Ed Helms

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And we would just go get cocktails after work and just pitch ideas and make each other laugh about what a crazy character Andy Bernard was.

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

Very excited to be talking to Ed Helms.

You know him from The Office, The Hangover, The Daily Show, Rutherford Falls, and much more.

Like me, he's also a podcaster, and his show, Snafu,

is all about history's greatest screw-ups.

I really delight in him.

Here is Ed Helms.

But here we are, two podcasters.

We're going to talk about yours a lot.

Snafu, which means it's a military term, situation, normal, all fucked up.

Ted.

It's my podcast.

How dare you?

This is a this is a family show, just so you know.

Yeah, no, that's that's World War II, I guess.

Some soldiers were just kind of getting exasperated.

And, you know, the army loves an acronym.

And so that's where Snafu and Fubar, which is arguably a better acronym.

Wait,

so messed up, F you.

What is Bar?

Fubar?

Yeah.

Fubar is fucked up beyond all recognition.

Yes, yeah, which is just it's just so glorious, and it's it's one worse than snafu.

It's a, yeah, yeah, situation normal, all fucked up, is kind of like, yeah, like this is like, yeah, it's always like that.

It's always just kind of fucked up.

Fubar is like, oh, oh, no, this is bad.

This is bad.

And this is what your podcast is.

You take us through

decades of most, mostly are all American snafus.

So the podcast,

there's three seasons of the podcast, and they're all, well, season one is kind of a global snafu, but it's really about the American side of it.

It's American, I would say.

Yeah, the first three seasons, the second season is a very American

and

yeah, season three is about prohibition.

So that's...

There's nothing more American than that.

The book is,

well, I should clarify a little bit that

podcast is like each season is a deep dive into one crazy snafu.

Eight episodes, like immersive, almost like cinematic listening experience.

I'm narrating, but there's lots of sound design and production effects.

And it's like a long, deep exploration of one thing.

Also funny, but it's

you do everything that will bring it to life to listen to it's highly produced.

It's not it's not like a guest show, it's but but we've interviewed historians experts people involved in the snafus sometimes

The book is just a much lighter sort of survey of snafus there there's like 31 each chapter is a new is almost like a short story just looking at the book one of the snafus was that children actually got a chemistry scent in the 50s that had two little bottles of uranium.

Uranium, yeah.

Which is

at higher doses is real deadly.

Yeah.

Terminally so.

And

perhaps in the doses, they got not good.

I mean, not ideal.

They were in little glass vials.

With the letter, don't open them.

Yeah, with like, don't, don't open these.

But like, what do you do if you're a kid with a new?

it actually wasn't a chemistry set.

It was like a, it was like your home nuclear lab or something.

I forget the actual name.

Generate power, right?

But well, like nuclear, like just sort of,

yeah, it had uranium in it and it was definitely radioactive and a toy that children shouldn't play with, basically.

This was the 50s.

Like we didn't know.

We just didn't know.

We didn't know any better.

There were so many toxic substances in the industrial world.

But the only reason they took this toy off the shelves is because it was too expensive.

It was too expensive to produce.

Only later did they realize that, yeah, this was probably also too much radiation for children.

That must be kind of a nice ingredient or prerequisite for a snafu.

It starts off.

This is a good idea.

Sure.

We need to solve this problem and this might be a really good idea.

That's a great observation because that is most

snafus in this book are things that started out as

like a really good idea or like an effort to fix a problem

and

just terrible judgment, human error,

all of the above.

First off, how did you come up with the idea of doing a podcast about snafus?

Well,

Ted, I wanted to do a podcast podcast like you, right?

I

just was kind of, I was a big consumer of podcasts.

I really enjoyed them.

And I'd been guests on tons of podcasts.

And I was just kind of wondering, like, where do I fit into this

landscape or do I?

Because I didn't really want to do an interview show.

I suck.

Yeah, they're the worst.

They're the worst.

They're the worst.

And they're so annoying to go on and to sit through.

And, oh,

I haven't read the book.

They're such a burden.

Yeah,

no one's prepared.

It's just what a joke.

But

no, but I honestly, I love, I love these shows, these interview shows.

I listen to them all the time.

And they're really, they're so enlightening.

You get, get to know people in different ways.

And, but I didn't want to do that.

So I was like, is there some subject?

And history's just always been a fun area for me that's kind of like effortlessly interesting.

Like, I'm always curious.

I go down these weird little rabbit holes all the time of like, oh, like medical history.

I'll just kind of like get into some weird thing, or like, you know, when did we start to understand

what cancer is and how that works?

Or, or when, who invented the bulldozer and why?

I just, my brain is very

frenetic and kind of curious that way.

And

so I was like, okay, a history podcast, but it still has to be funny.

I want it to be like really fun and engaging.

So

then it was like, well, okay, screw-ups, like

the screw-ups of history are inherently funny.

They're inherently

captivating because they're literally like, car crashes on a freeway.

You drive by, you have to turn and look.

And so it just felt like a the perfect mashup of my interests and

something that it would be fun to do.

And it has been.

It's actually been so much more rewarding than I even thought.

Like I thought it would just be sort of a fun, light engagement.

Turns out it's a hell of a lot of work.

It's honestly, it's too much work, Ted.

I'm overwhelmed and I am ready to truth, Don.

Do you have help researchers?

Yes.

No, we have a great team.

And

I had a lot lot of research help on this book, too.

And

yeah, we have a great team.

And

what I was saying is I wanted it to be sort of fun and light going in, but the more you dig into these subjects, the more rich they get and the more human they get.

