Asia or like like everybody's house had Family Guy box sets.

Well it was dorm rooms honestly for me, because it was like when you look at the like so when this I mean, we'll get to it later, but this thing was behind the Simpsons and behind Chappelle's show, and that pretty much defines fourteen to twenty four year old guys humor for ten straight years of the culture, you know.

And I think that's why it was so quota. In fact, I know that was why it was so quotable because it was the first TV show that you would just I mean it kind of birthed comfort watching in a way because I would watch these episodes over and over and over again and do full scenes with my friends just in the hallway at school. Yeah, for me, it was more of a high school thing rather than a college thing.

No, No, I mean it was it was. It was all through that. But then I brought them with me to college. Yeah, so they would just I had like six yeah, I mean like had six seasons of family guys. It would just like which what are we thrown in the PS two to like crash out on the couch for Yeah, And I was already a Simpsons fan. South Park hauld hit but like, I don't know, man what, we can talk about this later, but South Park has

Is just I missed this.

Yeah, so I'm excited to explain it to you, pal oh good and all of our listeners.

No, I was the same way with you. I was a Simpsons guy, and then I saw advertisements for this also on Fox, probably while watching The Simpsons.

And it's funny.

I remember at first thinking that Peter Griffin was just like overweight Bill Gates, Like I really thought like some kind of like parody or something which just really sets it shows the sign of the times, if you will. It would have been like what like late ninety eight. And yeah, soon as I started watching Family Guys like you couldn't go back to the Simpsons. It just to me it felt like this was so much more potent.

Yeah, and man, I you know, I don't want to give him credit for this, but like this show honestly was one of the first kind of early precursors of what entertainment would be today. Yeah, or like the screen experience today where it's like it's gonna move really fast, there's gonna be a bunch of things that you miss.

Everybody knew that it was always a guy. It was a guy in high school. Everybody knew that guy in high school who everybody thought was hilarious. But then all of a sudden, you just realize one day wait a minute, you're just random, You're not funny?

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Like that, Yeah, that's a common knock against the show. That's what show writers from like the Simpsons in South Park kind of accuse family guy of being.

But it's so funny because all those guys were like I mean, I don't know about the King of the Hill writers room, but they were definitely like Harvard people in the in the Simpsons writing room, And like, did those guys not know about Dada? Did they do not know about surrealism? Were they like not able to I mean I think that, like I's very generous, well, but they would. I mean, the Dadas were scatological quite a

Also, that's an incredible pairing, and I applaud.

You for it, okay, And like it's obviously cringeness, it like navigated its cringiness just by powering through. Yeah, Like there was a point at which you would just like I don't know, like if you like saw someone wandering around your college dorm in like an oversized hoodie and Family Guy pajama pants. You would be like avoid that person. Oh that was just most you people.

That wasn't me. Yeah no, I had crushed velve at pants in college, of course. Yeah no, I that to me, that was just everything. I was in a dorm where everybody was in the dorm was really in the television like that was they put all the like wanna be TV writers into one dorm. That was like the theme of my floor of my dorm, which in retrospect, I can't believe I meant it out alive. But yeah, no, that was just kind of everybody in my dorm.

Okay, good to know.

Yeah, so I kind of just stopped watching The Simpsons after I got into Family Guy. And I don't know if it was just because the Family Guy just kind of took over for me, or looking back on it, it almost seems like Family Guys started to ascend right when The Simpsons started its long, slow decline. But I know you're much more of a Simpson's head than I am, so imagine you have thoughts on that.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to pin exactly when it started declining. I think there were still some good episodes every now and again around that time, but I'm more interested in your perception of it versus south Park. South Park.

I South Park got a weird relationship with because I remember being in fourth grade, I want to say, And I remember my I was in bed about to go to sleep, and my dad came whirling in, and my dad didn't get excited about a lot of things, and I just remember him being like, you will never guess what I just saw on this crazy TV show And it was the Mister Hanky Christmas Special and he couldn't believe, Like I have to imagine, judging from his reaction that

Yeah. Same, but I don't like, I mean, I still put like this. Obviously, South Park is great. The Scott Tenorant episode is one of the perfect episodes of television of all time. Yes, yes, but I just couldn't fathom why South Park Guy. Like, I can understand that like a bunch of Ivy League like joke crafters in the Simpsons room hated Family Guy, but like, where did the South Park guys get off?

Well, Okay, I think it's I mean, because it's Matt Stone and Trade Park. It's just the two of them, So I think they probably feel like it's these two scrappy upstarts competing against the whole writer's room who are making a boziz. I mean, I think Matt Stone and Trey Parker even said like, yeah, they made a hell of a lot more money Family Guy, whan we ever did U. So I think they felt like it was

Yeah, and I mean, I'll admit.

I think South Park smarter.

I don't know about that. I do think like the cutaways when I heard them explained as I think in Seth Macfarland's terms, like as essentially writing a far side comic strip, Oh wow, okay, like and just having this idea of like how are we going to pitch like some random absurd image or some like insane ten sections of action that like can be communicated in an instant like this and keep the pace of the show. I

I mean, it's very effective, I will say, I mean, and just the ingenuity of a many I do admire how Family Guy breaks the pain threshold with like long gags. Oh yeah, like Peter fighting Ernie the giant Chicken for like eight minutes or whatever the hell that was, Like that's incredible, Like I admire those swings.

But that's what I get back to saying that there's a degree of good writing in there is because it initially started so small.

That's guts. That's not good riding, that's guts.

Okay, it's guts, and its foresight to be like have this like seeded thing where it's like, first it's just like that chicken, pass me a bad cubon. So we have like ten seconds of like a fight, and then it gets occasionally referenced until it builds up to like a full you know, they live fight in the alley scene, so like which I also would be risky nuties if I didn't tell you that south Park straight up copied that entire scene for an episode, so they referenced it in the.

Same way the Family Guy referenced it.

Yeah, well, I mean, we'll get into the south Park episode later anyway. Obviously, because the show is nearing four hundred and fifty episodes, multiple spin offs, et cetera, et cetera, we are covering the launch of the show to its initial cancelation and return, and then we're gonna wrap it up with some of the meme culture stuff and some of the controversies. So for anyone that expects us to be a deep dive into the entirety of aired Family Guy, turn off now and don't give me a one star rating.

What's on Family Guy?

Yeah? No, Oh, we were not cool enough for that. Oh my god. I had to hear that so much when I was in the high school jazz band circuit.

WHOA what'd you play it in jazz band space pace?

Yeah? Anyway, Family Guy was created by a gentleman named Seth MacFarlane, who, as anyone knows by now, is super into forties and fifties music and road movies and also TV from the late seventies into the eighties and show tunes and show tunes. Yeah, he's like a half boomer, half Generation.

X, which is kind of why I feel like we'd be friends.

Yeah that tracks. H McFarlan was born in Connecticut in nineteen seventy three and was apparently drawing by the age of two. By five, he knew he wanted to be an animator, but unfortunately, as he said on Inside the Actors Studio, there was no information at the time. I think my parents found one book on animation that they scrounged up for me, and they got it from a library,

Now, okay, I'm sorry. Even for a nine year old in the eighties, that rate seems criminal.

Five bucks. I don't know, man, times were different. You know, crack was cheaper.

Walter Krutze. Is that a Walter Cronkite reference or just probably? Yeah?

Yeah, so, like, I don't know, I just I know we.

Talked about this a little bit offline, but just get this out of the way. Seth MacFarland. Is he like some kind of can we say savant? Like he's definitely like a very unusual talent, and not just from his influences, like he was doing this at nine years old, Like that's that's unusual.

Yeah, there's like a single purpose to him that seems weird when you consider how like lazy he's actually gotten in not writing or working on like any of these shows anymore and just showing up to do voiceover work.

He's worth three hundred million dollars.

Yeah, there's that too. Anyway, McFarland's eventual taste for courting controversy showed up early A strip of the character kneeling at the altar for communion and asking the priest can I have fries with That earned him an angry letter from a local priest.

I feel like that's literally a Family Guy joke. I swear I could hear Peter saying that.

Yeah. In eighth grade, he made an animated film that was very, very crude. In his words, you explained to a IgM that I had a sense of exactly what it was I wanted to do, but it was just kind of tough. Even at the time, which was not that long ago, no one was really able to tell me how animation worked. Funny note about McFarland's early life.

Hill for the headmaster to to die on, like I've never like it. Must have been pointed like did he have it out for the McFarlands, Like that's a weird thing.

Now. I feel like somebody was just like, check out what one of our alumni is doing. And he was like, oh my goodness.

I said this in the Dead Poet Society episode. These schools are evil. Take it from me. Prep school dropout.

Yeah. Well, As McFarlane explained to Terry Gross on an episode of Fresh Air in twenty eleven, a big early influence on him was the Muppets, and in particular their music. For me, the Muppets were more legit than anybody in that regard, he said. The Muppets and even Sesame Street. Joe Roposo, the great jazz composer, wrote so many great songs for Sesame Street and the Muppets. Sinatra recorded Being Green,

I can't believe he's not shouting out Paul Williams Holmes is incredibly rainbow connection them Street, I.

