This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com. Host hey, everybody. My name is Seth Meyers, and it's very exciting. This is the first episode of a new podcast that I'm doing with three very old friends of mine. And earlier today, they sent me this intro and asked me to read it word for word as they wrote it. In 2005, three gentlemen arrived in New York City, not just to change the fortunes of Saturday Night Live, but to change the course of comedy history. Their names. I'm not going to insult your intelligence. You know their names. But if you just woke up from a 17 year coma, they answered it. Andy Yorma and Akiva. Aka. Aka. That's how you wrote it. Aka. The Lonely island.

That's how we wrote it.

That's how we wrote it. We don't play by anybody's rules.

Thank you for getting it typo correct.

It's the Lonely island and Seth Meyers podcast. So I started at SNL in 2001, four very nice years at the show before you guys showed up. And you showed up with a lot of other wonderful people that we'll talk about over the course of this podcast. But I genuinely mean this. I'm being sincere. The tone of the show had a major shift in the right direction and started a really delightful era of the show when you guys showed up.

I agree.

And you had a really nice thing going for you. You showed up and you knew each other.

Can I just interject before we really get into the meat and potatoes of this?

Yeah, but can you just introduce yourself?

It's me, Andy Samberg from the lowly island.

Okay, great.

Seth Meyer's former cast mate.

Thank you.

I just want to say, before we get going, shouldn't we, like, celebrate a little that we're starting like, a huge podcast together and, like, who ride a little bit on the mic?

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good.

We'll add that later.

Yeah.

It's just nice to see you guys.

Faces and then for no one else to see us.

Just don't wanna be like, yeah, well.

It'S the first podcast. Yeah. You've had the least enthusiasm for this in all the planning, and now immediately you're coming up.

I've never wanted to do this. I'm just saying, now that we're forcing people to listen, should we make it kind of fun?

Like, hey, welcome to the party, motherfucker. Yeah.

And who ride?

Yeah, we got a hoo ride. Yeah.

All right, a little bit more morning radio kind of energy.

Welcome back to four shock jocks. All right, we should note that we have not figured out the name for this podcast yet, but Yorma is pushing very hard that it should be four shock shocks.

I have figured it out, and it's called four shock shocks.

Tell us why you like the name.

Yeah, well, Andy, all the other names were taken. It's because this thing plays sound effects. That's why.

What is it that you have that plays sound effects?

You have it in front of you, too. It's called the zoom piece. It's the thing that the podcast company gave us.

And yorm, of course, already figured it out.

Me and Akiva did.

Oh, man, we all have access to that.

Yeah, it's annoying as fuck.

Yeah, it's a nightmare. Now, before we got on here, when we were tech checking, you were mentioning that this felt a lot like Spider man the musical. And when they were in kind of previews and figuring stuff out. Seth. And then you were going to tell me something about when you saw Spider man the musical before it started.

Oh, right. People, this might already be lost to history, but in the early rows, tons of Spider man turn off the dark. Is that what it was called? A lot of spider Men were falling from the rafters and hurting themselves super bad. And living in New York City at the time. That was pretty much all the New York Post was writing about is how many Spider Men were falling and hurting themselves. I wrote way too many sketches about it. I was completely enamored with the story that people were hurting themselves, especially just people dressed like Spider man hurting themselves in Broadway theaters. I wrote a sketch for Fred called Gublin in Green, where he was a lawyer who only that seems possible, dealt with personal injuries. That happened at burn off the dark.

Yep.

And then I got an email that seemed like a joke email that it wasn't. I got an email from Bono.

Yes.

Inviting me to. This is not a joke. Inviting me to the premiere of Spider man. Turn off the joke. Turn off the dark. That said something along the lines of.

He wanted you to turn off the jokes.

Well, that's what he said. He's like, something along the lines of, like, you've had your fun, you've told your jokes, now come see the real thing.

Thinking, like, once you see it, you'll understand there's nothing to joke about.

Right. Cause people are genuinely hurting themselves.

Go see it.

I did. I went to opening night, and my memory of opening night of Spider man turned off the dark, which I should say went smoothly. And none of the Spider Men, none of the green goblins, none of the audience, everybody walked out as they entered.

You're saying you went to a Broadway show and there were zero deaths?

There was zero. I mean, I will say half of the audience, and I'm not gonna say which half I was in, I think was a little bummed out that nobody fell from the rafters. But you guys remember Hal Wilner, rest in peace. Absolutely incredible. SNL. What was his specific title?

I don't know what.

Hal's some version of music music guru, music superhero. He was a guy, if you needed a sketch, scored. Hal had this sort of encyclopedic knowledge of music. He was also an incredible record producer. He had the coolest friends in the world. He was this kind of New York icon who was friends with people from Lou Reed to Jarvis Cocker to everybody. He was at the opening, and I remember his son was sitting directly behind me. And his son was maybe eight or nine years old, let's say. And the funny thing about Spider man is a Broadway musical is it's still got to tell the Spider man story. And so Green Goblin, he's singing a song about how he's going to go into this machine to give him superpowers. And what you don't know if you've never seen anything about Spider man is that he's going to come out and be evil. And he walks into this giant machine, and this eight year old behind me, Hal, sun, just goes, this isn't a good idea. Destroyed everybody within earshot. It was their laugh of the night. This eight year old appreciating that Green Goblin was making a bad decision.

Why can't he see that this is gonna go bad?

He's literally singing a song about power and how much he wants it. Has he not read the greek myths after that? Yeah.

What happened?

Did you make fun of the show again afterwards? Publicly?

Was Bono there? Cause it'd be great if he didn't show up.

I think Bono was. Bono must have been at opening night.

Wasn't one of the give up the smooches about that, or am I thinking of something else?

I do feel like we have to take three giant steps back for our listeners.

You don't think that's household name stuff?

The very fact that you're referring to the give up the smooches as a recurring thing that an audience.

I don't know what that is.

I don't either.

Even you guys, two out of three of the lonely island don't know what give up the smooches are.

Well, yeah, they didn't care for my live stuff. They were just focused on the shorts.

Yeah, that's true.

This is very true. They only had respect for pre taped bits.

We were busy.

Give up the smooch. Was Andy in a full rigging where he had to hang upside down and come down from the rafters? It was an update feature, right?

Yeah. Update feature. Yeah.

Basically, your head was next to mine, and you kept trying to get me to kiss you.

Do the upside down smooch.

How do we not remember this?

You were probably editing, but you were.

Dressed like spider man without the mask.

