Mike Schur

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The reason that I embarrassed myself in front of you when we first met in the way I did is because, A, I meant it, and B, cheers is the first show I ever cared about.

Welcome back to Everybody Knows Your Name.

This week, I'm joined by a brilliant mind who's been making us laugh for years, Mike Shur.

He wrote and produced on The Office, co-created shows like Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn 99.

He also created The Good Place, which I was lucky enough to be on, and it changed my life.

Most recently, we united for A Man on the Inside, which is now streaming on Netflix.

This episode was recorded a while back, and we weren't quite ready to talk about the show, which is why you won't hear us talking about it.

Mike's one of the smartest people I know, and I can't wait for you to meet him.

Here he is, Mike Schul.

I have to do a disclaimer just because it is so

different to be sitting next to you talking to you because bottom line, no matter how you cut it, you are the writer, creator.

And I am the actor.

So you are the parent and I am the kid.

You feel like

there's a power dynamic switch?

Totally.

Is that what you're saying?

Yes.

No, it's not a switch.

It hasn't switched even.

It's like

that's who you are.

And so if I am obsequious, Eber, it's because I'm still trying to kiss your ass

to make sure that I work with you forever.

I think that I would like to think that you have gotten beyond the point where you have to kiss anyone's ass.

No, that's what keeps me youthful.

The scrappy still needs to make my way, still need to prove myself.

Yeah, fine.

And don't ever be afraid of kissing somebody's ass.

It's good for you.

It's humbling.

It maybe might get you something.

Is that really your philosophy, would you say?

That you, or not kissing people's asses, but that you consider yourself to be

like that you sublimate your ego to the ego of the people you work with.

Yes, but comma, you need a huge fucking ego to claim that.

You know, so so I am, I am, as Mary likes to call me, a faux F-A-U-X Christ.

Right.

I am not.

You know, I am not, I am pretending to be humble.

But I don't, well, this is, this is confusing now because

your

genuine self, I would say, from having watched you work, is

like egoless on the set.

You don't seem, you don't have any of the

superiority complex or kind of like

don't you no one can ask me to do anything else because I know I nailed it kind of attitude that folks who have far less than your resume and stature sometimes have.

And so I don't think it's faux, F-A-U-X.

I think it's genuine.

I think there's a genuine, I think you ride a sine wave of like you have to have an enormous amount of confidence in your abilities in order to do all the things you've done.

But then when you're actually working,

I have found you to be, I mean, I talk about this all the time with people.

It's shocking how

egoless you are when you act, when you're doing your work.

Here's what I think, and I'm sure there must be a version of this truth for you as a writer.

But every time you start something, if you don't start at zero and start with, I know nothing,

then you will be tempted to go, oh, I was funny last time I did something like this.

I'll do it that way.

And you cut yourself out of a, you know, the

big, wonderful chunk of the creative process.

So part of it is, I think, smart

as an

actor.

And

I'm not,

I guess I'm conflict avoidance, but, but I,

correct me if I'm wrong.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I might be wrong.

Don't hurt me.

But it's also, I like to feel good.

I like to feel happy.

That's how my body

enjoys going through life.

And so I'd much rather not,

you know, I will stick up for something that I, well, sorry, I'm rambling, but here's how I was also trained by Lesson Glenn Charles and Jimmy Burroughs.

Don't come to us and talk about the character or the script until we've heard our words done by you.

So then I'm willing to have a conversation, conversation, but I don't have to be right.

I just want you to know, Mike, how I feel when I say the words that you wrote.

And is that how you picture it?

Is that what you wanted me to feel?

I will have that conversation and

stick up for

how your words made me feel, but I don't have to be right about the words being right or wrong.

Yeah, that's the best way to do it, in my opinion, because what you're describing is essentially the writing process to me the writing process to me is

you you have an idea and you think that that idea is worth pursuing whether it's a character a scene an entire show a movie whatever and The way I used to think of it is when you break stories in a TV writer's room, you brainstorm a million ideas and you put them all on index cards and they're up on a giant wall.

And the way I used to feel is that when you stand back and kind of go into like a soft focus and evaluate the work you've done, some of those cards begin to glow a little bit, like they start to have a little, a little like pulsating glow around them.

And your eye keeps getting drawn back to them.

And that signals you that like this is worth exploring.

And so you, you start exploring it.

And the only possible attitude to take when you begin that process is, I think this is good, but I don't know.

And let's all decide together.

It's a team sport and we're going to like investigate this together and we're going to throw out ideas.

And I'm never going to, like ultimately, if I'm running a show, it is up to me eventually to say like, okay, this is this is the direction we're going in.

But for a very long time, and even after you decide what direction you're going in or what the story is going to be, you still have to maintain this kind of, like 20% of your creative brain has to allow for the possibility that you're wrong and that someone else has a better idea.

And as soon as you close off that, that entirely, that pathway, you're just running the risk that you're missing something good.

And there are very few actors I've met who I think approach the craft of acting the same way, which is to say, I'm going to do this the way I feel like it should be done.

And then we're going to like check in.

We're going to like, how was that?

That felt pretty good.

Maybe I could try it.

Maybe

I'll be receptive to notes or suggestions.