And tragic.

And at times very tragic.

Sad history.

Sure.

And then.

season two of the podcast became actually incredibly poignant in ways that I didn't expect because we were talking with so many of the people involved.

And

so in all these kind of beautiful, surprising ways, the whole experience of working on the Snafu podcast and then

subsequently the book has been very enriching and kind of uplifting.

And

as much work as it is, like I just can't wait to keep going and keep doing more.

It is way more work than I expected.

It's not quite as much fun necessarily as like being on a movie set or a TV set.

You know, those are.

You're not the bridegroom.

You are.

You're right.

You are working very hard beforehand.

Yeah, you're in the trenches.

You know, it's also, it's kind of this perfect combination of history and conspiracy that happens to be true.

So it's not.

It's

not making anything up.

You're not making anything up.

This really happened, but it feels oh

as unbelievable as some conspiracy theories are except it's real it's yeah some of these stories are so outlandish that that you're you're spot on they feel like

like conspiracies and a lot of them live in the space of you know

uh of of spy craft or intelligence, you know, the CIA.

There's one,

there's

one story from the book that that's just almost impossible to believe, which is it's the 1950s, the Cold War is

just full force, and the United States and the Soviet Union are just looking for ways to one-up each other and intimidate each other with their nuclear strength and power.

And someone hatches a plan, someone in the U.S.

government hatches a plan.

to shoot the moon with a nuclear warhead

that explodes on the moon.

That would explode on the moon.

Now,

why would this be a good idea?

Well, the thinking was

that the Soviets will see us hit the moon with a nuclear warhead and they'll just be like, oh my God,

we're doomed.

The Americans are so badass.

Look at that.

They can shoot, literally shoot the moon with a nuclear warhead.

And this is like how, how a 10-year-old thinks, right?

Like, we're just going to blow up this thing over there to scare these people.

But also, like, the moon is like, who,

what did the moon do?

Why does the moon need to get shot?

Um, how far down the line did this okay?

So, this man goes, this got very far down the line, and they start to realize this is actually a terrible idea.

And thank God they came around on this, but basically, they realized that any minor miscalculation or malfunction could very easily result in this nuclear warhead missing the moon, slingshotting around the gravitational field of the moon and just coming right back at us.

Yeah.

Or Moscow and go, whoa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

just hitting the earth somewhere.

That was.

That was not obviously a very bad outcome.

The other thing they realized is that even if they hit the moon, the best they could hope for is is like a little, like it wouldn't be this giant explosion that, that the Soviets would see and be like terrified by.

It might just be this little dustball, a little poof.

And if you could see it at all.

And I love that

because

that detail is fully Wiley Coyote, right?

Like that's that, that is, that is every time Wiley Coyote plummets off a cliff, he lands in like a poof, a little dust cloud.

After the sound disappears.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And

you can imagine like Acme

consulting on this project.

It's that Looney Tunes, like that whole idea.

And

here's another crazy thing about that whole story is that one of the researchers was Carl Sagan.

Oh, wow.

A young Carl Sagan right out of grad school.

And the only reason that we know about this is because

one of Carl Sagan's biographers, you know, decades later is going through all of his old papers and finds a fellowship application where he had listed this project as on basically on his resume.

And

this biographer is like,

I'm going to put a hold on the Carl Sagan research.

What the hell is this?

Oh, my God.

I'm going to go down this rabbit hole for a minute.

But that's it.

That's like to your earlier point, like

the, about conspiracy, you know, the only reason we know about so many of these things is because of either

accidents like that or the dogged work of authors, historians, and journalists.

And to me, that's like kind of the

hero story underneath a lot of these things.

We just wouldn't know if it wasn't for journalists.

It's kind of interesting, too, that we're in a period of, you know, history belongs to the

victor, you know.

And you're going, no, no, it's here.

If you dig deep enough, it's all there.

Here's the truth.

This is what really happened.

Yeah, we're also in this weird moment where it feels like

history

needs to be manipulated to fit a narrative.

Yeah.

Right.

It feels like we're,

um, and that's tra that's very heartbreaking to me because,

um,

because history,

uh, when it's looked at responsibly is a sort of, is a,

um

it ideally, you're trying to build as factual a record as you can.

Um

and you're you're you're in doing so, you're sort of taking responsibility for the

human error or

in the case of like

the United States.

Like if we look back at United States history, it is so important to be open and transparent about our mistakes, about our flaws, not in a way that denigrates us, but in a way that we can

keep growing and also

make any amends or make any adjustments.

Amends is

probably a controversial word, but I just mean making adjustments that we need to as a culture, as a society, as

people.

And it's not designed to make you feel guilty.

No.

It's shameful.

Right.

And how weak is it to feel that guilt?

Like, exactly.

It's not an exercise in guilt.

It's an exercise in knowledge.

It's an exercise in

growth growth and curiosity and exploration.

It's like, you know, it's like digging into yourself in therapy or something.

Like, hey, let's look.

We got to look at the whole package here.

There's good parts and bad parts.

There's things we're proud of.

There's things we're not proud of.

How do we move forward

in the most honest and productive way?

Yeah.

I don't know.

We just got real.

Ted.

No, I know.

It's good.

It's good, real.

And snafu is a great way to do it because there's also a grin in there that

is fun.

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I'm proud to know you, man.

Oh, thanks.

Your level of intellectual curiosity mixed with humor.

I mean, where did that come from?

When you look back, did you grow up around people who were intellectually curious and encouraged that?

Yeah.

I would say I can kind of point to a couple of things.

