Hey, everyone.
It's Dan here.
And on February 15th, listen to this.
My favorite show of all time, The Simpsons, will release its 800th episode.
Now, I can't claim to have seen all 800, but I've seen a lot of them, okay?
So you can understand why I was extremely excited when I had the opportunity to go into the Simpsons writers room, meet some of the writers, meet Simpsons creator Matt Groening, and to talk with them about their favorite food moments in Simpsons history, including an episode in which Bart, Lisa and Marge become food bloggers.
So for this week's reheat, in honor of the Simpsons 800th episode, we're pulling out my special trip to the Simpsons.
Now, of course, remember, there's an episode of The Sporkful you want to hear.
We'll pull out another deep freezer for you.
We do take requests.
Drop me a line at hello at sporkful.com.
Thanks so much and enjoy.
I love The Simpsons.
It is the seminal comedy of my formative years.
And if you're half as big a fan as I am, you know that food has always been a huge part of the show.
I like pizza.
I like bagels.
I like hot dogs with mustard and beer.
I'll eat eggplant.
I could even eat a baby deer.
Food on The Simpsons is also a big deal behind the scenes.
You know, TV writers are notoriously food-obsessed people, and Simpsons writers are no exception.
Everyone orders a salad in the morning and then, by the time lunch comes around, it's like this is the last thing in the world I want to eat.
What am I going to do?
My whole day's screwed.
Today on The Sporkful, I visit the Simpsons writers room to talk about the role of food for the writers and the Simpsons themselves.
This is sort of a dream come true.
We're looking for a new food critic, someone who doesn't immediately poo poo everything he eats.
No, it usually takes a few hours.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies, it's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
The Simpsons is my number one show of all time.
I remember in seventh or eighth grade the Lions Club Carnival came to town and the best prize you could win at the carnival was a Bart Simpson t-shirt that said don't have a cow man.
And I feel like as I matured, the Simpsons matured too.
When I got into college I remember in Boston there were repeats of the Simpsons on every weeknight on two different channels.
So if you played your cards right, you could watch the Simpsons at 6 pm six, 30 and seven, 30 every night.
And then seven o'clock was jeopardy.
So that two hour block for me and my roommate, Jake, we planned our day around that two hour block.
And we actually even, I'm going to date myself.
We had a VHS player and we would buy blank VHS tapes and tape all all these repeats of The Simpsons.
We had like 15 or 20 VHS tapes worth of old Simpsons episodes.
Did we ever watch them?
No, because there were already three episodes on a night.
I don't know what we thought we were going to do with them, but we were ready, okay?
Ready for The Simpsons apocalypse, I guess.
And it may not surprise you to learn that my all-time favorite Simpsons joke is food-related.
It came in one of the early Halloween episodes.
Those are always really twisted and weird.
And in this one, Homer tries to fix a toaster and he gets electrocuted and gets sent back in time to the age of the dinosaurs.
Don't panic.
Remember the advice your father gave you on your wedding day.
If you ever travel back in time, don't step on anything, because even the tiniest change can alter the future in ways you can't imagine.
Fine.
As long as I stand perfectly still and don't touch anything, I won't destroy the future.
Stupid bug!
You go squish now!
But that was just one little insignificant mosquito.
That can't change the future, right?
Homer gets sent back to the present, which has been altered since he stepped on that bug.
And now it's this 1984-type scenario where Ned Flanders is like Big Brother.
So Homer goes back in time again to try to fix things, but he screws up something else.
So when he comes back to the present now, all the people are giants.
So he goes back to the past, messes up something different, comes back to the present, walks into his house and
Good morning, Father, dear.
Hope you're well.
Are we taking the new Lexus to Aunt Patty and Selma's funeral today?
Fabulous house, well-behaved kids, sisters-in-law dead, luxury sedan.
Woo-hoo!
I hit the jackpot!
Marge, dear, would you kindly pass me a donut?
Donut?
What's a donut?
Homer runs screaming from the house to go back in time.
Then Marge looks out the window.
It's raining again.
And it's raining donuts.
Genius.
So I think you get the point.
I was extremely excited to get to hang out with the Simpsons writers.
