Falling Asleep to Family Guy w/ Ian Chillag

Summary

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The Nightly – Falling Asleep to Family Guy w/ Ian Chillag

Date: June 22, 2026
Host: Josh Gondelman
Guest Co-Host: Ian Chillag

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Episode Overview

This whimsical, cozy episode explores the peculiarities and preferences of nighttime rituals, sleep-related “red flags,” and odd historical anecdotes—all in welcoming, late-night tones perfect for winding down. Guest Ian Chillag, known for NPR’s How to Do Everything and Everything is Alive, brings his signature dry wit and warmth as he and Josh answer listener mail, debate sleep routines (including the virtues and perils of falling asleep to Family Guy), and detour into the hilarious and macabre with history’s “unusual deaths.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sleep Routines and TV Habits

Listener Bri’s Email:
Bri shares grievances and “red flags”—notably, her fiancé’s nightly ritual of falling asleep to Family Guy.

• Josh reads Bri’s email: “My fiancé insists on falling asleep to Family Guy every night. Needless to say, as soon as he’s asleep, I turn the TV off and turn on my hatch.” (02:10)

Ian’s Empathy:
Ian relates, sharing his own surprising sleep aid:

• “I found the only thing that could make me sleep was the Amazon Prime Video series Jack Ryan. …Within 10 minutes of pressing play, I would be out.” (02:47)

The hosts riff on the paradoxical comfort of action thrillers and Family Guy as sleep aids:

• “Maybe with Jack Ryan in charge, everything is safe out there and I can rest easy.” — Ian (03:43)

Discussion on Synchronizing Bedtimes:

• Ian’s household: Both partners go to bed together; Ian sometimes matches his wife’s breathing to fall asleep.
  • “She’s in a motorcycle of sleep and I just hop in the sidecar…” (04:40)
• Josh’s mixed-bedtime household: Wife reads and sleeps early; Josh wishes for a less intrusive reading light.

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2. Bri’s “Sleep Red Flags”

Josh and Ian break down each of Bri’s sleep pet peeves:

a. Less Than Two Pillows (06:39):
Hosts agree that sharing one pillow is an extreme form of intimacy.

• "It's either a lot of conflict or a lot of love if you're able to have two heads on one pillow." — Ian (07:10)

b. Sharing an Email Address
Josh shares his bemusement that his parents have always shared one email, while Ian reveals both his parents are named Sean Chillag and sometimes share an email, too.

• “My parents are both named Sean Chillag. They have exactly the same name.” — Ian (07:53)

c. Wearing Socks to Bed (08:34):
Hotly debated. Ian mentions “sleeping rocks”—oven-heated stones his mom wrapped in pillowcases for cold nights.

• “I get into bed with socks and I kick them off at some point between wake and sleep.” — Ian (09:46)
• “I’m not judgmental of other sock sleepers.” — Josh (09:57)

d. Not Cuddling with a Blanket
Bri wonders if she just needs a pregnancy pillow—her fiancé sweats too much for cuddling.

• Ian calls the pregnancy pillow “the chaperone” that ruined snuggling, and shares the joy of disposing of it after his children were born.
  • “I would say, like, I can’t wait until we have this baby so I can burn this thing.” — Ian (11:23)
  • The anecdote about Ian’s friend throwing the pillow down the stairs is a highlight (11:31)

Community Call-Out:
Josh and Ian invite listeners to share their own sleep grievances and even alternative lullabies for Bri’s fiancé.

• “If anyone has any restful words or maybe a lullaby for Bri’s fiancé so that he could have something else other than Family Guy…” — Ian (12:24)

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3. Wikipedia’s “List of Unusual Deaths”—and why it’s so soothing at night

Ian confesses a pre-bed fascination:

• “I have recently become obsessed with the list of unusual deaths Wikipedia page.” (13:07)

The pair trade historical oddities:

• Death by laughter (Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher who laughed himself to death at his own joke —“Oh, that’s embarrassing. Especially for a stoic.” — Josh (15:40)
• Death by beard tripping (Hans Steininger, who tripped on his 4.5 ft beard):
  • “He usually kept his beard rolled up in a leather pouch by his side, but he let it out, and tragedy happened.” — Ian (16:13)
• Death by falling turtle (Aeschylus, the playwright):
  • “An eagle was carrying a turtle looking for a rock. Aeschylus was bald and it saw his head and thought it was a rock, dropped it on it, and that’s how he died.” — Ian (18:16)

Josh and Ian riff on hat history and fashion, referencing historical beard-purses and hat fads.

