Latest news with #ConanOBrien
CNN
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Ayo Edebiri really committed to a joke about being Irish and Conan O'Brien loves it
Conan O'Brien loves a good bit. Ayo Edebiri has given him a great one. 'The Bear' star began a joke back in March 2023 at the South by Southwest in which she pretended to be Irish. Edebiri kept it up, claiming she played the role of Jenny the donkey in the Ireland-set film, 'The Banshees of Inisherin.' 'I wanted to congratulate you, because you started this joke which you improvised, a joke about being Irish, and then you kept going,' O'Brien told Edebiri during a recent conversation on his 'Conan O' Brien Needs a Friend' podcast. 'There's this crucial point where a joke either becomes like, 'Okay that's enough, I've done it enough, I should stop,' or you double, triple, and quadruple down on it and refuse to let it go, which you did,' he continued. 'Now it has resonated so much that the people of Ireland have accepted you as one of their own, which they will not do with me.' O'Brien said he has the opposite impact with the people of Ireland. 'I am this figure of great shame in Ireland,' he quipped. 'But you, you got a day in Boston, and you're revered by the Irish people,' he said. 'I am rightfully loathed by the Irish and never a day in Boston.' Edebiri explained how it all came about. 'I remember talking about this with a friend. I was like, 'My favorite type of joke low-key might be a lie,'' she said. 'Like, something where it's almost not even funny, it's mostly just funny to me.' Edebiri, who like O'Brien is from Boston, tried to encourage him and said, 'I think your day could come.'
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Conan O'Brien wouldn't get 'picked' for Late Night role today
Conan O'Brien has revealed he doesn't believe he would get "picked" to host Late Night in 2025. The comedian believes he would be overlooked for the high-profile hosting gig in 2025. "Nowadays they would never have picked me. Ever, ever," he said in response to an audience question while hosting his Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend podcast. Instead, Conan explained, he felt a casting agent now would be scouring the internet for online comedy sensations. "They would have said, 'OK, the world is filled with hilarious people who have been making things on YouTube for years, and there are so many possibilities," he suggested. "Back then it was 'oh no who will host the show if Dave's (Letterman) not hosting it? We need to turn to an expert' and they turned to Lorne Michaels." Lorne, 80, is the creator of sketch show Saturday Night Live - the show that gave Conan his first big break in TV. Conan was then chosen to host the late-night spot in 1993, with the gig lasting until 2009. "Lorne looked around and lo and behold I get the chance," Conan went on. "Which I was not ready for! But my lesson to everybody is when your moment comes you may not be ready but you have to take it and then figure it out on the way."
CNET
29-06-2025
- CNET
Traveling Abroad? Get a Burner Phone to Keep Your Data Private
If you're planning international travel anytime soon, you might want to think twice about bringing your everyday phone. According to recent reports, US Customs and Border Protection agents are increasing the frequency and intensity of device searches, even for American citizens returning home. That means your texts, photos, emails, and browsing history could all be up for grabs the moment you land. To avoid handing over sensitive data, some security experts are recommending a simple solution: travel with a burner phone. But a burner isn't just for crossing borders. It can also be a useful tool for everyday situations where you want to stay connected without sacrificing privacy or convenience. Whether you're trying to cut back on screen time, protect your personal details, or just want a break from the constant ping of notifications, a no-frills device can help. Even Conan O'Brien swears by his for staying focused. If you've ever felt like your smartphone knows a little too much, it might be time to consider giving it a vacation of its own. Read more: Best Prepaid Phone of 2025 Although carriers have offered prepaid phones since the '90s, the term "burner phones" or "burners" essentially became popular in the 2000s because of its use in the celebrated HBO series The Wire, in which characters use burner phones to avoid getting caught by the police. Although often portrayed as such, burners are not only popular among criminals. With privacy concerns rising, you might consider using a burner phone yourself. So, what exactly is a burner phone and how does it work? Below, we explain everything you need to know about burners and how to get one. What is a burner phone? Simply put, a burner phone is a cheap prepaid phone with no commitments. It comes with a set number of prepaid call minutes, text messages or data and is designed to be disposed of after use. Burners are contract-free, and you can grab them off the counter. They're called burner phones because you can "burn" them, i.e., trash them after use, and the phone cannot be traced back to you, which makes them appealing to criminals. Burner phones are typically used when you need a phone quickly, without intentions of long-term usage. Burners are different from getting a regular, contract-bound cellphone plans that require a lot of your information