Bill Oakley

1st March 2019

Aurora Borealis! In your kitchen! May I see it? It’s a very special Bullseye with Bill Oakley, the veteran TV writer. He worked on Futurama, Portlandia, and some of the greatest Simpsons episode of all time. Including… you guessed it! Steamed hams! The classic Simpsons bit turned ubiquitous, weird and postmodern meme. Bill’s also taking up a new career: reviewing fast food on Instagram!
We talk about all that and more from the stage at the Listen Up Festival in Portland, Oregon.

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Photo: Courtesy of Casey Campbell Photography
The Simpsons Writer Bill Oakley On His Crowning Achievement and Reviewing Fast Food on Instagram
Bill Oakley’s a veteran comedy writer for TV. He’s worked on Portlandia, Futurama, The Cleveland Show and Disenchantment.

He wrote for The Simpsons between 1992 and 1998 – the golden years.

Together with his partner Josh Weinstein, Bill made some stone cold Simpsons classics:

Remember when Malibu Stacey got a new hat? The time The Simpsons went to Australia? Or how about the time baby Maggie shot Mr. Burns?

All those episodes were co-written by our Bill.

In this episode, Bill tells Jesse about what he feels is his crowning achievement on The Simpsons and writing reviews for fast food on Instagram.

You can see Bill’s latest work on the Netflix show Disenchantment. He’s a writer and executive producer for the series.

If you want to see more of Bill’s fast food reviews, find him on Instagram, his handle is @thatbilloakley.

In this episode...

Senior Producer
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Maximum Fun Production Fellow

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  • Bill Oakley

About the show

Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.

Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.

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