Sophocles’ Multiple Deaths:

• One account: He died from reading a monologue without breathing (“read himself to death”).
• Another: Choked on a grape; a third, died of joy upon a play’s success.
  • “Honestly, that’s how I would like to die. Just to success myself out of this world.” — Josh (20:22)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “She’s in a motorcycle of sleep, and I just hop in the sidecar.” — Ian Chillag (04:40)
• “It's either a lot of conflict, or a lot of love, if you’re able to have two heads on one pillow.” — Ian Chillag (07:10)
• “My parents are both named Sean Chillag. They have exactly the same name.” — Ian Chillag (07:53)
• “I can’t wait until we have this baby so that I can burn this thing.” (About pregnancy pillow, “the chaperone”) — Ian Chillag (11:23)
• “An eagle was carrying a turtle looking for a rock. Aeschylus was bald and it saw his head and thought it was a rock, dropped it on it, and that’s how he died.” — Ian Chillag (18:16)
• “Just to success myself out of this world.” — Josh Gondelman (20:22)
• [Peter Griffin impression] "Hey, Bree's fiancé, for you, in the style of Peter Griffin—good night." — Josh Gondelman (21:41)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:10] – Listener Bri’s Family Guy sleep grievance
• [03:43] – Ian’s Jack Ryan sleep confession
• [04:40] – Matching spouse’s breathing for sleep
• [06:39] – Minimum pillows red flag
• [08:34] – Anti-sock stance, childhood warming rocks
• [10:43] – Cuddling with blanket/pregnancy pillow stories
• [13:07] – Ian’s obsession with unusual deaths
• [15:40] – Stoics and death by laughter
• [16:13] – Beard tripping fatality
• [18:16] – Aeschylus’s turtle accident
• [19:35] – Sophocles monologue/joy deaths
• [21:41] – Josh’s Peter Griffin goodnight

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Episode Tone

Warm, playful, gently meandering, with an undercurrent of absurdist humor, the show creates an ideal late-night, bedtime vibe. Both hosts share openly about their own quirks, drawing in listeners as co-conspirators in the oddities and comforts of nightly routines.

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Takeaways

• Sleep habits are deeply personal—and sometimes delightfully odd.
• Historical oddities can provide great bedtime amusement.
• There’s a ritual comfort to sharing these late-night confessions—whether it’s a TV habit, a pillow preference, or a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

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Goodnight to Bree, her fiancé, and all who find comfort in even the quirkiest routines. And, perhaps, to Sophocles and Aeschylus too.

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Transcript

[A]

Audio for sleep by hatch. Hello and good evening everyone. I'm Josh.

[B]

And I'm Ian. Welcome to the Nightly from Hatch, where your late night thoughts go to rest.

[A]

So this summer on the Nightly, we are bringing in lots of fun, cool, interesting people to co host with your regular crew in the pillow fort. And as always, if there's something you'd like to hear us talk about or if any of our conversations spark anything you want to respond to, please feel free to reach out at the nightlyatch Co. This week I I am joined by the wonderful podcaster and podcast producer Ian Chillag. You may know Ian from his podcast Everything is Alive as well as NPR's how to Do Everything. And I work with him frequently because he is a senior producer. I believe I'm getting that right at Wait, wait, don't tell me on npr. Welcome to the Nightly Ian, it's so

[B]

nice to be here. I realized the last time you and I were on microphones together, you were on Everything's Alive and you were playing the world's gentlest chainsaw.

[A]

I was honestly just thinking about like, when was. Because we work together frequently for weight. Wait, but we haven't like talked on Mike since then, which was. Gosh, was that 2019?

[B]

It was, yeah. It was too long ago. However long it was.

[A]

Well, it's so good to have you here in the pillow fort. I would love to start tonight because we got an email from a listener named Bri who has some sleep related grievances and read flags that they would like to air. And so I was wondering if I could run these by you and see how you feel about them.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Okay. So this is Bree's number one sleep grievance. And it is. I'll read it verbatim. Number one, my fiance insists on falling asleep to Family Guy every night. Needless to say, as soon as he's asleep, I turn the TV off and turn on my hatch. So how do you feel about this?

[B]

Well, first of all, I love that she says my fiance and not my former fiance that whatever this is, it has not been a deal breaker.

[A]

I think that's a beautiful observation. They're overcoming the fiance's love of Family Guy every night.

