The Simpsons

0:00:03.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Welcome to Pop & Locke, I’m Natalie Dowzicky.

0:00:05.3 Landry Ayres: And I’m Landry Ayres. They’ve added words to our dictionaries like Shakespeare, they’re responsible for a boom in the animation industry, and they are America’s longest running sitcom having been renewed for a now 34th season. Joining us to discuss the one, the only, The Simpsons, are two returning Pop & Locke guests and Simpsons mega fans, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Michael Cannon.

0:00:37.3 Michael Cannon: How are you, Landry?

0:00:38.5 Landry Ayres: And Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of William and Mary, Chris Freiman.

0:00:43.7 Chris Freiman: Hi, good to be here.

0:00:45.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Between Bart Simpsons appearing on any type of print possible, Portland recently naming a major bridge after Ned Flanders, Spider Pig becoming a national icon, and all that the show has done for animation as an industry and art form, how and why did The Simpsons go from just a show to a pop culture sensation?

0:01:06.3 Michael Cannon: Oh God, there are… Lots of things went into that.

[laughter]

0:01:09.9 Natalie Dowzicky: That’s a loaded question. Here you go.

0:01:11.5 Michael Cannon: The first… Yeah, there is… The first has to be a fantastic set of talent, all converging in one place in some bunker in California, where they started spitting out these first cartoon shorts in 1987, and then a regular animated series out in prime time TV in January of 1990. The people who make The Simpsons, the writers, from the very beginning and the voice talent are really just amazingly talented people. And they all came together in one place in time with this medium, that had been used before, obviously, there was lots of animation on television before 1987 and January of 1990, but no one had really explored the potential of animation, of animated TV, the way the creators and the talent on The Simpsons did.

0:02:16.2 Michael Cannon: They took it in directions that no one ever had. They made a cartoon for adults, that wasn’t adult in the sense of being inappropriate or anything like that for prime time, but adult in the sense of being very cerebral. At the same time, it was very funny. And so, once they realized that this medium had potential to go where live action television never had, where animation never had before, this very talented group of people just went hog wild. And then turned this show into a sensation that is ongoing now 30 years later, and it’s captivated now I think generations of audiences.

0:03:06.4 Landry Ayres: Michael, can I ask you, Did you know those dates off the top of your head, or did you research them before you did the podcast? I’m just curious.

[laughter]

0:03:12.3 Michael Cannon: I did my research at least that much research.

0:03:15.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Well, I also kind of… Cannon, and I wanna put you on the spot, Did you watch the first episode the day it aired?

0:03:21.1 Michael Cannon: You mean on The Tracey Ullman Show?

0:03:23.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:03:23.8 Michael Cannon: No. So I…

0:03:24.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Or in January of 1990, the first full episode.

0:03:28.4 Michael Cannon: True confession time, I… When it came out on The Tracey Ullman Show, which I watched occasionally. I didn’t think much of The Simpsons. I thought they were a little weird. And even as I look back on the first, so I don’t remember if I saw the first episode that aired, but and then when I look back on the first season, you could see the potential of the show, but they hadn’t really hit their stride yet. And I don’t think they really did that until maybe the third season. And so I didn’t know what I was looking at, at the time. I thought it was… I thought it was funny and when I go back and look at the things that I…

0:04:10.1 Michael Cannon: The first season now, I still think it’s… I still think it’s funny. But no, I was not like a diehard fan from the beginning. I still remember one of the shorts from the Tracey Ullman Show where they did a riff on things that parents say to their kids when they’re tucking them in at night, and how they’re actually kind of terrifying, you know, the Rock-​a-​bye Baby on The Tree Top lullaby [chuckle] and Bart is asking Homer existential questions about what is the human mind and it’s just way over Homer’s head, and he says, “What is mind? It doesn’t matter. What is matter? Never mind.” And so I remember that from watching it the first time, but again I didn’t know… Was not then the huge fan that I am now, ’cause I didn’t realize what I was looking at yet, and they didn’t realize what they were sitting on yet.

0:05:05.0 Chris Freiman: That’s gotta be the influence of all those Harvard writers, those jokes, I think. And I agree, I think the third season is probably actually when I started watching as a kid, so I think a lot of people didn’t quite know what to make of it, even in the third or fourth season where people had this impression. It was this really vulgar sort of dangerous show. I think maybe Barbara Bush or someone said that The Simpson’s family was a bad influence. And so there was a period of time in my childhood where I wasn’t permitted to watch The Simpsons, but then my parents watched it and they saw that it was… Not just that it was funny, but that it was actually heart-​warming in a lot of ways, particularly in the early seasons, there was a lot of family togetherness and that sort of thing in the show, but I agree, it was the third season for me, re-​watching them from the beginning. That’s really when it took off and became what it is today. Well, not what it is today, we could have a conversation about what it is today perhaps.

0:06:01.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh, don’t worry, we will.

0:06:03.0 Landry Ayres: Okay. I’ll say what it was at its peak, I’ll say.

0:06:05.7 Landry Ayres: It does make me feel good to hear that someone else was also at one point not permitted to watch this television show, because I was certainly in that camp. And I knew other people that sort of had similar situations or their parents were wary, but I also knew a ton of kids whose parents were like, “Yeah, it’s The Simpsons, it’s a cartoon, or it’s hilarious,” but I was certainly in the camp that The Simpsons were something that I was not allowed. It was for adults, but I feel like I missed the cutoff for getting a taste of it or then they basically just came in and my parents didn’t watch The Simpsons either. So they didn’t know why I wasn’t allowed to watch it. They were like, “It’s just not for kids.” So I grew up thinking The Simpsons was this vulgar television show completely inappropriate, they’re cursing all the time, it’s violent, it’s sexual. And then I went back and my parents eventually were like, “Oh yeah, it’s not that big of a deal, I guess if you wanna watch it, you could, but we just we weren’t fans.” And so I look back and I learned that people were just like, “Bart Simpson is a bad influence on children, and he might misbehave.” And I’m like, “This is what we worried about in the early ’90s, honestly?”