He had the mask. Right. And then you pulled it up.

Pulled it down to do the smooch.

Yeah.

Like Tobey Maguire style classic. I didn't know how to title.

I guess it was Seth, give up the smooch.

Give up the smooch was your catchphrase in this sketch that required so much rehearsal.

I think I wrote it with Rob Klein. In fact, I know I did.

Yeah, you definitely wrote it with Rob Klein. And now it was deeply uncomfortable to hang upside down, correct?

Well, yes. The funny thing was, I kept writing things for myself where I hung upside down. Cause we did upside down Spider man for the Emma Stone monolog as well. And we also did an update feature about the guy who got hung up on the ski lift.

Oh. Where his pants fell down.

Who fell out of the ski lift but didn't fall down off it. His, like, leg was wrapped around it. So basically, basically, me and Klein kept writing stuff for me to be upside down. But every time we did it, they would always send me up, like, ten minutes before the thing, so I'd be upside down listening to you guys doing. Listening to you, mostly doing update jokes. And by the time they lowered me down, all the blood had, like, rushed into my head. So my face was, like, engorged. And by the time the feature was over, they'd bring me back down, and my eyes would have, like, capillaries exploded all in them. And in the next sketch, I would look like I was, like, on meth.

You remember, too, how Ken Amon would always tell you that whenever anybody had to be rigged on the show upside down, it was like the Flying Wallendas. It was like a famous family that did the rigging for every Broadway show.

Oh, leave it to Ken to reference that.

It was like, this is showbiz history, Pally. Also, by the way, you think it's bad for you, it was not my favorite to tell update jokes knowing that you were hanging above me like sort of damocles. Yeah.

By the way, especially with all the Spider man musical stuff happening, I was like, if they are falling, well, also.

You really gotta knock on wood if you're gonna joke on the fact that they're falling. And in order to joke on it, you gotta rig yourself up.

Karmically speaking, I was owed a fall.

Yeah.

It's amazing how sexy that can be in Spider man and how probably unsexy it was to shoot, I would think.

For Toby, the movie, they just like, rig up Toby for 1 second and they're like, go, go, go.

We should call him.

I do think that a list I want to keep running for this podcast in our early nascent stages is guests we want to have on to answer really short questions.

That's great.

So, Toby, just to explain real quick how long he had to be upside down.

Okay, well, yeah, ask him the one question. He goes like five minutes.

Okay. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on, Toby. And then ideally, get him to do a live ad for us.

Long intro music, long outro music.

Can we start a list?

Yeah. So we're gonna have long guests, but I also wanna have short guests, which are tops. Two questions.

I have two ideas for long guests.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Nia Long. Justin Long.

I thought you were gonna say snoop duck.

That sucks.

Howie Long.

Great.

Yep.

Seth, I gotta say, like, for your intro for this, I get sort of jealous thinking about the time you didn't spend with us.

Oh, you shouldn't be. How? I genuinely mean it. I mean, for me, the first four years before you guys showed up, not because you weren't there yet, but that was my most fraught time at the show because I didn't feel like I knew what I was doing yet. So it was a fun time to be in New York City, but you guys showed up right about the time where I finally felt like I had some footing on the show, so I was a lot more fun to be around.

Wait, wait. What year did you feel like that kicked over? Because I remember my second year going up an elevator with Emily Spivey, who I consider like a vet. Like, she was a veteran writer who was getting, like, two to three pieces on every week, and I was having, like, a panic attack in the elevator going up 17. And I was like, when does this end? And she was like, oh, it never ends.

Yeah, I think my second year you guys were there, I started doing update and felt a little better.

That'll do it.

Whereas the first year you guys were there. I think it was the flop sweatiest year I had, because not just Andy, but also Bill Sudeikis first years for those guys.

Three male whites.

Three male whites. And I was barely holding on. As a male white, I already felt like I was in third position behind Fred and Forte.

Right?

And then all of a sudden, I'm not even sniffing the podium as far as I was, like, outside chance as a bronze medalist for best male white. But it was rough. And also, I really liked writing for all you guys more than I liked writing for me. And I had this realization of, oh, if I don't like writing for me.

It's so funny. The perception for everyone is completely different, though. Cause no one ever thinks they're on solid ground except for, like, two people. And for us, I was like, oh, Seth gets something in tapas show every week.

Yeah. Yeah.

I always thought of you as just like, oh, he's killing it.

But tapa show was a little different, because sometimes, I don't know, I felt like a lot of cold opens that were serviceable. You know what I mean? They weren't things I.

You know what Akiva always liked to say?

What's that?

Top of show is top of co.

Oh, top of co.

It's always top of.

Oh, yeah, you did. Oh, that brings back the memories.

And I'd be like, oh, it's not quite a nested rhyme.

Yeah. That was your criticism of it.

I'd be like, yeah, but it works.

The more I say it, the more people agree.

That's right.

I will say this. I don't remember what year it was. I went into Lauren's office and said something about what I thought was wrong with update when I was hosting it, and Lauren said, update's the least of my problems. And he didn't say, it's not a problem. But there was something about him saying it was the least of his problems, where I think, oh, look at me.

Teacher'S pet.

Looks like I might be not. But that speaks to the fact that you're never on firm footing. You're just, like, not the biggest problem in his world, right? Look at me.

You just sucked less than everything else sucked at that moment.

Yeah, no, it's always just like, well, I won't get fired this week.

How was your day, honey? Let's just say I'm the least of.

Lauren's problems, and he's got a lot of them. His house in Amagansett has squirrels. I had a weird path, because when you write a sketch on SNL you have to be under the bleachers with Lorne. And because I was a cast member first, it wasn't until my fifth year that I wrote something where then I was under the bleachers. Because almost everything I wrote I was in. And it was so jarring to be under there and realize, oh, this is why writers are always in a terrible mood. Like, I thought actors had it bad because if you're sketch bombed, you bombed in front of the audience. But it wasn't as bad.

No, there's nothing quite like bombing in.

Front of Lauren and just, yeah, yeah.

If cast heard what was said about them, they would quit the business.

So Alex Baze, who took over update after Doug Amos and now is the head writer for late night, he did the thing you're not supposed to do, but it was so funny he had to do it, which is he basically shared a awful thing Lauren said about me during a weekend update, which is really funny. Cause I realize now we do a thing on our show called a closer look, which is sort of our signature piece. Amy had left and I was trying to figure out a new kind of really thing to do. And I had a magnifying glass and it was called a closer look. And I spoke with a Sherlock Holmesy accent and basically took a closer look at something. And after it finished, Lorne turned to Baze and said, burn the tape. You gotta just tip your cap to that. Yeah, burn the tape is a really good.