Food is such a big part of The Simpsons, partly because it's not just a show.
The town of Springfield is a whole fictional world, complete with its own food brands Duff Beer, Crusty O's Cereal and Chef Lonely Heart's Soup.
For One,
There's actually an Instagram feed called Springfield Cuisine, devoted entirely to foods from The Simpsons.
Then, of course, there's Homer, the ultimate eater.
Mmm, donuts.
Who can forget Homer at the candy convention, stealing the gummy Venus de Milo?
Or the time Homer intentionally gained 61 pounds so he could go on disability and work from home?
Classics!
All this was on my mind when I met up with Rob Lezebnik, who had invited me there in the first place.
He's been a writer and co-executive producer on The Simpsons for 14 seasons.
But he was a fan way before that.
25, 27 years ago.
There's an episode early on where Homer you might remember, Homer gets a 10-foot sub from a picnic that Mr Burns throws and he brings it home and he's just relentlessly eating it, and eating it, and eating it.
You've been eating that thing for a week.
I think the mayonnaise is starting to turn.
Two more feet and I can fit it in the fridge.
It just killed me.
I just remember from that long ago just being killed.
At one point he says he's in bed with Marge and she's trying to convince him to get rid of it because it's going to make him sick.
I'd like to be alone with the sandwich for a moment.
Are you going to eat it?
Yes.
So I wish I'd been there for that whole experience.
I bet that they were dying when they wrote that because I was when I watched it.
You wrote that scene with the mayonnaise dream.
Yes.
I'd wanted to do a show about Spider-Pig because we really hadn't featured him.
And so we did this episode.
I did this episode where Spider-Pig gets hurt on Mr. Burns' property.
Mr. Burns decides to take care of him so he won't be sued.
And Burns or Smithers says, if it doesn't work here, we'll take him to the Mayo Clinic.
And...
Homer looks off and says, the Mayo Clinic, eh?
And then it goes into Homer's fantasy about what is a Mayo Clinic like?
And all the doctors are jars of mayonnaise.
And they're resuscitating the pig with the mayo.
And it's just this, like, avalanche of mayonnaise.
Should we slice them diagonally or just cut off the crust?
Who cares?
It's hopeless.
I was interested that you had both Hellman's and Best Foods represented.
Yes.
Which are the same mayonnaise.
They're two different labels.
Right.
And in fact, isn't one's west of the Mississippi, one's east of the Mississippi?
Something like that, yeah.
We even had that.
At one point, that was in the show.
And that's why those labels were there because there were jokes about the fact of, what do you know?
You're Best Foods.
You know, I'm the real thing.
I'm Hellman's.
But I think that got cut for time.
So the vestige of it was for sharp-eyed viewers like you were the labels.
But then Miracle Whip comes in.
Yes.
And Miracle Whip comes in at the very end.
You fools.
I'll save him like I've saved a million lunches.
And Miracle Whip is actually the one who unscrews his lid and starts spooning Miracle Whip onto the sandwich to save it.
Exactly.
In a slightly queasy making scene.
And then collapses in the ground.
And says something like, it gets harder every time.
Exactly.
Thank you for remembering.
Yeah.
There are too many shows.
Yeah, I hear you.
Are you a Miracle Whip fan, Rob?
No.
So why explain this plot twist to me, where Miracle Whip saves the sandwich that Hellman's and Best Foods cannot save?
Anything for a laugh.
Yeah.
I do have experience with a lot of mayo experience because I grew up in the Midwest and my mother was I think she would have said by her own admission a terrible cook.
And in fact, the first time I took my wife home to meet my parents, my mom had made a special dessert for her, which was I'm not kidding jello with mayonnaise whipped into it.
And my wife was like desperately looking at me like, what do I do?
How do I avoid this?
So yeah, the mayo stuff is deeply in my roots, and probably a lot of my body is mayo.
Thanks, Jolene.
By now, it was mid-morning.
Pretty soon.
It would be time for the table read, when the actors sit together and perform an early draft of a script to see how it sounds.
Before that, though, came something even more important, ordering lunch.
For the writers, this is a focal point of the day, a ritual.