I grew up in a home that

I think my mom and dad were both just very curious people.

And we had tons of books and tons of

like reference books.

My dad was

a history nerd.

He was kind of,

he was into Civil War history.

So he had all these old, musty, like, you know, history books about that.

And

we had shelves of National Geographics.

And that was like, I think my entry introduction.

No, no, just

the magazine.

So did we.

Right?

It's like a.

Yeah.

It was my first

naked woman.

Oh, I think for a lot of us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was National Geographic.

Yes.

First, first boobies was National Geographic.

You're sitting there doing these incredible historical references.

That is where I saw my first press.

I think for, yeah, those of us of a certain age, that's National Geographic has that role also.

But

I loved it.

I just loved all of the

places around the world

that it took me, right?

Just I could pull any issue off of the shelf.

And we had hundreds.

Like, you know,

just going back

like 10 or 15 years,

my parents saved every one.

And then we also had the other thing that I loved was our World Book Encyclopedia on the bookshelf, which I, which you're Google.

Yeah, it was Google.

That's right.

And anything you were curious about, you know, someone would say,

you know, something about St.

Petersburg, Russia, and you're like, what is, what's that?

You could just look it up.

And

it was such a more

sort of

like

Google now as

a research tool is so overwhelming.

It's like this flood of

sources and information.

And you really, it's like such a,

like I, I just almost panic trying to sort through things.

If I'm really trying to learn about something, like, all right, well, who wrote this?

Is it really legitimate?

Is this a thing?

Like, what is this place?

You just, there's so many websites with so much crap.

But the world book.

The world book was so simple.

You just turn to the page.

It's all alphabetical.

You turn to the page, you read about it.

It's like, you know, maybe a few short paragraphs.

If you're lucky, it's a couple of pages on this thing.

And,

and it was just,

it was a contained,

you know, packet of information, exactly what you wanted.

See, that's

to me, that's the beginning of the Ed Helms that

I find fascinating.

We both share the joy of the giggle.

That's very similar.

The joy of the giggle.

I see that in you, and I have that.

But then some similarities vanish because

I was the son of an archaeologist, the scientist, and my sister soaked up everything, every adult, scientist from all over the world would have dinner in our house.

And

nothing landed.

Nothing.

Took it all for granted.

Thank God I got to be an actor because nothing else fit.

I could read for pleasure if I had to read to retain something.

Oh, nope, my brain just didn't do that.

So I am pure actor,

pure, pure actor.

I will never direct.

I'll never write.

I'll never produce.

I'm an actor.

You,

on the other hand, are amazing.

You write and produce and act and play six different instruments.

You just, I just, and what to me, I bring that up not because you're like, oh, how amazing, but it also you are, but it also, I think, impacts your acting there's something about you when i watch you that

you can be as wild and funny as the script demands but there's something so grounded in you that is more important

than everything else that's going around you you have that air that i just find fascinating when i watch you act i loved hangover i loved the the uh

Everyone feels empathy and all the humanity in you, even though you're you're sitting there without a tooth, being as silly as whatever the script needs.

You really are a wonderful actor, and there's so many layers to you that I think come out of that curiosity.

Wow.

Yeah.

That

go on.

Then there's your looks.

You are astoundingly handsome.

That is, I am so, so moved by that.

It means the world.

So tell me how you, good.

I'm glad because it's true.

Tell me how you started the funny part, how you started into acting, theater, improvisation, whatever.

So

the short version is

that I saw Saturday Night Live when I was eight years old and I just thought Eddie Murphy was

having the most fun of anybody I'd ever seen.

And I didn't even understand it, but I was just like, I want to have the fun that he's having.

I can tell he's having fun.

And the outrageous confidence.

Yeah, exactly.

That, that's what I, that's what I wanted.

And I think I was

maybe like a nervous, anxious kid in a lot of ways, and maybe still am, but it was that confidence that Eddie Murphy had as an 18-year-old on that show.

God, you know, my God, he's 18.

Wow.

The, the, the self-possession.

It was intoxicating to watch.

And

the

command and it just seemed like such a thrill.

And so, of course, like so many comedians, Saturday Night Live became kind of my,

I don't know, obsession is a strong word, but it was, it just was sort of a

always there.

It was a, it was a constant of my focus in growing up.

And something I always,

I just sort of like early on was like this is I want to be a part of that I want to be a part of that now that's the kind of like

that's the

the part you can that I can tell

or that I can sort of like look back on and say oh yeah the that's that's what sort of got me started but when I think a little deeper and I've only started to think more about this recently like

what is the

what where where where does the sort of like

desire,

why did that grab me so much?

What is the thing that like actually draws me to comedy in the first place?

And,

um,

and I think that has a much more complicated origin in

growing up in a, in a, a very sort of repressed southern uh home with some

some toxic elements to it and comedy being a

kind of

way out of tough situations or a way to handle tough people or a way to fix things.

And

my dad was a very complicated guy with

who was brilliant and

had some demons, but he was also insanely funny.

And

I could just tell that was my favorite part of him.

And so

he just had a wicked wit that was honestly in, I think, a little

like too mean spirit

for my taste, but I could always appreciate his sense of irony was so strong.

And he could, you know, he just was, he was a bootstrap story.

He'd grown up in Montgomery, Alabama and

gotten himself through college on an ROTC scholarship and then

got himself through Harvard Law School and became a lawyer.

And

he, so he, he had this perspective on sort of class issues that few people have and

also

had a just

incredible ability to kind of cut like with a with a satirical mind.

Um

and uh

and so that I think that mixed with again how about your mom?