You gotta take some swings, though.

You gotta take some swings. So as the maybe proxy host of the show, I do wanna keep things moving. The goal to our listeners, I do wanna say the goal of this is to go through the digital shorts over the years. But before we get to that, let's talk real quick. And guys, I've heard it before. It's not the best story, but tell everybody how you met.

Well, Keeves been pretty quiet. I think it's his turn.

Yeah.

Keev, jump off.

Yeah, kev, you take off.

Oh, geez.

How fast can I get through it? But pretty fast, right? It's just we all grew up in Berkeley, California. We went to the public schools. Me and Yorm met in 7th grade at Willard junior High. And Andy was a grade younger, although not in years, just more like maybe got held back. I don't know.

Yorm is over a year older than me.

Okay.

I'm the most mature.

So we met him when we were in 8th and he's in 7th. But me and Jorm became friends in 7th and then all of us became friends in 11th grade. Really?

My 10th. You're 11th again. I'm younger. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, calendar year, you're not a year younger than me. But once again, I don't know how that happened. Probably held back, I'm gonna guess. Right.

And we get a lot of the same references that yorm is a little aged out of.

That's right.

I was a big snorks guy growing up.

Exactly. Whereas Jorm was more into snorks.

Yeah. You know?

Yeah. The thing about the snorks era is it had a hard out.

Yeah, hard out.

Basically, between grades, there was no bleed.

No bleed on the snorks.

No, they canceled it, and that was it.

The snorks. Can I jump in? I'm going to interrupt your narrative real quick.

Yeah.

I think the snorks were the first thing as a kid that I realized was a knockoff.

Yes, yes, yes. I think for all of us, we were like, well, this is a rip off. I like it, but this is.

Oh, yeah, I'm gonna watch it, but I don't respect it.

Like, eight years old.

Yeah, that's pretty shitty. I can't believe you're doing the Smurfs like this. But I do like my snorks.

But Astro's a charming guy.

Do you have a favorite thing that's clearly a knockoff?

Ooh, that's a great question. Yeah.

Gobots, right?

Oh, yeah.

Where gobots were second, I think I just researched and found out that they were first, but in my mind, they were second.

And were the ripoffs for me? Transformers?

Yes, I guess.

Transformers.

The famous ripoff of gobots.

What a knockoff.

Wait, there's no way Gobots was first.

All right, so this is, again, we're in the lab, so to speak. That's our question for the next episode. Everybody has to come up with their favorite knockoff.

Oh, I like that. Is that engaging social?

Yeah.

Oh, that's smart.

We will get the answer really quickly.

When you guys tell me. I want you to preface it with hashtag knockoff.

Oh, that's really good.

All right, so you guys met in high school during the snorks era. When did you guys realize you were collaborators? When did you move to LA? All at once together?

All at once. In 2000. Joram had lived there. Cause he went to UCLA. Then me and Keev both did film in college. They both somehow took a year off. So we all graduated at the same time again. I'm a year younger. Full year younger.

You're NYU, Andy.

I graduated from NYU. Yeah.

You're Santa Cruz, Keev.

Me and Keev hung at Santa Cruz, though. Cause I went Santa Cruz my first two years. This is interesting. And then we all had made, like, video and film projects, was doing acting, and he acted in Keeves stuff. And we met back up in the summer after we all graduated and showed each other the stuff we had made. And we were like, oh, I see. We're all dumbasses. Let's work together since we're already friends and we want to do the same thing. And we took a picture at Yoram's house that we still have.

We could put that in the show notes.

Yeah, the evening.

I always hear podcasts, always talk about show notes.

There is an evening where we met.

Well, we put that in the show.

I'm trying to tell the fucking story. Piece of shit.

I want to ask Seth if we have show notes.

Stop asking about the shows. I always hear about show notes. We can do show notes. Keith. Story has ever been told. All right, keep going, Andy.

I gotta say, if anyone actually turned this on, they already know this story probably, right?

Yeah.

No, I mean, I guess not. They might be just setheads.

That's true. Do you think the Seth heads at this point are a little worried about the lack of politics?

Possibly.

What I do know they want is our three opinion on politics of the day.

Yeah.

When you go full politics and mix it with zero politics, I guess you end up with, like, a little bit.

Yeah. This is, I think, a good level, which is zero. So you moved to LA.

I'll take it from here. So we took this photo at my.

Mom'S house, which will be in the show notes.

Exactly. And it was the three of us making a decision to go down to Los Angeles altogether. We all moved into my super shitty, tiny apartment on the west side of Los Angeles. Then I went on vacation, and these guys looked for houses for two weeks. I was in Hawaii with my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife. But they found an awesome apartment on Fairfax and Olympic that Akiva ended up dubbing the Lonely island.

We went with it. So credit to us.

Yeah, more credit to us for approving Akiva's idea.

It's not a good name.

And hopefully we'll find a name for this podcast in the same organic way.

Burn the tapes.

Burn the tapes.

You'll also find that this repeats, too, of me and Andy approving Keev's great ideas.

Yeah. And then taking credit for being the approvers.

Not overtly, but just sometimes by being the face of the operation. Getting credit.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

So now you're making videos.

Yeah, we're all temping. Like, really, really shitty temp jobs in Los Angeles.

Who was the worst temp of the three of you?

That's really hard. I think both me and Andy were probably tied. I got fired three times.

I got fired a lot. What did you get fired for?

I got fired from a BMW dealership on the west side of Los Angeles for printing my resume for another job.

That's more fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was just late as shit every day, no matter where I was.

Yeah, I got fired for being late once. And then our best firing story was that we would constantly take shittier temp jobs for shittier pay if we could all work together. So we got a job working for Fox, making Christmas ornaments. It was just in a warehouse where we were tying ribbons onto silver stars for Fox employees. And I think we were getting paid, like, $7 an hour.

Not bad.

And then about 45 minutes into our morning, a woman came over to us and was like, okay, I need you to sit over here. And then I need you to sit over here. We were like, wait, I'm sorry, are we in fucking camp?

We were being separated.

And then we were like, no, no, no. The only reason we took this job is because we wanted to talk to each other. And she was like, well, that's not gonna work for us. Cause you guys aren't working well enough. We were like, we think we're working better, actually. And then she was like, well, you guys can leave if you don't wanna separate. And we're like, okay, great.