They order in the morning, then eat together in the afternoon.
Rob was joined by fellow writer Ryan Coe.
There were two options that day the studio commissary, which is like the cafeteria, and a local Mexican place.
This is Juliette.
Did you meet Dan Cashman?
Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
So, Juliette, how annoying is it to have to take the right of food orders every day?
Oh, it's the worst.
No.
Go on.
It's totally cool.
You get to use a cool clipboard.
It's very exciting.
Some people take way too long to decide.
Absolutely.
That is probably the biggest issue we have.
Yeah, we should have a timer or something.
What about Rob and Ryan?
Where do they rank in the annoying...
Oh, they're not too annoying.
I often get buyer's remorse.
Like after you call at lunch, I'm like, no, no, call them and change it.
I don't want chicken.
Why did I order chicken?
Why do you think that happens to you, Ryan?
Because lunch is very important to me, and so I don't want it to ruin my whole day.
Everyone orders a salad in the morning and then, by the time lunch comes around, it's like this is the last thing in the world I want to eat.
What am I going to do?
My whole day is screwed.
That's kind of a parable for life, though.
You start off with all these good intentions, right?
Like, I'm going to clean up my act today.
It's a new day.
Yes.
And by lunchtime, you're like, melt some cheese on something right now.
Yes, yes.
But then it works out great, because then I sort of just eat half of the healthy lunch and maybe like two or three cloud bike bars.
So you managed to get the non-healthy stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
I get my calories.
Okay.
So let's play some orders.
Okay, let's do it.
Rob, what are you going to order?
Okay.
From commissary, please.
This white bean and chicken sausage soup.
Perfect.
Sounds great.
And nothing pairs better with that than tacos.
Oh, perfect.
I think.
Well, you're getting tacos on top of that.
So you're doing soup from the commissary plus tacos.
So this is very, very common.
Also, commissary can do fruit plates and veggie plates.
So people, even if they're ordering from the restaurant, will throw in.
I'm going to get some watermelon and grapes.
I'm going to get whatever fruits or vegetables they want on the side.
Because it sounded to me for a minute like Rob was being kind of difficult there.
But you're telling me that wasn't difficult.
Yeah, he's a simple guy.
It's easy to work with Rob for sure.
Ryan, what are you going to have?
The spinny is a little tough, but I'll get the chicken enchiladas.
And then what's good with that is a rainbow roll sushi.
Those are classic, classic combination.
Is that really your order?
Yes.
Good season.
Yeah.
Was that great?
The lunch order was in.
Rob took me to meet another writer, and just walking around the place was amazing.
This is the Fox lot in L.A.
It's like its own city.
There are rows and rows of basically airplane hangers with movie and TV sets inside.
We're talking 20th century Fox, you know.
Do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
Do-do-do-do, do-do-do.
You get the idea.
This is where they filmed The Three Musketeers in 1939 and where they do American Horror Story today.
Miracle on 34th Street, Young Frankenstein Moonlighting, The X-Files, Arrested Development and Dr Dolittle 2.
Hey, they can't all be hits.
Then there's another area where it's all bungalows and low-slung buildings that almost look like motels.
And those are the offices and writers' rooms.
Rob had told me that if there was one person on the Simpson staff I had to talk with while I was there, it was Matt Selman.
In a writer's room full of food-obsessed people, Matt reigns supreme.
He's an executive producer, and the episodes he oversees almost always have food jokes.
It's always fun for me, and I believe most of us, to come up with Gross, fake foods.
We have two wing chains.
These are not famous things beloved by Simpsons fans, but guess what?
I like them.
One is called Garbage Wings, where the theme is that the wings come in dumpsters and the dipping sauces are in little garbage cans.
And I just think that's cute and funny.
And then we have also one called Utica Wild Thighs, which is a competitor of Buffalo Wild Wings from nearby Utica, where they take all the disposed of thighs not used by the wing restaurants and deep fry those.
That's actually probably better.
I feel like thighs are better than wings.
Thighs have weird fat pockets that when deep fried do not always melt into the chicken.