Mean surely others. Well, therein lies the rub. McFarlane, as most people know, loves mid century great American songbook crunersh he sings on the show. He studied with Frank Sinatra's old vocal teachers. He put out his own records and toured with like big bands and cocktail shows. At one point, when he was at Risdye, the Rhode Island School of Design where he went to college, he thought about going to Boston Conservatory to study musical theater, which talk about

Yes, quite, or he would have written, like you know, if the South Park guys did Book of Mormon, and I can imagine Seth macfarlan would have probably done something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The so called Disney Renaissance, which we talked a lot about on this show, the incredible string from what eighty seven to ninety five is generally it's it's the era of that Little Mermaid Duty and the Beast, et cetera.

I guess it really depends on when your cut off or when they stop being good. Is yeah, Hercules has shooters out there.

I like Hercules, is okay. I think Mulom was like the last good one in my memory. I remember thinking that the one without all fulfilled Colin song Tarzan. I remember thinking Tarzan was like, oh I don't like this at all.

Yeah, And I think like when I was, I think like Hunchback of oshra Dam was another one where I was like, this isn't good. Yeah. Yeah, although that one I shooters too. I will say it's just because everyone loves the priests like Horny Fire and Brimstone Song.

Anyway, the so called Disney Renaissance was primed to make a huge impact on young on Master McFarlane, I feel like he would have been the can of kid that would get off on being called Master McFarlane.

Right, yeah, probably, yeah. Takes one to know one.

He enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design. He said, I suppose I decided there that big bulbous eyes were important.

If that's the some takeaway of his education.

And He studied there with the intention of becoming an animator for Disney. Then here comes the Simpsons. He told MPR who said, hey, you could also do this. We're rewriting the rule book with regard to what you can do on television, and I was laughing. This was something that actually was for me. In college, McFarlane did stand up comedy, which I can't imagine that went well, especially seeing well Oscar.

He's not doing it now. Yeah, when you're insanely rich and can virtually pay your way out of any debacle and you still don't return to something you flopped at in college, Okay, that's how you know you really sucked at it.

Yeah, so he did stand up. He appeared in student films. He created a thesis called The Life of Larry, which was basically a dry run for Family Guy, A thesis film.

What did I say, just a thesis.

A thesis film. I definitely think it was included as like a bonus feature on one of the Family Guys.

Yeah they're out there.

Yeah, I've definitely seen it hilariously. At least one of his professors at Risdy tried to deter seth MacFarland from honing in on comedy. He told The New York Times in two thousand and four. I just wanted to make people laugh, and I remember taking a lot of guff from my professors about that. I showed my storyboard my film professor, and she said, I'm really worried that you're wasting your time on what's essentially a lot of bathroom humor.

Yeah, man.

One of Seth McFarland's professors submitted his thesis, the one that one of the other professors thought he was wasting his time on. Somebody else apparently at the school thought it was great and submitted it to Hannah Barbara without

Johnny Bravo Forgot about Cowen Chicken Isn't that kind of sweet that like a professor randomly picked. I mean, I think part of the program was that people had to be selected, but just the idea that someone was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna do this for you and I'm also not going to tell you. You know, that's kind of sweet.

I like that.

I would have enjoyed that support at any point in my life. But you know, so what are we talking about.

Interestingly, it wasn't McFarland's animation Chops that got him his job at Hanna Barbara. As he explained to IGN, I was actually one of the few people who got hired into that program primarily because of writing. This is what they told me after the fact. Certainly, my student film was not the drawings were not anything special. They were pretty crude looking. But you know, it was the content, the jokes themselves, that were the reason they hired me.

Yeah, I have a dim memory of that. Yeah, I mean, you know, One of the things that I do like about him that this show made me respect more is like he kept bringing in people from the kind of animation community. Like there's a lot of people on this show who he worked with at Cartoon Network and other places. So you know, it's a family business. Come on, make

So it's crazy, that's actually really nuts about That's actually how I got my job at iHeart was that I pitched them a show which we're still talking about making yees, seven years after I pitched it to him initially, and I was directed to somebody who wasn't getting back to me, wasn't getting back to me, wasn't getting back to me, and I almost just gave up. And then I said, you know, I'm gonna try them one more time. And then he was like, oh my god, I'm so sorry.

Now, and look and look at me now, Tom top of the world, look at look at me now, look at me. I'm getting paper. Ultimately, Fox gave him I am grinding, I'm grinding, grindset, mindset. Ultimately Fox gave him a proposal do a pilot for fifty grand. Wow. Yeah, at a time when most half hour animated shows cost close to a million dollars. And then they would see the idea was that I animate this thing by myself. Mccarlan told The New York Times. I spent about six Yeah,

These days, it costs I think around two million dollars per Family Guy episode, and I guess that excludes talent fees, because the main cast gets something like a quarter million dollars an episode. And that figure I saw was like ten year years ago, so I don't even want to know what it is now.

Initially, McFarland did most of the show's male voices simply out of necessity. Stewie's voice comes from Rex Harrison and McFarlane's love of Doctor Doolittle and My Fair Lady, while Brian's is the closest to McFarland's actual speaking voice. Do you know about the controversy with Stewie. Well, I was going to get into the smartest boar on Earth thing, but I didn't. I stopped caring.

Oh well, id care?

Yeah, I was gonna say, this is how we check each other.

You know.

If that's one thing I'm good at, it's caring, Folks, you know that it is.

He's a wonderful lover with a pretty good dick, Folks. If you're hearing this right now, that means I wasn't mad.

Enough to cut it out. Interestingly, there was a comic strip, I think it was a local Chicago comic strip that was later turned into a series of graphic novels in the early nineties, like mid nineties round ninety five called Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest kid on Earth and this boy, he's a boy with a big football shaped head, I think,

Yeah. I mean the reason that I don't, like fully go in on him for this is that the world of early nineties comic books was very cloistered, and if he grew up, if Seth was in Connecticut and then Rhode Island, the chances of him bumping into and then reading an episode of an underground like alt comic were

Seth did clear up another big bit of Stewie lore in a two thousand and nine interview with Playboy in which he confirmed that Stewie is gay and considered an episode where he officially came out, which I don't think they ever ended up doing, although, as you said, I have tuned out of the last fifteen.

Century of seasons. Yes, no, I I think that character got so much more funny when he just turned into like they, I mean, the early leg I'm gonna kill like Lewis, I'm going to kill you like all that mother.

Uh, Jim Morrison as Rex Erison or vice versa.

Now I'm trying to remember the ones. The one quote that I used to that I that I downloaded from Kazah. Maybe it wasn't burned that well into my brain, or maybe I've made room for it with for Jazzar Peggios.

Were security number.

Yeah. Yeah, Uh, that character got a lot funny and when he was just sort of a foil to Brian, like when they started just pairing them together in all the Road episodes like that, that was a that was smart of them.

Yes, meanwhile, that's about Peter.

I can't do Peter. I can't do that voice. Peter Meanwhile, as McFarland told NPR, is very much the quintessential big fat, loud New England guy who is very very good at the core, big hearted, but just has zero self editing mechanism, no idea what is appropriate and inappropriate, and you just kind of have to forgive him because he doesn't know any better. And I knew so many of those guys. My father knew tons of those guys when we were

Someone was watching Tree of Life that Brad Pitt like three hour meditation on.

Yeah, it's charismatic, it's beautiful, there's dinosaurs.

Her mom sat there silently throughout the entire thing, and as soon as it ended in the credits all she stood up and went dumb and walked out of the room.

That's pretty good our soul review. Oh was she wrong? I who's to say? Who is?

Who is to say?

Art is subjective? That's why we love it, don't we, folks? Except for my art, which is objectively correct. And I will see you all driven before me one day.

Family Guy's other biggest contributor is Alex Borstein, at the time a breakout star on Mad TV.

I forgot about that, A deeply racist character. Oh yeah, she was like miss Kwan or whatever. Yeah, I forgot about it, like fully doing Yellow Phase. Yeah, I forgot yeah right now? Yes, yeah.

She came via Fox except Leslie Collins, who asked boristein to voice lowest quote for next to no money McFarland joke to ign although it probably wasn't a joke.

It was sketch comedy mixed in with the sitcom, and it was so dense.

She told The La Times in twenty twenty four of what initially appealed to her about the show. Each episode has so much in it, and I just knew it was special and weird and made laugh out loud throughout. By McFarland's estimation, Borstein did quote probably seventy five percent of our female voices and also wrote for the show, which I didn't know, helping to rain in the fraddy

Every time someone started saying something that makes shut up Meg, And God, that still gets me, dude. I'm sorry. I know there's all kinds of gendered stuff in there and whatever, but like, who lets you back in the house, funny non moments of extreme cruelty.

I mean, yeah, it's not a gender thing. I mean I think about like, you know, Donny, you're out of your element from Big.

That's always funny to have one character irrationally furious at another one.

Yeah, that's just love, that's just comedy gold, that's just good writing. Fellows's voice, Borstein explained to NPR in twenty fifteen, it's a direct rip off of a cousin of mine on Long Island. Her accent's a little different. She's Hungarian, so it's Hungarian and Long Island mixed together. It's like a cat dying.

It's terrible. Yeah, that does sound quite awful.

Yeah, Borstin and McFarland's heavy character loads meant a lot of time in recording Boots. I usually do all one character first, like I'll do Lois first, and once I finished that, I'll go back through and I'll do Tricia Takanawa or Babs or whatever. Borsting told bleedingcool dot com.