Well, you're missing one key detail.

Which is what?

She said, if you don't like it, you can leave. And we went, hmm, what time is it? And we checked our watch, and we were like, they're still serving McDonald's breakfast.

So we quit.

We took our hour long $7, and.

We went and got McDonald's breakfast. That was the deciding factor.

Yeah, when you made the decision based on that, she probably didn't think, I can't believe I let him get away. The Lonely island and Seth Meyers podcast is supported by Airbnb. Hey, Yorm.

Yes.

I want to tell you real quick about a trip I took at an Airbnb in Pittsburgh. We got there. My family was there. You know, we love sports. My family.

You guys are nuts for sports.

The personal touches were really nice. There were old Steelers newspaper articles, framed. Pirates articles framed. But also a big old picture of Mister Rogers and another big old picture of Wiz Khalifa.

That is everything. Pittsburgh. That is a black and yellow Airbnb.

And it made our visit very personal. And this is just a shout out to anybody who might be listening thinking, hey, my home has personal touches. People who visited my town might want to stay there. You might as well just go over to Airbnb and see what your hosting opportunities are and you can enjoy it as much as I enjoyed it, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com. Host this show is sponsored by Betterhelp. Hey, Jorm. Yes, we talk a lot on this podcast about a very special time in our life where we were just drained, emotionally, physically, on empty.

Are you talking about right now? Cause that's where I'm at, Seth.

Well, I was talking about the past. The past is often present with you, Jorm.

It is.

That's what I'm always saying.

I think a lot of people we knew back in the day, and a lot of those same people now have used therapy as a helpful tool for those days when you're feeling drained, when you feel like you have no energy for the things that are important to you. And Betterhelp is a great option for anyone who's looking for somebody to talk to. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge.

Seth, if they wanted to talk to you personally and just get it all out, could they?

No, I am not available nor licensed.

Okay.

But fortunately, Betterhelp is. Find your social sweet spot with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp.com island today to get 10% off your first month. That's Betterhelp. Help.com island. You're in LA, you're making short videos. They're airing. What was that show where they would show videos every week? Channel something.

Yeah, airing is not really the right word for it, but it was almost like a mini film festival each month where 200 people would get together to show each other their videos. Channel 101, which was created by Dan Harmon and Rob Schraab.

Shout out Schrob and Harmon.

What's the path from you guys doing that to you guys writing for the movie awards?

We purposefully didn't take jobs specifically because a friend of ours had sort of gotten into the circuit of writing for sitcoms and then never got to do their own stuff. So we'd sort of seen like, oh, if you get into that world, sometimes that's the end, and you just start writing for other people. And so we always kind of wanted to do our own thing.

I was just talking about this the other day, and I think it was also on the naive idea that they would take away our specialness, and we would go be a cog in a machine, and we were 22 and self righteous and didn't realize you can go work on a sitcom for six years and then go be Charlie Kaufman, like, the most original writer of all time. In our minds, the moment we became corporate drones, we would disappear into the system.

Well, we're from Berkeley, so, you know.

I don't remember ever even talking about it.

We just would when we were so broke.

Did we get offered to write on shows, though? No, never.

That's what I'm saying. Like, we didn't get offered. Anyone even knew who we were. I think that's very nice of you to establish, Andy, for our industry listeners. Yeah, no, that no offer was made.

None offers.

Got it. We were literally, like, boogie nights, like, coked up in the attic. Like, and if they offer us jobs, you say no. Cause we got morals.

Does it count as principle that this never got road tested?

Yeah, but we couldn't afford coke.

Well, yeah, our friend got us a job on the movie awards, put us in touch with Joel Gallen and split a single writer check.

This should be noted for people not in showbiz. This is another reason why it was good that you guys didn't take a sitcom job. This weird thing where two people are allowed to be one writer.

They allowed us to be one writer. And I think that we got dollar 100 a day. And then after taxes, that covered, like.

A burrito, it was $1,000 a week. So we were getting dollar 333 each. And we already had gotten managers and agents that we were really proud that we had gotten agents and managers. So we were also paying them 20% of $333 a week each. I will point out that the MTV movie awards were a cool job at that point. Like, when we would look at previous scripts, it was like Wayne and show Walter had worked on it, and, like, Chris Henchy and John Glaser was there.

With us, and John Benjamin. They were both there.

That's right. That's right.

Yeah, it was a great show. I remember it being a show as a comedy person, you didn't want to miss, for sure.

I mean, there were very memorable things, like the Stiller stunt double with Tom Cruise thing was like a sketch that was not on a sketch show that everyone knows.

Yes. And MTV had super deep pockets then, so the sketches looked great.

Yeah, they looked amazing.

Yeah.

It was a lot of cutting people into the movies and stuff, and it.

Was just cool for us to be able to write for, like, actually cool famous people on these little pops. And I feel like first year, we barely got anything on.

It's also pre social media, so it was still rare to get to see movies get made fun of in any way.

Right.

And a bunch of famous people in one place, like, not in a movie or a show.

Yeah, that was still rare.

And you guys did it twice, though.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, we did the Lindsay Lohan.

Lindsay Lohan was first year, but then.

The second year is the big year. Cause Fallon hosts.

Correct. Fallon host brings shoemaker Higgins and a ton of SNL writers with him.

Right.

Including you.

No, no.

But you were just there the after.

Parties, I think maybe the first time we met, but I did not write on it.

I would have remembered if Seth was writing.

Yeah, right. But I feel like you were in town. I feel like we hung out in hotel rooms with a bunch of SNL writers while we were doing it.

And I feel like you were there 100%. And I remember Shoemaker, who, again, just to give people backstory, Shoemaker was a producer at SNL. We were all there. He's a name that's going to come up a ton. He's now the producer of this show. He's the best. For my money, there's no better friend to writers in television than Mike Schumacher.

Tell us why.

Because he just sees what you're good at and tells you what to do with your own skills as opposed to telling you that thing that other people do where they tell you sort of what's hot right now.

Yeah.

His thing is what you do is great. Here's how you should take what you do and make it the thing that's hot right now.

He is a wonderful person. He's also someone who can tell when people are spinning out, and he's good at telling them, you're worrying about the wrong thing, you're fine.

Yeah.

Which, especially at SNL, you just need someone to tell you that.

He also worked his way up from Pa. Right, at SNL.