And so you're eating it and the skin will peel off and there's kind of wet chicken meat underneath with lots of gross gloppy thighs, thigh fat in the chicken.
I guess you and I have different opinions about thigh fat, Matt.
The fried chicken thigh is a challenging piece of meat.
I'll just say that.
One reason I was excited to talk with Matt Selman is that he wrote one of my favorite Simpsons episodes of recent years called The Food Wife.
In it, Bart, Lisa, and Marge become food bloggers.
But Homer isn't interested.
Oh, and here's my favorite restaurant, La Fridge.
It's open 24 hours a day, and there's no dress code.
What inspired that episode?
Well, certainly I was like in a more foodie phase of my life then.
And food blogs and were kind of a big deal.
And you know it was an exciting time to be in LA and like drive around and eat at this taco place or this Ethiopian restaurant or this Korean bone neck stew place.
That was just so specific.
It's like you could really... have a real worldly experience.
But what I loved about the episode was the way that it skewered foodie culture.
Right and it sort of made fun of the idea was okay, there was a certain amount of smugness and self-importance and bragging about that kind of foodie culture.
But, you know, there is kind of, you know, we're the Simpsons, we like to make fun of things.
So it's like if there's a smugness or a self-importance or like a bragging element of it, Let's make fun of that.
And that's where there's that rap song in the middle.
A lot of rap and hip-hop is about bragging, and a lot of foodie stuff is about bragging.
So to bring those together, it's not just random to do a hip-hop song about what you've eaten.
It's actually, there's kind of a commonality there.
Don't scoop gelato unless it's got umami.
And did you feel like in a way you were kind of making fun of yourself?
Sure, of course.
Self-loathing is a huge part of what we do.
But like a sort of a creative breakthrough.
We were thinking about the episode and how it would be like a really obvious way to go would be Homer the foodie, because Homer likes food.
Right.
But once we sort of said, wait a minute, he's like a blue collar guy.
He really just likes pizza and cheeseburgers and more than anything.
And he's highly suspect of pretentiousness and sophisticated things and foreign things and things that make him feel like he doesn't get it.
So like to have him be like anti foodie for much of the show and be able to voice that kind of regular guy opinion is, you know, gave the episode really good conflict.
And my favorite scene in that episode is the scene in the Ethiopian restaurant where Marge and the kids go in there.
They're using pancakes as spoons.
Ooh, let's see what else they do wrong.
And Marge is so skeptical.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
They're selling CDs in the restaurant.
Back to the car.
What can I get you?
Oh, I'll just have a side salad.
We have no side salad.
Back to the car.
Relax, Mom.
Be adventurous.
Yeah, just have fun.
It's certainly fun to make fun of people's fears, especially when we can portray them as being irrational but yet relatable.
Like, I just love that Marge was afraid of the fact they were selling CDs in the restaurant.
It's just a funny observation.
And that anyone would be scared of that is, you know, is funny, is ridiculous.
I mean yes, there are some lines that sort of poke fun at Ethiopian food, but I feel like they more poke fun at the ignorance and suspicions of white people about Ethiopian food.
Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
And so in that scene in the Ethiopian restaurant, it is the white people who are the butt of the joke.
Right.
What's the craziest thing on the menu?
She means the most authentic.
Well, that would be the... Then I'll have that.
Huh?
Okay, Marge, you test drove a convertible once, you can do this.
Holy casserole!
That's good gloop.
At this point, a bunch of white food bloggers come in the door of the restaurant.
Wait, wait, wait, what is she eating?
They've never served me that dish, and I wear indigenous beaded headgear.
Oh, this?
It's just a little zel-zel mention, I'll let you want.
It's all I ever eat here.
They have prepared her a dish from the non-translated page.
So grab a pancake and slurp some slop.
Foodies, heed my call.
Commence ripping and dipping.
But that's why I found it so cutting and clever is because of the way that it sent up all of that.
Like the guy who says, we discovered Korean barbecue.
What does he say?
He says, we discovered Korean barbecue in this town.
Before the Koreans?
Oh, sure.
They cook it, but they don't get it.
There is a funny slash sad, weird thing where it becomes almost competitive to stuff your face with what and then tell people about it.