You heard me, you read me.

I usually end up playing five characters in one episode, so I go back through five times and do each character separately. Oddly enough, Thorsten recalled the ign that at first, between the pilot and the show's pickup, the network wanted to get rid of me. She said, I had the fight to keep my job. I had to re audition for it, along with every female that ever stepped off a bus in Hollywood. Seth Green, who was then more known for his role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and

Also in He was in Idle Hands, Oh Yeah, which is a bad movie. Car Harley Waite's a great movie. It's an even better replacement song. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure Paul Westerberg still gets royalties off that. That might be why he doesn't feel the need to work Seth Green.

He was brought in to play Peter and Lois's son, Chris pattering his distinctive voice on Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. That's incredible. I never picked up on that. He apparently had been screwing around with an impression of Buffalo Bill with a bunch of his friends and they dared him to do it at the audition, and apparently he ended up getting the role because he was one of the only guys, if not the only guy who didn't do a surfer dude voice.

I think he asked McFarlane, he was like, do you mind if I just do something really weird, and McFarland was like, yeah, sure, and so he was like, well on your dad, Like I don't know that now we're sure a great big fat woman. That's sort of That's the closest I can get to Buffalo Bill.

I used to be able to do it. I used to be able to do it because there was a guy went to college with who sounded just like Chris in real life, and I used to imitate him and then it occurred to.

Me so weird.

Yeah, the key was so weird. That was like the thing he used to always say, and then I can't do the rest of it.

Also, like in every episode, at least one character just goes, what the hell? Yeah?

I know that's gotta be I asked McFarlan, ever comments on that, because that is like a thing that keeps coming up in like things you didn't know about family guy posts. Yeah, it's in like every episode somebody does the derivation of what the hell? Yeah, it's amazing.

During one episode.

I forgot about this until researching this episode, Seth Green as Chris does, there's a whole bit.

Where just call it the tucking bit.

Yeah, Chris recreates the Buffalo Bill Goodbye Horses, dress up from Silence of the Lambs.

It's a great bit. It's a great bit, good one to do at parties. Speaking of voice actors, I didn't know this.

The show initially cast Lacey Shabert, your beloved Gretchen Winters for Mean Girls as the voice.

Of miss a pretty pretty brunette.

You love lazy Shber? I didn't.

I didn't love Lacey Shepard such a crush on her. I went to go see that and she lost in Space movie where Matt LeBlanc is the good guy and Gary Oldman becomes a bug monster. Was she Penny, Yeah, if that's the character she was the girl? Yeah?

Oh, I had a big crush on Penny as a kid, because Penny was in the in the Silent Music too, Angela cart right man speaking of like bad stuff that we watched because we loved the women in it. I watched Mikey Madison on SNL this weekend. Oh yeah, first time I've watched the Asonal episode many many many years.

Oh, the one where Morgan Wallen like walked off because all those big city liberals were making him feel bad about being a drunk racist.

Yeah, I mean I think he took one for the team and saw that otherwise the headline was going to be that it was just a bad episode and didn't want my sweet Mikey Addison too.

Yeah. Yah, yeah, I'm sure he did that out of the largest of his enlarge heart. Oh guy is such a piece of shit.

Is see the guy who threw the chairs off the off like the deck bar in Nashville and like almost killed someone.

Yeah, and I'm pretty and he's like he was like definitely on camera saying the saying the hard end. I think he's just like he's like basically just like a Southern like frat boy. Yeah, he's from Sneadville, Tennessee. What do you think about that? Sneadville is not a character from the lar Ax. Yeah, he got he got into he he left Kid Rock's bar after breaking glasses in it and started like just screaming at people on the street. He was unmasked. He was like going around and unmasked

When you say his place, you mean his home or his.

Yea, his home. He and his label donated five hundred thousand dollars to organizations including the National Museum of African Music, Rock A Dance Racism, and the BNAC. So, I guess we don't talk about that anymore. That guy sucks. Come to my bar, buddy, I won't even wait for you to get drunk. Drop your ass just for beauty.

Piece of call your bar God's country.

I should should not, well, every bar is God's country to the faithful among us alcoholics.

Was I talking about Jordan Lazy Shaber Lacy Shabert, Yes, yes, so I had no idea. She was the voice of Meg for the entire first season, not just the pilot, the entire first season. Actually no, she wasn't the voice on the pilot. Seth MacFarlane's sister because he had no money, got his sister to be the voice of Meg, and then the rest of the first season was Lazy Saber and then she ended up leaving after the first season, but there was no drama involved.

I wanted there to be so much drama involved. Yeah, it was literally just like she was like I was a child and already on one TV show.

So she was on Party of five. I forgot about that.

Yeah, just she's like I needed to go to school. Uh.

Meilacunas had no such concerns.

Yeah, right, fifteen dude, was she like trafficked tier? I don't know how she actually wound up on.

Is Aston Kutcher really into like anti human trafficking stuff?

Well yeah, I mean then there's also the fact that he like definitely started courting her when she was like fifteen.

My favorite story about me Lacunas and I have one was that she got was that she got her job on that seventy show and the producers were like, are you aeen? And she said, I'll be eighteen on my birthday and she was fifteen, and she was like, yeah, I will be eighteen on my birthday, not my next birthday.

But clever girl. That somehow worked.

Somebody must have checked. I don't know. It's a great story.

I love that print legend.

Yes, yes, but yeah, she was already working on that seventy show when Fox asked her to audition to play the voice of Meg. I'm family guy. She was fifteen years old, working on getting her driver's permit and I never heard this, but still battling her native Russian accent for certain pronunciations. That's crazy to me.

Yeah. I don't know how they got around it as much on that seventies show, but like there's a whole bit where they were talking about her trying to get the word electricity right because she kept saying electricity.

It is crazy to me. I know, like very well, like maybe half a dozen people who moved here in their like mid to eighteens from other countries and barely spoke English, and now they speak flawlessly without an accent.

I don't underst standard.

And I've was trained in eight years of French, as I think, were you, And it's like nope.

Yeah, yeah, but that was our fault, from picking the lamest romance language. What are you gonna do with that? What are you gonna take your French language? Go order at a restaurant? French hate the French, hate you for even trying. Yeah, like, what's the point As you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. What we're talking about again?

Uh?

Oh more voices?

Oh yeah. So, rather than have McFarlane or Borstein imitate voices for the volley of cutaway jokes that the show is known for, production deliberately made it a bit to track down actors from not just you know, regular anonymous voiceover guys like the guy who played Roadblock on G I. Joe, but also like George Went from Cheers. Director Dan Povenmeier told I g N that when they first reached out, George Went was like, why didn't you guys just pull

I think that's the one, right, I know, it's exactly the one.

Yeah, get you a little pig ass back here, some bitch.

You know, the popsicles guy.

Jess is gonna go. Oh, Jess is gonna go out, makes his peeps and poops. God. Well he does that, and then he does Bruce the performance artist, who is like, oh, absolutely, I can do Spider Man. I can pretend, like, you know, go on a costume and shoot them with my web fluid and pretends the kids are all just you know, the little buds cut up in my web.

Isn't Vincent Price doing the like steamed salmon in the dishwasher pit. It sounds like Vincent Price.

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. And then he also does until twenty twenty one, for reasons that should now be obvious. He also voiced Cleveland. The show filled out the rest of its voice talent with regular celebrities and comics like Patrick Warburton is Peter's neighbor Joe, Jennifer Tilly is Joe's wife Bonnie, and Norm McDonald as Death replacing Adam Carolla, who sucks and then death replaced nor McDonald.

I know, I'm sorry. He is one of my favorite people. I am so sorry. I'm sorry, but it was right there, and you know what, he would have done it.

That's true, that's true, he would have. I just saw this bit of him recently on talking to John Stewart about the Crocodile Hunter, and John Stewart is like, please don't make me laugh at this right now, man.

Please, because it was like the week it happened, right.

Yeah, He's like, how much it would have been sucked to that it was a he was the Crocodile Hunter and a sting ray got him, like at the Alligator the Crocodile meeting the next week, and Carl's like, that one should have been us. I almost had him shut up, Joe, No, you didn't, is he? Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like a genius.

Well yes, I feel like I've never encountered a celebrity who, instantaneously after their death was appreciated on such a vastly higher level than he was when he was alive. Yeah, nobody realized what a genius he was until like all the compilation videos after he died.

Yeah, I think comedy fans did. I mean, he was like big in the community and my absolute favorite. I think it's him Corolla as death instead of Norm MacDonald. But don't make me chase you. I got flow, Joe. You don't think I can have flow Joe. You don't think I can run you down and then immediately trips and falls. But a number of other industry veterans with some surprising resumes also helped to give voice to co Hog.

But he said edible clam, which is a really great name for a band o ediple clam and.

Like a disorder. Yeah yeah. John G. Brannon, the creative the Jerky Boys as mort Goldman and Horace the Bartender, I think brought on solely because Seth Macfarlande liked Jerky Boys. Carlos alas Raki, who I must remind everyone, is the voice of Rocco from Rocco's Modern Life, The Talk about Chihuahua and spy Row the Dragon. In addition to his work on Reno Naima Wan. I think his first appearance is as mister Weed, Peter's boss at the Factor also

That would make sense. It kind of looks like twisted fifties.