0:07:26.3 Michael Cannon: Eat My Shorts! Was scandalous.

0:07:28.0 Landry Ayres: Yeah, exactly.

0:07:28.6 Chris Freiman: And, oh yeah.

0:07:29.0 Landry Ayres: I’m like, “Eat My Shorts! That’s nothing these days.”

[laughter]

0:07:33.3 Landry Ayres: So was there something that fueled this backlash? I know Chris had mentioned possibly Barbara Bush or something, but what cultural context are we working with at the start of the Simpsons? That both sort of created what it wanted to be and what it could be, and also how people reacted to it?

0:07:53.5 Michael Cannon: Let me give you a little bit of a cultural background of the United States through my own story, and I can one up both of you here, but my parents also forbade me to watch an animated television show, but it was not the Simpsons, it was The Flintstones. My parents thought that The Flintstones were two adults. Now, that also dates me, it reveals that I am the oldest person on this call, ’cause I was a child when The Flintstones were on the air.

0:08:21.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. [laughter]

0:08:24.3 Landry Ayres: I was about to say it wasn’t even like a flashback at that point, it was just like modern day. [laughter]

0:08:28.2 Michael Cannon: Right. And we still make fun of my mom for that one, but by the time that Simpsons came around, I was in high school. I was a senior in high school when the series began to air. My parents had relaxed about the cartoons or given up, I don’t know which is true, but the country was still… This is the United States, it still has a puritanical streak, and it had a very strong tribal political, cultural war that was being waged when George H. W. Bush ran for president in 1988, he was running on a family values platform, and then along come The Simpsons who are supposed to be this typical American family, and they’re boorish and they’re and sometimes obnoxious. And before long, the First Lady and then the President of the United States is taking swipes at this show.

0:09:37.9 Michael Cannon: And I think what that says about the country is that all of this garbage that we’re dealing with now, all this tribalism and partisanship, there’s nothing new about it. It’s just the cost of people conveying their tribal allegiances has plummeted dramatically with technology, and so it seems like there’s more of it out there. But it was already there. And I’m a little bit embarrassed to say that at the time The Simpsons came out in my misspent youth, I considered myself a Republican but I’m proud to say that I was disappointed with George and Bar when they were making fun of The Simpsons because even then I knew you’re just not giving them a chance, ’cause there was really something special here.

0:10:27.5 Chris Freiman: Were you are a Republican at the time they aired the episode, the Sideshow Bob runs for mayor, and they had the Republican Party headquarters. Were you still a Republican at that point? And if so, how did you respond to that?

0:10:39.6 Michael Cannon: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. What year was that?

0:10:43.0 Chris Freiman: That was pretty early. That would’ve been like season five-​ish, I think.

0:10:48.7 Michael Cannon: We can look it up fairly quickly. Oh right, it was Sideshow Bob Roberts, season six, episode five.

0:10:56.8 Chris Freiman: And there’s the Rush Limbaugh character.

0:11:00.8 Michael Cannon: Oh, and that was glorious. So this is actually interesting. And I think it explains some of the cultural divisions over The Simpsons. Let’s see. It aired in ’94, so that was when I was graduating college. By that time, I had left the College Republicans, but I think a lot of conservatives had a problem with this show because they might have aesthetic taste that makes them prefer watching The Waltons to The Simpsons as George Bush put it. But also because George and Barbara Bush were criticizing The Simpsons and The Simpsons shot back. In fact, they shot back in the middle of an election campaign by saying, when Bart said that, “We’re just like the Waltons, we’re praying for an end to the depression, too.” That was, they took that as a partisan shot against George H. W. Bush, and I think that caused a lot of conservatives to miss just how much this show skewers big government, the Democratic Party, and a lot of things that drive conservatives crazy.

0:12:11.4 Michael Cannon: Yes, they also skewered Republicans, but I came up with a list of things just from the few shows that we watched that should be appealing to conservatives like in Deep Space Homer, “How you’ve got this government agency, NASA that has all this equipment, not to track satellites, but to track Nielsen ratings.” They’re joking about NASA unloading an IRS surveillance satellite into space. And yet The Simpsons were doing all these things to poke fun at the idea of big government and how incompetent the government is. You would think conservatives would like it. But a lot of them fell into this trap of thinking The Simpsons were against them because of this thing with George and Barbara Bush, and because they do, yeah, in fact, make fun of Republicans.

0:13:05.3 Chris Freiman: And you mentioned family values and that’s an interesting feature of so many of the episodes particularly the early ones. So, so many of those episodes have a plot where the family goes through some ordeal, they have some struggle that’s kinda tearing them apart, but at the end of every single episode, the family kinda comes together oftentimes in front of the TV. Like the kid has a problem, Homer and Marge have a problem, but at the end of every single episode, they come back together, which you think would be construed as a very sorta family values kind of message. But like you said, it was more just about the partisanship than watching the show and seeing what was promoted in it.

0:13:39.4 Michael Cannon: And if you get tired of your political enemies, your political opponents, making fun of businessmen, and they portray businessmen as C. Montgomery Burns, yeah, it’s gonna stick in your craw a little bit, but maybe their tribalism blinded them from how even-​handed this show really is. In the few shows that we made a list of notable Simpsons episodes that we were all gonna try to watch before we did this podcast, and in that 10 or so shows, and I watched all but one of them, they made fun of Ted Kennedy twice just in this handful of shows. And they did it in the context of… [chuckle] And they did it in a way that made Rush Limbaugh sound reasonable. In one of those times when one of the characters said, “Birch Barlow, that right-​wing crackpot,” he said, “Ted Kennedy lacked integrity.” Can you believe that? That’s a way of making fun of the left that makes the right look reasonable. And, yeah.