I'll try something else just for the hell of it.

And

that to me is the continuation of the writing process as the rubber is meeting the road.

And if you don't do it that way, I've worked with a lot of actors who come from the improv world.

They're all very much like that because they know this is like these ideas are, they should be like tissue, right?

It's like you try this, it doesn't work, you throw it away, you pull it out and you go.

Yeah.

But you come from a very different place.

And it was wonderful to watch you work because you had, coming from a completely different angle than the improvisational actors like Steve Carell or Amy Poehler, you had this similar feeling of like just constantly sort of like probing and

experimenting.

And some of the very greatest moments on The Good Place came from that exact instinct that you had.

And that is, that's, there's nothing better to me than working on a scene.

talking it out, experimenting, and then suddenly someone, whether it's an actor or a writer or a set PA, who cares, has an idea.

And then you try that thing and that's the breakthrough.

And that is just wonderful.

It's the way that all of this work should be that.

And it isn't always that.

And when it isn't, I feel it, you know?

Boy, I tell you that,

let's talk about the good place just for a second, then we'll go backwards.

And

people say, have asked me how, you know, oh, wow, you've been working for a long time and what is that?

And it really is once I decided early on not to have things written for me, because that cuts out a huge chunk of the creative process.

I'd rather, you know, find the smartest guy in the room, smartest lady in the room.

And if he's not available, you find me.

Yes.

Oh, you ruined it.

Shoot.

Okay.

But, you know, you wanted, you had this thing you just wanted to say.

And then you go, oh, wow, can I be part of that?

You know, because then

you're not catering to me we're all focused on the idea the project the story and anyway let me let me the first time I

maybe it wasn't the first time but I really met you was when you came

to Keith Addis my manager's office and pitched the good place

to me but to us yeah you started off by giving me an amazing compliment so it was just so smart because I turned my hearing aids up and I was ready to hear.

Do you remember how that actually went?

I think about this a lot.

You said, I'm really excited about this meeting.

And I said, I bet I'm more excited.

Yeah, you did.

That's it.

And then you said, why is that?

And I said, because I consider you to be the greatest actor in the history of the medium of television.

Now, if you back up in my brain, an hour, I was driving to Keith's office and I was very nervous to meet you.

And I had a thought in my head very, very clearly, which was: don't blow this by being too obsequious and complimentary.

Like, don't just be cool, man, is what I was saying to myself.

Be cool, don't say something insane, and then jump back now to me saying, I think you're the greatest actor in the history of the medium of television within 30 seconds of meeting you.

But I didn't, I, when I said it, I was like, I'm blowing it.

I don't care because that is genuinely how I felt about you.

And I, and I, I figured, like, look, either he's gonna,

he's gonna like recoil at that, or he'll enjoy it.

And then we're off and running.

And thankfully, it was the latter.

Thankfully, my God.

And then

to finish that little

meeting,

I may be exaggerating, but basically, you know, you pitched the idea and you started and

you talked for, I'm guessing, 45 minutes.

Yeah.

And with such detail

that may have changed eventually when you, you know, started writing more.

But it was with such detail.

But what a bizarre idea you were pitching.

I mean, really.

Yeah.

You know.

Your mind first goes, oh, I get it.

It's the office in the afterlife.

Right.

No.

Right.

And we, at the end of your 45 minutes, Keith and I hadn't said a word.

We just looked at each other and it was like, I don't know what this is going to be, but I want to be part of it.

Yes, please.

Sign me up.

I should say that I'm not in the general habit of talking for that long when I'm talking to someone about an idea.

I felt like when I had the idea, which had been months and months earlier, I was like, this is a hard sell.

This is a hard sell for anyone.

It's a hard sell for a network, for a studio, for an actor.

And I thought that that I owed it to all of those people, starting with NBC, who had

generously offered me an entire season guaranteed to be on the air, which at the time was fairly rare.

It's more common now.

But at the time, it was very rare.

And then, so starting with them, but then going to people like you and Kristen Bell, who let's be real.

You went to Kristen Bell and then me.

But go on, please.

I felt like in order to give people of your stature clarity on what you were walking into

and the kind of like intricacy of the idea, it wasn't going to suffice to give you a 15-minute overview.

It wasn't going to be enough to say, like,

you run heaven and there's a mistake and you're kind of running around trying to figure out the mistake.

What do you think?

Are you in or out?

Like,

I, first of all, didn't think it would work to get you or Kristen to be in the show.

But more importantly,

the show was was going to take you in a very significant and very surprising direction.

And I didn't think it would be fair with you specifically to tell you half of the idea or even four fifths of the idea without you knowing, and this is a spoiler if anyone hasn't seen the show, that the entire premise of the show is going to be upended at the end of the season.

So I think I

think I prefaced it to you by saying, like, this is going to take a while to explain.

So just like bear with me.

But it was very unusual to talk that long for me in a pitch.

And it was only because I felt like, frankly, you had the right to judge whether you wanted to be involved based on the entire idea, not on half of it.

I knew I wanted to be involved immediately when,

and you would also say to any kind of question was, I'm not sure.

Yeah.