He started in 1985. He was a script PA at SNL where writers would write sketches in 1985 on yellow legal pads. And then he just slowly worked his way up and I think, understood the bones of that place better than anybody.

When we first got hired, our first meeting was in Shoemaker's office with all the new writers that got hired. Right, keev, you were there. Andy wasn't there for this, but we were waiting for Tucker Bryant. Tucker. And I just remember meeting Shoemaker and being like, I can't believe this is our boss. Like, one of our bosses. Like, I was like, this dude is so fucking funny and great and, like, the nicest dude and have never changed my opinion of him.

Yeah, I feel like Shoemaker, and I always laugh that I would not have the career I have without shoemaker. And what works great is he tells everybody what to do. And if you listen, he loves you. If you listen, it goes great. I mean, he understood very early on what the best use of my skills were. I think he did with you guys as well. And people who sort of don't fight it have a pretty high percentage of winning as we go through these shorts.

He will come up a lot, especially right at the beginning because he was the main person encouraging us to keep doing them.

One last interesting thing about Shoemaker. I recently had dinner with him. It was supposed to be with him and Seth, but Seth had another baby, so he bailed.

It's true.

Classic.

And shoemaker, after a few drinks, confessed to me finally that even though he thought I was funny and Seth was funny, that his favorite comedian is Colin Quinn and everyone else sucks in comparison.

This is very true.

He's like, I get why you guys are good.

Schumacher has always put Quinn first.

Wait, that's real.

He's like, I get why you guys are good. But he's, for me, Quinn is my guy.

I was like, look, I get it.

I love Quinn.

Yeah.

When Quinn is on our show, it's the most heartbreaking thing because Shoemaker has a super recognizable laugh and he sits the same place every show I do. And when Quinn is on, Quinn gets like ten. Shoemaker laughs. And in my head I'm thinking, I think that's what I got in all of May.

He loves Quinn. I mean, Colin Quinn is super funny. We all love him. But I will say everybody that was at the show at the same time, time as him, like, they know the truth, that he's actually the funniest of all of them.

Not only is he the funniest, but he's so up Shoemaker's alley as a pure New York comedian. Because Shoemaker is pure New York. Yeah.

Yep.

So jumping ahead, you guys meet Shoemaker. He likes you guys. Andy, I remember some of what you did in your audition that got you hired. Do you remember your audition?

I do. I want to know what you remember.

Well, I remember watching audition it filled a huge hole because obviously at SNL, you're always looking for people who can play those who are in the news. And at the time, we didn't have a swedish chef. You have to remember from, like, 2001 to 2005 when the swedish chef was in the news.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if you remember, but, like, there was some weeks where it was conspicuous in its absence.

Yeah.

There's gonna be so many people who.

Have auditioned for this show who listen to this. They're like, what the fuck?

Oh, yeah, you did a swedish chef. If you auditioned for this show and didn't get it and you, like, over thought it and you were like, what do they need?

What do they look like?

Well, they don't want that.

I know they don't want that.

You really came in and basically said, fuck off.

Here's the thing. I'm a politico as established.

Yes. Yeah.

We all think that I didn't and still kind of don't follow the news.

That's probably better.

I mean, I watch a closer look from time to time.

Thank you, buddy.

Yeah, the old one that was in dress rehearsal that got cut.

Yeah.

The Sherlock Holmes one.

That's the one. Wait, that's. So when somebody says to you, I love Seth Meyer's closer looks, you're thinking of the magnifying glass.

Oh, you have access to that. Must be some dark web shit.

What was your swedish chef impression? How long did you do the swedish chef? I mean, we did them all at the time for each other or me and Andy.

You guys helped me write my audition, which was very nice.

Yeah.

You know who else helped me with my audition was Will. Frank Forte. For no reason other than just to be nice, like, fully help me workshop it.

That's classic.

Forte should be noted. Another name that will come up a great deal in this podcast. Genuinely one of the nicest, most selfless human beings to a fault, often to the detriment of the people who are currently with him. Yes.

If you go into a party, the deeper you go in with Will forte, you're not leaving with fucking Will Forte. Cause he's gonna say goodbye to every motherfucker on the way out.

Yeah.

Yep. But audition?

Yeah. What did you do?

Smorgityborg. You smorgity borged.

I smorgyborg.

Oh.

I think it was like a commercial for pop songs, but it was the swedish chef singing them. So it was basically just like the swedish chef doing in the air tonight by Phil Collins. And I think I did, like a long wind up to the, like.

Better than I remember.

Yeah.

So wait, Andy is all you remember swedish chef? Cause that's all I remember.

No, I remember probably all of it. If I really just do it for.

Us, it had to be under five minutes.

It's a mix of stand up. I had been doing standup.

Oh, right. So you did some stand up. You did, chef.

I did Ross Trent in one of them.

Really?

Which ended up being a digital short years in. Yes. I feel like I weirdly did actually do a lot of what I did in my audition on the show, but it always ended up being, like, one line in a sketch. Like, I think I did an impression of Billy Bob Thornton.

Right.

Did you do Jimmy Fallon?

I did Jimmy Fallon, and I ended up doing that with Jimmy. We, like, redid his McJacker mirror thing with me and him when he hosted.

Do you remember an update you did on air where you played Jimmy Fallon at Hanukkah that got cut.

It didn't air. I did an update feature called Jewie Fallon, and it was just me as Jimmy talking about jewish stuff.

I feel like, what do we think? On the count of three, I want everybody to answer in 2024, can you do a character called Juy Fallon? One, two, three.

Of course.

No.

You think? Definitely yes.

Oh, for sure if you're jewish. Yeah, that's true.

You could.

Yeah. So you get hired, and then you guys get hired as writers. Akiv and Yoram. Yeah.

Yep.

Andy went, did an audition, came back. Then they said, all right, that went well enough. Why don't all three of you come in and audition? So Andy had to do a second audition, and we had really scraped the barrel to try to put together that first one. And then, of course, in classic SNL fashion, they go, don't do anything you did the first time. So he had to come up with a whole new one.

And we weren't coming from, like, a improv theater background. Like, we had been making all these little short films together and borrowing video cameras from friends and equipment and things like that and just making stuff together, because that's what we knew. But we weren't coming from being on stage every day making up new characters. And so it was scraping the barrel to be like, here's an impression of this guy.

It is weird because this is part of the first half of your first season, which is how far you guys went from your strengths. Like, you did this arc away from it and then back to it. It's so weird that the show didn't know from the beginning, oh, these guys make short films.

Right. That was not a job opening. That was not a slot that needed to be filled.