0:14:39.7 Chris Freiman: They also have a few libertarian jokes in there. So the one thing that I remember in particular is when Ned’s Leftorium is about to close, he says, “I only have it until midnight and then it becomes Libertarian Party headquarters. Let’s hope they have better luck with it than I do.”

[laughter]

0:14:57.3 Michael Cannon: So they took a dig at libertarians, but I would argue most of the political messaging, and most of the political themes of The Simpsons are very Libertarian friendly because they’re making fun of the left. They’re making fun of the right. They’re making fun of government and how incompetent it is. They are making fun of the irrationality of collective decision making. If you look at the Treehouse of Horror VII, which was on our list, that’s where the people of America elect President Kang. That’s only a portion of an episode but it’s so jam-​packed with political commentary about how a two-​party system necessarily limits people’s choices in the political sphere and suppresses a lot of people’s political preferences and transforms, because each party is competing for the median voter, transforms the two-​party into entities that really don’t look that different from each other. And that is a very libertarian theme. We are forever talking about how there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties. And they even have those classic lines where someone says, “Well, I believe I’ll vote for a third-​party candidate.” And Kodos or Kang, I forget who he says, “Go ahead and throw your vote away.” And then the classic line where Marge asks once they’re enslaved by President Kang and Marge asks, “Why I’m I even building this space weapon to point at a planet I’ve never heard of?” And Homer says, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.”

0:16:46.3 Natalie Dowzicky: [laughter] I think that one of the hallmarks of the show too, is just its ability to kind of make fun of everyone. So it doesn’t… I think in their earlier seasons like Cannon was saying it might have alienated some groups over others, but as the show progressed, I feel they were powerful in the sense that they were able to make fun of everyone right-​left. They make fun of parents. They make fun of kids, men, women, business people. They really run the gambit in terms of who is the source of attack that day, which I think makes it a more accessible show for everyone and it doesn’t necessarily alienate an audience. And there’s always maybe one episode you’re upset because they attacked your group or whatever, but it’s still funny. [laughter] It’s still something that should be funny and shouldn’t be taken personally. And I think that’s one of the things the show does so well, at least in its prime, was that it did a good job of dispersing the attacking and didn’t make it like, oh, so clear that this is who we’re going to attack, and this is how the show is going to be always.

0:17:49.8 Landry Ayres: It very much exemplifies the ethos of don’t have a cow, man. It’s the whole point. It’s just like we’re all a mess at this point. We all deserve a little bit of ridicule. And honestly, I don’t think that’s a bad lesson. Don’t have a cow, man. It’s… So yeah.

0:18:07.3 Michael Cannon: And they did that from Season one. If you remember in Season one, Bart the General, grandpa Simpson is writing a letter to advertisers, the companies that advertise on television complaining about the entertainment that he’s seeing on television and how he wants it to be blended inoffensive. So they began the series really by making fun of their audience, part of their audience, people who were gonna complain about them. But by the time they were done, they had not just made fun of their audience and everyone else, they even turned on themselves. They made fun of writers. There’s a classic episode also involving grandpa Simpson, where they are teasing the writers on the show for being Harvard-​educated and thinking they’re smarter than they really are. I think that they were making fun of Conan O’Brien in particular with that one. They make fun of the producers of the show in that episode as well. They make fun… And not only that… And, of course, they make fun of the genre of animated television through Itchy & Scratchy and other takes.

0:19:27.0 Michael Cannon: But they even made fun of this. And this is what always impressed me the most, they even made fun of Fox, and that just warmed my heart that they were brave enough to do it and then they got away with it, and here I’m thinking of when… I think it was… Lisa Simpson was asking Crusty the Clown about is, what is it? It’s his brother or his cousin, Luke Perry, and said, who was on Beverly Hills, 90210, and she asked him, doesn’t your… Doesn’t he have a… Doesn’t he have a show of is… Oh yeah, Krusty was trying to revive his career, can’t Luke help you out, doesn’t he have his own show? And Krusty the Clown goes, “Yeah, but it’s on Fox.” And that really illustrates that they were equal opportunity, not offenders, but they believed in equal opportunity when it came to making fun of people, and that this was really a huge cultural phenomenon because they could get away with doing that, get away with making fun of their parent company, and the parent company loved it, well, because they were laughing all the way to the bank.

0:20:42.7 Landry Ayres: Yeah.

0:20:43.2 Chris Freiman: Well, they would even go after Rupert Murdoch in particular, not just Fox, he makes a couple of, Rupert Murdoch makes a couple of appearances in The Simpsons episodes.

[music]

0:20:54.3 Landry Ayres: A lot of commentary and specifically very recently, within the past few years has centered around what The Simpsons mean and how they were meant to exemplify, like someone had mentioned before, the typical American family. Springfield itself is closest to Matt Groening’s hometown in Oregon, for instance, but there are 34 Springfields in 25 different states in the United States, which apparently is also not the most common name for a town in the US, there are apparently places that have more common names, but it’s certainly meant to represent anywhere USA in the sense that like a Pawnee, Indiana is attempts to feel like that even if it doesn’t always quite capture what any place could be. What does it mean for The Simpsons to represent this, “real America” and is that what they project then as the real America, is that attainable?

