It's time to answer a fan question.
Something we do every week.
And since this is our hundredth show,
we thought we'd do something special.
Hey Jesse. Hey Mike.
My name is Josh and I am calling
from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
I just wanna say I love the podcast
and I look forward to it every week.
I have a question about a bit that was on Late Night
with Conan O'Brien and it really
kind of took on a life of its own,
inspired a website, maybe a fall live stream as well.
That is the hornymanatee.com sketch.
If memory served me correctly,
I think Conan had mentioned something about visiting
hornymanatee.com and he found out after that
if somebody in a position of power mentions a website name,
NBC requires them to actually buy it
and kind of make it a thing.
So that led to quite a long running sketch
with this recurring theme of the horny manatee.
And I'm just wondering, is it true
that you guys actually had to buy the domain
and it kind of, you know, morphed
into what I think to be one of Conan's funniest bits?
I'd be interested to hear a little bit more.
Thanks again, guys. Take care.
Thanks Josh.
Thank you, Josh. Wow.
That's a great question.
That's a very specific question.
I know, and we have not addressed that before.
Certainly not.
I know we've been waiting.
It's never come up.
But yeah, so we do have to buy the domains
if we mention a website on the show in any capacity.
Right.
If it's in a comedy sketch, we have to make sure
that that website doesn't already exist.
Right.
And then purchase it if it doesn't.
And the reason for that is let's say someone else
buys the site and puts stuff up there
that could be offensive, et cetera,
then we'd be liable for any negative.
Yeah. And we wouldn't get any of the profits either.
Yeah, exactly. You're right, of course.
I never thought of that. Which would be unfair.
Oh yeah.
But it occurred to us while we were thinking
about this question that the person who managed the websites
and finding, making sure that the URLs were available
on our show was actually Jordan Schlansky.
Is that right, Jordan?
That is right. That's correct.
You're here with us.
Yeah.
Hi Jordan. I'm here.
Yes, so we thought we would go
to the horse's mouth to get an answer on this.
Please welcome Mr. Jordan Schlansky.
Hello, Jordan.
Hi, thank you guys for having me.
You've just sent us a photo.
Oh, this is a photo of you with the horny manatee.
Yeah, as Josh mentions, we had mentioned the URL horny
manatee in a comedy sketch and this was December of 2006.
Oh wow, look at those sideburns.
That picture is me and Dan Goor, of course,
former writer on Late Night with
Conan O'Brien Right.
who's gone on to do fantastic things.
Yes.
Have you had him on the show?
Yes, we've had Okay.
Dan on the show in season one, I believe.
Okay.
Yeah, checking up on us.
So in order to say the website on the air,
as Mike mentioned, the network had a policy
that we purchase it to ensure
that there would be no questionable content.
And we had done that a few times before with other websites.
And then one of the writers, which I believe was
Dan had the great idea that, "Hey, listen if we own
this site anyway let's make a comedy bit out of it."
And we made it into a functioning website.
We would do photo shoots and feature kind of erotic
Manatee themed artwork on the website.
And the picture I just sent is a behind the scenes photo
of Dan and myself, positioning the Manatee for one of the
aforementioned erotic themed photo shoots.
What position do you think that was going to be?
It's just sort of spread eagle right now.
Based on the limitations of the articulation
of the particular costume, I don't know that
there was that much we could do with it.
Unfortunately, I had actually looked up the website.
It for a while, we had it functional and then later on
NBC just had it direct to their own homepage.
And now the website goes nowhere,
but I looked in not only does NBC still own it
but they renewed it as recently as last year.
Oh, interesting.
Wow.
It may be their general policy to never
let the URLs expire or maybe there's some future.
Maybe they hope we're gonna come back.
Meanwhile, that's where a third
of their income comes from right now.
Yeah.
Yes. It was originally a comedy bit.
I couldn't quite remember the details but there's
a big article about it in the New York Times at the time.
We used to do bad NCAA mascots, and one
of them was that Dan came up with,
it was supposed to be a Manatee on a webcam
and he was trying to do a lascivious dance
and Mark Pender, our band trumpeter,
we cut to him watching this on his laptop,
and then Conan just did an ad lib.
Pender's on hornymanatee.com.
And then because he ad-libbed that
after the show, Jordan, do you remember this?
I'm imagining that's when you would've kicked into action.
Yeah. That one was surprisingly available.
In this day and age, there are very few combinations
of words that haven't been purchased yet,
but back in Right.
sweet, innocent 2006.
Yeah.
There was a lot more availability
and no one had thought to purchase horny manatee.
And that's right, Dan had a great idea to let's...
Make it a real site.