to be on file. Why should you use a burner phone? Diy13/Getty Images Burner phones are an easy way to avoid pesky cellphone contracts or spam that you may be getting on your primary phone number. Burners are not linked to your identity so you can avoid getting tracked down or contacted if that's what you need. However, you don't have to dispose of it after use -- you can just add more minutes and continue using it. Burner phones can still function as regular phones, minus the hassle of getting a phone with a contract. You can also get a burner phone as a secondary phone for a specific purpose, like having a spare phone number for two-factor authentication texts, for business purposes or to avoid roaming charges while traveling. You can get a burner phone for any privacy reasons you may have. Read more: The Data Privacy Tips Digital Security Experts Wish You Knew Burner phones, prepaid phones, smartphones and burner SIMs: What's the difference? Burner phones are typically cheap feature phones and usually don't come with the bells and whistles of a smartphone. Because these are designed to be cheap and disposable, you only get the essentials and very simple designs. The flip phone is a common sight in the burner phone market. All burner phones are prepaid phones but not all prepaid phones are burners. What sets a burner apart is that you will not have to give away any personal information to get one and it won't be traceable back to you. Also, it will be cheap enough to be trashed after use. Prepaid smartphones are generally low-end models to begin with and burners are the cheapest prepaid phones you can get. However, you can use any unlocked smartphone with prepaid SIM cards if you want to, essentially making it a prepaid phone. If you want to get a burner, you don't necessarily have to buy a new phone. You can get a burner SIM and use it with an existing phone as well. Burner SIMs are prepaid SIMs you can get without a contract or giving away personal information. Where can you buy a burner phone? Burner phones are available at all the major retailers. Shelby Knowles/Bloomberg/Getty Images Burner phones are available at all major retail outlets. You can pick them up from Best Buy, Target, Walmart and other big retailers. They're also often available at convenience stores like 7-Eleven and Rite Aid, local supermarkets, gas stations and retail phone outlets like Cricket, Metro and others. You can get a burner phone with cash; a typical burner should cost between $10 and $50. It may cost more if you get more minutes and data with the phone. If you're getting a burner phone specifically to avoid having the phone traced back to you, it makes sense to pay with cash instead of a credit card. If you just want a prepaid secondary phone, you can pay for one with a credit card. Credit cards will leave a paper trail that leads back to you but that shouldn't be an issue unless you really don't want the burner phone linked back to you. There are also many apps that let you get secondary phone numbers, including Google Fi and the Burner app. However, these cannot quite be called burners in the ideal sense because these providers will typically have at least some of your personal information. If you're just looking to get a solid prepaid phone without anonymity, you can check out our full guide for the best prepaid phone plans available currently. We also have a guide for the best cheap phone plans you can get.
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Did The Simpsons really just kill off a major character?
The Simpsons is getting experimental in its old age. With 36 seasons complete and a renewal through a 40th secured, the show has entered territory previously occupied mostly by non-prime-time stalwarts like Saturday Night Live and Meet the Press – television institutions that run for much longer than the typical sitcom or drama. Perhaps conscious that the animated comedy has now lasted five to 10 times longer than a normal sitcom, the 36th season has repeatedly toyed with the idea of what a series finale might look like, even though no such thing is anywhere in sight. For the season's premiere back in the fall, it created a fake series finale, hosted by Conan O'Brien, that featured forever-10-year-old Bart turning 11 and reacting badly to a number of finale-style abrupt changes to the status quo. And in the last episode of season 36, Estranger Things, the show flashed forward to a future where family matriarch Marge has passed away and a gradual estrangement has developed between now-adult Bart and Lisa. (Homer remains alive, with the show repeatedly underlining how unlikely it seems that he would outlive his patient, cautious and seemingly healthy spouse.) As fans caught up with the season on streaming, the finale has created a mild headline-generating controversy over whether Marge is 'really' dead, most likely among less consistent viewers who might dip back in occasionally (or get their news about the show from the internet, rather than watching it). Of course, she's not; Estranger Things is one of many flash-forward episodes the show has done over the years, generally understood to be alternate versions of the future, not pieces of a vast and interconnected timeline. The show's flashbacks are similarly intentionally contradictory; early on, Marge and Homer were young parents in the 1980s; as the show got older and they stayed the same age, subsequent flashbacks