0:22:05.7 Landry Ayres: Like they started off in this very comfortable middle class life where they show the Simpsons struggling financially at times, but Homer has a stable job, there’s a lot of union power that becomes sort of integral to his story, at one point, but eventually, they seem to become almost wealthy in an aspect, but only because of the way people are looking at what they achieve in today’s economic context. So people have calculated what Homer would take home in wages based on inflation and wage power and things like that. And I think it’s… And it’s really fascinating. I wonder what it means for someone to try and capture what real America is. That’s something that gets lobbed a lot, I think at… Specifically a lot of conservatives, ’cause I think they use that as a talking point very frequently, like you hear them talking about fly over country, when Trump was elected, it’s like we’re gonna go to West Virginia and we’re gonna do profiles of Trump voters and get to know what the real America is. Is that a thing? Should we… Is real America a myth? Or if it does exist, what is that?

0:23:31.7 Michael Cannon: 330 million is a really big number. I know that in Washington, where you’re used to dealing with billions and now even trillions, but 330 million is big enough that we can’t get our heads around it, and in a country of 330 million people, you are not gonna see a lot of homogeneity. So the answer to your question is, it’s too big a nation to find something typical, to find something real, there’s so much diversity here that you’re not gonna find a real America, you’re gonna find commonality, and certainly, the Simpsons tapped into a lot of that, but I don’t think there is a real America that unless it’s just common themes and common relationships, you’re not gonna find a real America in the sense of common culture or even common family structure.

0:24:37.3 Chris Freiman: And it’s worth noting that actually becomes reflected in The Simpsons as the seasons go on, so sometimes they’re almost in New York. Springfield is kind of like New York, and then sometimes there’s like Beverly Hills is like right next door to The Simpsons and like West Virginia is right next door to Springfield.

0:24:52.7 Landry Ayres: It’s very similar to like a King Of The Hill, where the town that they’re in is… It could be anywhere in Texas, it’s an hour from Dallas, Austin, Houston, El Paso and Amarillo, [laughter] which if you know Texas is physically impossible.

0:25:07.9 Chris Freiman: And I will say too, in terms of the, so I see the meme that’s like, right, it’s like, this is what Homer would have to make, etcetera, etcetera, and people talk about the union at the power plant, but it’s also worth noting, they do use nuclear power, so that’s another thing, maybe…

0:25:22.7 Landry Ayres: That’s right.

0:25:23.0 Chris Freiman: That’s worth discussing as well, I don’t know.

0:25:24.3 Michael Cannon: Well, [chuckle] and it’s the cleanest form of power there is, except for solar, which is just a crock. Now, they used nuclear power, but it also comes in for a lot more criticism than praise, everything does, but I don’t think they ever have anything nice to say about solar, but the union… I’m glad you brought the union stuff, now, that’s something I left out of my list of political themes that Republicans and Conservatives should have liked is wow, they’re harsh on unions. [chuckle] In The Simpsons. I mean when Homer gets elected the head of the union and asked how much does it pay? And they say nothing. And he says, don’t, and they say, unless you’re crooked. He goes, woo-​hoo. That’s an important political theme and another example of the bravery of the writers and the staff on the show, is that they are able to make fun of such a powerful… Politically powerful and culturally powerful institution, and lived to tell tale.

0:26:28.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Well, they also… They make fun of police unions a lot too.

0:26:31.1 Michael Cannon: Oh, God.

0:26:31.7 Chris Freiman: Well, and also like public schools too. They make fun of public school teachers and Principal Skinner, so this goes to the point that there’s sort bipartisan skewers.

0:26:42.8 Michael Cannon: And in an affectionate way, also because I’m sure the teachers I know would see what Mrs. Krabappel has to deal with and see what Principal Skinner has to deal with and think, “Oh, yeah, yeah, just like that,” because I think they do it in an affectionate way.

0:27:04.4 Landry Ayres: It’s true, it’s not as acerbic as something like South Park, which similarly has a “No one is safe” philosophy to their punch lines. Everything with The Simpsons is kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and then pulls you in and gives you a noogie. It’s more of… There’s almost like a, “You can make fun of people when they’re close with you” vibe to it.

0:27:27.6 Chris Freiman: And I think that’s part of its appeal too. I like South Park, and I like comedies that don’t have a soft side. So shows like Seinfeld or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I like and they have no softness to them whatsoever, but there’s also something to be said for shows like The Simpsons where, yeah, they make fun of people and institutions, but there’s always this sort of layer of empathy and understanding, and I think there’s a place for that.

0:27:55.2 Natalie Dowzicky: Well, I was even gonna say an example of that is in the Bart, The General episode, at the end. Bart is like talking to the camera and he was like trying… The show creators were trying to say that no one wins in war, and they were kinda [chuckle] trying… That no war is a good war, and [chuckle] then Bart goes, “Well, except the American Revolution.”

0:28:15.2 Michael Cannon: Except for the following wars…

0:28:17.0 Natalie Dowzicky: And Star Wars. Yeah. [laughter] And they list stuff off. So they were trying to like have a clear message about what they thought about war, but then he lists all the ones he thought were good wars. [laughter]

0:28:27.1 Michael Cannon: Yeah, which… And so making fun of American political culture on that score, and also in that episode where… Making fun of the American political culture, where Grandpa Simpson explains to Bart that a General can send a soldier into battle, can push him out of an airplane, can do all of these awful things to him, but you can’t slap him. That was a very Apocalypse Now moment, explaining what happened to the General Patton there, and I think that’s another libertarian theme pointing out the hypocrisy that politicals… Collective decision-​making can produce as manifests itself in the American public don’t… War crimes that American soldiers might commit or all the collateral damage in our kinetic military actions, but God, if you put an obscenity on a bomb that’s gonna drop on somebody, the problem is the obscenity rather than the bomb itself. That generates a backlash among the body of politic.