How does she fit in that?

Mom, um

mom uh is

a great laugher

appreciated.

Yeah, great.

And and uh and so

I've so so she would she would she she was there to kind of reward a good

a good joke or a good performance performance or a good kind of moment.

So if I did something silly at the dinner table,

dad might get mad, but mom's going to laugh.

And

that's been a

huge, I think,

safety net for me was like mom's laughter.

Boy, I might get misty talking about that.

But I remember the

premiere for the hangover.

so like I said, kind of, I grew up in a kind of a repressed southern home, pretty

like politically, very progressive, but still a very socially conservative

kind of environment.

And uh, so the hangover is

nuts.

Like, that's not what they raised me to do is to be in a movie like the hangover.

And uh, so my parents, I mean, at that point, they'd seen me do crazy stuff on the daily show in the office.

So there was, you know, there was some sort of acceptance already.

But, but still, I was nervous for my parents to see the hangover.

And as a, well, I was like 35 when that movie came out.

And I'm still like nervous about my parents.

And so they came to the premiere and I'm sitting next to my mom.

And, you know, there's just so much insanity.

And

the movie ends and there's huge applause.

And I'm looking at my mom.

The lights come up and she's crying.

She's like tears streaming down her face.

And

for a second, I'm like, did I just break my poor mom's heart?

Tears of sorrow.

And she just is, she's saying, she says to me that that was so funny.

you know, and just a big hug.

And

I'll just never forget.

That was such a kind of like special moment.

The hangover was such a pivotal moment in my career and my life.

And for mom to just sort of be all in on it.

It makes so much.

Yeah.

Oh, that's a great story.

Yeah.

Bradley and Zach.

You're

a terrible human being.

You work with Zach.

You know.

And I live near Bradley.

They're both horrible human beings.

We really went through so much together making those movies and promoting those movies all over the world yeah yeah

did things change kind of for you from that the impact of how huge they became oh yeah um was walking around different was fame fun or not so fun as a result of those movies

um

Things definitely changed.

I,

you know,

I had the benefit of kind of ramping into fame through, sure, through the daily show and then the office for, I was on the office a few years before the, the first hangover, I think, a couple of years.

And, um,

and so it wasn't completely out of the blue, but I will say it was a, it was a level of fame that I just knew nothing about.

I did like, it was, uh,

nothing can really prepare you for that.

Do you remember that at that transition for yourself?

But I did the same thing you did.

I think God knew I couldn't take a big cannon shot of fan.

Yeah.

Then I had to go here, be in the background, not do a commercial.

Now maybe be a soap opera.

Now, you know, it built up to Shears.

Okay.

But I do remember when Sheers

syndicated.

The first week of syndication.

So you weren't just on Thursday night at 9 or 9.30, whatever it was.

You were on every night.

Yeah.

And the

amount of, I remember walking out and going, whoa, what's wrong?

What's going on?

Because so much energy was coming my way.

And

people fanning out on you or looking at you, just looking at you, whether you know they're looking at you or not, is energy physics slamming into you.

Oh, yeah.

And for me, my safety valve, because it was a lot.

And somehow from my parents or my sister, I was able to go, oh, I need to deal with this.

Coincidentally,

that's when environmental activism, ocean

activism started for me.

And that's kind of what saved me from fame.

Yeah, that's a great.

You turned to alcohol.

No.

I turned to violence.

That's yeah, that's so interesting.

I

think I'm curious your take on

the

what I found and what I, what I didn't even have the awareness to understand at the time

or the tools to deal with

was the, what I found kind of crazy was the loss of control over your environment as a, as a famous person.

You, we, you know, you take for granted for so long that if, if, you know, if you're

in a weird situation in a restaurant, a fight breaks out or something, you can just leave.

Or if you're at baggage claim and somebody's being weird or there's a, you know, people yelling at each other, you can just walk away, right?

But when you're famous, you're suddenly not able to like just walk away.

Because people look at you.

Yeah, well, people, please handle this.

Yeah.

Or they'll just, people will follow you or be curious about your reaction to something or just want to talk to you and keep following you and keep looking at you and giving that energy you're talking about.

Um,

the, the,

uh,

it, it's like those moments when you do just want to sit down at an airport gate and like read a book and people are just coming up asking for pictures or want to chat or whatever it is.

Um, and generally, that's very positive energy.

And I'm, uh, I, I'm like, I welcome it, but right, um, but sometimes it's not.

Sometimes it's, it's like, it can be dark or weird, energy, you know, drunk guys thrilled about wanting to do shots with you because of the hangover or whatever.

Um,

and, uh,

and, and I think it was that sense of like, well, what do I, what am I supposed to do in this situation?

And not having a sort of set of tools or even a kind of maturity to sort of like deal with.

And I suddenly understood how a lot of celebrities become agoraphobic.

But I sort of made myself a promise that I would,

that I would.

I would keep doing everyday things.

Yes.

And I won't be,

I won't hide.

No.

You can.

kind of hide in plain sight.

Sure.

You can bore the hell out of people.

Yeah.

If you put on dark glasses and walk someplace with the bodyguard, you will attract a crapload of attention.

Yes, for sure.

As opposed to, you know,

down the street.

I'll give you a gift.

Here's,

except it's probably too late.

This is my response to, hey, Ted, da, da, da, da.

Or do you remember?

I have this generic, hey.

It's a, hey,

which means, oh, I hear you.

Yep.

I remember.

Yep.

Gotcha.

Can't stop.

Hey.

You sound like a horse.

Yeah.