This is what I think might be, but I'm not sure, which was, because a lot of times people are just in enrollment and they don't really stick to the integrity of their idea.

Yeah.

And I remember my one question was, if this is brilliant, I'm not sure how I can be funny.

Yeah.

And if

it turns out, first year of the story, because nobody

should know.

you know, no thanks to me, by the way, because I'm a blabber mouth.

Nobody should know the secret

at the end of the episode.

But you were so,

you listened to me and

I

and I'm so grateful for that, but it was so worth the wait.

Because as a, when you read lines and you know, you're in a comedy and you look at your thing, you kind of, my analogy is you grab your funny gun and you start shooting.

And I wasn't sure if I had the funny bullets.

Yeah.

You know,

you said something very smart.

And it's, this is why this is the best job in the world is you said,

and it's something I genuinely hadn't hadn't thought about.

Well, that's not true.

So I had this thought that in order for this show to survive long term, I had to stay a step ahead of the audience.

And what that meant to me was, as soon as you set up this premise, which is woman gets into heaven, there's been a mistake, she doesn't belong there.

Guy running heaven is, sees things going haywire.

doesn't understand why, is actively looking for the problem.

So as soon as I reasoned that as soon as I set up that premise, that people would assume, okay,

at the end of this season, the cliffhanger, the big like heading into season two cliffhanger will be that you find Eleanor, that Michael finds Eleanor and realizes that she is

not supposed to be there.

And so, I had said to myself, aha, I am clever.

I will move that up.

And I had that slotted for around episode nine or 10 because I thought no one will be expecting it before the end of the season.

And And then when you said what you said, which was basically,

I am for that, for the entire time I am searching for her, I am playing the same thing.

I'm playing the same comedic beat over and over again, which is, I created a paradise and there's a flaw in it.

And I'm, and I'm running around searching for the flaw.

And in a befuddled professorial state.

Exactly.

And so I had not considered, I was thinking about how to lay out the story based purely on the theory and the concept.

And you, you said, you asked a question about the practicality of the actors involved.

And it made so much sense.

And I was like, you're totally right.

And also, frankly, the earlier we do this big shocking thing, the more shocking it will be.

And the less time you, Ted, have to be doing only one thing.

And so we ended up making that right in the middle of the season.

That was the seventh out of 13 episodes or something.

And as soon as we did that, you suddenly had something else to play.

And so did Kristen and so did Will Harper and so did everybody.

And it's still believable to the made-up situation that we will discover later at the end.

Yeah.

And it was, again, it was that part of what was so charmed about that show to me is that the folks involved were all,

everybody was all in on the project.

And it was a very open and fun and free-flowing discussion amongst the writers and actors and producers about what was the best way to execute this very tricky idea.

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Can I ask you a question?

Yes.

Did you?

This is a podcast, after all.

It seems only natural.

Well, most guests realize I have nothing to really say and they do a monologue, but okay.

Just desperately covering for you

as you lean back and take a nap in your chair.

He's so sweet.

He's a little old.

I will take care of him.

It works too sometimes, by the way.

Did you know when we were starting, even while we were shooting the first season, did you know that

the reliance on real, genuine ethics and philosophy, meaning you had ethic professors around the country on speed dial, that writers would have seminars with people who are immersed in the world of ethics.

Did you know it would be that?

real

as far as the ethical underpinning.

Yeah, I did.

And that was part of the reason that I felt like I had to

break so much of the story because I was like, I'm going to walk in to my boss's office at NBC and I'm going to say, I'm going to do a half-hour sitcom about moral philosophy.

And it's going to terrify them.

And I don't blame them.

That is not their fault.

They're in the business of entertaining America 21 minutes and 30 seconds at a time on Tuesday nights at 8.30.

And I cannot,

I can't, in good conscience tell them I'm going to do that without explaining how it is going to work and how the show will still be funny and entertaining.

And so

I said to them,

I said, look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you.

This is not a show where from time to time, off in the margins, we'll make a reference to some aspect of philosophy.

Philosophy is baked into the core of this thing.

Ethics is baked into the center of this pie.

And here's how I think that is going to be okay.

And here's how the show is still going to be funny.

And they were, to their credit, to their everlasting credit, they were, they felt okay about what I was doing.

They were excited about it.

They thought it was a cool idea.

And then, and I have to say, I'm not just saying this because I'm on your podcast.

When I got you and Kristen to say yes, they stopped caring.

They just stopped caring.

It was like, that's Ted Danson.

Everybody knows Ted Danson.

That's Kristen Bell.

Everybody knows Kristen Bell.

Whatever this is, go ahead, go with God.

And so it made it a lot easier to

sort of sell them on the idea once the cast started to take shape.

There is one very funny moment.

I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again.

I said to them in the pitch meeting, I promise I will not make this feel like homework.

I understand that people don't want to watch homework on television.

So I will not make this feel like homework.

And then we we were on the set shooting the beginning of episode three, and Will Harper was standing in front of a blackboard that said Philosophy 101 on it.

And I was like, oh, I'm making it feel like

it's worse than homework.

It's school.

It's not even homework.

And I just was like,

it's been going well.

I think I'm going to get away with this.

And I, and we did.

You, you, another

important thing as a producer, writer, producer is casting.