were brought further and further into the timeline. None of this makes headline news, even on a slow entertainment day. But one reason 'Marge is dead' has seemingly caught fire as an internet curiosity may have to do with the unexpectedly mortality creeping in around the edge of the show. Anyone who has watched The Simpsons in recent years, especially if they've seen a new episode juxtaposed with an older one, would have to take note of how different the characters sound. Animation may be able to preserve a character's basic look and inure them from ageing (apart from the shifts in animation technique that present subtle changes in design or movement). Animation still can't defeat, however, what the show once called the ravages of time. The Simpsons has employed a core of voice actors for nearly four decades, and who among us sound precisely the same as we did 40 years ago, if we're so lucky to have that comparison point? Marge is the character where this is most noticeable – more so than characters whose voices have been replaced by new actors for reasons of racial sensitivity. (This just means that Black actors now play Black characters, and so on.) Those newer performers bring their own style to the character, however subtle the change. But Julie Kavner, the distinctive actor who has given one of the great long-term voiceover performances of TV history, turns 75 this year, while Marge is forever on the cusp of 40. Certain line readings will sound very close to the 'original' Marge voice. More often, though, we're getting a raspier, scratchier version that sounds more like Marge's occasionally seen mother (also voiced by Kavner in a more whispery register). Harry Shearer, who voices more than a dozen major supporting characters including Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and Ned Flanders, also sounds deeper and older in recent years. That's all on top of the show's creative changes – some of which have been quite good. Under showrunner Matt Selman, the show has upped its game in recent years, actively pursuing more ambitious, format-challenging and emotionally resonant stories. Not all of them are golden-years-level funny. (Few episodes of anything are.) But the creators feel engaged with their institution, and sometimes they've even taken advantage of the modified vocals; in one recent holiday episode, Ned Flanders sounded genuinely grief-stricken in part due to Shearer's inability to hit the higher range of his usual tone. Even when the actors' changes do sound jarring, obviously it's not anyone's fault. People age – and IP, at least lately, seems to insist on defying that process, creating a difficult-to-resolve conflict. The show obviously isn't ever going to permanently kill off any of the family members, but at some point, they may be in the position of hiring someone new to voice Marge, or augmenting the performance with AI. The finale already introduced a new voice for Bart's best friend Milhouse, following the retirement of longtime voice artist Pamela Hayden. She reasonably concluded that continuing to play a 10-year-old boy well into her 70s wouldn't make much sense. Maybe that's why the most poignant element of Estranger Things isn't the death of Marge, which is handled lightly, avoiding the immediate devastation of grief with just a brief cursory shot of her funeral, and ending the episode with a short scene of her happily looking down upon her family from heaven, where she clinches with longtime crush Ringo Starr. Rather, the emotional core of the episode is the sequence in which Bart and Lisa abruptly grow out of their beloved Itchy and Scratchy cartoons after realizing the show is now also marketed toward babies, with cutesy versions of the characters adorning little sister Maggie's pyjamas. In true Simpsons fashion, this is also the funniest passage of the episode, with spot-on observations about marketing, kids' shifting tastes in popular culture and defensiveness about liking stuff that's for 'babies', complete with a spoof of a memorably emotional scene from Toy Story 2. Despite the show's jokes, the idea of the Bart/Lisa bond breaking over Itchy and Scratchy, and Marge's distress over it, is a potent one, maybe because it's precisely the kind of uncharacteristic change alluded to in the season premiere. The Simpsons has been lampshading its ability to reset its characters for decades at this point; that's the connective tissue between its heritage as a sitcom from another age, and as a cartoon across the ages. In Estranger Things, it's depicting a natural process less seismic but no less constant than death: letting go of once-beloved media and the real-world habits that accompany it. Plenty of fans will have the opportunity to let go of The Simpsons, whether by chance or by choice. The show itself, good as it sometimes is, can only play at that farewell process, experimenting with what-ifs typically subsumed into the status quo. I'm not personally eager for the show to end; my daughter still eagerly watches it, and that brought me back into the newer episodes. But there does seem to be a denial of impermanence, maybe even some frustration with that, under the show's surface. The real question isn't whether Marge Simpson will live on, but how long the show will keep contemplating endings it can't have.
The Guardian
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Did The Simpsons really just kill off a major character?