[music]

0:29:40.7 Landry Ayres: There are a lot of lessons that The Simpsons can teach us, I think. One that Chris had pointed out in preparation for this episode was there is possibly a Hayekian lesson about unintended consequences in a certain episode. Would you care to elaborate and explain what you meant by that?

0:30:02.6 Chris Freiman: Sure, this might be reading too much into The Simpsons, but I suppose… I don’t know maybe not…

0:30:09.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Never. It’s not possible. [chuckle]

0:30:09.2 Chris Freiman: Maybe not, yeah and that’s what we’re here for anyway. But here…

0:30:11.8 Natalie Dowzicky: Exactly [chuckle]

0:30:12.4 Chris Freiman: There’s… This is just kind of one of the all-​time great episodes in its own right. I think it’s just called Bart Vs. Australia, but it’s the one where they go to Australia. But there’s this… They go to the airport and Bart says, “What is the sign?” And Lisa says, “You can’t bring plants and animals into the country, it might disrupt their ecosystem.” And Bart says, “Oh, okay” and he let’s his frog go in the Australian airport, and then at the end, you see now, the whole Australian countryside is being overrun by frogs destroying their crops because just this one tiny little intervention that Bart made in their delicate ecosystem. And it strikes me that there’s a kind of Hayekian lesson there about unintended consequences and complexity, that something that might seem sort of like a trivial intervention into the economy can have really huge and negative unintended consequences, and that is… Some people have pointed out this parallel before, between ecology and economics, that they’re both complex, delicate systems, and it’s just really hard to know how a very small change can have larger impacts on the system. So even though that’s not about hierarchy exactly, the frog case, I think there’s a lesson to be learned there.

0:31:27.9 Michael Cannon: And I think you’re right, I think it’s a lesson they tried to drive home a couple of times, in addition to that. And in Treehouse of Horror V, you remember, Homer travels back in time and alters the future in ways that he didn’t like, some ways that he did, but he went back in time before it started raining donuts, and then began stepping on every dinosaur he could find to try to change the future. The lesson there is tiny small decisions can have a big, unintended consequences over time, but maybe the best example, I think of this is also probably the most libertarian episode of The Simpsons ever, which was Homer vs The 18th Amendment, when the town of Springfield decides to not reinstate prohibition, but they found that the town charter has always prohibited alcohol, and so they decided to enforce that.

0:32:29.1 Michael Cannon: And it came after St. Patrick’s Day and a lot of drunken tomfoolery. But they demonstrated in that episode, all of the negative, almost all of the negative, unintended consequences of prohibition, including when Homer said that at first I thought prohibition was a good thing. People were drinking more and having a lot more fun. So there’s that unintended consequence of prohibition. There was also the corruption of the police. There was a funny exchange between Fat Tony and Rex Banner, the Eliot Ness like figure who came to clean up Springfield or enforce prohibition. Where Fat Tony says, “Alright, you win. From now on, we’ll stick to smuggling heroin.” And Rex Banner, the policeman says, “See that you do.”

0:33:18.7 Michael Cannon: Because that’s another effect of, unintended an effect of prohibition is, when you prohibit certain substances, psychoactive, or what have you, substances that people want to put in their bodies, you create an incentive for them to make those substances more potent so that they’re more easily concealable. And also, as it happens, more dangerous. They go through all sorts of unintended consequences of prohibition in that episode before they realize, before at the end, at the end, Marge Simpson gives a very inspirational speech where she says, “All my husband did was violate a law that doesn’t make sense.” And then she makes a really interesting cost-​benefit calculus. She says, “Now I’ll admit, car crashes and fistfights have been down recently, but prohibition has cost us our freedom, our freedom to drink.” And so when you talk about unintended consequences that episode is a tour de force of that Hayekian lesson about unintended consequences. And I also think, as I said, it’s probably the most libertarian episode of The Simpsons.

0:34:36.5 Chris Freiman: So I have a couple of thoughts. First, this is not really Simpsons related, this is just kind of a musing. It’s not necessarily amusing, but it’s a musing where in movies and TV where they’re, if you travel back into the past they say don’t swat a mosquito ’cause it could be really bad. ‘Cause it could change the future, or the present, I guess. But I swat mosquitoes in the present, and that doesn’t seem morally problematic, but that’s gonna alter the future and unintended… So why is it worse to go back into the past and swat a mosquito than doing it in the present? I don’t know. I feel like they could both have unintended consequences.

0:35:13.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Mind blowing.

0:35:14.0 Chris Freiman: But yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. We gotta ask Conan O’Brien that I guess.

0:35:15.6 Michael Cannon: ‘Cause the victims already exist or something?

0:35:20.4 Chris Freiman: Maybe.

0:35:22.5 Michael Cannon: Whenever I think about time travel I’ve ruined it for myself and everybody else because I always ask the question, okay, you can travel through time, but if you do that the Earth’s not gonna be in the same place it was when you left. And so you’re gonna be floating away in space wherever you go unless you’re also really precise… Unless you can also travel through space really precisely. So yeah, I ruin it.

0:35:50.3 Landry Ayres: Physicists, make sure to respond to us on Twitter. I want this fact-​checked.

0:35:54.6 Natalie Dowzicky: Hey, but according to this, according to The Simpsons, average citizens can now go into space, so we should be fine. In Deep Space Homer.