Whatever.

Yes.

With a big grin and a yeah.

Oh, I love that.

I love that.

Somebody

I'll never forget.

I was doing a press junket with

a wonderful actor who I will not name, but they kept asking him

what if he was attached to this new big superhero role.

And he couldn't answer, you know, because it wasn't official or the whatever.

It wasn't, he just, well, he wasn't able to actually answer the question yet.

And so

he kept saying that reporters kept asking the question, and he would go,

he would just mumble.

He would just mumble.

And at one point, I was like, hey, you should just come up with like a stock answer.

And he's like, no, no, no, I think this is working pretty well.

And it was.

Like the reporters were just like, what is he talking about?

They just move on.

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Back up, back up.

I see you getting hired to be in the office, but by the end of your time, you were producing it, you were writing parts of it, and you directed a couple episodes.

What was that progression that you wormed your way into the front office?

That's really.

I'm actually sorry.

I'm after the writer in you.

I think what you're actually getting at is sort of the benevolence of Greg daniels who is do you know you know greg i i you know i don't really but i know of him through mike shore i know the legendariness of him sure i don't we haven't hung out um well he is uh both a genius and a lovely man and uh

he uh he was the showrunner for listeners he he was the the the creator of the american version of the office and uh and and ran it for for most of its its run.

And he just had an incredibly collaborative spirit and welcomed the sort of, you know, he fostered the ambitions of both his writers and his cast.

And so

when cast

like

expressed interest in

doing different things or sort of adding creatively,

he was there to help and kind of facilitate and make things happen.

So, um, so I saw, you know, some of my castmates directing and

yeah, sure.

John, John did a few.

And, um, boy, what a director that he was, he was like super special.

Um,

and all

the, the, the great, the best thing about John when he directed episodes, there was, there was a sort of culture in the office where

we just went long, like every day went long.

And we just took our time and moved through scenes slowly.

And that was great, but it also meant that like everyone was tired a lot.

And sometimes we weren't getting enough sleep because we were, you know, we'd have to be in early the next morning.

But John, every time he directed, we were done at like, whoa, you know, 6:30 every day.

And he just ran that set in

such with such like a steady hand.

He's one of my favorite human beings.

He and Emily.

yep incredible yeah

um

but he got so you

they what did you ask for not asked for where did you go first writing or directing well i didn't write office episodes but i did uh but you i contribut i pitched a lot and i sort of you have a producer credit right yeah towards yeah towards the end we were we were uh

yeah a few of us were became producers on it um and so i was involved in that creative process and pitching things and sort of reflecting with writers and at different times on different storylines, et cetera.

But

honestly, I think of improvising as a sort of form of writing, and that was always happening as well.

So, yeah.

And you met Mike Shur,

which became a collaboration.

Yeah.

Mike, what, what a

the worst.

Oh, right.

He is so bad that when I called him a few minutes, texted him a few minutes ago, he said, make sure to ask him to do his Shelby Foot Ken Burns box impersonation.

So you're on.

I'm sorry.

You have no choice.

We will sit here until you do it.

Oh my God.

He totally threw me under the bus.

That's so funny.

Well, first, let me just give you a little background on Mike Scher and and me which is that um

he uh

so he was a writer when i joined the cast of the office he was a writer and um

and for some reason he and i just took we we we found each other early and kind of glued onto each other because we both thought that andy bernard was the funniest, dumbest, craziest character.

And we would just like

go get cocktails after work and just pitch ideas and make each other laugh about what a crazy character Andy Bernard was.

And so, in so many ways, character on the office, correct listeners.

Yes.

And so, in so many ways, Mike was like integral to the creation and genesis and ultimate evolution of Andy Bernard in those early years.

And

purely out of joy, it was such a fun, joyful process to kind of like just pitch and make each other laugh.

And I would, you know,

perform some dumb thing.

And

he was on set a lot.

And

we were just constantly finding things.

And he's good buddies with John Krasinski, too.

So that those first couple of seasons, it just was like such a fun little collaborative cocoon that we were in.

But

that's Mike's sure.

Yeah.

Now,

now mike's request is still on the table okay so you've seen ken burns civil war documentary yeah there one of the most prominent voices in that documentary is uh is a historian named shelby foot who's this uh sort of you know southern aristocrat uh sort of southern academic and he's obsessed with the civil war and um and they just like ken goes to him constantly and i and like of course, he's a, he's a well-regarded academic, but, uh, but I would always complain to Mike that like, why, why does he go to Shelby Foot so much?

And one of the things that bugged me about Shelby Foot

is that he would,

so much of what he would say

was so clearly apocryphal.

Like it was not factual.

It was not something that could be verified in any way.

So he'd say something like, you know, when Stonewall Jackson's men

took the crest of the hill and looked down into the valley, and Stonewall said to them, Boys,

this will be the moment of your life.

And the soldiers looked at him and they saw the glint in his eye.

And they, and they were filled with courage and charged down the hill.

It's like, no, they didn't.

How do you know that?

Come on.

How do you know they saw the glint of his eye?

I was like, what?

And so

it's such rich storytelling, which is why I both love it.

But then also, like, the historian in me is like, come on, you can't verify that they saw a glint in his eye.

And

he does.

Is he still alive?

Because you still get him on Snap Fu as an expert.

I don't know, but I have deep affection for Shelby Foote and just that little bone to pick.

And of course, yeah.

You and Mike are both incredibly curious people.

Yeah.

You both have that.

He's a blast.

Yeah.

And we we made Rutherford Falls together with another,

our third partner in that was Sierra Teller Ornellis.