And man, did you, I mean, let's start with Will Harper.

Yeah.

Who could pull that off but Will Harper?

It's

turned out to be

not a lovable nerd, a leading man extraordinaire.

So all casting conversations I ever have begin with me praising Allison Jones, our casting director.

She cast, she cast Curb.

She cast Parks and Recreation and The Office and The Good Place.

She casts every every great comedy on TV with few exceptions has Allison Jones behind it.

And she,

we, you know, the miracle of Allison is: I said, I created the character Tahani on paper.

And the deal I sort of have with Allison, and I don't think I'm unique here, but the deal I have with her is I say, like, I'm going to tell you the general parameters of what I'm looking for, but

I am open to like, I, her, her acumen in casting is so 999th percentile off the bell curve that I say, like, I'm going to give you the basics, but like, I will, I will, I would love to see anyone you ever bring in for any of these roles, as long as the core of the person seems the same.

So, I said to her, Okay, Tahani is Eleanor's rival.

And so, she should be everything that Eleanor is not.

So, Kristen is a diminutive person, so Tahani should be tall.

And Kristen is a fairly provincial, lived in Arizona her life.

Tahani should be very worldly.

And the way that I described her on paper was a South, a tall, glamorous, South Asian woman with an Oxford British accent who is like, I described her as like Indian or

South Asian Grace Kelly.

That was the person I thought would drive Eleanor the craziest.

And then I was like, but it doesn't matter.

Like if she's South Korean, if she's Czechoslovakian, if she's, if she's from Bimini, I don't care.

She just has to fit the parameters of being the opposite of Kristen.

And then, you know, four weeks later, in what

Jamil to Jamil, a six-foot-tall Pakistani Grace Kelly with an Oxford British accent, who, by the way, not only is her accent perfectly posh and British and lovely, she is like incredible with accents and can do all sorts of different accents.

And we had her do a bunch on the show.

And that's what makes Allison the best at what she does.

Will Harper was the hardest part to cast.

We looked at a million people.

We saw a lot of really great folks.

And I remember

she sent me an email and said some tapes just came in from New York.

And I watched them in my office at Universal.

And Will's was, I think, the first one I watched.

And I got like the hair on my arm stood up.

And I was alone.

And I was like, I think this is something.

This feels like something.

And I sent it to Drew Goddard, who is going to direct the pilot.

And he watched it on his phone at like his daughter's soccer game and immediately texted me.

He was like, This is the guy, right?

And I was like, Yeah, this is the guy.

And everyone I showed it to over and over again, David Miner and Morgan Sackett and everybody, it just kept feeling like, Oh my God, we finally found him.

And even though we had that feeling when we watched it, I don't think anyone truly understood what we had found.

And the craziest thing, and I'll say this again, is Will had been acting for a long time.

He'd done a lot of New York theater.

He had decided that if he didn't get a part part that casting season, he was going to quit acting.

Like it's, it's so, it's even now, you know, like if you're almost in a car accident, yeah, and but you narrowly avoid it, and then like six months later, you suddenly have the feeling of like, oh no, I'm, oh no, it's okay.

It's okay.

It happened and I avoided it.

I have that feeling about Will Harper all the time of like he almost quit acting.

The world was almost denied William Jackson Harper.

That's a terrifying thought.

Throw in Manny Jacinto.

Yeah.

Throw in Darcy Cardinal.

Darcy Cardinal.

I felt so sorry for on week four.

I went, oh, dear, poor Darcy.

Sweet girl, but she has the most boring.

Yeah, linear.

She's going to play a computer.

How much fun is that?

Yeah.

And she became this, you know, rock star.

Cut to three years later, she's playing all of the characters in one episode.

Yeah.

It was a, there, I think that successful shows, and this should segue us to cheers in a second, but I think successful shows, shows that are creatively successful, all have one thing in common, which is that if you look back on them,

it seems like a magic trick.

It seems like

someone was pulling strings and making everything work out perfectly.

The reality is we just got really lucky and we had a lot of really good people working for us, like Allison and Morgan Sackett and folks who knew how to put these things together.

And Steve Day, our assistant director, and David Niednoggle, our visual effects supervisor.

Like they made together, they made a thing that

has this sort of beautiful, smooth sailing arc to it, and that we executed exactly the way we wanted to, to say nothing, by the way, of the writers and all of the guest stars on the show.

Everyone who was on the show was so good.

And so when it's over and it's done and you look back on it, it retroactively seems impossible that it could have ever happened.

But it does start with an idea

that feels like it has a lot of authenticity to it and

original.

And then that you, the odds are

pretty good that you will start to attract people who are excited by that.

So, yes, it is a magic trick, and it doesn't always work even with the same ingredients.

But wow, let me, before we go jump to me and my glory of cheers in my late 30s,

a couple of things.

You know this, but

this ethics, this

philosophy show, this comedy about ethics and philosophy was taught

in

Notre Dame.

Didn't they have a

on their syllabus, there was ethics.

There is a professor at Notre Dame

who has become,

I would say, a friend of mine, who was teaching a class called

God and the Good Life, I think is the name of the class.

And it was a very popular class before the show.