Yeah. Fun fact that I also just learned. Couldn't think anywhere else to put this the recurring Portuguese fishermen characters. There is actually a large Portuguese American fishing community located in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

You found this, but I'm stealing this because I love it so much.

Please for IMDb.

A number of actors have made their last appearances on Family Guy. These include Waylon Jennings in two thousand and one, All he's not really an actor, Carol Channing in two thousand and six. She didn't die until like ten years later.

Too.

Well, she was like super old, was like one hundred. Yeah, Roy Scheider from Jaws and all that Jazz and my favorite Bob Fossei movies. And William Woodson in two thousand and nine. Robert Lojia, who I totally.

Forgot, was dead in twenty thirteen. This is a nasty way for me to find out.

Lauren Baccall and Dennis Farina in twenty fourteen, and Frank Sinatra Junior in twenty sixteen. I can't believe he was on on Carrie Fisher in twenty seven Yeah, we.

Didn't really talk about the Star Wars episodes, but obviously that's its own unique niche in the Family Guy universe, which is funny. The coolest thing about them is that they were completely above board, Like they got permission from Lucasfilm to do them, but then Seth MacFarlane and like some of those showrunners, went up to Skywalker Ranch to screen them for George Lucas and apparently he found them hilarious, So I think.

Yeah, he was a huge fan and he basically gave him carte blanche to do whatever they wanted indefinitely.

Hell yeah, Hell yeah.

Disney owns Star Wars now and Disney owns twentieth Century Fox, So I guess, yeah.

Yeah, I guess that parody will never see the light of day, is what we guess.

Oh, here we go, we cannot speaking of beloved properties, Yeah.

Who could forget Batman himself Adam West playing Adam West, the mayor of co Hog. McFarlane met West when he also played himself on an episode of Johnny Bravo that McFarlane written, I think he was a mayor, Yes he was also Yeah, McFarland told the club, I think he likes playing into what he's known for, even on a casual basis. He's a really fun guy to work with and genuinely gets comedy. It's not the type of situation where you just bring someone in to make fun of themselves.

That was one of my favorite bits of all those early seasons of Family Guy. I mean the bathroom bit where he's like slinking through the hallway and he sees the three bathrooms men women, Adam West.

He starts to go in the Anam West. No, No, we'll be expats five that back. It's so good. Yeah. And then it's funny too because they initially had named the high school in the show James Woods High, and then James Woods out of himself as like a Trump freak, and they renamed it Adam West High.

So I didn't realize that, and James Woods was like on.

The show, right, Yeah, he was in before that too. Yeah, And I think they just cut ties with him. I think like Seth, you know, Seth MacFarland is a pretty like you know, Northeast middle light blue Democrat, so a lot of his like Brian, Like Brian driving around in a preas with like a Hillary Clinton bumper sticker on. It was like a bit of a self own I think.

Yes, yes, writer and co executive producer Steve Callahan told IGN in twenty twelve, for the first couple months of production on Family Guy, we didn't have offices and we were crammed into one room that was sort of being borrowed from King of the Hill, who.

Hated them, who hated them.

It was like we were caged animals in there because we would spend ten twelve hours a day in this one room and with a cast in hand. Twenty four year old Seth MacFarland became television's youngest executive producer probably still certainly, Yeah, I don't think young people are getting in a network TV now. And the first episode of Family Guy aired on January thirty, first, ninety nine, after.

The Super Bowl. Am I remembering that right? Yes? I I remember watching that. Yeah, Yeah, that's why it had such a crazy share out of the gate. It did really well for a little while.

Twenty two million or something, which is hysterical. I think got to like number thirty three on Nielsen's that week, which and for twenty two million these days is like the sum total of people watching network. Yes, these early Family Guy episodes went with dramatic titles like Death Has a Shadow and Mind Over Murder, and these were tributes to McFarland's love of radio thrillers from the nineteen thirties

I appreciate the candor.

Yeah, I think. I also read that he wanted every episode to touch on death in some way.

Interesting I did, But good for him. Everything is touched by death, and you know it's coming for all of us. And as soon as you get right with that, soon you can move on with your actualization whatever that might be. That was just a PSA that has nothing to do with the show.

Well, higel, moving on from death, let's talk about one of your other great loves.

One thing that said Family Guy apart was the depth of its music. Yes, each episode uses a fifty to ninety piece orchestra. That's insane.

Start.

There were two guys behind that. One of them is Walter Murphy. And unless you already know this, not in a thousand years would you be able to name the one hit wonder He wrote.

I actually knew this, but I will yeah, okay, flex God, sit down, be humble.

Drop the Kendrick sample in there. He wrote a fifth of Beethoven, which is that really annoying thing that comes on AM radio on long drives that is like you're like, why are there like hats and like octave bass under this Beethoven thing? Walter and Murphy Baby That's Why became a huge hit as a single in nineteen seventy six, and was subsequently featured on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack the following year, which itself was a giant hit. Murphy

They were good.

I did not listen to them. It's like musical theater, Like I like disco and I like classical music. When you push the two of them together, they both become terrible. Murphy was approached by McFarlane, who had the concept for the Family Guy opening sequins and its lyrics. He said, we're going to start with this all in the family reference, and then I wanted to cut away to a big, like show tune style Broadway number, and I have the lyrics,

He does a great version of You Make Me Feel So Young The Sanatcha song, Mmm like as Stewie. It's really good.

He did say it was easier to sing in character because it like it makes you less self conscious.

That was how I had to learn to sing. I had to when I wanted to do the theatrical productions in high school and I specifically said I don't want to sing, but I would like to be in them, and they said, well, too bad. You have to. If you want audition, you have to sing as part of the audition. And I desperately wanted to be involved because all the girls I liked were involved, and that was of course knows what you did, yeah, And so I

And I sort of inherited it.

And I was so nervous that I listened to a bunch of probably like was seth MacFarland did a bunch of like fifties and sixties krooners, like Bobby Darren and Harry Nielsen album where we did a bunch of like the Great American songbook stuff, And so I just listened to all that, and then I just imitated them at the audition, and I did so well that I kept getting singing parts for the rest of my high school experience and would spend the pre show time in the

This is a pretty Lore Jordan Lore heavy episode. Already, I'm liking this. We'll see if we can get you down to like a traumatic memory from grade school by the time, we're done. Okay. The biggest problem with recording the initial theme song was that Fox hadn't drafted a budget yet for the show's music, so they did it with one trumpet player playing all the trumpet parts, the trombone player and the sax player, and then Murphy played

One thing that immediately dogged Family Guy was the Simpsons comparisons on their faces. Both shows are about working class, nuclear families with the same structure, though in Family Guy the dog talks. Are there any characters that speak in Simpsons that shouldn't? I think I can think of.

No, I don't think so, but what I was going to say is important to note. Also, these shows ripped off the Honeymooners, right well every sitcom, yes exactly, but like yeah, but like a borish like you know, a lot of sitcoms didn't rip off Witched, where the husband was like well adjusted and handsome. They all went for the slovenly guy. That's true from the er slob himself. Jackie Gleason, Baby.

Is he a good guy? I could imagine we were a new friend of the pod who put us straight about how Jack Benny, who I thought was a Capitol B couple g bad guy along the same lines as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. He let us know that Jack Benny was one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, And so I retract my statement. I bet you he would know about Jackie Gleason. I would imagine he would be a tough guy who uh Gleason.

Yeah, yeah, it's not great. He had an affair with us secretary.

I mean that's far for the chorus.

He had multiple affairs.

They were still in the acceptable range for mid century celebrity scumbaggery.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if he ever like beat up a guy or was racist, but you know he was he Philandered.

I had a story that Tony Orlando told me he was on one of the shows that I work on.

Of Tony Orlando and Dawn.

Yes, this is a story of SETH mcfarli would love. When Tony Orlando got his network TV show in the seventies, the first guest that they were able to get was Jackie Gleeson, which is a huge get because he was, you know, a huge star and this was this new singer, had like two hits and now he's the sort of untried TV guy. To get like one of the biggest figures in TV history to come on, it was phenomenal. I guess jack Quite was quite exactly. It was credit coup.

So he was racist, that was the gist of it.

And Tony told him off and basically like yelled at him and told him get off a set.

And then good for Tony Orlando.

Jackie was like chilling out in his dressing room trying to calm down. Then he sent word out that he wanted to speak to Tony, and Tony's going in there, thinking, oh my god, this guy's gonna shank me. And he goes in and Jackie apologized that was wrong, and then they became friendly. And then from that point onward, after every episode of the Tony Orlando Show, Jackie would call him and give him affectionate notes and they became friends.

That's cute. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, he learned not to be racist in front of a person of color. Is Tony Orlando a person of color? Can I say that?

I think he's He's a Greek father and a Puerto Rican mother.

Yeah, that counts. We'll run him into the constitution. Oh well, hell are we?

I have no idea where we are now to start a new section.

Oh we haven't even gotten there yet. Oh oh okay, Simpson's a family guy.

That was it, okay. McFarlane has always been opened about his love for the Simpson telling ign I love the Simpsons. I could have transitioned that better. Sorry, And it sort of laid the groundwork, sort of paved the way for subsequent animated shows, they sort of established the new method of doing primetime animation, but unfortunately this feeling wasn't mutual.

As McFarland explained to The.

Av Club in two thousand and five, apparently the Simpsons team hate our guts.