It wasn't. And nor did anyone know that we did that.

I think that shoemaker, I had seen episodes of the boo, so that was your OC parody to timestamp it. So I knew you guys made short videos, but even then, working at the show, it did not occur to me that that would be your path forward.

And we realized that sort of quickly because I remember one of the first things we wrote for the show was a sketch that was a musical. Correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but it was Andy, as a young man who wants to wear his shorts at night, and his overly strict father, who I believe was forte, won't let him wear his shorts at night. And it was a musical. And then at one point, he flew out of a window on shorts like, aladdin of, like, his dream of wearing shorts at night.

Just the drastic overreach in our very first episode.

And it was a real realization at the table of being like, this doesn't work for this show.

To be fair. That would not have worked as a pre tape either.

No, it sucked.

It wouldn't have. Yeah, but it was just like, explaining your humor is a difficult thing occasionally. And the videos for us were sort of a shortcut to doing that because you can just sort of present the idea after the fact.

That's true.

I do want to start talking about this effort you guys made for live sketches. And I've done some research, but real quick.

Oh, boy.

Did you all find out at the same time that you were hired?

I found out first. I believe the story is I found out on a Friday, and we spent the whole weekend sweating it out and being like, Andy, you have to take it. Like, they were being so nice. They were like, you have to take it. It's your dream. And if they hire both of us, we'll come. But if they only hire one of us, then we'll stick together. You'll go off without us. And it was, like, super dramatic and intense. And by the way, like, it was, we had been working together for five straight years and living together.

Yeah.

Me and Yoram had to make a pact, essentially, so that there wouldn't be one of us left in LA by ourselves.

And now, all jokes aside, because earlier we talked about how you guys turned down all these sitcom jobs you were never offered, but I think I can venture that you guys would have kept that packed.

Yeah, absolutely.

Do you really think now, today, if only one of you gotten hired. You guys would have said no.

I think we would have. I think it would have been a crazy hard decision, but I think we would have.

Yeah.

I don't know how they ever could have decided between us since we turned in a writing packet together.

No, but I did audition, and I didn't get the show, so that might have been more of a strike against one of us.

I requested a writers meeting, by the way, when they offered us all the audition after Andy did good, and I was like, I'll go for a writers meeting. And so I had a meeting with Tina and Lorne.

Oftentimes, though, you are in people audition, and it helps their cause getting hired as a writer, because you get to show off your writing.

I got one laugh that I can remember in my audition. It was just me dancing as a 13 year old at a bar mitzvah, and it was no words, and it was just, like, really awkward. It was kind of like a just you guys character. Just very awkward. I learned that dancing and, like, small, and I got one audible laugh from Tina, and I was like, fuck yeah. If that was just that, that was fucking worth it.

Yeah. It's like, why don't they make the whole plane out of the black box, right?

That's probably what she was thinking.

Oh, we'll just do this. So, guys, Andy's first appearance on the show is Bill and Andy impression off. On October 1, 2005, Bill Hader and Andy Samberg lay it out for us, guys.

Well, we had tried to write some big barn burner sketch that Yoram has already talked about. And when nothing we did got picked, we got told like, oh, you always get a second chance to figure out something on the show because you can always slide an update in. So we knew that was the only chance something else could get on the show. And so it must have been Thursday night. And me and Andy had an apartment together. So it was like three or four in the morning on Thursday night. Andy, is that your memory of it?

I think that was the gist. I mean, it was born of me knowing that Bill, who we were already buddies with, was really good at impressions, and I was famously bad at them and just kind of leaning into that.

It's very fun to rewatch because the game is that Bill does great impressions and you do terrible ones.

Yes.

But the other fun thing is that, and I don't know if this was the backbone of the idea. Bill's impressions were not for the audience. No, they're so old. He had a really good Peter Falk and a really good, James Mason. But they don't actually kill. Like, they're insanely good, but it's not like crushing.

That probably helped your cause, Andy.

But that's a good intro to Bill, though, and Bill's heart.

Okay, Peter Falk, listen. Geez, this guy, this guy. Wacko, I tell you, he's really wacko. Pretty good, but how about a little Jack Nicholson?

Here we go.

Hey, how's it going? I'm Jack Nicholson. Wazzup. My next impression is acclaimed english actor James Mason.

I have told you before, Lolita. No boys.

Thank you. How about a little dash of Julia Roberts?

Hey, how's it going?

I'm Julia Roberts. The pretty woman was a question for you, Andy, because a sketch I wrote, and again, time stamping. When you guys started, we did a fundraiser for Katrina sketch and it was celebrities and builded Pacino and destroyed. Yeah, it was one of those show stopping moments.

We are building a new house in the New New Orleans. We'll put the doors wherever we want.

What?

Oh, there's a shih tzu stuck in a spanish oak tree. I go to save that doll.

It's fascinating now to know, and Bill's talked openly about his anxiety on the show. And again, to echo what we said, nobody has an easy ride. Nobody ever thinks. But at that moment, standing next to him, because I was doing my less well received Anderson Cooper. But I knew having been on the show for at that point, you know, it was beginning of my fifth season. If I could have said anything to him after that, it would have been, oh, you're gonna be fine.

Yeah, it was like a rock concert.

He was the next thing for sure.

Who were you in that sketch, Andy?

I was holding a boom mic.

Oh.

I was like a guy in the news crew.

But you fucking nailed it, though.

Everybody thought you nailed it. Yeah. But billing and the impression on was a success. It should be noted. Yeah, it went well. You do what Bill Murray did. You guys come off as charming. When it ends. Everybody up, I believe, thinks, oh, I'm excited to see more of those two guys.

Sure. I mean, it definitely set up who we were.

Yeah.

Like Bill doing amazing impressions of super old cinephile actors and me being like a massive doofus.

Yeah. Then an episode later, congratulations. You get your first sketch on the.

Werewolf to be just starting on the show and get something on the first two episodes. We were feeling pretty good.

You should. Wait a minute. Are you a werewolf too? Oh, what, this?

No, no, it's just a mustache.

Yeah, I like the way it looked.

On Tom so much, I decided to grow one myself.

Huh. They get it, Tom. You're a wolf.

It was a guy who brings home a first date, and he starts warning her in a way that lets you know he's a werewolf. And at midnight or whatever, he's going to have a transformation and be horrific. And then the time strikes, and all of a sudden, it's just now he's hideous. But the only thing that changes is now he has, like, a nice mustache.

Yeah.