But the essence of the show,

sorry, the essence of the class was very similar.

It was like, let's talk about philosophy.

Let's talk about what philosophy has to tell us about.

about being a good person and living a good life.

It's Notre Dame, so it has a little more of the religious philosophy woven into it,

which we sort of avoided on the show.

But she reached out to me and

I think after the first season, because my wife went to Notre Dame and my father-in-law, my late father-in-law went to Notre Dame too.

And she reached out to me and asked if I would come and

talk to the class.

And partly why she had done that is because she had started using, I'm pretty sure I have the timeline right.

She had started using things from the show to help teach the class.

And there was this sort of amazing dovetail.

And a lot of the stuff naturally that she was teaching was stuff like the trolley problem

and the sort of basic ethical questions that folks have asked.

And so I went and spent a couple of days at Notre Dame and it was really fun.

And I had a great time.

And I've since done that at a lot of universities.

I think what I've learned is, you know, it's not the easiest sell for, you know, college, first year college students to like, come learn about moral philosophy.

Like it's very impractical you it doesn't suggest a high earning future in the private sector and so the show has provided teachers at all levels high school college even I think you know postgraduate studies the ability to make the basic blocks of learning how this stuff works more more enticing and more fun.

And so a lot of places are using, I was just at the University of South Carolina,

who,

you know, know, actually, I wrote a book called How to Be Perfect that was sort of the distillation of everything I learned writing the show.

And that book, which you very nicely blurbed, thank you for your blurb.

That book was given out to all of the fresh and fresh women, first year students at South Carolina as like a, as like a, here's, read this before you, you know, start your first day of classes kind of thing.

And so there's, you know, I've been to, I've been to Duke and North Carolina and Wake Forest and been to Stanford and all these places.

And

the sort of feeling is the same, which is like,

if you are the person who's inclined to get interested in the subject, this show is a really good introduction because

it's all of the basic ideas.

And it's also a lot of very funny, funny, and handsome folks are telling you how that works.

One of the things,

so there's that, which just to my point,

you know,

this is the real deal.

This philosophy and ethics in the show

comes from a very real serious

place.

And at the same time,

this message, which is, you know, like you said, sometimes a difficult sell, is wrapped in

the most glorious visuals,

special effects that blow your mind, and the sense of humor of a nine-year-old boy who loves smart jokes.

Yeah.

So it's like this package package of this might feel like

some medicine, but no, no, this is going to make me very happy.

Don't worry.

It's going to be great.

We're comedians.

We want to make jokes.

And before we move to my earlier career,

let me just say that you

rejuvenated my career.

I have more people coming up.

Really?

Yes, ages 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, especially young teenagers who are at that point in their life, I think, this is my spin, is that their sense of humor is starting to get really honed.

And they're fast, especially this generation is so fast that they love the fast pace of the show, the fact that they can go, did you see that in the corner there?

And their friend will say no, and they'll watch it again.

So literally, I have people with big grins on their face that makes me have a big grin on my face because

I know literally what they're coming to say.

And it's not just oohing and awing about me.

It's oohing and awing about the show.

Yeah.

And that's, that's brilliant.

Okay.

Speaking of brilliant.

Speaking of brilliant,

let's go back to, because you said when I asked you if you would do this, said, yes, I want to talk about cheers or I can talk about cheers forever or whatever.

Don't need to do that, but go for it.

Don't need to do that, but do it.

Go ahead.

The reason.

As a segue, because I want to go back to how you became you.

And that was,

how old were you in 1982?

I was six or seven years old.

Okay, so this is good.

The reason that I

embarrassed myself in front of you when we first met in the way I did is because, A, I meant it.

And B, Cheers is the first show I ever cared about.

And I cared about it to a degree that it's almost impossible now for me to calculate.

There are episodes of the show.

I've re-watched it since it aired.

It's now available in a lot of other places.

And

I think my 30th birthday present from a person I used to work with was the entire DVD set of all of cheers.

It was from my former assistant, Allison, bought me like all of the episodes on DVD because everyone knew that that was my favorite show.

And there are, but there are episodes of the show I've maybe haven't seen since I was 10 years old or have only maybe seen once since I was 10 years old that I remember with blinding clarity.

And I think it's fair to say that it's what made me want to be a writer.

I think it's either Cheers or Saturday Night Live is what I would pinpoint as like, that's what made me want to write for TV.

I remember seeing the names Glenn Charles, Les Charles, James Burroughs on the screen and thinking like, I don't understand this.

I don't know how this happens, but those seem to be the guys whose names come up first.

And that must mean they're important.

And so I want to be them someday.

Like, I want to do this with my own show.

At age literally

eight, nine, 10, 11.

Yeah.

And I think now that I've been doing it professionally for a long time, it only

continues to kind of reveal itself as a sort of miracle of engineering to me more and more.

If I watch an episode, I can watch any episode at any time.

And it's not, it's, it, the effect of it on me has not worn off.

In other words, I've spent the last 20 years or so doing nothing but break stories for half hour comedies.

And it is really hard.

It's a really hard thing to do.

It's a hard thing to do well.

It requires an enormous number of people to do it.

And when you do it, you feel like you have you've scaled a mountain.