I'm not sure why I've.

Said this before, but that show at its best is up there with the best episodes all in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke. I was reading a quote from one of the writers from a lecture that he gave, and he said, quote, the Simpsons staff hates Family Guy for a sath. That's got a sting.

Although they he and Matt Groening did like a panel interview many years later where they were like talking about it. But it's kind of funny because I don't even think Matt Graining was involved in the writing at this point.

No, yeah, no. One of the earliest examples of this beef that you can find is from Simpsons writer and show owner Al Jean in a two thousand and three interview. I wasn't a big fan of Family Guys, he said, to be honest, I thought it was a little too derivative of The Simpsons, to the point where I would see jokes we did on The Simpsons, or a critic

Because The Simpsons has never been canceled.

It never will be. Yeah, it will be limping through until the asteroid comes. I remember being a writer at the Simpsons when the Family Guy was canceled, and then I thought, good riddance. He told the La Times in twenty twenty four, there's only so much nipping at your heels you can really indulge. Writer Mike Rice wrote in the twenty eighteen book Springfield Confidential that quote. When Family Guy debuted ten years into the Simpsons run, our younger

No, But I mean, I think that a lot of people are missing the the very like the important cultural context that like, when The Simpsons first came out, it was a moral outrage. I mean the fact that Bart said, like what the hell, and like eat my shorts, told his dad to eat my shorts. Like people were fully like the Reagan nights that were, you know, still breathing,

You know, was it Barbara Bush or Nancy Reagan who called out Marge Simpson in a speech and then somebody from the Simpsons Show wrote a letter as Marge that was like very sweet, like.

You know, I I don't know anything about that. Oh oh wait a minute, I need to pull this out. I know Barbara Bush. I think Barbara Bush had talked a lot about the bar Was Barbara Bush? Yeah, she talked a lot about the Simpsons. Yeah.

It was a note to Barbara Bush obstensively from Marge Simpson. Dear first lady, I recently read your criticism of my family.

I was deeply hurt. Heaven. Those were far from.

Perfect, and, if truth be known, maybe just a wee bit short of normal. But as doctor SEUs says, a person is a person. I try to teach my children Bart, Lisa and even little Maggie always to give somebody the benefit of the doubt and not talk badly about them, even if they're rich. It's hard to get them to understand this advice when the very first lady in the country falls us not only dumb, but quote the dumbest

Me at Current Events group at the church.

I always believed in my heart that we had a great deal in common, each of us living our lives to serve an exceptional man. I hope there is some way out of this controversy. I thought perhaps it would be a good start to just speak my mind with great respect.

Marge Simpson that manages like a shocking number of like very subtle jabs. Yes, Starbush, I mean again.

All those Simpsons writers are all Harvard educated, Like, yeah, yeah, Barbara Bush wrote back, Dear Marge, how kind of you to write, I'm glad you spoke your mind thought dot dot.

I foolishly didn't know you had one.

I'm looking at a picture of you depicted on a plastic cup with your blue hair filled with pink birds peeking out all over. Evidently you and your charming family Lisa, Homer, Bart and Maggie are camping out. It is a nice family scene. Clearly you're setting a good example for the rest of the country. Please forgive a loose tongue warmly, Barbara Bush.

I mean, that's certainly one of the stupid things to ever come out of the White House.

But oh so, ps Homer looks like a handsome fella. Oh god, well, and minus five for making us think of Barbara Bush's tongue.

Also, yeah, man, people were stupid back then. Just this was the bread and circuses that kept us from focusing on you know, all the all the like, the encroachment of neoliberal economy that we were about to wreck our country. And this is where you fade me out. As you mentioned earlier. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, did.

A panel interview alongside Seth MacFarland in a twenty fourteen issue of Entertainment Weekly. In this interview, Granny Grimmembered's initial reaction to Family Guy. He said, my first take was, oh my god, he got competition and they're out flanking us. This show is wilder and harsher and nastier. We used to get in trouble. We used to be the cause of the downfall.

Of the United States. And then speaking to.

MacFarlane, he said, you guys completely have your own style. At the very beginning, you were accused of copying us, and we were accused of copying you. So I stopped watching your show just because I didn't want it to be in my head. But they took this rivalry on air at certain points. It's got vicious.

Yeah Yeah. The first on air shot across the Bow appeared in two thousand and two Treehouse of Horror episode on The Simpsons, the camera pans across the field of clones Homer has created with a machine, and hidden among them is Peter Griffin. Then, in the two thousand and five episode The Italian Bob, there was a gag where the Italian police leafed through a handy book of American crimes, on which the third page read Plagiardismo with a drawing

Hebdo my correct with that? Jordan's correct? Yes, that's correct in twenty fifteen, I believe.

Yeah, well we'll wear an it.

This isn't what I signed up for. I like Family Guy. Why do we have to get off the air forever? You should like show your sense of humor is just like Family Guy. Don't you ever ever compare me to Family Guy? You hear me, come out, compare me to Family Guy again, and so help me. I will kill you where you stand. You just want Family Guy off the air? Do you have any idea what it's sech everywhere I go? Hey, Common, you bess that Family Guy? Hey you said to human reminds me of Family Guy. Common.

Joke after an Eventually, in the courts of this episode, it gets revealed that the Family Guy's staff writers are manatees. Using a random sentence generator controlled by idea bles that are lowered into their tank to create the show's signature cutaway gags.

I love this episode so much.

I mean, it's funny. Yeah, I don't know, man, I just never caught into South Park. I kind of always just felt it was, uh, it just felt like bullying.

That's interesting.

I don't feel that that show ever. Like their attitudes that became a parent and everything were just like, you know, like we're the smartest guys in the room. We can say this, and we can say that and whatever. And I just never I don't know. I'd be hard pressed to articulate it further than that.

They're the Becker and Fagin of a turn of the century comedy misanthropes.

Yeah, except I'd like to see them make you can't buy a thrill. Putts is playing around with instruction paper, Yeah, doing child's voices into their sixties. That show's still on, right.

Oh yeah, good for them. I don't think they're even all that old as fifty five.

Okay, time is a cruel mistress. South Park show runner Trey Parker told The New York Times in two thousand and five, we kept running into people that are just like, oh, you guys do South Park. I love that show and Family Guy that's the best. You must love Family Guy, and we were like, no, we really hate Family Guy. Still, in the same interview, Matt Stone admitted they completely ignore

That's great.

The worst of Family Guys responses to this was admittedly a bit much. Yeah. In the September two thousand and seven episode moving out Parentheses Brian's song, the show threw up a fake bumper ad and the lower third of the screen, which is one of those like you know they'll scroll of the lower third of the screen will have like a network animation promoting another show, and this was promoting The Simpsons featuring March As the regular episode.

I think I read that that didn't actually make it to air, It just became I'd read that. Yeah, there were two versions of every show made, one that was broadcast and one that was for streaming in DVDs.

Yes, but I mean, at this point, they didn't know that there was going to be a dB deally, so they I understand why he was angry that it had just been cut completely. And yeah, I mean it's a bit much, but it is proportional to family guys, you know. Deal. You know, of course they were going to take it somewhere that was horrifyingly dark. Yes, and you know, to me again, it's not that it's like that it was a rape joke. It was the fact that it was a rape joke that culminated in the gun murder of

But on the flip side, you've got some great facts about Quagmire.

For me, I did did you know that Quagmires based on Bob Hope that I didn't know.

I knew he was supposed to be like an anachronistic fifties guy, but I didn't know he was specifically Bob Hope.

See. I think he was a little bit supposed to be more of like a seventies swinger, like an eg Bob Hope character, you know. But I think that large jaw is probably the most identifiable part of that.

An episode where Peter and his friends get a look at Quiguire's driver's license. He apparently was born in nineteen forty eight, which means that he's like pushing eighty. That's weird, and the secret to his youthful appearance carrots. He said, some of the ways you can expect and some of the ways that you could also expect because it's Family Guy.

Eventually, the Simpsons Family Guy crossed over to a full on crossover special in twenty fourteen.

I had no memory of this. I thought it would have been a bigger news story.

Oh, I definitely had stopped watching any of this stuff by then. What was I doing in twenty fourteen, I was playing a lot of shows. I don't think I was watching any I mean this is I didn't have a TV. I stopped having a TV when I moved to New York, you know. And I wasn't spending a lot of time watching streaming unless I passed out in

It's when Lois looks back on all the food they've wasted, and they cut to Peter trying to feed Tom Selick peas from a spoon through the TV screen and.

When it changes characters.

None for you, Higgins, you had yours?

Hey, Hey, none for you Higgins trying to steal time Shalick food.

No, No, you've had yours. We don't have time to touch on literally every time someone said Family Guy went too far. This joke's about Terry Schivo, Sarah Palin's sung trig, transphobe, homophobia, domestic violence, the Boston Marathon bombing.

What have you, and the rest and the but I well.

Heigel want to highlight how furious the right wing TV morality group, the Parents Television Council war at Family Guy. In May two thousand, in an email, the Parents Television Council launched a letter writing campaign to the Fox network to persuade the network to cancel Family Guy. This is

Yeah.

For the show's one hundredth episode special seth MacFarland interviewed people who hated Family Guy, hiding the fact that they were speaking to the show's creator. I kind of remember this.