0:36:00.5 Chris Freiman: Well, and actually if I could follow up too on the prohibition thing, one thing that I thought was really nicely illustrated by that episode, and I actually have to put a plug in for the Institute for Liberal Studies. So I actually taught a couple of weeks worth of seminars on The Simpsons and politics. And so I came super, I was super well prepared for this. And we watched that episode for that seminar. And one thing that really stuck out is how it illustrates the Baptists and bootleggers dynamic, which was of course part of a driving force of prohibition itself. Where you have, I think it was literally Helen Lovejoy is “Won’t somebody think of the children. They’re getting drunk. It’s terrible.” There are these moralisers who want prohibition. And then of course you have the people who profit off of the prohibition, like Homer in this episode. And of course, this was actually the dynamic in prohibition in the United States. And I think they did a really good job of actually nailing how that works.

0:37:00.7 Michael Cannon: It still is the dynamic in the United States. And as was illustrated again in popular culture by the show Breaking Bad, and how one of the drug kingpins there was, pretended to be one of the Baptists trying to get drugs off the streets because he knew that it was good for business. Prohibition was good for business.

0:37:24.6 Natalie Dowzicky: I just thought it was downright hilarious that they were smuggling the beer into the house in bowling balls. I just… It didn’t make any sense to me. I was like, “of all things, why?” But hey, it worked.

0:37:38.4 Michael Cannon: But one more observation about that episode, something that, and anyways this is another libertarian theme. But it didn’t even occur to me, maybe at first, however many times I saw it, and I’ve seen this episode a number of times, and it didn’t occur to me until I was reviewing it for this show. But there’s a very, very harsh critical judgment that The Simpsons embedded into that episode about people who want to limit other people’s freedom. And it came from Rex Banner right after Marge gives her brief speech about how prohibition has cost us our freedom, the freedom to drink. Rex Banner says, “Now hold on a minute, Missy. It’s not up to us to choose which laws we want to obey. If it were I’d kill everyone who looked at me cockeyed.” I didn’t realize it until this most recent time that I watched that episode that they’re portraying this prohibitionist as a psychopath. This is someone who, if unrestrained by law, would go around killing people. And maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it seemed like a deliberate choice to portray prohibitionists as having these sorts of impulses.

[music]

0:38:55.0 Natalie Dowzicky: So I feel like a lot of times when people are talking about The Simpsons nowadays about episodes from the past, they’re always talking about how The Simpsons predicted real life, and how that’s a big thing. [chuckle] So off the top of your head, how many… Can you think of how many times The Simpsons has predicted real life?

0:39:15.0 Chris Freiman: It’s a lot. So the one that stands out is they predicted the Trump presidency pretty far in advance. I think part of it is just… So they… It’s 34 years or something. So like 34 years and 20-​plus episodes a season, you think how many minutes of The Simpsons has been on TV, and they gotta get something, they’re saying so much stuff, they just gotta… They gotta get some of the predictions right, and those are the ones that stick out. But yeah, the Trump one I think was really the big one that Lisa inherited a big debt from President Trump in one of the flash forward episodes.

0:39:58.1 Michael Cannon: I think this is a fascinating area for scholarly inquiry into what did The Simpsons get right about the future or… But I think it’s a mistake to call these things predictions. They were not predicting a President Trump. What they were trying to do was come up with an outrageous scenario in the future, so outrageous that it would make people laugh, and not just laugh, laugh a lot. And the most outrageous thing they could come up with is this clown from New York becoming the President of the United States, because yeah, you could kinda see how it would have happened, but that would just be insane. And then it happened. So you can look back and say, “Oh, they predicted it.” They were not sitting there saying, “We think Donald Trump is gonna become the President.” Maybe they were saying… And that would be insane if it happened.

0:40:48.6 Michael Cannon: Maybe they were saying the political system is so screwy, and political collective decision-​making is so irrational and dangerous that Donald Trump, someone like Donald Trump could end up President. But I think it’s more… It’s important to recognize that they were not predicting this, they were just trying to come up with an outrageous scenario, and the political system happened to match it.

[music]

0:41:18.5 Landry Ayres: I have, I think what is gonna be a tough question for some of you, when is it gonna be time to say goodbye? Has it already happened? Is there a time where you’re like, “It should have ended here”, and just forget the rest?

0:41:33.8 Michael Cannon: Easiest question ever, because Troy McClure has already answered it when he said, “Who knows what sorts of shenanigans they’ll get into between now and the time the show becomes unprofitable.” That’s when The Simpsons are gonna end. And they even made fun of themselves, they made fun of the cancellation of their own series years in advance because… By admitting this is what’s gonna make it happen.

0:41:58.3 Chris Freiman: What’s… So I might be wrong about this, but I seem to remember one of the joke episodes that Troy McClure references is like grandpa getting married or something like that was one of the… And the joke episodes actually became real episodes like 30 years down the line from that. So maybe that’s an indication that it’s time. Although, honestly, at this point, I say keep it going, and I’ll tell you why. So the time to have ended it would have been after season eight or nine, I think, but now that it’s been rolling for so long, I feel like we just gotta keep it going, and it’s like a tradition, so I watch it now with my kids. And this goes back to the earlier point about, is it scandalous to let a seven-​year-​old watch The Simpsons? I let my seven and nine-​year-​olds watch The Simpsons and it’s great. And I would like for them to be able to watch The Simpsons with their kids, new episodes with their kids in 20 years or whatever. So I feel like we’ve already… It’s way past its prime, so that ship has sailed, so just keep it going forever.