And he's like, don't look at me. I'm hideous, essentially.

Recurring theme of mustaches in our work.

Yeah, mustaches play a big role in your first year on the show. But now there's one. It's really gonna sound like busting, but it's the greatest gift you guys ever gave. Cause one, you guys wrote a pre taped bit that went badly. I think at this moment, I think it's safe to say, akiva, especially, I remember you saying, I wanna shoot my own stuff based on how this works.

Oh, I know what it is.

But also, this song has never left my head. It's a fucking earworm. JJ casuals. Keep it casual whatever. Keep it natural with shoes that look like feet things get hectic, but don't.

Sweat it keep it JJ casual.

Mm hmm. Do you like to keep it mellow?

Can you dig it?

Shoes that look like feet. Can I explain this one?

Yes, please.

JJ Casuals was Andy doing the impression of Jack Johnson? It was a commercial parody. JJ casuals are shoes that look like feet. The whole premise is sometimes you go to a restaurant and they make you wear shoes, but if you're Jack Johnson, you don't want to wear shoes. Cause you keep it casual. And so there's shoes that look like feet. As a premise, it all makes sense to me. I rewatched it. The audience, they're keeping it casual, too.

Full time, though, out of respect for the writers.

Out of respect. But I will tell you that in my life, not a month goes by where I don't think things get hectic, but don't critic.

Keep your ear J casual.

It is the catchiest words to live by. Yeah. Things get hectic, but don't sweat it keep it JJ casual.

The writing was on the wall. There was some tunes coming.

Tunes were coming.

Yeah.

As a sketch didn't quite land well.

We were not allowed in the editing room.

We got positive feedback. I will say yes when you're that new on the show, just getting something on feels like such a big win. Even something not doing well to you is so far beyond what you expect, which is to not get anything on. I will say every one of these we were counting as a win, even when we knew they weren't doing good.

I remember, to be honest, when you wrote JJ casuals, I thought it was super funny because we would pick the commercial parodies before the season started. And so I loved it. And I do feel like the problem was maybe the sensibility of who ended up shooting it and editing it was different. Yeah.

And I don't want to call anybody out or anything, but there was a moment that we had while shooting it where Keev leaned over to me while it was being shot because you didn't have that much power in this particular scenario.

None.

Yes, none power. But they allowed writers on set, and Keeve leaned over and was like, they just crossed the line. And I was like, oh, my God.

Yeah, it's day one of film.

Day one, it's the eye line.

And we were like, wait a minute.

It was a moment where there was two people at the maitre d at the front desk of a restaurant, and they flipped sides. And I was like, I whispered it to yorm and drew a diagram. Was like, maybe we don't understand. Maybe they're doing something else.

We were like, oh, maybe we're wrong.

And then we just watched them waste the time of do the whole scene, realize it slowly by talking to some script supervisor, come back, set the camera on the other shoulder, and do the scene again.

And it was one of the things that we were like, oh, we should do the thing that we've been doing for the last five years.

I guess we do know enough, and I do remember, I'm saying this as a criticism of myself and also a compliment to you guys. I remember you came back, Keev, after shooting that and said basically a different version of what you just explained about crossing the line, and you were a little bit more heated than you are now with time.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And I remember the way I responded to you because, again, I'd been there for a few years, and I think I had sort of relaxed into what the establishment of the show was. I felt like that scene where in Chinatown where the cop takes Nicholson and goes, it's Chinatown, Jake. I was like, this is just how it is. Because I think it's some degree, like, when you cross the line in filmmaking, they always say that's like, if it's both your mother and your sister.

Yeah, that's what they say.

And I think that's just to, like, tip people, to how this podcast obviously turns out. You guys were unsatisfied with that as an outcome.

And I will say, like, that kind of sentiment was also expressed to us on set.

Yeah, it was in the editing room.

That was what I was about to say. There was multiple things. It was on set. We felt like not just with the flipping of the thing, but also Andy was worried about doing the song, and they wasted the whole day on things that didn't matter, like the side characters. And they were like, okay, now it's time for Andy to do his song. We have five minutes left, and he got like two takes. Then we got into editing, really spent a couple hours writing down really detailed notes that were like, frame specific of like, you could get out of that cut a little earlier. Sat with the editor, and she was like, oh, yeah, these are all great. Then the person in charge came in, we went and got maybe into two. Like, okay, well, we have a bunch. She could just do them and show you our cut. But he's like, let me hear him. And we're like, all right, first one is this. We got maybe two in, and he realized we had a whole sheet of, like, frame specific notes. And that's when he said what Yoram said of like, okay, okay, okay, I get the idea.

You know, guys, he's like, essentially, like, pushing us on the back out the door.

This show's watched by twelve year olds.

And people who are high on weed.

You guys can just.

And he ushered us into an elevator, and then the elevator broke, and we were stuck in the elevator at the brill building for like 3 hours.

Oh, man, I forgot.

Oh, I got, I forgot.

So maybe that's what you were picking up on also, Seth, when we came back and we're a little heated.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like, oh, wait, what the fuck? No, we care a little bit more about this than that.

It was also, when you're not at the show, as, you know, the real world, and especially comedians talk a lot of shit about the show. And we had been defenders of the show as people who would watch it religiously every week.

This is important to note. Cause I think that's true. There's a lot of people before, before they get on the show, sometimes could be comedian haters of the show, which, by the way, a position I understand and respect. But you guys were never that.

No, we were obsessed with it. We watched every week.

Yeah.

And we would have our critiques, but we would almost keep them insular to our group of like, oh, man, we don't like that one. Oh, that's so good. I think we had an understanding of the challenge of the show, but after defending it from people who thought the show was lazy and being like, are you kidding? It's so much work. It's not lazy. They're trying their best. And then have somebody who worked at the show essentially say exactly what all those people always are imagining.

The people are saying at SNL, we.

Were like, oh, no. Are they right?

That can't be right.

Yeah. So then I guess the tipping point is you guys shoot something just for yourselves over one of the first breaks of that fall of o five. Do you remember going to air Andy with sea captain?

Oh, but it got cut, didn't it?

Yeah, it did not air. It went to dress.

What was the premise? I was a young sea captain.

You were a 17 year old sea captain.

Right, right. And it was basically one take, Tony. Right. It was like, don't worry, I'm a prodigy.

And da da da.

And then we immediately crashed.