Winter took over as president in two thousand and seven, and after a twenty fifteen episode of Family Guy featuring one of the stupidest jokes ever to grace the show, and this is the joke, Peter had surgery because he wanted to have quote two wieners. He lifts his hospital gown after the operation, swivels his hips with his back to the and everything covered by the backside of the gown. Viewers here and Peter remarks, uh, oh, that was the original.

I don't get it.

He's original wiener Ye. Another one added. The joke is that instead of the new one, the original fell off. Oh that's oh.

Oh. I thought it was the sound of them bumping into one another and I didn't get it.

No, sorry, Yeah, there's a sound of something thunking on the floor. I could have sold that. Let me just take that whole thing over again. It's kind of funny that you're explaining this joke to me. Okay, I'm going to keep that. So after that, McFarlane wrote a letter to Winter inviting him or two writers of Winter's choosing to quote write an episode of Family Guy the way you think Family Guys should be written.

That's an incredible challenge, Yeah, it is. Winsor ultimately declined the offer, but wrote back to McFarlane explaining that the PTC's goal was to raise awareness about how some subject matter may be harmful the children, and pointed to at least fifty eight jokes about sexual violence on Family Guy in three years don't last, asking McFarland, what is the cumulative impact on children who watched those programs?

Probably less than being sexually abused. Whatever, Sorry, McFarland told the La Times.

I was properly humbled, and I figured that I ought to give him a call. The pair met and sat and talked about media.

It's like you and me.

Yeah, McFarlane told Winter that quote, my parents let me watch Animal House, Caddyshack, Stripes, these R rated comedies when I was seven. I had a very strong family unit, and so there wasn't much damage that was done from those films. But when your kids being raised by TV, it could be a different story and The two eventually hit it off so well that in twenty nineteen, when The La Times cover the story, the pair were.

On a texting basis with each other.

McFarlane told the paper for this interview, I think it's a healthy, necessary thing for the PTC to exist in the same world as what we're doing. And also apparently the PTC loved McFarland's Star Trek parody The Orville, and instead of urging advertisers to boycott the show, as they had done with Family Guy, they encouraged advertisers to buy

It took that long, Yeah, so some progress. It's hey, it's a marathon, not a sprint, right, What is progress anyway? I've heard all these stories about it, but I don't

They did the same thing the rest of the development like around the same time. Well, it's not that hard, no.

No, yeah. McFarlane though, I think is quite sweet about it. He said it wasn't He didn't blame it on Fox. He said it was an issue of overconfidence. They felt that because the show was doing so well on Sunday nights after the Simpsons, that it could do well anywhere. Obviously that wasn't the case. But really, to their cred despite all the scheduling problems, the fact that they did

Family Guy ultimately earned its historic comeback thanks to Cartoon Network, who picked up the rights to the show Dirt Cheap and began airing reruns of it during their late night Adult Swim programming block.

Dude, if I had a time machine, man, I would just go back to watching Adult Swim just being high Maneah twelve ounce mouse.

Yeah, it's never a big aquatine. That was never really my thing.

Oh I liked aquatine? Yeah I did. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm not. I don't let him tell me what to do.

What else is on at that time?

Did you pick that up?

No?

This is one of my favorite random bits from Arrested Development, where Jeffrey Tamber has been locked in the attic and Jason Babman finds him having a tea party with like the dolls they've been left up in it, and he says something. He's like, he's like rambling on an advice and he's like, you know, Michael, you just you're too enthrall to these women, Like with these broads here, you know, I whine them and I dine them, but I don't let them tell them what to do. Pause. I don't

I do.

Rest of it.

I thought we've talked about this and you said you weren't into rest of the development because you thought it was a little too like nudge nudge, wink wink with the audience.

I do think that as a criticism, but I also think it's one of the Uh. I think it's up there with thirty Rock and like prime era cheers as like laughs per capita. Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. You don't agree though, because you still haven't watched thirty Rock. Oh yeah, because you have, you're still salty about it from oh my gosh, that's becoming a theme this episode. From your time at NYU in the screenwriting program, Well it was this.

They made us like dissect scripts from it. And it's just because they're funny as well. Sure, but it's just if there's a way to make something not funny, it's to just forensically examine it.

Suddenly it became homeworks as we do. Okay, that's that's fair. Continue. I don't know point I was making.

These family got reruns on Adult Swim, a basic cable network, end up beating both David Letterman and Jay Leno's late night shows on CBS and NBC. Among the coveted eighteen to thirty four demo. Not surprised about Jay Leno. I'm surprised about Letterman.

Yeah. Letterman was always the guy that they could count on for the younger demographic. Yeah.

The Family Got reruns also provided a staggering two hundred and thirty nine percent boost the Cartoon Network's ratings. That's insane.

Yeah, what must have been the reaction when those figures came in other than like are these right? Yeah? I mean two hundred and thirty nine percent They earned their bonuses that year.

I'm trying to think about, like what I would have watched on Cartoon Network.

I mean maybe it was like Flip Bravo. It would have been Johnny Bravo, and they had a slate, they had a slate before that, but Adult Swim was just totally,

But it was weird. It was like the network aged up with us, Like it started when we were kids and aired relatively kid friendly shows in my memory at least, and then as we hit like late middle school, early high school, it started skewing a little older. It was funny.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't delved super into the history of adult Swim, but I think it really was just kind of a like pie in the Sky thing where they were like, I don't know, most of our audience doesn't stay awake this late. Does anyone here want to try and do something with this? And that's what happened.

It's probably like what's Snick was for Nickelodeon when they had kind of the more older skewing are you Afraid of the Dark type stuff?

Oh yeah, but Snick didn't have Aquitine Hunger Force where Danzig shows up, or like twelve ounce Mouse where it's like a paper mache mouse who's also like a violent mercenary for hire. I mean, stuff was really out there. It was mecapse on the old Swim it was, but that was a little later. Yeah, okay, yeah is also great?

Yes? Is that?

Then't say Tom the Satanic Priest is droning on and on and on and on and totally monotone, and then Nail sating. I just think there's there's a hilarious moment. You have to cut all this because this is not making it tear. I don't I don't want to be part of something. It's just two guys talking about bits from shows. But I'm gonna cut it right there.

Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment.

Wow.

So simultaneously with this phenomenal performance on Cartoon Networks Adult Swim Fox released Family Guy on DVD with its first box set.

I imagine the first season.

Coming in only behind The Simpsons and Chappelle's Show in sales for all time.

That's wacky.

That record still I mean, of course the record still holds because we're streaming it. Record is never gonna be broken.

I'm not sure if it did, it might have something else might have squeaked in, but they were certainly on the tail end of the era to amass such a record. Yeah, and to be like, man, I mean like do you remember, how do you actually remember how huge Chappelle show was? Yeah, to come in second to that, like yeah, wild for a show that you know, Fox canceled Idiots.

It is funny to me how the things that were huge at a given time in history. I was talking about this with my dad not too long ago, that are still remembered as huge, you know, Beatles, pet sound like, the things that are all those classics, and then the things that were huge at the time but then just didn't make it through and we're just kind of memory hold. I feel like Chappelle's show, people don't well. I mean I know that there's a lot of yeah, he did.

A lot about himself. Yeah, but I know, I think it's just that everything once it's really that you can trace that to the Internet, I think, because it's it's you know, things got so much more fragmented and people just stopped depending on like the big studios to like dictate what movies were going to be big or like what shows to watch, and it just I think like that was like early dial up, you know, Internet message boards and fan clubs were like the end of the

I mean, it's got Steven Skall. That's all I need to know.

Yeah, Fried Green Tomatoes. Oh, that's something called Far and Away.

Nope.

Fifty eight mil domestic?

What are the top five? I mean I've seen in the top five?

Oh, Batman Returns with a Weapon, three Sister Act Home Alone, two and Wayne's World. Yeah, I mean ninety two? The second ninety two. The Fugitive made one hundred and seventy six million dollars. Does anyone remember The Fugitive other than John mulaney making a joke about how convoluted the plot of this Fugitive actually is. Oh, I thought, Oh, here's a better one. Number three The Firm, Oh was talking

I think it was a succession where the brother says something that was like, I'm going to make you an indecent proposal, and she's like, you've definitely ever seen that movie?

Have you? Okay, sorry, let's get this back on track.

Let's get it back on track with Steve Feldstein. Steve Feldstein will get a SAT name with Steve. He was the then senior VP of Fox's Home Entertainment. He told The New York Times, once we made DVDs available Family Guy, the response was incredible. Were we surprised about the response. I'd be lying if I said no. The DVD sales, he added, led the network to take a second look at the show. Yeah, No, were there any like actual stats for numbers of like how much they sold in that period?

Oh, sales of the DVD set reached two point two million copies.

That's nuts, That is nuts. And they were like, what forty bucks apiece?

Probably around maybe something like that. Yeah. Wow, So like, okay, almost one hundred million in DVD sales. That'll make you take a second look at to show you canceled.

Yeah. McFarland told The La Times that he took Family Guy's entire early struggle in stride, mostly out of lack of experience, He said, I had nothing to compare it to because it was the first show I'd ever pitched and it got picked up. I thought, oh, I guess this is normal, which it certainly is not. When it got canceled, I was like, Okay, well I guess this.

Is normal too.