0:43:09.2 Michael Cannon: Similarly, I encourage my kids to watch The Simpsons, they’re 12 and eight right now, they’ve been watching The Simpsons for a couple of years. Initially, my wife said, “Should we really be letting them watch The Simpsons?” and my response was, “Oh hell yes, we should. Absolutely we should, there’s no question here they will watch The Simpsons.” So from… In one generation…

0:43:30.3 Natalie Dowzicky: This is the parenting hill I will die on. [laughter]

0:43:32.2 Michael Cannon: In one generation… And we went from, we have a kid who couldn’t watch The Flinstones to a father who was encouraging his kids to watch The Simpsons. And as a kid who graduated high school the same year that Fox launched The Simpsons series, so I like to think that I was the perfect age get hooked on Star Wars ’cause I saw that, I saw the original episode four in the theater at the age of five. I also think I caught The Simpsons wave at just the right time because I was a knuckle-​headed teenager when the series launched. And to be able now as a middle-​aged father of three to go home and hear my kids quote classic Simpsons episodes to me, I mean oh, oh, this is… And I would love for my kids to have the same experience with their kids and even with new episodes, if they’re able to keep the show profitable.

0:44:36.0 Landry Ayres: There’s a really great… There’s a video I watched about it. There’s a YouTuber named Jacob Geller who does like video essays and things like that, but he specifically has a video about, I think it’s in the 26th season or something like that, Don Hertzfeldt who’s an animator, who has done movies like World Of Tomorrow, and It’s Such A Beautiful Day, and really sort of strange abstract, sort of existential, sad animated movies, did an introduction for… Did basically the couch gag for one of the episodes in the 26th season, and it involves Homer picking up like a sci-​fi remote and hitting it and basically traveling through time, both backwards and forwards, and you see the characters and the couch gag devolve into these weird abstract, like Lovecraftian monsters of the future, and it gives the impression that The Simpsons has gone on forever, for hundreds and thousands of episodes into the future, [laughter] so much that they become The Sampsons at one point, and they just start spouting like gurgled versions of their catchphrases and stuff like that. And the video itself is a really sort of interesting contemplative meditation on what it means for these characters to, like a lot of sitcom characters do, learn lessons at the end of every story, and then pretty much forget them as soon as it’s over, which is a very common trope in sitcoms. It helps keeps them consistent, and things like that.

0:46:20.1 Landry Ayres: But with the scale of time that The Simpsons has been on, the fact that you’re having these people living seemingly eternally at this point and not learning from their lessons permanently is a really interesting sort of thought experiment on what it means to take your memories with you and what’s the point of living a long life if you don’t get to keep what you’ve experienced. And it’s really kind of interesting to think about what these characters learn at the end of every episode and what they choose to carry on in their life and what’s worth leaving behind. And I highly recommend people go and watch it. And I think that there’s a heart-​warming message about living in the present and living for the now, and doing the best that you can in the moment that is embedded in the Simpsons, but you would not get from the text of the story. It’s from the repetitive sort of structure of it and what it’s meant over time that I think is really, really kind of cool.

0:47:31.1 Chris Freiman: I saw… I think this was a tweet from one of the writers responding to a fan. This also goes to the point about skewering the fans as well, I think The Simpsons really like to do that as well in the… But I think there was a fan who was complaining about continuity errors. So at one point Homer is in high school in the ’90s and he’s in high school in the late ’70s or whatever it is. And the writer, I don’t know if this was tongue-​in-​cheek or if he was being serious, but he said each episode is its own universe. And so this would be an explanation for why they never learn, because each episode is just its kind of self-​contained world and then the next episode you see, they’re actually different. And I will say too, maybe I shouldn’t even publicize this, but this is how old I am, when I started watching, I was like more or less Bart’s age, and now I’m Homer’s age. So I have lived the arc from Bart to Homer, and I hope I’ve learned more than the characters and internalized more of these lessons than the characters, but yeah, I myself have had all that time passed.

0:48:42.0 Michael Cannon: Which would make me the Grandpa Simpson of this episode. We were inching up to that. I figured I’d just make it explicit.

[laughter]

0:48:50.0 Natalie Dowzicky: I was curious, what are your kid’s favorite episodes are? Do you go back and watch earlier seasons or do you watch them like right now?

0:49:00.3 Chris Freiman: So, a couple of things. So my son, I was very proud when he made this observation. He says, “The new episodes have better drawings, but they’re not as funny,” and I thought, “That’s spot-​on.” The episode that both of my kids always like to return to is… What is it called? I think it’s called something like, “You Only Move Twice.” It’s the… Where… I’m forgetting all the… And like Hank Scorpio, I think is the guy where the Simpsons moved to the new town and it’s kind of like a James Bond parody, which is a pretty good episode… It’s not my favorite episode, but for some reason, my kids really like that one.

0:49:40.9 Michael Cannon: I think my boys like the show more than my daughter does, and they gravitate toward the episodes where Bart is at his most puckish or pluckish. And so the one that I most often hear about from them is “Bart versus Australia” and they love the part where Bart plays the adults for fools right in front of their faces, right after he told them he is going to do it, and they don’t even notice. It comes when they explained to Bart that he’s gonna have to go to Australia and apologize for a collect call that cost some Australian family thousands of dollars or something, and he said, “All I have to do is go to Australia and give a phony apology? I’m great at phony apologies.” And Marge says, “Bart!” and he says, “I’m sorry.” My son frequently quotes that one back to me, I think that’s his favorite episode.

0:50:42.5 Landry Ayres: Like Bart’s shirt said, “Adults suck, then you become one.”

[laughter]

0:50:49.1 Michael Cannon: And one thing we haven’t talked about on how long it’s gonna go on, what happens when they lose IP protection? And then anyone can create a Simpsons t-​shirt or episode…

0:50:58.5 Natalie Dowzicky: It’s gonna be one of those Mickey Mouse scenarios [chuckle] where they just keep changing it.

0:51:02.0 Landry Ayres: The Simpsons cinematic universe is what’s gonna happen.

0:51:05.5 Michael Cannon: Yeah, they’re gonna keep extending the copyright so that they can keep milking that cow.