You feel like you've achieved something truly remarkable.

And sheers did 300 episodes and they're all really good.

That just seems impossible.

And the thing that I always think about when I think about the show is,

what is it called?

Is it a fractal?

I think it's a fractal when you, when it's a pattern, each part of which contains the entire pattern itself, right?

Every episode of the show contains the pattern of the show itself.

So there are themes to the show.

Some of those themes are in the theme song of the show, like sometimes you want to go where everyone knows your name.

But the family, the outside of the family family that was created on the show and the relationships and the sort of ideas that the show wanted to talk about, you can pick any episode at random and you can find them.

That's a really hard thing to do to say like,

you basically, if you want to teach someone what the show is about, if I wanted to teach someone what the show is about, I would have my favorite episodes.

I would say, watch this one, watch the Thanksgiving episode where they get into a food fight, watch the season one finale when Ted, when Sam's brother comes to town or something like that, or watch the Lucky Bottle Cap episode from, there are certainly ones that I would send them to.

But if they ignored me and they turned on any episode from any season, they would get a pretty great representative sample of what the show was doing and wanted to talk about and wanted to, the argument the show was making is present in every episode.

That's really, really hard to do.

And I don't think it's true of some other shows that I consider to be all-time classics.

Like,

I just marvel at the, at the machinery and the engineering.

It's such a simple show, such a simple premise, but every single piece of it was holistic and related perfectly to the umbrella scale of the.

of the whole project.

I'm going to snip that five minutes and send it to Lesson Glenn Charles and Jimmy Burroughs because I know that would mean a lot to them.

Okay, but now you're seven, eight and you're looking and thinking about cheers.

Maybe not maybe that came later in life, but you were engaged in comedy and looking and figuring out what you liked about comedy at seven, eight years old.

And I read here at 11 years old.

You bought without feathers, right?

The Woody Allen collection of stories.

Well, I was bought for me by my dad because I had started to get really into comedy.

I was, I had seen some

homesick from school.

I watched Sleeper and Bananas, I think.

And then, and I was like, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen.

And then my dad bought that book for me.

And then I started to get, and then he was like, if you like this, you should watch Monty Python.

And I did.

And then he was like, if you like this, you should watch Saturday Night Live.

And I did.

So it sent me on a, I was careening through the history of comedy very quickly at that point.

And

I don't actually know.

I don't think I watched Cheers in the first two years.

I think I probably started when I was around that age, probably 84 or 85.

But

it was the first long form show that I knew and cared about and understood, partly hilariously because I was a Red Sox fan.

And so the fact that the show was about a former Red Sox pitcher, that alone was, I was like, this is amazing.

I can't even believe there's a show about a guy who played for the Red Sox fictionally.

So it just had a lot of, it came along at the exact right time for me.

And I just remember thinking like I, I cared about it deeply and I would count the days until it was on again.

And in those days, you know, obviously there's no secondary market.

You can't watch it anytime except when it's on live.

We didn't have a VCR.

Like I had to be in front of my TV at a certain point in the evening to watch the show.

I think it was on at nine for a while.

And so I know my bedtime was nine, and my mom would let me stay up and watch it from nine to nine.30.

We weren't a Nielsen family.

It didn't help you.

But yeah.

So I'm sure I'll pull this back to me again in a minute.

But can I, can I, I read this other thing and I didn't read this in the book.

And I should have, because

that you have a whole thing about talking about

separating the artist and the art.

Yeah.

Clearly talking about Woody Allen.

Talking about that exact thing.

Yeah.

And I just think that's an amazing conversation.

If you want to tune out now, you can if you're of that ilk.

But

but it's a big subject.

And I know this, I understand the sensitivity.

Some people do deserve to be canceled, but it, you know, or have done things that aren't good.

And I'm not saying that about Woody Allen.

I'm just saying all

people, you know, have this balance.

But when you talk about artists, when you all, you know, are we supposed to get rid of Picasso's paintings because he certainly was, you know, a womanizer or whatever he was?

So, what is your point when you talk about separating the artist from the art?

Well, the point I tried to make in the book I wrote was that

we are now living in a time where

everyone knows everything about everybody.

And that is good in some cases because bad behavior can be noticed and pointed at and stopped.

And it's also bad in some ways because

we now live in a world where everyone's heroes turn out to have rough bad qualities because all human beings do.

And there is a wide range of those bad activities.

Some of them are forgivable and some of them are not.

And the argument I make in the book is simply that you have to

decide for yourself, essentially, what is forgivable and what is not forgivable.

There will be people that you love, athletes or movie stars or directors or artists or whoever, who do things, who are revealed to be monstrous in a way that you think like that just doesn't comport with what I believe to be a

proper way of living on earth.

And I can't buy that person's books or look at that person's paintings or go see their movies.

And there will be other people who do problematic things who you think like, that's really bad.

But I think I, I think, as is it,

oh God, Brian Johnson, is that his name?

The

lawyer wrote a wonderful book and said that very famously that people are more than the worst thing they have ever done.

And so you can decide that too, right?

You can decide like, okay, this is bad behavior, but it's, but I can find it in myself to forgive that person if that person,

you know, seems genuinely remorseful, if that person tries to make amends, whatever the concoction of stuff is that you think that person needs to do in order to climb out of the hole they dug.