[B]

Yeah, if they can beat this, they're going to make it all the way. When I traveled to Australia for work and had to immediately get into Australia, so I was completely flipped. And I found the only thing that could make me sleep was the Amazon prime video series. Jack Ryan.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Which is not meant to make you fall asleep, but Something about it. Within 10 minutes of pressing play, I would be out there. Just something soporific. It is my Family Guy, I guess. So I, I understand where the fiance is coming from.

[A]

And the Amazon series Jack Ryan is with John Krasinski, formerly of the Office as the titular Jack Ryan.

[B]

That's the one, yeah.

[A]

Wow. And that just puts you out. Do you, do you have any hunch what, what gives it that quality?

[B]

I. I mean, I feel like it's. It can't be nice what I'm saying about a show which is called a thriller, that it seems to have the opposite effect on me. But I don't know, maybe there's just. Maybe I trust that with Jack Ryan in charge, everything is safe out there and I can rest easy.

[A]

Let's say that I think that's a beautiful and gentle way to describe the effect that John Krasinski's Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan has on you. Are you a same bedtime household or are you a mixed bedtime household?

[B]

We are a same bedtime household, my wife and I. Yeah. Yeah. She sleeps easier than me and sometimes I will. If I can't sleep, I will do this thing which as I'm about to describe it, I think is going to sound creepier than it is.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But if I can't sleep, I will listen to her breathing and I will do the same breath. I will sort of like match what she's doing and that she's in a motorcycle of sleep and I just hop in the sidecar and it pretty much without fail will knock me out.

[A]

Kind of a Jack Ryan effect.

[B]

Yeah. My wife, my sweet Jack Ryan, Emily. Yeah.

[A]

Because we're a mixed bedtime household and so it's like two very different sleep routines where my wife Maris gets into bed and she'll read for a little while and then I'm usually up for like another two hours. She's an early to bed person and so I would love to. I need to get like a little sleep light for my, you know, that's just for my side of the bed because I do feel like all the lights that I have access to would be intrusive on a person who is already asleep. So I don't have a good pre bed reading routine which I would love to get into.

[B]

I remember seeing in catalogs when I was a kid something called the itty bitty book light. Do you remember this?

[A]

No.

[B]

Tell me more about was a little thing that would clamp onto your book.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

So that. Yeah. So it's like only the book would be lit and everything.

[A]

I need to look into one of those for when I sneak into bed. Okay. We've got a few sleep red flags from Bri as well, which are different than sleep grievances, may I say.

[B]

I think going to bed with a list of grievances, whatever they be, may be counterproductive to the process.

[A]

Yeah. It does kind of contradict that famous advice of not to go to bed angry.

[B]

Yeah. It seems like Brie is trying to go to bed angry.

[A]

Yeah. She's like, I'm angry about going to bed. What are you going to do with that? First red flag. Having less than two pillows, I guess fewer than two pillows. Two is minimum, which I think is fair, especially if you're going to share a bed with someone. If you're having some kind of sleepover, I think at least two pillows is in order. Yeah.

[B]

What you're. You're thinking two people, one pillow is bound to lead to conflict.

[A]

I think that is too much proximity.

[B]

Well, it's either a lot of conflict or a lot of love if you're able to have two heads on one pillow.

[A]

Well, my. My parents, since they've had email, have only had one email address. And I find that both a charming expression of their love and trust for one another. And also, I can't imagine sharing a personal email address with someone else.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it is prioritizing their relationship over everyone else that they are contacting because it is so confusing for everyone else. My parents have the same name. My parents are both named Sean.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Both named Sean Chillag. They have exactly the same name.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

And they will occasionally share an email address. And it is. You just. You just write off the possibility of understanding who is talking to you.

[A]

For sure. That is fascinating. Were they both Sean Chillag before they got married?

[B]

My mom was Sean Harris, and she married Sean Chillag and chose to take his last name. And, I mean, you could argue she also took his first name and replaced her Sean with his Sean.

[A]

Yeah. Maybe he took her first name. Maybe they traded.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's more. Yeah. That's equitable.

[A]

Wearing socks to bed. That's a red flag, which. I think we're getting a little picky now.

[B]

So we're against wearing socks.

[A]

That's breeze position.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. Which I don't. I've stopped. I used to wear socks to bed when I was little, but I think it was just because I didn't have control over how warm the room was.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

And now I'm sock free.

[B]

Did you have this. I think this is. I grew up in West Virginia, and it's probably an Appalachian thing, but when we would go to bed in the winter, my mom would. We had these big stones. They were like the size of a normal hardbound book, but a stone. And she would heat them in the oven and then wrap them in a little pillowcase and put a stone in the end of our bed to warm our feet while we slept.

[A]

No, we didn't have that.