The Simpsons is getting experimental in its old age. With 36 seasons complete and a renewal through a 40th secured, the show has entered territory previously occupied mostly by non-prime-time stalwarts like Saturday Night Live and Meet the Press – television institutions that run for much longer than the typical sitcom or drama. Perhaps conscious that the animated comedy has now lasted five to 10 times longer than a normal sitcom, the 36th season has repeatedly toyed with the idea of what a series finale might look like, even though no such thing is anywhere in sight. For the season's premiere back in the fall, it created a fake series finale, hosted by Conan O'Brien, that featured forever-10-year-old Bart turning 11 and reacting badly to a number of finale-style abrupt changes to the status quo. And in the last episode of season 36, Estranger Things, the show flashed forward to a future where family matriarch Marge has passed away and a gradual estrangement has developed between now-adult Bart and Lisa. (Homer remains alive, with the show repeatedly underlining how unlikely it seems that he would outlive his patient, cautious and seemingly healthy spouse.) As fans caught up with the season on streaming, the finale has created a mild headline-generating controversy over whether Marge is 'really' dead, most likely among less consistent viewers who might dip back in occasionally (or get their news about the show from the internet, rather than watching it). Of course, she's not; Estranger Things is one of many flash-forward episodes the show has done over the years, generally understood to be alternate versions of the future, not pieces of a vast and interconnected timeline. The show's flashbacks are similarly intentionally contradictory; early on, Marge and Homer were young parents in the 1980s; as the show got older and they stayed the same age, subsequent flashbacks were brought further and further into the timeline. None of this makes headline news, even on a slow entertainment day. But one reason 'Marge is dead' has seemingly caught fire as an internet curiosity may have to do with the unexpectedly mortality creeping in around the edge of the show. Anyone who has watched The Simpsons in recent years, especially if they've seen a new episode juxtaposed with an older one, would have to take note of how different the characters sound. Animation may be able to preserve a character's basic look and inure them from ageing (apart from the shifts in animation technique that present subtle changes in design or movement). Animation still can't defeat, however, what the show once called the ravages of time. The Simpsons has employed a core of voice actors for nearly four decades, and who among us sound precisely the same as we did 40 years ago, if we're so lucky to have that comparison point? Marge is the character where this is most noticeable – more so than characters whose voices have been replaced by new actors for reasons of racial sensitivity. (This just means that Black actors now play Black characters, and so on.) Those newer performers bring their own style to the character, however subtle the change. But Julie Kavner, the distinctive actor who has given one of the great long-term voiceover performances of TV history, turns 75 this year, while Marge is forever on the cusp of 40. Certain line readings will sound very close to the 'original' Marge voice. More often, though, we're getting a raspier, scratchier version that sounds more like Marge's occasionally seen mother (also voiced by Kavner in a more whispery register). Harry Shearer, who voices more than a dozen major supporting characters including Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and Ned Flanders, also sounds deeper and older in recent years. That's all on top of the show's creative changes – some of which have been quite good. Under showrunner Matt Selman, the show has upped its game in recent years, actively pursuing more ambitious, format-challenging and emotionally resonant stories. Not all of them are golden-years-level funny. (Few episodes of anything are.) But the creators feel engaged with their institution, and sometimes they've even taken advantage of the modified vocals; in one recent holiday episode, Ned Flanders sounded genuinely grief-stricken in part due to Shearer's inability to hit the higher range of his usual tone. Even when the actors' changes do sound jarring, obviously it's not anyone's fault. People age – and IP, at least lately, seems to insist on defying that process, creating a difficult-to-resolve conflict. The show obviously isn't ever going to permanently kill off any of the family members, but at some point, they may be in the position of hiring someone new to voice Marge, or augmenting the performance with AI. The finale already introduced a new voice for Bart's best friend Milhouse, following the retirement of longtime voice artist Pamela Hayden. She reasonably concluded that continuing to play a 10-year-old boy well into her 70s wouldn't make much sense. Maybe that's why the most poignant element of Estranger Things isn't the death of Marge, which is handled lightly, avoiding the immediate devastation of grief with just a brief cursory shot of her funeral, and ending the episode with a short scene of her happily looking down upon her family from heaven, where she clinches with longtime crush Ringo Starr. Rather, the emotional core of the episode is the sequence in which Bart and Lisa abruptly grow out of their beloved Itchy and Scratchy cartoons after realizing the show is now also marketed toward babies, with cutesy versions of the characters adorning little sister Maggie's pyjamas. In true Simpsons fashion, this is also the funniest passage of the episode, with spot-on observations about marketing, kids' shifting tastes in popular culture and defensiveness about liking stuff that's for 'babies', complete with a spoof of a memorably emotional scene from Toy Story 2. Despite the show's jokes, the idea of the Bart/Lisa bond breaking over Itchy and Scratchy, and Marge's distress over it, is a potent one, maybe because it's precisely the kind of uncharacteristic change alluded to in the season premiere. The Simpsons has been lampshading its ability to reset its characters for decades at this point; that's the connective tissue between its heritage as a sitcom from another age, and as a cartoon across the ages. In Estranger Things, it's depicting a natural process less seismic but no less constant than death: letting go of once-beloved media and the real-world habits that accompany it. Plenty of fans will have the opportunity to let go of The Simpsons, whether by chance or by choice. The show itself, good as it sometimes is, can only play at that farewell process, experimenting with what-ifs typically subsumed into the status quo. I'm not personally eager for the show to end; my daughter still eagerly watches it, and that brought me back into the newer episodes. But there does seem to be a denial of impermanence, maybe even some frustration with that, under the show's surface. The real question isn't whether Marge Simpson will live on, but how long the show will keep contemplating endings it can't have.