Right and Yeah.
And then do comedy about it,
and we invited fans, as you said,
to start sending in their own horny manatee fan art.
So it was one of the early interactive
Which is also a dangerous thing to do now probably.
Website bits, yes.
Well, one of the interesting feel good stories related
to this situation was that
Yeah.
We were, I believe, selling shirts.
I've also sent you a photo of one of the logos that we had
on a shirt. Okay.
And all of the proceeds that we made went
to a legitimate manatee foundation because they were,
and maybe still are Oh, two
inseminating manatees. Yes, a threatened species.
And we sent it, I forgot the name of the foundation.
It was based in Florida, and we were in regular contact
with them, making sure they got the proper proceeds
and they loved what we were doing.
And I mean, if they loved it, to me, that's a blessing
that the manatee community in general was on board.
Sure. Yeah.
I don't know if they loved the content as much
as the check that was getting sent to them.
But I remember Conan quickly, soon after
it was like I don't like that bit.
I think he hated the costume because it was so
Cause it's so bad.
It doesn't even really look like a manatee.
It looks like it was adapted from something else
like a Yeah.
They took the trunk off an elephant or something.
Yes.
I've seen so few actual manatees in my life that the image
I have in my head of a Manatee is that costume.
Oh, that's terrible.
Yeah.
That's upsetting.
They all have that big swing around their neck.
Can I ask a question?
Jordan, what would've happened if Conan would have said
that website and then you found out
that it belonged to somebody else?
Well, what often happens is, if that's the case,
the standards department screens all of our shows.
And after the show, if they hear a website like that,
they'll check in with me and ask
if we knew it was gonna happen.
And if so, if we purchased the URL.
Ideally we would tell them yes.
In cases where we haven't, they usually ask us to censor
either the entire name of the website, or maybe
just the .com or .biz part of it,
just to leave some ambiguity there
so they have plausible deniability that they didn't actually
endorse a particular website that could be problematic.
There was a lot of times, if a website's unavailable,
it doesn't necessarily contain questionable content.
But the threat is that, in the future, when a show repeats
we can't control what would be on the website.
Then the only sure is to own it.
There was one example, normally we kind of rolled our eyes
when we get these notes if something is ad-libbed
in the show and we have to censor something.
We're never happy about it.
Yeah, cause it almost makes it sound worse when you
It makes it sound worse. Censor it.
We don't want the perception that we're a show
that falls under high amounts of censorship.
Back on the TBS show in 2014, we had the cast
of Orange Is the New Black on and Laverne Cox
was one of the cast members on the show.
And she had mentioned her twin brother
and that he had a website.
He was a musician, she said, and she wanted
to promote his website and we didn't
know about it in advance.
And normally if a celebrity asked to plug one
of their websites, there's a lot more leniency
involved than if it's just an unknown website.
You know, we wanna make sure that we treat the talent well.
And usually their harmless sites.
Normally I'll check out a website in advance.
In that case, it was ad-libbed.
I did not have the opportunity.
So after the taping, I immediately got an email
from the standards department saying
that we needed to censor the website.
And again, in the interest of talent relations
she was only promoting her brother's musical website.
I kind of went back to them and pushed back a little bit
and said that we'd like to keep it, let's cut some slack.
And I got an email back, which I have located,
and I'd like to read it to you.
Sure.
After I said that, we'd like to keep this URL,
the mention on air of Laverne Cox's brother's website,
I was told there is a pornographic image on the front page
of the site of three men being anally penetrated by objects.
Those are musical instruments.
And that was from standards and practices.
This was from standards and practices. Immediately to
verify the accuracy of the email, I went it to the website,
and in fact Well, of course.
That was certainly the case.
I can't say I disagree with the logic
of this policy as much as we disliked it at times.
It's interesting cause all of this, honestly,
I feel a little bit bad because we've sort of dispelled
here the myth that you don't do anything for the show,
like I'm sort of upset to know
that you occasionally did things.
You would've preferred it if I did not do things.
I would, yes.
Right.
That's part of your mythology.
Do you feel some level of sorrow that my image
was unnecessarily tarnished by the myth
that I didn't do anything?
I still don't know if we've shown you have actual duties.
All I've heard is you were looking
at three men being anally penetrated.
I don't know if that's work.
If so, and you were holding up
That's a good point.
The flap of a costume.
How many hours per year would you say you
spent researching pornographic websites for work?
Well, if I were to aggregate all of the requests
and the time that I spent looking at them,
and then the percentage of those pornographic,
I'd say under 10 minutes per annum.
At least that's what we say in Latin.
Yeah, what a great use of Latin.