Who cares?
Where do you think that comes from?
I don't know.
I love foodies and eaters and people who are passionate about gorging themselves.
And Homer is the king of all food lovers, right?
But, you know...
You just try to find that little crack in their foodie armor and stick a wedge in it and have some fun.
Coming up, lunch arrives, and we'll hear why writers might be the pickiest eaters in the world.
Plus, I meet Simpsons creator Matt Groening and he tells me how new technology has changed the show's food jokes.
Stick around.
Talk about broth squirting dumplings.
Dumplings.
Dumplings.
And now, a delicious word from our sponsors.
Welcome back to The Sporkful.
I'm Dan Pashman and I want to let you know that we have two live Sporkful tapings coming up March 19th in Brooklyn with special guest Kenji Lopez-Alt, and May 1st in Boston at WBUR City Space.
Don't know the guest yet in Boston, but when we did a live show in Boston two years ago we had a packed house and a lot of enthusiasm.
Man, we got a great crowd in Boston so I cannot wait to see all the folks in Boston and Cambridge and Somerville and wherever else you live.
So again, March 19th in Brooklyn, May 1st in Boston.
Get info on tickets at sporkful.com slash events.
All right, back to the show.
It was time now for the table read, which was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
And I say that with a little bit of hesitation, only because I feel bad, because I can't share it with you.
They wouldn't let me record it.
It's top secret.
But here's what I can tell you.
It's in a big conference room.
All the actors who do all the voices.
They sit around a table with their scripts, with all the writers.
And there's probably 50 more people filling the room, some standing pressed against the wall.
These are other writers, friends and family members, studio executives.
They just sort of like they want to create an audience in the room so they can test what gets laughs.
It's sort of like a focus group.
And so I got to sit there and watch the actors perform an episode of The Simpsons.
And the episode they were doing the day I was there was about Krusty the Clown joining the circus.
So it's sort of like can this pampered TV clown cut it in the down and dirty world of an old time circus?
And Nancy Cartwright was there doing Bart.
Yardley Smith was there doing Lisa.
Dan Castellaneta was there doing Krusty and Homer.
And really the most amazing thing of all was that it gave me a newfound appreciation for what talented voice actors they are.
Because you know when you watch the cartoon yes, intellectually you understand that the voice is not actually coming from the picture, but your brain kind of makes that connection.
When you hear them reading these lines separate from the images, you hear how the slightest little pause or intonation or the way that they deliver a line just makes it so much funnier.
Watch an episode of The Simpsons with your eyes closed.
You'll see what I'm talking about.
After the table read, I caught up with writers Rob and Ryan.
You heard them order lunch earlier.
I wanted to ask them about one of the food jokes in the episode from the table read.
It was about Krusty the Clown's writers and the spice turmeric.
It's sort of a joke about how spoiled the writers are that if they don't get a good grade on their show from the reviewer, they will be cut off from their turmeric boosts.
Right.
So turmeric is sort of like the annoying homeopathic ingredient of the moment.
Not to knock turmeric as an ingredient.
It's delicious.
But, like you know, there's all these special powers that are being attributed to it right now.
That I'm sure will be, you know, I'm sure that the trendy health food, health food Arati will have moved on to the next thing sooner enough.
Do you ever worry that you're going to put a joke like that in and that by the time the episode airs, like turmeric will be old news?
Well, maybe it'll be funnier after it's been debunked.
It'll be like, oh, that that was a funny trend that happened.
I don't know.
It's too hard.
The show comes out in nine months.
So, yeah, a lot of things are going to be dated by nine months in that turmeric joke.
Yeah, that's just the sort of high risk you have to take at this job.
We have several swings down the line at rewriting, too.
So it's like we'll take one more pass at this a month before it airs, maybe six weeks before it airs.
So we often are kind of kind of catching a couple of things like that.
It's like, wow, we you know, that that already feels old.
That's amazing.
Oh, let's see.
Just then, Matt Selman came in.
He's the guy I spoke with earlier who wrote the Food Wife episode.
Matt, what do you think of that table read?
Pretty well.
Just one step on the road to production, the road to airing, you know.