And that that was a

that was a very history-oriented show.

Uh, in, and it was sort of born out of historical curiosity.

And that's something that

making amends in a way.

Yeah.

And by talking about it.

And confronting, you know, difficult things in the past.

And

so, yeah, that was a part of, I think that was a really cool thing that

I think I discovered later in my friendship with Mike was that shared,

just

that specific sort of lane of curiosity into history and what makes us who we are and so forth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Okay.

I also hear that in between takes, you're in your dressing room composing, creating, playing on the banjo, guitar, sitar.

You know, that you are a man of many stringed instruments.

I mainly am just a guitar and banjo player, which is a, yeah, which, which I don't think is that crazy.

But I did play the sitar on uh on the office in a christmas episode i think i played deck the halls uh on a sitar which is a very complicated instrument well it it is and it isn't like it it it is it is a overwhelming instrument um

but to do something rudimentary like play a melody on it if you're someone familiar with fretted instruments as i as i am

you can very crudely pick out kind of a melody.

I should

just be fully transparent.

I was not playing the sitar in the sense that I understood what I was doing.

I was plinking out a melody.

I am not a sitar student of any sort,

and it is an incredibly

elegant and complex instrument when done, when played properly.

I didn't do that.

Are you banjo

efficient enough or good enough to play with Steve Martin?

Yeah, we've actually played a few times.

Yeah.

And

we're playing together or we're on the same show coming up.

Rhiannon Giddens is a great

musician and banjo player

who has a show at the Hollywood Bowl in mid-June.

And Steve and I will both be able to do that.

Oh, my God.

That's amazing.

And,

but, but yeah,

he's inspiring to me in a hundred different ways.

Me too.

Yeah.

When did you do that?

When did you pick up the banjo?

So

my guitar teacher, early on, I had this kind of

this,

I liked old music.

I don't know what it was, but I, oh no, I do, I kind of know what it was.

Like sometime around junior high, all my friends were listening to, you know, the cool bands and pop music of various kinds.

And I had this little, this like chip on my shoulder about like

a very sort of catcher in the wry attitude of like, that's all phony.

What's the real stuff?

Where does this stuff come from?

So I was like digging into like old blues records and old,

and that took me into, you know, folk music and all kinds of different things.

And then being in the South and I spent a lot of time summers up in Western North Carolina and sort of being up in Appalachia,

getting interested in those music traditions.

And so.

uh but it kind of came from a place of like i'm getting into the real stuff and uh so i started learning guitar and with a kind of focus on bluegrass guitar.

And had this wonderful teacher named Sam Worley in Atlanta.

And he,

what a formative figure for me he was.

I really adored him.

And he taught me a lot of wonderful guitar.

And then he always had banjos sitting around in his in his music studio.

And

I kind of would always

like, I wanted to play one, but I, they're, they're extremely expensive.

I couldn't afford one.

I didn't know

how I could sort of get to play a banjo.

But then my school, my high school

decided to put on a production of a bluegrass musical.

And there's only one that I know of, and it's called the Cotton Patch Gospel.

And it's kind of a

religious gospel play, but it's a musical.

And the music is all written by Harry Chapin.

Wow.

Yeah.

And it's all this, this, this fun bluegrass music.

And

the

music, I mean, the theater director was like, well, can anybody play the banjo?

And I was like, I'll learn.

I will learn for this.

And so I went to my banjo teacher and I was like, can I borrow a banjo and will you teach me these songs?

And he said, yeah, sure.

And so that was my first, that was around probably 16 or so.

Having gotten nimble on guitars.

Yes.

So, so that's exactly right.

Having been, you know, very into

finger picking guitar, you know, blues styles, it was a fairly fluid transition to the banjo finger picking.

And I learned kind of rudimentary versions of the songs.

I wasn't playing at a very high level, but I could play.

I could just, I could play these songs

and sound okay.

And it was enough for a high school musical.

And you kept going.

And then I kept going.

And studying and all of the above.

And then I kept going.

I had

a really good buddy in college.

I still didn't own a banjo.

And that still was frustrating.

And it felt prohibitive just because

they were so expensive.

Now you can get these wonderful

Deering good time banjos for a few hundred bucks.

And they're really well made because they're mostly machine crafted.

But back then to get like a serviceable banjo, it just was, you know, six, seven hundred bucks at least, if not more.

And

I just didn't, I, it was not something I could do.

So

I got to college.

A really good friend of mine was a great banjo player.

And I just hung out with him a lot, learned a lot from him, played his banjo all the time.

He was like, yeah, yeah, you can borrow it for whatever.

I finally bought a banjo when I moved to New York City after college.

And I took some, took some, a few lessons.

I was thrilled to find out that one of my banjo heroes, a guy named Tony Trishka,

was giving banjo lessons in New York City.

Like he was just a banjo.

I was like, really?

It's like

someone, I forget how I got his number, but I called him and I went to a banjo lesson the whole time.

I'm like, you're Tony Trishka.

You're just like giving banjo lessons to idiots like me.

And sure enough, and he, he was,

and to this day, like he's a dear friend and

an incredible inspiration.

And that's actually the last time I played with Steve Martin was at

Tony Trishka's 75th birthday show in New York City, which was just last year.

Do you guys, have you performed many times together, Steve?

You and Steve Martin?

No, we haven't.

No, I think we've all had her in between.

No, no.

That was a show with with way too many banjo players and we all kind of like came out and did little bits and so forth.

But, but I've played a couple of times with Steve in just a casual setting, um,

you know, with other, other musicians.