And the argument I make is simply the only mistake you can make, really, is to try to ignore it, is to pretend it's not there.

If you do that, then you're basically saying anyone can do anything at any time and there are no repercussions.

I don't think that's the answer.

I don't think the answer is to simply say, well, everyone's bad in some way.

And so I'm never going to personally pass judgment on anyone in the world for anything they do

because that doesn't seem like the right way to have a sort of a sense of integrity to me.

I think you have to kind of figure out where the line is for you.

You might end up, as soon as you draw that line, you are opening yourself up to an argument, which is how can you forgive this person, but not that person?

How can you say that I'm not going to listen to this person's music anymore, but you listen to that person's music, which people are fond of doing.

And that they might, you might find in that argument, they have a point, and then you have to kind of erase the line you drew and redraw the line somewhere else.

But

that's okay.

That's not,

these are not.

simple questions.

Oh, and it's gray and that makes most people very uncomfortable.

It's much easier to be black and white.

Right.

And I think that's the mistake.

I think the mistake is trying to ignore the grayness and the mushiness and the uncomfortability you feel when you say like, all right, I'm going to continue.

Picasso really meant something to me.

And I'm going to continue to look upon and adore the paintings of Picasso, but I can't possibly.

Yeah.

Or like, but I can't forgive Mel Gibson for what he did or something.

And then someone will say, how can you still like Picasso if you don't like Mel Gibson?

And you're like, well, it's not the same thing.

They're two different issues.

And

that

difficulty of arguing these things makes people want to either ignore all of it and just say like, anyone can do whatever they want.

I don't care.

Or in some cases, write everyone off and say, the second that anyone makes a mistake of any kind, they're dead to me.

You can't support that person.

You can't look at Picasso paintings.

You can't see Mel Gibson movies.

Everything is out the door.

And I don't think either one of those is the best possible way to approach this.

And I would argue that it also misses on another level the whole point, which is take a look at yourself.

Right.

This is an opportunity.

Yes, that was wrong.

You can call it out.

You can be angry that your friend did this, or whatever you need to do to be real to yourself.

But you're missing the point if you don't go, wow, I need to check myself out.

You know,

I don't, I, you know, wow, I have said things to women that I thought was charming and designed to make them laugh.

But who cares about your intention, Ted, if it made them uncomfortable?

You know, you need to keep digging into, because that's the whole point is to know yourself.

Yeah.

So,

you know, it's just a big,

ugly mess.

The whole thing is a big, ugly mess.

And, you know, the

problem

that you're talking about, too, is that no two of these things are the same.

No.

No two issues that have been brought to light from any two different people are exactly the same.

There's power dynamics at play where they, were they bosses and did things to their subordinates?

Were they guests in someone's home or movie set and did things to the folks who were too afraid because of their power and

fame to raise an issue?

Like we also don't know.

I said we did we know everything.

We don't really know everything.

We don't, we don't know the context, important pieces of context in all of these cases.

So it's, it's, I don't think the simplest way to put this is, I don't think the right answer to living in this world is either the second anyone does anything bad or questionable, you're dead to me.

And I also don't think the answer, I really don't think the answer is I'm going to close my eyes and cover my ears and pretend that none of this is happening.

The real path is through this this muddy, murky gray zone that requires you to do a lot of check-ins with yourself and a lot of self-examination and a lot of like

the way I should say, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do it.

I don't want to do it.

But it's hard.

It's like love.

It's like faith.

It's a living thing that, you know, you have to engage in every day.

It takes a lot of work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just takes a lot of work.

And I, and the work, people have full lives and a lot of personal problems and difficulties and issues and

things that they have to spend time and energy on.

And I don't blame you for not wanting to spend any time or energy on figuring out whether it's okay to watch an old Mel Gibson movie.

Like no one wants to spend that time.

But.

I don't think that it's the right answer to say, like, I'm never going to think about it.

I just don't.

I can't believe that that's the solution.

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I've been on the road, so basically I've been eating in restaurants for the last month.

So I'm going to throw this to my producer, Nick Liao.

Nick.

Well, Ted, I can cook a meal for you because I've been enjoying Home Chef.

Nice.

I'm looking forward to trying the Smoky BBQ chicken thighs, which is a good summer meal.

Smoky chicken thighs.

Smoky barbecue chicken thighs.

How does it sound?

You got me coming over to your place.

Yeah, please.

Anytime.

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Okay, so go back.

I want to get you to Saturday Night Live.

I know there was a period you said that you were involved with free cable access, you and your friends at an early age.

And you really did do your research.

So you could do anything you wanted, right?

Yeah, there was a cable access station in my hometown.

And my friend Adam Goodwin and I, when we were in like middle school and high school,

like, I can't remember how it started.

Maybe we like interned there or something.

I mean, this is cable access.

This is like Central Connecticut cable access.

No one's watching this thing, right?

It's mostly like.

low-level informational shows.

It's Between Two Ferns style informational shows about like the library has a, has like a fundraiser, whatever.

So we realized that like no one, no one was minding the store and we could kind of do whatever we wanted to.

