Yeardley Smith Looks Back On 30 Years of 'The Simpsons'
*By Conor White*
Yeardley Smith has voiced the iconic Lisa Simpson for three decades, and she's still amazed that the show has remained such a massive success for so long.
"I remember reading once that the average life of a sitcom is five years, and that's if you're doing really, really well," "The Simpsons" star told Cheddar in an interview on Monday.
"The Simpsons" premiered on Fox in 1989, after originating as a sketch on "The Tracey Ullman Show". After 651 episodes, it's still going strong.
"I like to say we're halfway through," Smith said, perhaps only half-kidding.
Aside from giving birth to a countless number of memorable characters, the show has become something of a pop culture prognosticator ー predicting everything from the U.S. upsetting Sweden in Men's Olympic Curling, to the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, to yes, Donald Trump being elected president.
"Well, there's a crystal ball in the middle of the writers' table," she joked. "And they just gaze into it and things come to them."
"It is kind of uncanny," she agreed.
With the production of "The Simpsons" now a "well-oiled machine," as she described it, Smith is now lending her unique voice talents to a new medium ー podcasting.
Alongside longtime friend and fellow actress Zibby Allen (of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."), Smith hosts "Small Town Dicks," a true-crime podcast that looks at the most harrowing crimes in America's small towns, featuring the real detectives who solved the cases.
"People think that in small towns, that it's small-time crime ー like you're rescuing a cat out of a tree or something," she said. But that's not the case.
"These big-time crimes are happening in small town USA with the same level of depravity and reckless and disregard for human life, but with less frequency."
As for "The Simpsons," all good things must come to an end ー even the longest-running series in primetime history.
"We're probably closer to the end than we were, say, 10 years ago," Smith said.
Not that she wants it to end anytime soon.
"I could do this forever," she said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/yeardley-smith-iconic-voice-of-lisa-simpson-talks-30-years-of-the-simpsons).
The crypto industry is still reeling from Terra's recent crash. The company's blockchain was temporarily halted earlier this month after the collapse of its cryptocurrency Luna (LUNA) and its stablecoin TerraUSD (UST), which led to almost $45 billion being wiped from the tokens' market caps within a week. Now, many are left wondering what Terra's struggles mean for the broader crypto market. Reeve Collins, CEO of the NFT platform BLOCKv, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell from Davos 2022 to discuss.
China's largest ride-hailing company will no longer be listed on the world's largest stock exchange. Didi shareholders voted on Monday to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, less than a year after launching a $4.4 billion IPO with the most significant U.S. share offering by a Chinese company since Alibaba debuted in 2014. Since going public in June of last year, around $70 billion has been wiped from Didi's market value and shares of the company have dropped nearly 90%. Now, Didi is expected to begin preparations to list in Hong Kong. Kevin T. Carter, founder and Chief Investment Officer of EMQQ Global, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
This episode of On The Job presented by ADP: Cheddar takes a deep dive into how offices in Silicon Valley are handling return-to-office policies with Jesse Levinson, Cofounder and CTO of Zoox; Bob Lockett, Chief Diversity & Talent Officer at ADP breaks down the importance of flexibility at work and how to approach compensation in order to improve retention; Pamela Rucker, CIO Advisor and Instructor for Harvard Professional Development, explains how A.I. can play a role in sustainability efforts and what business leaders need to know about ESG.
Jeremy Kim and Wootak Kim, content creators and the stars of the ‘Under the Influence’ podcast and YouTube series, joined Cheddar News to talk about using their platform to help other Asian American creators. "When we were kind of like coming up with the show idea, there's like so many other people that we really respect or look up to or that interesting stories that will never get the chance to be seen by anybody else," said Jeremy Kim. "And so that's the kind of the platform that we wanted to create."
Chantel Powell, Co-Founder and CEO of Play Pits, joins Cheddar News to discuss how she's grown her business from making it in her very own home to being sold on the shelves in Target stores across the nation, and break down how her business remained resilient throughout the pandemic.
Coming off of their face masks endeavor, Jill Zarin of "The Real Housewives of New York City," and her daughter Ally Shapiro, CMO of JIll & Ally, join Cheddar News to discuss their latest product: crystal manifestation candles. "We have tigers eye, we have amethyst, we have lapis, and alone those could be almost the price of the candle," said Zarin. "We were really able to do it in an affordable way, and if you don't know how to manifest or what that even means, we do it for you on the candle." Zarin also dished on the new season of "Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip."