Are you writing scripts?

Um,

I'm in,

so I have a production company, and I'm mostly in sort of development mode.

For stuff for you to do

on film.

For stuff for me, but also stuff maybe not for me um tv or film or both or whatever very much both yeah and uh

uh

and a couple of the couple of the snafu seasons we're trying to turn into uh that's great that's a good idea yeah because they're just such incredible stories and they're true um with incredible characters so hopefully or the snafu

that takes you in the wrong direction and all of a sudden you're running down streets in Berlin being chased by no sorry you know what there it is I love it I love it you know what you know what's funny is I do think about stories in terms of the moments that I want to have in a in a movie do you think that way no but I know writers that do that Jonathan Ames will come up who I just love he did sure bored to death yeah he will come up with the most ridiculous image and then figure out how to realistically be able to get there by kind of doing the story back.

Is that what you're talking about?

Yes, exactly.

I mean, you just said running down back streets of Berlin.

And to me, that conjures like some of the great film noirs and like, you know, the clacking of wingtip shoes through the cobblestone streets and

with great like, you know, that that

stark black and white lighting and Orson Welles peeking around a corner.

It's all

like to me that those those feel like the feelings you get from those moments is what

like I'll think of something and then want to write to it in that way.

And like, like Jonathan, like build to something just because the moment feels so cool or exciting.

Or it's like, how do I get, you know, how do I get a guy dangling from a helicopter for whatever reason?

And then you just write, write to it.

Or call Tom Cruise and say, yeah,

give you a shortcut.

It's weirdly, the hangover was such a dream come true just making that movie before, of course, it became this like juggernaut.

But even before that, making the movie felt like such a dream come true because i had had this image in my head of

i just wanted to do a comedy where like me and

some friends were in a car chase and we're scared out of our minds and we're all screaming hysterically and for some reason that image was

like

had been playing in my head for years like the action comedy but like from not not the not the macho like cool guy like owning a moment but the guys that are terrified in a moment like that just feeling so funny free

free the script and so so i became that i think was part of how i read material was like oh does it

like almost subconsciously like is it meeting these yeah these sort of my my fantasy moments like that and of course the hangover has like 10 scenes like that So I was, yes.

Oh, I can't wait to do this movie.

You're a bit of a manifester.

You'll have to see.

I guess.

Look what you did.

I mean, I'm not that, I, I'm not a, uh,

yeah, I'm not, I'm not quite woo-woo in that way, but, uh, but I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Energy matters.

Do you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do believe that.

Do you,

how do you lead your life?

You don't have to do the personal life, but the career life.

Do you have goals that you want or do you just delight in what's coming your way?

Are you, if you had a magic wand and you could say, this is where I want to be five years from now, do you think that way, or do you just

delight in what's coming?

Um, I'm much more.

Does that make any sense?

Yes, that's a great question.

And, uh, and I,

I think that I'm much more the person that is like chasing goals and chasing

the dream of the guys guys in the car laughing and

chasing lots of aspirations that some of which are very

very sort of specific and some of which are very vague, like that idea of just being in a car chase scene.

But I will say I think I'm that

to a fault because

I think I could benefit from a little bit more of the joy of like, especially now at this point in my career, where

there's not as much a need or a sense of like hard hustle that was so much, which just defined the first 20 years of my career.

I've been so fortunate to have the various successes that I've had.

And I think I'm now

like fantasizing fantasizing about the

other version, more of a role with it, kind of

like a more,

I guess,

patient and

I don't know.

There's it, that, that, that's feeling like it could be a more

gratifying

concept.

Yeah.

That probably has.

Maybe.

Maybe I'm just exhausted.

No, but you know, you do kind of reach that, oh, I could mentor something or I could

parent something.

You know, that kind of role all of a sudden becomes available

or interesting.

Well, I certainly, I'm, certainly parenthood has changed how I evaluate opportunities, right?

I, I'm, I'm like a deeply involved parent and I

like it's very hard for me to picture

going to St.

Petersburg.

Yeah.

Projects that take me away for

long stretches.

And

yeah, so I'm, that's something I'm still

kind of trying to figure out.

Yeah.

I have to say, Mike Shrew, I mean, Mike Shrew did the good place.

So I worked with him for four years on that.

And

this is the second year of a

man on the inside, which is his.

So that is not a collaboration.

It's him hiring me.

Working.

It's a collaboration.

Getting, yes.

You bring a lot to the table.

No, I do.

But I was trained to go,

here,

let me do your words for you.

Is that what you meant?

You know, this is what it makes me feel like when I do your words.

Is that, am I on the same page as you?

That is a collaboration, but I'm not the writer.

Let me suggest an idea to you guy.

Right.

But anyway, he has offered something that now for me as an actor at at 77, it's like, I realize that I've always wanted to

know what it was like to be funny or try to be funny at every age that I am.

You know, it's like, do you want to do Sam Maloney parts when you're in your mid to late 40s?

No, no, that's an adolescent thing and it was perfect and that's great.

So to, and now I'm.

I'm a 77-year-old who's hired to play a 77-year-old

talking about age and being real about age and funny, you know, or talking about second chances and being funny.

You know, it's like he's given me this amazing,

everything I could dream for really

is happening right now in front of me.

So it's kind of my, my goals are now.

Can I keep going, please?

Right.

Let me keep showing up for work because this is delicious.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

I'm in the kind of dessert

part of my life.

Acting was, life was.

That is great.

I'm curious, do you feel like the

like a show like Man on the Inside,

where you're playing someone like

not too dissimilar from yourself?