So, yeah, you're a 17 year old captain. Everybody's, like, very concerned that you're a 17 year old captain. I read it today. It is crazy how many pages into before the turn. Yeah, we didn't get it. You're just a very competent sea captain. So this is like, page three. Amy Poehler. You know, I heard a rumor that the captain of this ship is a 17 year old boy.

17?

That can't be right. Oh, it's right, all right. You're talking about ship youngblood, the youngest sea captain in all the world. Page four. Still haven't met him. Finally, he walks in. Page five. Good afternoon, Wilkins. Good afternoon, Captain Youngblood.

What's the weather report?

Well, winds out of the southwest at 15 knots, sir. Huh. 15.

Are you sure?

It feels more like twelve to me. Well, uh, right you are, sir.

Twelve.

Nuts. You never cease to amaze. All right, so that's page five.

Jesus.

Page six, still like nothing.

Dry as a bone.

Build suspense.

Page seven. Still nothing. A lot of different sets, by the way, you're, like, in the dining hall. On the screen.

Keep it expensive.

Vt, pre tape scale model of the ocean liner immediately crashing into an iceberg. Oh, my. What was that, sir?

We made an iceberg.

An iceberg? No. Who would put an iceberg in the middle of the ocean? I was so happy reading this because it was such a reminder that your sense of humor has always been your sense of humor. Oh, by the way, this was written. Makes a lot of sense. This was written for Lance Armstrong.

Oh, yeah. Best show ever.

And then the rest of the sketch is just you being a fucking shitheel who blames everybody else.

Will you go to the front page and tell me the names? In the upper left corner.

Samberg.

Damn it.

Schaffer. Taconi.

Damn it.

Higgins. Higgins. Higgins.

Nice.

Higgs.

Bones.

Please pull yourself together and lead the crew.

I don't wanna lead the crew. I hate them. They're smelly and they smell like smelly fish.

Sucks.

Such good turns.

Like every other line saying the crew of a ship smells like smelly fish. I do endorse.

So you're still endorsing. That's good.

So, Seth, yet another success that you're pointing out. But somehow, for us, it really felt like we were failing at the live portion of this show. Yes, very much so. And there was our first off week. Me and Kiev were very kind of embittered and like, ah, just feeling like shit.

What the fuck?

Like, let's go out and make something. And we did a music video based on the Yin Yang twins song, the whisper song called the Ping Bong Brothers, which was a very mature, highbrow joke of us whispering about how you might enjoy our penises.

You might like our penises. I really laugh to touch it. And then I'll show you my penis, you guys. And then I'll show you my penis, you guys. And then I'll show you. I watched it today and I thought, oh, this will be a cool deep cut for people to look at online. And then I looked. It has 16 million views. Well, now, yeah, but I'm just saying, I kind of thought it was this weird deep cut track, but this is a keeven Yoram on camera. Classically, you guys, it's a minute and 20 seconds. It's got fake mustaches. It's got the doorstep of your actual apartment at the time.

Yes.

Which will make a return appearance almost immediately. So you guys shoot this thing?

Yes, we make this little short. It's probably under two minutes long.

It's a minute, 20 minutes.

20. Perfect length for that joke. It's probably too long, actually. In addition to movie awards, we'd also worked for Geforia, which is a music video.

No, video game award show.

Video game award show for g four, which was a network. And did we submit it to them?

Keith, did that have something to do with g four?

Yeah.

No, no. It must have been that. We put it on YouTube and then they found it. Cause later on that next week, on a Friday, I remember we turned it on. We were like, the thing that we did is gonna air on another channel.

Oh, maybe they used it as a weird bumper.

They played the whole thing. It was like, maybe for a show or something like that. Somebody picked it up, but we were like, oh, shit. This thing that we made is now airing on a different television channel.

Oh, you know what? I think that they had a show on g four that was, like, way earlier than, like, a tosh zero.

Like, web clips, something like that.

Yeah.

It was just like, oh, they thought it was funny.

Yeah, yeah.

Where they would just collect things from the world and just play things and, like, talk about them, and so they played it on that. I think you're right.

I remember thinking, like, oh, this is what we should be doing. Like, this is how we can get stuff on tv.

But we did that one. I remember we came back to the show after Thanksgiving, and we showed it to Shoemaker, and he was like, wow, that's really cool. You guys just made that.

But it's.

You guys, do something like that, but do it with the cast. See what happens.

Higgins, too.

Yeah, yeah.

I remember Higgins and Shoemaker sat us down and told the three of us, like, hey, if you guys want to make something like that, but using Andy or using the cast or both, that would be great.

Yeah.

The show is always very encouraging.

And I will say, I watched it with Shoemaker today, and Shoemaker said, even the font, because if you watch that, the fonts kind of evoke Andy popping into frame. There was a style to it that looked different than anything you'd seen before.

I will say that is another Akiva staple because you were always the best at editing. Kiva always loved this sort of off yellow impact font, and then it just became our staple, lonely island.

Well, guys, I think this is actually a pretty good, natural ending point, because we're abutting the first digital short, which will be our next episode. For anybody who wants to get ahead of it, it's called lettuce. And that stoop is the exact same stoop from the Bing Bong brothers.

And lazy Sunday.

And lazy Sunday.

Saving a buck or two on locations.

You know, a lot of people in New York City are walking around looking for that Sex and the City stoop. Meanwhile, the digital short stoop is two and a half blocks away.

Exactly, exactly.

Seth's corner will be a very important segment on this show, where anytime there's a digital short, I'm going to tell you a thing I wrote.

So, Seth, we should maybe do a tee up, though, to transition into that. So it is Seth's corner.

We're going to do a segment on the show called Seth's corner. We put no preparation into this intro, but I'm going to let Andy do it.

Now, I know all y'all are hearing a lot about Tli, short for Lonely island, but we also have my main man, Seth Meyers, on this. Booch. And that means we gotta turn the magnifying glass on him. So every one of these podcasts, we're gonna take a quick detour into something I like to call Seth's corner.

That's right, it's Seth's corner, where we.

Asked Seth something he wrote on the episode that we're talking about. And when he tells us what it is, we're gonna tell him what we think for real this time. Not because we were scared of him like back then when he was our boss.

No.

Now we're gonna tell him the real truth. Prepare to be ream Seth. And welcome to Seth's corner.

Sing the jingle yorm. Seth's corner, you're all invited. Seth's corner.

It's happening right now. Take it away, Seth.

So, Seth, what did you write this episode?

Everybody, thank you for listening to episode one. We will see you soon. The Lonely island and Seth Myers podcast is supported by Airbnb.