But it wasn't like they were kicking to the curb. It was we still want to be in business with you. My deal with twentieth Television Animation never expired over those two years. It was about to expire, and then they picked the show up again. McFarlane went into further detail about the moment that he learned the show as resurrected in an interview with IGN. He said, they literally called

I do love that quote.

Yeah, I remember when it was announced. I remember that was like a big deal.

I don't think I remember when it happened. I just remember like reappearing. So I don't know. I didn't have I wasn't part of the letter writing campaigns. I didn't care about I didn't care about anything that much.

So I wasn't part of that either. But I remember what it was announced. I was like, oh my god, this is great.

It was great.

It was great, and what a time. It was a time of innocence, a time of confidences.

Long ago.

It must be are you just ripping? No, it's it's bookends. It's my favorite Simon A. Garfunkle song.

Oh you so ach got me got his ass? Whose gas? We got our Garfuncle dude. Yeah.

Fox ended up ordering thirty five new episodes of Family Guy in May two thousand and four, making the show the first to have been brought back by DVD.

Sales and likely the last Yeah Oh Yeah.

DVD sales were not the only measure, though, there was a robust fan campaign to bring the show back that even picked up notice overseas. The Guardian, which is based in the UK, remarked on the situation in two.

Thousand and five.

Protests involved over one hundred thousand signing a petition promising to boycott all Fox TV and every product They advertised nearly bankrupting a business by sending diapers and some less than subtle letters.

It was they nearly bankrupted the diaper business, to be fair, because they were like sending so many to headquarters to Fox at one point, why were they sending diapers because of Stewie? Oh you fool?

Oh okay, that's good, that's medium funny. McFarlane told the paper. It was the largest fan campaign anyone had ever seen. Funnily enough. Neil Goldman, who went on to executive produced Community, another show brought back by extensive fan action, was working on Family Guy during the campaign and recalled Fox gradually becoming annoyed by the cases.

Of diapers mailed to the studio.

And added that even the online diaper company was asking people to stop.

And that's what the problem was was because there were not that many places doing online delivery at in this era, right, so they were like they found like one place that they could game so that it wouldn't come back to them and like use anonymous stuff. And the company was like, please, these aren't being accepted and we can't keep up with demand, Like stop doing this.

That's amazing. I've never heard that.

The show naturally commented on the cancelation in North by North Cohog the first episode of its revival. I remember

I do remember that.

Family Guy, however, was not invincible upon its triumphant return. In a number of cases, celebrities whose works have been the topic of the show's many cutaway gags have sued, like Carol Burnett. I didn't know about this. I guess.

There's an episode with a scene where Peter and his friends visit an adult book store and Peter has concerns that the store will be dirty, but then Quagmire says it's pretty clean. Carol Burnett works part time as a janitor, and the camera pans to a cartoon version of Carol Burnett in one of her best known roles, mopping the floor as her character the Charwoman. Actually it's funny.

Yeah, I think it was just just named the charge Woman Charwoman.

Since Family Guy did not get Carol Burnett's permission, she sued twentieth Century Fox for two million dollars on copyright infringement claims.

The lawsuit also.

Alleged that the TV show used an altered version of the Carol Burnett Show theme.

Song, which it probably did to set off the gag. Yeah, but that's not all that is not all Jordan Police Academy actor Art Mitrano sure also sued over a scene in which Jesus, like the Son of God, mimics Mitronto's bit of performing magic while humming Fine and Dandy from the nineteen thirty musical of the same name. Burnett's was rejected right when the judge.

Yeah, this case was tossed out.

Yeah. Yeah. Burnett's case was talked out while Mitranto's was settled out of court. I don't know anything about that guy's bit, but it is a case when the gag got too specific.

Oh yeah, he's like doing some lame magic thing with like his fingers and now I remember it.

Okay, okay, okay, okay. But the show had moments that Fox didn't back in court or anywhere else too. When You Wish Upon a Weinstein, that was an episode that succeeded in getting under Fox's skin. In the episode, Peter, desponding over his money problems, praised for a Jewish person to come and help him. He becomes friends with the wildly caricatured Jewish man Max Weinstein or Max Goldman? Did Max Goldman or Max Weinstein? I thought it changes? I guess it's Weinstein.

The name of the show is when You Wish upon a Wine Stea.

I remember that he becomes friends with the wildly chricatured Jewish Max Weinstein and then attempts to convert Chris to Judaism when he sees how successful Max is. Fox executives initially stopped it from airing in two thousand, but it was broadcast on Cartoon Network in two thousand and three, and then after the network could see it wasn't that big of a deal, it aired on Fox in two

However, there is one Family Guy episode that still isn't available. I didn't know this until reading this.

I mean, it's probably it's out there. It's out there on the internet, but not officially.

The intended season eighth finale partial Terms of Endearment, which, yeah, as some of you may have Guessed is about abortion and contains frank discussion.

And jokes about such.

Owing to this, the episode was never aired on either Fox or Cartoon Network, wasn't put on the season eight box set, and isn't available to stream on Hulu. It is apparently for sale on Amazon Prime, however, as part of a Family Guy package, and was aired in the UK in June twenty ten. Then Fox Entertainment president Kevin Riley told The New York Times that unsurprisingly, the decision

I read that they did a table read of this once it got shut down, and that it was well received at the table read when wherever they did it with, you know, I guess it passed some audience's smell test. But do they have audiences for table reads? They do them well, they'll do them, they'll do them sometimes they'll do them as an event. But it was during COVID when it started just being like a virtual thing that people did because it wasn't a table read for like

But Farland also gave an eerily prescient quote in that aforementioned New York Times article saying people in America they're getting dumber. They're getting less and less able to analyze something and think critically and pick apart the underlying elements, and more and more ready to make a snap judge regarding something at face value, which is too bad. You really see, you know, his love of Archie Bunker and

I mean, it's part of what I've heard. I saw to get termed depiction as endorsement, oh, which is like become a watchword lately because apparently, like the Zoomers, there's all these people who get super angry on Twitter when like they're like, you expect me to watch this movie where this character does this, this and this, and it's like, yeah, it's a movie, the character is a bad person. It's

I like that. I never heard that.

Well, now put on to a lighter subject.

Yes, nine to eleven.

What is it and what can it do for you? You better keep that one.

We're about to get to a fairly well known bit of law about Seth MacFarlane on September eleventh, two thousand and one, who's booked to fly from Boston to Los Angeles on American Airlines Flight eleven, but it's travel agent had mistakenly told him that the flight left at eight fifteen and not seven forty five. He talks about this a lot, pretty much, everyone asks us about this. Here's what he told MPR. I'm a perpetually late person. In every flight that takes off, you have to figure that

Who knows so?

In my case, obviously the day itself was a tragedy in a disaster. But if we're just talking about my case, it doesn't strike me as something that I'm attaching an unbelievable amount of significance to because of those reasons, because I missed a bunch of flights, I disagree in this scenario, that would stick with me.

Well, Jordan, maybe one day you failed to make a flight that'll be hijacked and then we'll see how you feel. Can anyone do that, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie can arrange it. Can we arrange that for Jordan?

I can tell you right now that would that would stick with me. Well, I told you the story about my aunt.

Right. You're telling a lot of stories on this episode, so I know.

I'm sorry everybody. I know we've got I.

Think you should tell the story about when the plane you were on started to go down.

Oh that was bad. I've told that story. Oh yeah, I wrote I wrote a love note on an airsickness bag to a girl I like the time. Yeah, that was bad.

It was more about the guy next to you who grabbed your hand and was screaming.

That was a different No, He's just that was a different flight when the turbulence was really bad. I hate to fly, I really hate to fly, and apparently so did this man because he just kept grabbing my hand.

Total stranger.

We hadn't spoken to each other the entire flight, and then when I looked at him with a quizzical look in my face, he said, I'm just gonna hold your hand as a statement of intent.

Is that happens to you, Yeah, it really is. Yeah. No, I don't know, man. I mean, like, I try not to read into shit like that because that'll make you go insane.

You know. I think I think it's his atheism peeking through, he said to the av club. I'm not a fatalist. I'm not a religious person. What I felt more than anything else was gratitude towards my travel agent for screwing up my itinerary. It didn't change my perspective on what I do or anything like that. I couldn't really let it. If anything, I started drinking more, which, speaking of which I thought, I read he was hungover and that was

Yeah, exactly. But no, I told you.

My grandmother very very Catholic, so she would kind of try to reject anything that sort of smacked of the occult. But she would claim that she would have these these kind of psychic visions or dreams and she had a dream. So the night before her oldest daughter was supposed to go with friends on.

A college to Oh you told me this story.

Yeah, Well they were going to go on a college tour and with friends, and the night before my grandmother had a dream of Jesus on the horseback riding up to her and shaking his head and somehow intimato, don't let She somehow took this to mean that she shouldn't let her daughter go on this trip. And so the next morning, when like my aunt or daughter was about to leave, she's like, no, you can't go. I'm sorry,

Yeah, I don't know.

I've had a few instances of my life where those things that you know, kind of can't be explained that I don't I don't have strong feelings on what was at play. But I have to admit that it was weird, and I find this weird. I find it weird that narrowly miss.

You're perfectly You're perfectly entitled to.

But you know what, it wasn't my experience to have, So Seth can feel about it anyway he wants.