[B]

Yeah, it was nice.

[A]

That sounds very effective.

[B]

I'm very excited about the sleeping rock.

[A]

You like making a little pizza out of your feet? Little pizza, yeah. How do you. Are you a besocked sleeper?

[B]

I don't think I have a preference. I think whatever has happened, I think I get into bed with socks and I kick them off at some point between wake and sleep.

[A]

Yeah. I'm not a sock wearer, but I don't think. I'm not judgmental of other sock sleepers.

[B]

Yeah. I wonder if. Yeah. I wonder if Bri has had a bad experience with socks in the bed.

[A]

That's true. And then finally not cuddling with a blanket. And then there's kind of a parenthetical that elaborates a little bit. And Bri says, maybe I just need a pregnancy pillow. I'm not even pregnant. My fiance just sweats too much to cuddle with him. Lol. Which I can relate to that as someone who I. I think I generate a lot of warmth and some. Some sounds, frankly, when I'm asleep. So I'm not. I'm kind of a. I'm not a soothing, unconscious cuddler. We.

[B]

We had. I have two children, and we got a pregnancy pillow for both. Both of the pregnancies, which is if. I guess if you. If people don't know, it's. They come in different shapes, but it's usually. It looks like the letter N or an upside down U, and you sleep in the middle of it just because, you know, your body is uncomfortable and needs different support than it does when you're not pregnant. And I hated it so much. I would call it the chaperone, because it just completely kept me from my wife.

[A]

Yeah, you're kind of on your own.

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

That's really funny.

[B]

I would say, like, I can't wait until we have this baby so that I can burn this thing.

[A]

Get the chaperone out of there.

[B]

Yeah. And my friend Mars and I, who. She and her wife were pregnant at the same time, and we would talk all the time about how much we hated the chaperones and about a week after they had their baby, she sent me a text and it was just a video and I didn't know what it was and you could see it was just a staircase. And I hit play and it was just her hurling the pregnancy pillow down the staircase so she could throw it away. So happy to say goodbye to that thing.

[A]

That's amazing. That's really funny. Well, thank you, Bri, for sharing your sleep grievances and red flags. If anybody else has comments on that, they have their own sleep grievances or red flags or anything they want to share with us here at the Nightly, please do send them in. Send any of your thoughts in at thenightlyach co.

[B]

I would say also if anyone has any restful words or maybe a lullaby to sing for Bree's fiance so that he could have something else other than Family Guy with which to fall asleep, that would be nice.

[A]

Yeah. He needs to just try out some alternatives. I think it's, you know, no points for or against Family Guy as a work of entertainment, but those are not soothing voices to everyone.

[B]

Josh, I have to tell you, I have recently become obsessed with the list of unusual deaths Wikipedia page. Have you seen this?

[A]

I haven't been to the Wikipedia page, but I understand the fascination. I was like. I remember like the Darwin Awards. Do you remember that from years ago?

[B]

Yeah, totally.

[A]

It's similar premise. Yeah. Of like people who. Who died in bizarre and kind of darkly funny maybe ways.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. No. I don't know how I ended up there. But you can start very, very long ago when maybe the stories are not as true as they are now. Sure. Which maybe makes it sort of more fun to read them because you don't have to worry about anyone because there's a very good chance that the story got mangled over time.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

But there was. You go through and you find so many people in the four, five, six centuries before B.C. you find so many people died of laughter. Wow. Just something. A joke would be so funny that they would suffocate because they could not stop laughing, which I've never. You're a comedian.

[A]

I don't know if you have ever. I'm a comedian. I've never. There's never been a manslaughter or I guess to appropriate from the Naked Gun man's laughter at one of my shows. A death by man's laughter.

[B]

I guess that would be pretty bittersweet. As a comedian.

[A]

You're right to have someone perish from laughter at a show.

[B]

Someone died. But I was so hilarious. I killed them.

[A]

I literally killed. Yeah. Do you think that these deaths happened because jokes used to be funnier in the BCE time? Or do you think people just, like, weren't used to things being funny? They're just kind of like, I till the land and I. I groom the sheep. And you just aren't used to humor. So when it hits you, it really hits you.

[B]

As you read this Wikipedia page, you do see some of the jokes that. And I will say jokes were not funny back then. It's just they were just such a

[A]

new hypothesis, one disproven.

[B]

There's one. Chrysippus of Soli, 206 BC. He was a Greek stoic philosopher. It doesn't say what the joke was, but it does say he died laughing at his own joke.