Matt, what's one food-related Simpsons joke that you wish you had written?
I can't remember.
I can't remember anything that we ever did.
I think one of my one of my all time favorites was in the episode where they go to the all you can eat seafood buffet.
They run out of food and then they sue for false advertising.
Mrs. Simpson, what did you and your husband do after you were ejected from the restaurant?
We pretty much went straight home.
Mrs. Simpson, you're under oath.
We drove around until 3 a.m. looking for another all-you-can-eat fish restaurant.
And when you couldn't find one?
We went fishing.
Did these sound like the actions of a man who had all he could eat?
But I would say that's not a food joke.
That's a greed joke.
It's about gluttony, the sin of gluttony.
The food joke has a specificity of the food itself.
I mean technically yes, it's about food, but There's a great line now of course I don't remember it entirely from Food Wife where Homer is talking about sorbet.
My kids do not eat sorbet.
They eat sherbet, and they pronounce it sherbert, and they wish it was ice cream.
Yeah, that's a food joke.
Yes.
Although, well, I could argue, Matt, that it's more a joke about class and pretentiousness.
But it uses specificity of food to tell that joke.
Right.
We're going to argue a lot.
He thinks that fried chicken thighs are good.
And that's obviously the worst piece of the fried chicken.
Ryan, response?
This issue comes up at least once a month and it's a very sensitive issue for my boss about the amount of goo that's in a chicken thigh when you fry it.
We really tapped into something, Matt.
So I mean I like the moistness of the meat, but saying more about it, I think, would have me lose a lot of standing in the show.
Yeah.
And then finally, it was time for lunch which, at The Simpsons, is signaled to all the buildings in the area with the latest in lunch technology.
And Juliet, what typically happens after that bell?
I expected.
When that happened, I would see all these doors fling open across the lot and a stampede would occur.
It's a little more understated.
People kind of dribble.
It's more of a dribble, I would say.
Here's Joe.
Joe's always the first.
Joe's always the first?
Yeah.
Is that true, Joe?
Yeah.
It is true.
I get my lunch and Al's lunch, Al Jean's lunch.
Okay.
Are you a writer?
No, I'm Al Jean's assistant.
Okay.
Al Jean, of course, the showrunner of The Simpsons.
What did he order?
I don't know what he ordered.
I think he got chicken enchiladas and rice and beans.
All right, should we go into the actual part of the beast?
Yeah.
By heart of the beast, Rob means the Simpsons' main writer's room.
I had pictured something very antiseptic, like an office conference room.
But it felt pretty warm, with a big long wooden table in the middle and a screen at one end.
It sort of felt like a cross between a ski lodge and a classroom.
This is Max Pross, another writer.
It's Dan Patterson.
Hey, my name's Dan.
Good to meet you.
He does the Sportful podcast.
Oh, this is the food part.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you mind if I ask you a couple quick questions about food and...
As long as they're off the record, sure.
Well, then that's not going to be very fun.
Tell me your name, please.
Max Pross.
And you're a writer?
I try to be, yeah.
Okay.
And what is the role of food for a writer on a TV show?
It is far too important a role.
A legendary comedy writer, Steve O'Donnell, is convinced that writers are the pickiest eaters in the universe because they're so used to detail and moving a comma or a a word around that every ingredient counts in food.
And since writing in general is procrastinating, what better way to procrastinate than thinking about what your next meal is going to be?
So are you a picky eater?
Extremely.
What did you order today?
I left it to the geniuses who get the lunch for us, because I have standing orders at every restaurant, because there's only one thing I like at each place they go to, so they know what it is.
So what's their thing for this place?
This is a fish burrito at Pinchas.
Fish burrito.
Yeah.
Is the fish fried?
It's kind of fried, fried slightly.
They call it grilled, but it's really fried.
Mm-hmm.
I would worry that it would lose its crisp when it's all wrapped up, taken to go like that.
It does.
No, you have to put into consideration the traveling that each food does.
Ryan, we spoke earlier about how you are often plagued by lunch order regret.
Now you're eating your classic combination of enchiladas and sushi.
How's that panning out for you?
It's good alternating bites.
