Neil and Seth on the Science of Family Guy | StarTalk
Seth, I called you into my office. Yes, I got to talk to you. Want me to help you clean up? Clean up the office? At some point, I had to find you and talk to you about the science in Family Guy.
Yeah, yeah, and I said to myself before I even met you, there's science lurking within the creator of this show. The only question is: is accuracy? CU, you know, we have a—it’s a cartoon; you have a talking dog. So I'll give you freedom on the accuracy part.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I saw an episode, and Brian the dog was sweating. He was in some nervous situation, and he’s sweating on his neck and his forehead. I was ready to like jump all over it. I said, "Dogs don’t have sweat glands," or not on your—and halfway through the tweet, I said, "I’m complaining about SW GLS on a talking dog without commenting on the talking."
So then, because I said I was about to post this critique, and then I withdrew. I was delighted when your production people, your post-production people, called me when you were making Ted 1 and said, "Christmas, some town outside of Boston, 1985 in this direction, we need a meteor to streak through the sky, a shooting star. Can you tell us about it and what sky is that?"
Right, right, and I said, "Well sure, but what’s your interest in this?" And they said, "We saw what you did to Titanic. We don’t want to be—we don’t want to be the crap out Cameron, so we don’t want to be next in line. Feel your wrath."
I would later tweet this fact, and people had a field day with it. They started saying, like, "Ted one, Titanic zero." Your Twitter is huge; you have like 3,000 followers now. 3,000, right? Or three—3 million? 3 million, 3 million, 3 million.
What happened to my mom? But it's all like, you know, plates of food and selfies and pictures of you at the beach, you know? Yeah, that’s why I read something about science for once. I'm charmed by the level at which you and others, which I think is a growing force, people are reaching for science as a point of creativity.
I think that’s—stay with that, if you can, always, my friend. Thank you.
Thank you, Neil. Do you mind doing a couple of—?
Oh yeah, sure! Hi, say this is Stewie Griffin, and you’re listening to Star Talk Radio.