That's right, right, that's right. I'm just reminded of the one Anthony Gizelnick joke that I liked, which was, you know, my mother was actually supposed to be on one of the flights for nine to eleven. I think, yeah, to delay it's a delayed burn, which is one of the things I like about it. Am I talking to you? Talkingou what's going on?

Yeah? But what's interesting about Seth macfarlan and nine to eleven other than this flight thing, was that Family Guy had aired a gag about Osama bin Lauden two years before the nine to eleven attacks, which I had no idea who Osama bin Laden was before September eleven, two thousand and one. So that's shocking to me.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, you're about to explain what what I wrote, So do that you think it's a joke.

In the first of Family Guys tributes to the Bing Crosby Bob Hope Road to Blank series, in which they joke about Osama bin Laden distracting airport security by singing I hope I get it from a chorus line. That episode was broadcast in May two thousand as part of the show's second season. I can't believe, like it's just such a weird target for.

It is it is, But you know, because I am having disease, I went the extra mile and figured out why exactly, Oh.

Tell us, tell us, I would love to know why.

So Family Guy is on a ten to fourteen month production schedule, meaning that for a joke to air in a May two thousand episode. I think this gag would have originated when the FBI added bin Laden to the

I know we could accused of patenting ourselves on the back and laughing at our own jokes, but folks, if we can't amuse ourselves. Folks, we're doing this in a vacuum. We have to laugh at each other otherwise, otherwise what do we have. If we were doing this on stage, we would probably laugh less at each other because we've got the crowd out there that gives us that feedback We need to have feedback to, like play off of,

I don't know, and I don't want to know. Yeah, yeah, but just they made a joke about Bruce Jenner's vagina and then one day she got one, and she's very brave for it, despite still being like a southern California Republican. Were you people when that Vanity fair cover came out? No, it was a couple of years before. Oh man, Yeah, that was like a bomb went off in the office.

One thing that threw a wrinkle into Family Guy's equal opportunity offenders stance was Disney's acquisition of twentieth Century Fox in twenty nineteen show on Our richa pel Toil the Hollywood Reporter that Disney owns so many properties that I will find myself making legal arguments that I know are winners about parody and why we can get away with certain things. But then the question becomes, well, that may be rich, but Marvel doesn't want to see its character

Finally, as those of you on TikTok and those of you who get your TikTok content via Twitter or Instagram may know, Family Guy has had a startling second life online. Jordan. I mean, my fourteenth year of professional writing was this year. I don't know where you're at But I don't really recall Family Guy being huge in like meme culture in like the early days, like twenty twelve, thirteen, twenty fourteen. I don't remember it being part of the like meme

Family Guy's online profile was raised considerably after November twenty fourth,

It's like hundreds of thousands of people, by the.

Way, I mean, they all must have known that this was no. Three weeks later the show ret conned it or fixed it. I'd never heard that word.

Oh really, no, oh man, redcn is. I think it first came out of comics because they're always just bringing people back by some mean or another, but really crossed over. I think more popular culture when like with like all of these franchises and recasting actors and like Marvel stuff where they're like, oh, yeah, that guy we like set up to be a way bigger deal in that early movie that we haven't followed through on it anyway, Like turns out he went back to his home planet and died.

Perhaps obviously given the lead time of the show's production, McFarlane tweeted that the writers had never intended to kill off Brian permanently. He would say that the plot was intended to remind viewers to never take those you love for granted, because they can be gone in a flash.

How did Brian die again? Hit back car? Oh yeah, had he come back? I didn't watch these I was not watching the show by this point, but I read the Wikipedia. Stewie finds a version of himself with a time machine and forces that version of himself to go back and time. I'm in save Brian, Okay, all out?

Yeah, I didn't realize this until researching this episode. William H. Macy was initially floated as the voice of Brian, but he was turned down because this was you know, in the early days. They had but fifty thousand dollars to make an episode in one room, and they didn't have the budget seth MacFarland was getting his sister to voice Meg, and he was doing all the rest of the voices. McFarlan later, that's a great quote, it is.

Yeah.

McFarland later said, what kind of an arrogant must I have been to look at this great actor and say I think I can do this better?

Yeah? I mean that was a common tactic with shows around this area. Like, you know, they cast Danny DeVito in the in the second season of It's Always Sunny because they wanted to bring in a celebrity to anchor the show. They knew it was good and wanted to keep it up, but they were like, you need a recognizable face. In here, a number of standalone gags became

That's the one where they do like a stoner version of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang song me Ol Bamboo if I remember correctly.

Sounds about right. Yeah.

As a result of that episode, High Times the esteemed marijuana publication stowed upon Brian Griffin. It's Stoner of the Year title in two thousand and nine. Anyway, the show is also banned in Indonesia, Vietnam, Iraq, Egypt, Taiwan, South Korea, South Africa, and Malaysia.

South Korea.

Actually that surprises me, Iraq not so much.

Yeah, I mean it's weird considering I think, like I've definitely seen like Korean people rolling around with really cool outfits with like Peter Griffin on them.

So isn't it animated there too? Oh?

I mean so much stuff is yeah over there because it's non union jobs. What was I talking about? Oh? Yeah? But this is interesting though, because I think it peaked in search Oni in between October two thousand and eight and March two thousand and nine. Jordan, you used to work for Celebrity Rag like I did. What is that season? Oh?

Yeah, that's a ward show season.

Yeah, So the seventh season was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series that year, making Family Guy the first animated series to be nominated in that category since The Flintstones in nineteen sixty one in one, and it has since won eight more Primetime enemy.

Wow.

But yeah, I mean that makes sense why people would be looking for it during award show season, being like, Wow, did this really break this record? Blah blah blah blah blah. Anyway, finally we're getting into TikTok, so the show's current prominence as part of it, or at least where I've been seeing. I don't know if it's still used on TikTok, but where I started seeing its surface on TikTok was in like twenty two to twenty three, and that is indeed

I am like a new born child hearing all.

This, So like a ton of TikTok slang, which I don't think we should let these kids get away with. Boring ass is taken from aa VE or African American vernacular English, Like half of TikTok slang is stolen from Black people used to say it's supposed to sound like ass with like a stereotypical quote black scent. So instead of seeing boring ass that they avoid the curse by

That's medium funny it was.

And that one was actually reposted on Facebook pretty quickly thereafter, and that contributed to this massive combo of like x long or boring a Hell where people were like at funerals watching Family Guy or childbirths, like watching family ey clips on their phone and posting it saying like this funeral boring a hell. Like you know, eventually there's all.

I mean, here's something that I don't necessarily I really believe, and I haven't thought enough about it to really make this client.

But how much what we do on this show, maybe how.

Much of it is that Family Guy's humor and structure of those cutaway jokes just primed people's brains to create content in that way, and that led those sort of short form video platforms to gain popularity.

I think a lot of these kids were solely coming at this like they discovered Family Guy. I'm not I obviously don't know. I haven't interviewed any of them.

Yeah, the courts won't let you.

Also good, you know. The novelty was that it was like an old animated show that like they probably were not that familiar with that suddenly became this vehicle for all of this extraneous, weird content that they could do. I don't know. I, like I said earlier, like thinking about this and putting credence in some of the things that he said about it, I'm really like he may have predicted like the entirety of post nine to eleven

Family Guy was the cornerstone from which the Seth MacFarlane empire was launched. He created American Dad off the successive Family Guy spun off The Cleveland Show, and used a barely modified version of Peter Griffin's voice as the surprisingly successful Mark Wohlberg Because a foul mouth and a debauch Teddy Bear movie. Ted McFarlane also used the show's success as a springboard for his own musical aspirations, singing big band cruider music, hell yeah, which you know who among us?

Really? Yeah? Honestly.

The site Fast Company did some quick back of the Napkin math of McFarland's Empire in two thousand and eight and estimated it was worth or at least has generated about two billion dollars. That's billion with a bee. And this was before Ted in its sequel and apparently prequel streaming show launched that year.

Now it came out last year.

Oh came out last year?

Yeah?

Oh wow?

Okay, so Ted still has legs. Who knew?

I didn't?

I didn't. Good straight man answer to that. In the La Times piece that I mentioned, McFarlane, who is now only a voice actor on the show, as I mentioned, was questioned about how long the show would continue. He answered, at this point, I don't see a good reason to stop. People still love it makes people happy, and it funds some good causes. It's a lot of extraneous cash that you can donate to Rainforest Trust, and you can still go out to dinner that night. There was a time

Oh souls take on his creation, which honestly kind of seems about right.

Well, I got a questioned for you, Jordan, Yes, how you? How you coming on? That podcast? Will going on for next week? Hmm? Got a couple of got a couple of pages and a.

Google doc for mem nice little, nice little three act structure for a narrative podcast to do. Working on the the big podcast, maybe the Beach Boys. I know you've been working on that one for three years. Gotta we got a compelling main character protagonist, gonna be some obstacles for him to overcome.

Whose story boring there? Been working on that for quite some time. We aren't talking about that three years ago. Been working on that whole the whole time.

Nice little nonive beginning, middle, and then some friends become enemies, some memories.

We got friends at the end of the day. Your main character is richer for the experience. Yeah, I look forward to listening to it.

The best part was it got so high pitched that I could no longer hear it through that.

This has been too much information. I'm Alex Hagel.

And I'm Jordan run tag. We'll catch you next Time.

Too Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtog.

The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtog and Alex Heigel.

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