Marc Maron interviewed Dan Harmon for his podcast last year, but back then Harmon was in charge of a critically lauded TV show, Community, that had a passionate cult following. He has since been fired. And so Maron, who is guest-hosting Attack of the Show on the G4 network, sat down with him again for the first full interview with Harmon since the firing.

And it does not disappoint. Harmon is defiant, but also acknowledges his prickliness (“Maybe I am just a jerk,” he says), and he and Maron exchange amusing, metaphor-laden, rapid-fire exchanges about the purpose of Harmon’s chosen medium. “With television you’re engaged in the pacification of the masses,” Harmon says, “but I think the masses need to be pacified—they deserve it. I think if you pacify them well, you can pat yourself on the back and go, ‘I’m a good pacifier. I did good. I got sucked on.’ ”

Harmon returns to that theme throughout the interview. “Television,” he says at one point, “is a populist, derivative, democratic medium. You’re supposed to make a hamburger that everybody wants in their mouth. That’s when you know you’re doing it well.”

To which Maron replies that Community, in Harmon’s hands, was “a very misunderstood hamburger.”

Watch the full interview below. (Via Laughspin.)