[A]

Oh, that's embarrassing. Especially for a stoic

[B]

Martin of Aragon. This was in 1410. The Aragonese king died from a combination, it says, of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing.

[A]

Now, I feel like in a situation like that, you're like, this is probably before doctors knew what was going on inside people.

[B]

This is a good one from about 100 years later. Hans Steininger, 1567, who was the burgomaster of an inn in Bavaria. He died when he tripped. His beard was 4.5ft long. He tripped on his own beard and died. It says he usually kept his beard rolled up in a leather pouch by his side, but he let it out, and tragedy happened.

[A]

Now, was a beard purse common back then? I'm very curious about this. I mean, rest in peace to this tragic man. But, wow, I'm just picturing that as the hottest.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

Accessory.

[B]

Yeah, no, I mean, the fob came back for a little while. Chain wallet. It is the time for beard purse. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I kind of feel like if we were gonna get facial hair purses, we would have got them in, like, 2000 when, like, big, silly beards were kind of having a moment.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Guys wearing suspenders to be bartenders and stuff.

[B]

I love. I love the idea. You don't have a beard purse, but you can wear a pocket tee. And you can just tuck it right in, right into the pocket tee.

[A]

That's what those were for originally, I think, in the olden days.

[B]

Oh, you're wearing your beard tee.

[A]

Yeah. Like, well, I gotta have some soup later, so I gotta keep this hatch battened down.

[B]

Do you know the story of Aeschylus the playwright? Do you know how Aeschylus died?

[A]

No.

[B]

This is a story That I think I had heard before I encountered the list of unusual deaths. Wikipedia page. Aeschylus in 455 BC. You know that eagles will hunt turtles. And the way that they eat them, they will fly up and then drop them on a rock to break them open to get to the meat.

[A]

Very similar to how I eat a turtle.

[B]

So an eagle was carrying a turtle looking for a rock. Aeschylus was bald and it saw his head and thought it was a rock, dropped it on it, and that's how he died.

[A]

That just another reason to wear hats. That's a great advertisement for the hat. I think it might have even been how the hat was invented.

[B]

We did this story on how to do everything years ago that there was this. They were doing this outdoor. I think it was like an outdoor Shakespeare play in Chicago. But the stage was. I think maybe it was red wing blackbirds, I think had nested above the stage and were constantly dive bombing the actors. They're really territorial, so they had to design costumes. They had these hats that they would. It looked like there were eyeballs on top of the hat. So when the birds looked down, it looked like heads staring back at them, intimidating them so that they wouldn't dive bomb the actors. Yeah.

[A]

Wow, this is fascinating. And it worked.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. The show went on.

[A]

Nature's amazing. Before we wrap up, are there any more unusual deaths that I and the listeners should know about?

[B]

Okay, well, Sophocles. We know Sophocles.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

There. There are a few stories of how Sophocles died, but one of them was he was reading a monologue from his play Antigone and forgot to take a breath. So he read himself to death.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Which is a. Pretty. As a pretty good way to go.

[A]

Yeah. He died doing what he loved. Reading his own work out loud. What are the other variations on that story?

[B]

Oh, well, they're wildly different. One story is he just. He choked on a grape, which sounds more plausible, but it's no fun.

[A]

Yeah, that's not fun at all.

[B]

One story does say that he died of joy after hearing that his last play had been successful.

[A]

That is honestly how I would like to die.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just to success myself out of this world. Pretty sick. Amazing. Well, thank you for that. That was like such a. I had no idea about the death by laughter. And I'm a little insulted that it hasn't happened at one of my shows. But there's still time. You're still young. I hope everyone lives through all my performances.

[B]

You might still kill someone.

[A]

Yeah. I hope not. But, I mean, I would be. I would say, sad and unnerved, but, like, a little flattered.

[B]

Yeah, it's a private joy. It's a joy that you talk about at home.

[A]

That's right. You can't really share it. Well, thank you so much for joining me this evening, Ian. I want to say goodnight to you, but I also, at the end of every episode, we say goodnight to someone somewhere else in the world, or, I guess, where you are. Even so, I'm going to say goodnight to you, but I'd also like to wish, you know, a restful, long good night to both Sophocles and Aeschylus.

[B]

And I'll say good night to you. And I'll also say goodnight to Bree's fiance. And I hope you didn't have to listen to too much Family Guy before drifting off.

[A]

Hey, Bree's fiance for you, in the style of Peter Griffin. Good night.

[B]

That was amazing.

[A]

Thank you. To learn more about our phone free light and audio experience, head to Hatch Co. You can also follow us at Hatch Podcasts.