Personal Life
Meyer is in a relationship with the writer Maria Semple. They lived together during the 1990s and broke up in 1999, but later got back together. Their child, named Poppy Valentina after Valentina Tereshkova, was born in 2003; being a father gave Meyer a "sense of hopefulness". They live in Seattle. Although raised a Catholic, Meyer hated it and later became agnostic. While working at The Simpsons he became an atheist, taking the advice of fellow writer Mike Reiss. He is a vegetarian, gambler, collector of space program memorabilia and practices yoga. Meyer is a fan of the Grateful Dead with Jerry Garcia being the "closest thing in Meyer's life to a spiritual figure." His sister Ann is married to Jon Vitti.
Meyer has a strong interest in the environment and notes that "the only organization that I really care about these days" is Conservation International. In 2005, Meyer cowrote the TBS special Earth To America. The same year, a newly discovered species of moss frogs from Sri Lanka was named Philautus poppiae after Meyer's daughter Poppy, a tribute to Meyer's and Semple's dedication to the Global Amphibian Assessment.
In 2006 he wrote a comic, cautionary opinion piece about the environment for BBC News. It begins:
- "Are you a hypocrite? Because I certainly am. I'm an animal lover who wears leather shoes; a vegetarian who can't resist smoked salmon. I badger my friends to see the Al Gore movie, but I also fly on fuel-gulping jets. Great clouds of hypocrisy swirl around me. But even a fraud has feelings. And this summer, I'm feeling uneasy; I'm starting to think that our culture's frenzied and mindless assault on the last shreds of nature may not be the wisest course."
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