but i knew all of his bits. >> stephen: did your parents know you listened to george carlin when youe seven dirty words you can never say on television." >> yes, he was. >> stephen: do you know what they were? >> i do, but-- >> stephen: but we can't say them, exactly. what was the first talk show you ever did? >> first talk show, i don't remember, it might have been merv griffin, but i'm not sure. but i did a really forgettable movie called "beyond the poseidon adventure." >> stephen: sure, yeah. >> and they invited me to go on this talk show, and i had never been on a talk show, and so i was the last guest, and so i was in the waiting room while all six of the others went out there, and what i didn't know is the first guest gets to talk longer and as you go towards the end of the show, your time shortens. so by the time i got out there, literally, i had less than 30 seconds. probably 26 seconds. i don't know what it was. i was there. and they came back from a commercial. and the host said, "hey, weren't you a football player?" and-- and-- and peter boyle, who was also in the movie,

lorne: george carlin? you knews he so funny he would be a hit? lorne: i knew he had monologues that would work and i know he was funny. the biggest controversy of the first show was the network wanted him to wear a suit, a jacket and tie. he did not want to. he wanted to wear a t-shirt. it was not the biggest thing in my life. compromise, which took a lot of time on the show day, was he wore a suit with a t-shirt. it was the perfect solution. david: did you have to have a censor?- a lorne: there were a lot of discussions about what we could do and what we cannot do, and what you could do and 11:30 and what you could do at midnight. phrases-- all of those from the 1970's like cutting edge and pushing the envelope. we were trying to reflect life as we were living it and also 1975 is the end of the vietnam war. the president had resigned. new york city was bankrupt. it was a little window that opened where it was not business as usual. david: 1975, late 1970's or early 1980's, how has humor changed? nothinghere is almost we did in the 1970's that i

as i write in the book the hard facts are your stuff, you become the george carlin term of your stuff is a a value really almot entirely to nobody but you. after my grandmother passed, a few years later we did have the great cleanup and i wasn't in charge of it. her children were. there was an estate sale they came in and, of course, the value was and got out of it. at least the value that she had ascribed to it and this was a woman who spent time running a thrift store. she spent time in junkyards and scrap yards. which is what i have spent time because that was the family business. she had a keen sense of what this stuff was worth but, of course, it's not what it's worth to you. it's what it's worth to someone who buys it. at the time she passed away prefiling up house cleaned out, i started thinking maybe this would be an interesting subject for an essay in this particularly 21st century form of greeting but i was already underway with my first book which was about the global recycling industry. i decided this is something i would need to pass on. as things happened, a couple weeks

. >> george carlin was the first host. wanted to be permanent host. >> nice to see you.ining us live. >> there were a lot of names bandied about in terms of permanent hosts. >> that's one of those tv rules you mustn't break, until you do. then you realize, why don't you have a different host every week? but it was the cast that finally won people's hearts. >> come on, who is this? >> andy-gram. >> you cut your own steaks. we give you the sauce. >> i'm barbara wawa. >> thank you, thank you very much. you're beautiful. you're beautiful. thank you. >> you were drawn to the tv set, because you knew something insane might happen. >> live, live. >> live from new york! >> partly because it was live. partly because you knew television was now in the hands of the television generation. ♪ >> and these were kids in quotes who just might do anything. >> yes, having sex with women, the president within these very walls. that never happened when dick nixon was in the white house. >> it was counter television. that's partly what made it attractive. >> no problem. >> every one of their