Totally myself.

Yeah.

But you're reading, you're getting scripts written by people very dissimilar to you,

younger.

writers.

Do they feel true to the experience of someone like you?

I think so.

Yeah.

I mean, because they're not oblivious to their

incredibly bright.

And Mike Shore is writing this for me.

Yeah.

It's like it feels like.

And he knows you so well.

He knows what I can do well and not so well.

And he writes to the well.

And that's an amazing gift.

Yeah.

You know, it really is.

It's like, I'm so lucky.

So I'm just warm.

I have to give him a little speech.

He's getting a Hollywood star, you know, in the Hollywood walk of fame.

I'm going.

I'll be there.

Are you?

Yep.

I'm going to be there.

Give me some material.

I'm too reverent.

No, I'm going to heckle you during your speech.

Oh, that's good.

Good.

I feel like someone needs to take Mike

down a peg.

I've hired his writers to give me some sleazy things to say about that.

That's

a great way to do it.

Yeah.

All right.

What's next?

Anything for you?

This is a lame question, but I got to ask it anyway.

If you have a North Star in your life,

big picture, cosmic, you know, your sense of morality, your sense of what's right and wrong.

Where does that North Star for you come from, do you think?

From your parents, from life, from your wife, from

what is your North Star as far as your, you know,

morality and humanity?

And

that's like the biggest question

I've ever heard on a podcast.

Let me try to answer that.

So, so what is my North Star and where did it come from?

Right.

Is that sort of, that's what I heard, I think.

On the most basic human level, yes.

So

I do think that my North Star has evolved a lot over my life.

It's changed at different kind of levels of maturity and experience.

And early on, I think my North Star was like just being on a great TV show or being in a great movie.

And, but also, I've always had

this weird

kind of almost like a preoccupation with justice and fairness.

And so, like, moving through the world in that way

always or speaking out in that way always felt

important to me.

Now,

as I've gotten older and I've had kids,

I would say my most,

the most intense North Star for me now is being the best dad and husband that I can be.

Those, that's like, that's it.

Like that's everything.

And I still have lots of things I want to do professionally and I still have lots of aspirations.

But it's, it now all feels in service of this other thing, like

just being a dad and

growing as a husband, which, you know, has been a whole

the learning curve on that has been,

has been

incredible.

So Yeah.

And then,

and, and that's also a reflection of like who I was learning from at different times in my life.

So early on, you know, I was learning from my TV

heroes like Eddie Murphy and you, candidly.

You were someone I watched so much.

And

it's been like 65 minutes into this podcast.

Yeah.

About time.

I knew I had to get it in there.

Honestly, I just got a text from Mike.

He's like, did you, did you compliment him yet?

He needs it.

It's like, it's his water.

It's his oxygen.

We laugh, but oh, so true.

But,

but yeah.

And then I'm, I was sort of learning from

like my childhood experiences, which I feel like were a lot of my career was a sort of like response to or sort of like trying to

fix

insecurities from childhood or whatever.

Now I am learning from my partner and from my kids and they're

like,

like they're sort of these sources of incredible wisdom i mean children are so

wise like their emotional vulnerability and sometimes i feel like at a at a very young age what there's this there's this window when kids learn how to talk but they haven't yet learned how to filter or um or like socialize or be or sort of fit social norms, there's this window of just a couple of years where they have

this incredible ability to articulate truths that they are experiencing and or observing.

And in those years, like they are

shaman, they are like these incredible teachers of, oh, this is what we lose when, when we become socialized and when we, when we, we start to become insecure and we start to sort of build a personality for ourselves or a persona for the world.

And,

you know, you can see as a child gets older, you can see that start, those things start to happen and certain doors in their brain start closing sadly.

But that window, I mean, and that's just human.

That's just how we grow as people.

Of course, other doors open and

people flourish in all kinds of ways, but there is that beautiful window.

And I've been

tried to just stay as tuned as possible to that.

Cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have that.

I'm blessed with a relationship that

earlier on in my life, I think my image was if I got hit by a bus right now, I'd go, well, shoot.

I didn't do it.

I didn't experience what it was to fully love and to be fully loved.

And to me, that's kind of, and that can be your description of love, but that is the most human, basic,

for me,

truth.

You know,

when Mary and I are, and we're not always in that, but when we're zinging in that circular thing, it's like, it is divine.

It is heaven.

It is like, wow.

Yeah.

Aren't I lucky?

Amen.

I'm really chuffed that I got to talk to you, really, because I admire what you do a lot and you're really good at it.

And I have not immersed myself in Snafu, but I'm totally fascinated.

Get in there.

I will.

Listen to the podcast.

I think I will listen to the podcast first.

And I'll see you at Mike's, Mike, at Mike Scher's

Hollywood Walk of Fame.

I am going to heckle you now that I know you're going to heckle me.

So anyway,

what a pleasure.

Have a lovely day.

Thanks.

The pleasure was all mine, Ted.

Thank you.

Yeah, take care.

Thank you, Ed Helms.

Check out season three of his podcast, Snafu.

The news season looks at how Prohibition's war on alcohol went so far off the rails, the government actually poisoned its own people.

It has also spawned a book called Snafu, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups.

I wonder if Woody's in that.

No.

I miss you, buddy.

That's it for our show this week.

Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone you love.

Be sure to catch us on YouTube where you can watch full-length episodes.

As always, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you have a mind.

Means a lot.

We'll have more for you next week, where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Liao.

Our executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedurovich is our supervising producer.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grahl.

Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Jane Batista.

Our theme music music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

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