Although Reiss, Jean, Vitti, Martin and Gregory M. Daniels '85 have all moved on to other writing assignments, and O'Brien has his own late-night talk show, Richard J. Appel '85, who is a Crimson editor, Daniel J. Greaney '86, Daniel A. McGrath '86-'87, Steven R. Tompkins '87-'88 and David S. Cohen '88 have all joined the show, bringing the Harvard contingent to eight of the show's 12 regular writers.

"The interesting thing is that it all shifted," Oakley says. "It was originally a large group of guys who were all friends in the early 1980s who were running the show, and now it's a group of people from the late 1980s."

"It's basically the entire staff of the USA Today parody," Oakley says, referring to a 1986 Lampoon publication.

Despite the common College background of the Harvard writers, their postgraduation career paths took them in very different directions before meeting again in Hollywood.

"We have all professions on our writing staff except writers," says Cohen, who worked as a physicist for the Harvard Robotics Laboratory before coming to The Simpsons.

But Cohen is not the only "rocket-scientist" on staff.

According to Cohen, Keeler received an applied mathematics doctorate from Harvard and worked for Bell Labs in New Jersey.

"It has got to be the only show on television with two different writers who have both published articles in Discrete Applied Mathematics," said Cohen.

Unlike Cohen and Keeler, Greany and Appel have degrees from Harvard Law.

Greany gave up a career in corporate law in New York City to join the show last year and Appel was a federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

Itchy and Scratchy

In an episode from the fourth season of the show, the Simpson's writers had a little fun at their own expense.

Bart and Lisa submit a script to their favorite TV program, the "Itchy & Scratchy Show" which is a brutally violent parody of the "Tom & Jerry" cartoons.

Roger Myers, the President of "Itchy & Scratchy International" likes the script by Bart and Lisa so much he fires his staff of regular writers from Harvard.

One of the writers protests, "But sir, at Harvard they taught us.."