You're not committing your mouth to any particular one set of flavors and it's sort of taste confusion which I think makes every bite new and refreshing and a little bit gross.
And are you feeling any regret?
Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Also sitting at the table was someone I didn't realize I'd be meeting Matt Groening, the big boss of The Simpsons, the guy who created the show 30 years ago.
Matt, I won't ask you to tell me your favorite food-related Simpsons joke, because I feel like that's an impossible question.
Mmm, floor pie, right?
Yeah.
Are there others that come to mind, your personal favorites?
Well, there was one where Homer found a hoagie or a Subway sandwich, whatever the term is, and it got more and more rotten.
And finally Marge threw it out in the garbage and Homer got it out of the garbage can at the curb and tried to eat it and it was rotten.
According to legend, that is actually something that happened to Al Jean.
Matt, why do you think food is important to the writers on a show?
I know it looks calm here, but I would say that being a writer on a TV show is one of the most stressful, anxiety-provoking things.
So you're trying to be funny, and it's like being in school, where you've got to be funny.
It's like reverse school, where the job— is to be funny, where at school you had to study and it could be funny and that was extra.
Now the job is the school and we study in the back of the room.
Well see, now that joke kind of half landed.
But now you'll watch that Matt Selman will rush into the kitchen and start eating Doritos.
I want to be more funny.
I brought up the Food Wife episode, the one we discussed earlier.
That mocks foodie culture, where white bloggers say things like We discovered Korean barbecue in this town.
Uh, before the Koreans?
Oh, sure, they cook it, but they don't get it.
And that scene where Bart, Lisa and Marge go to an Ethiopian restaurant, which I talked about with Matt Groening.
The Ethiopians I know loved it.
They loved just being acknowledged, you know?
And in the Food Wife episode, do you find yourself more identifying with the would-be foodie food bloggers Marge and the Kids, or more with Homer, who only wants to eat things he already knows?
I will drive 40 miles for a good bowl of ramen.
San Gabriel Valley is the greatest part of Los Angeles.
That's not considered Los Angeles, but really is.
It is miles and miles and miles of amazing regional Chinese restaurants and Vietnamese restaurants and Mexican restaurants where the food here isn't watered down for gringos and locals.
It's done for the community where the people live and therefore you get to eat seemingly authentic food.
At this point, lunch was wrapping up and it was time for me to go.
But there was one more question I wanted to ask Matt Groening.
How has food on The Simpsons changed over the last 30 years?
If you look back at the old animation of the show, the joke used to be that Marge would serve them glops of food.
And it was just sort of like a mush.
And that was kind of the joke.
And then gradually, we learned that you could draw a certain kind of shape and it would look like a pork chop.
And now I think over the years, as our animation has gone into high def, we can actually draw food that you can tell what it is.
So I think that's...
Partly a technological breakthrough that has allowed us to do more specific food jokes.
I think that part of the reason why food is so important to the show is because it's a universal.
And also Homer is a really fun character because he is ruled by his impulses and he feels no guilt.
And I don't think there's a person alive who doesn't eat a donut without a tinge of guilt.
Right.
But Homer doesn't.
First, the award for the alumnus who's gained the most weight, Homer Simpson.
Oh, my God!
How'd you do it, Homer?
I discovered a meal between breakfast and brunch.
So that was my trip to the Simpsons.
It was really, really cool.
I especially want to thank Rob Lezebnik, as well as Ryan Coe, Matt Selman, and Matt Groening.
If you want to see that episode they were working on, it's called Krusty the Clown.
It's season 30, episode 8.
You can find it on Disney+.
You can also purchase it on a variety of streaming platforms.
This episode was originally produced by Anne Sani of Eva de Kornfeld and me.
It was mixed by Dan DeZula.
This update was produced by Andres O'Hara and mixed by Jared O'Connell.
Our team also includes Emma Morgenstern, Johanna Mayer, and Tracy Samuelson.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sportful is a production of Stitcher.
Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Eric Eddings.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And I'm Kiana.
I'm 11 years old and I live in Chicago, Illinois.
And I'm reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
Definitely more better.
This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer.
The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
Then there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