[music]

0:51:12.9 Landry Ayres: And now for the time in the show where we get to share all of the other things that we’ve been enjoying with our time at home. This is [0:51:19.5] ____. So Cannon, Chris, what else have you been watching, reading, playing, doing with your free time other than devouring Simpsons?

0:51:28.8 Michael Cannon: So right now I’m sort of… I’m not quite in-​between shows. I’m waiting on each new Ted Lasso, waiting with bated breath, because I made the mistake of not waiting until the season was over, or the series was over, and then binging, and so now I’m in this weird place where it feels like it’s the 1990s again where I have to wait for the right day of the week for a show to come out. On the other hand, it’s not really a mistake because Ted Lasso is just really that good. And in this… What are we, in the second season now? There’s a turn that I think some viewers have criticized, but that just makes me like the show that much more, and so I’m loving it. And I think I’m actually… I think I got a… I’m a show behind. I got a notification at 12:30 AM this morning that today’s… Today, we’re recording on a Friday, that today’s episode is available, and so I’m very excited to see that. But I’m also excited to hear what other people are watching because I don’t have something to binge right now.

0:52:36.3 Chris Freiman: I’ve never… I’ve heard very good things about it, but I’ve never seen it, so I don’t… But it’s on Apple TV, right? See, this is the thing, the proliferation of the streaming services, I can’t keep up, although that… So I did… And this actually I think maybe speaks to the original question. So I did sort of surrender and get the HBO’s streaming service, and so I’ve been watching some shows on that, and they’re actually older shows but I think they’re underrated, and so I’ll give you two. One is Reno 911, which is just really, really fun. I had forgotten how funny it was until I started re-​watching it. The first couple of seasons in particular are just great. So I highly recommend that. The other one that I would recommend is The Larry Sanders Show, which is also hilarious, and it’s kind of ahead of its time. So it’s about this guy, he’s like a late night talk show host, but as far as I know, it was one of the first shows that did it documentary style.

0:53:41.6 Chris Freiman: So it’s not quite like The Office where they have interviews, but it’s kind of like Arrested Development or Curb Your Enthusiasm where it’s kinda like shot in that style, and it’s just… It’s super, super funny, and it was funny throughout the entirety of the five or six seasons or whatever it was. And those are both on HBO, and they’re quite binge-​worthy. So if you do have that service, I would recommend both The Larry Sanders Show and Reno 911.

0:54:11.5 Michael Cannon: If I can jump in on the HBO part, I started watching Hacks, which is an older Joan Rivers-​type comedian, who’s sort of the queen of Vegas, and that is enjoyable, it’s fun, it’s funny, kind of bubblegum. I wouldn’t say it’s a Ted Lasso, but if you’re looking for something, you might check that out.

0:54:35.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, I just watched Sharp Objects on HBO. It was good. I mean it’s pretty dark. It’s based off of a book by the same name, and it’s the author who also did Gone Girl. Yeah. So it’s like, it’s kind of dark like Gone Girl, but a completely different story and narrative. So I watched that, it was good. I haven’t read that book though. And then I also watched, it’s on Hulu, but I watched Nine Perfect Strangers. I had read the book. The show wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, I thought the book was much better, but it does have kind of an all-​star cast, it has Nicole Kidman in it, Melissa McCarthy, I’m blanking on some of the other people, but pretty much all of the strangers on Nine Perfect Strangers are famous actors. And then I just started Clickbait, which is that new Netflix show that was trending for a while. I’m only one episode in, so I don’t really know what the big twist is, but the first episode ended on a cliffhanger, so we’ll see.

0:55:41.5 Natalie Dowzicky: It kind of eerily reminded me of Don’t F With Cats, because it’s based on the power of social media in the sense that it has a very hidden message. But Don’t F with Cats was a documentary, Clickbait is not. But it’s good so far. And on the book front, I just started Outsiders by Stephen King, and that is also an HBO show, I believe it’s an HBO show, but we’ll see. I love a good Stephen King book, so…

0:56:14.3 Landry Ayres: I am also week-​to-​week with Ted Lasso, made the same mistake of binging the first season, and then hopping on as soon as season two started. So it’s a week-​to-​week event at this point, but like I said before, I really like it. I made that same mistake and I actually just got to the point where I’m episode to episode with another show that, based on some of your recommendations, both of you, that I think you would both like, which is FX’s What We Do in the Shadows. It is so funny and I love it. So Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords co-​wrote a short film and later a movie that then they’ve remade into a now sort of a serial episodic series for FX, a single-​cam documentary-​style series, a la The Office with interviews and stuff, but it’s about vampires that live in Staten Island, and there’s three or four of them that are roommates in this big old abandoned mansion, and one of them has a human familiar that he keeps as like a servant that he sort of has this weird relationship with.

0:57:32.1 Landry Ayres: It is so funny, because they’re fearsome vampires that will drink your blood and are vicious killers, but they’re also of course, like any comedy, inept at most things and just do not understand the modern world because they don’t go out during the day when people do things. I highly recommend it. They’re very tightly-​paced episodes, like 22 minutes or something like that. There is never a dull moment, never does a joke go on too long, and everybody is just hitting it 10 out of 10, performance-​wise. And there’s great cameos. There are… I think they’re in the third season now, which is airing, but the first two seasons are 10 episodes each, so good.

[music]

0:58:25.1 Landry Ayres: Thanks for listening. As always, the best way to get more Pop & Locke content is to follow us on Twitter. You can find us at the handle @PopnLockePod. That’s Pop, the letter N, Locke with an E, like the philosopher, Pod. Make sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen as well. We look forward to unravelling your favorite show or movie next time. Pop & Locke is produced by me, Landry Ayres, and is co-​hosted by Natalie Dowzicky. We’re a project of Lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. To learn more, visit us on the web at www​.lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org.