And we went there, we started going there all the time and we learned how to use all the like cameras and all the equipment and stuff.

And we we started like writing things.

Like we wrote like

we, I remember we were huge fans of like the naked gun and airplane.

And we wrote like a half an hour

like sort of like documentary tribute show about the Abramses and about those movies because we love them.

And it was absurdist and silly and there were terrible jokes in it.

And I pray, I pray that those tapes have long been erased and are unavailable for viewing.

But we like filmed the whole thing and we like clipped in without

permission at all.

We clipped in chunks of the naked gun and airplane and airplane two.

And then it like aired on TV.

It was like on like table access at, you know, to probably two in the the morning.

Um, but it was the first time that I had ever sort of written anything and then like put it together and made it and then finished it.

And I remember just feeling this immense level of satisfaction.

Like we had a script that we like typed out on a typewriter.

I mean, it was, it was like the first foray into, into like making

becoming Mike Shur at a pretty early age.

Yeah.

I mean, at least, at least I wanted to be doing it and, and I enjoyed it.

And it was very silly and fun.

And then we did a bunch.

I don't remember what else we did.

We did a bunch of other stupid stuff.

But yeah, I was probably, I don't know, 12 or 13, 14, something like that.

So by the time you got to Harvard, jumping ahead,

you recognized and you were the president or the editor or whatever of the Harvard micro.

Yeah.

Which is a very funny, huge history of producing funny cutting-edge stuff that later became national.

It spun off into national lampoon yeah right but you when you got to harvard you that inclination to look for funny and was already there in you i wrote it in my application i said i said i want to i want to go to harvard because i want to write for the lampoon like i they i i manifested it into the universe and so yeah that was my like that was my main goal was to write for the lampoon because it because conan this is 93 i got there so conan had just gotten his show and he was on he was the the president of the Lampoon.

And there had been a bunch of articles, all of which I had read, about this weird old humor magazine at Harvard that had created National Lampoon's Vacation and Caddyshack and Doug Kenny and all those people from that era.

But then also

all of the ton of Simpsons writers had been on the Lampoon and a bunch of Saturday Night Live writers.

Jim Downey, who's the greatest sketchwriter of all time,

headwriter SNL forever and ever ever and ever,

had been on the lampoon.

And so I just, I had learned about this weird factory that churned out professional comedy writers.

And that it's what my dad also went to Harvard, I should note.

I didn't care.

What I cared about was the lampoon.

Like I had no interest in it as like a thing that my dad had done.

I had interest in it in a thing that Jim Downey and Doug Kenney had done.

So that was my number one goal when I got there was to write for the lampoon.

And then I got in freshman year.

You graduate, then what?

So I graduated and I

wanted to be a TV writer, obviously, but I also am a very practical person.

And so I decided I would give myself one year to try to get a job.

And if I didn't get a job in a year, I was going to go to grad school.

So I borrowed $3,000 from my Uncle Steve and I used it to pay rent on this tiny apartment down in the East Village.

I crashed on my friend's couches for a while.

And then I borrowed money from him and I put it as a down payment on this apartment.

And I wrote submission packets for Letterman, SNL, Conan,

maybe, I think that was it because I wanted to be in New York.

And so I got interviewed at SNL.

So I graduated in June.

In July, I got interviewed at SNL.

I didn't get hired right away.

They put us in pairs to walk around and meet the producers.

And I was walking around with this woman.

And I remember very clearly thinking, I'm never getting hired here because this woman is so much funnier than me and so much obviously better for this job than I am.

It was Tina Faye.

I was right.

She got hired.

I did not.

And when I got that news, I was like, yes, that is, that's correct.

Like I spent 11 minutes with her and it was very clear which one of us was ready to work at that show.

So I kept working and I got into the, into the fall and into the winter and I was sort of halfway through my year of experimentation and I hadn't gotten hired anywhere.

Although Jon Stewart

was writing a book and through

Steve Higgins, who was at SNL at the time, when I didn't get hired, he said, my buddy Jon Stewart is writing a book.

And I'm going to set you up on a meeting with him and you can pitch him ideas.

So I met Jon Stewart and Jon Stewart paid me like $1,000

three times, I think, over the course of a few months, just pitch him ideas for this book he was writing of comedy pieces.

He didn't use any of them at all.

And, but he paid me enough money to like keep paying rent.

And it was, it was amazing.

I'm, uh, I still, I, I saw him a couple of years ago and I, every time I see him, I just like, he's like my, like he was like the Medicis.

He like, he just, he just paid me to work.

Um, he was the Medicis for a crappy artist.

Like that's, I didn't give him anything of value.

But anyway, I got into December and I was thinking, all right, it's been like six months now and I should probably apply to grad school.

Like I, you know, you have to apply by January or whatever.

And just at the moment, I was sort of like, I had sent a couple emails, I think, to like get applications.

And then I got a call in classic SNL fashion.

It was like, you

start Monday kind of thing.

Like, congratulations, you start Monday.

And I started there in January of 98.

You and Will Harper have something in common.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think I came quite as close to quitting as he did.

And I certainly, he had been acting for 13 years.

And his problem was that he hadn't been like discovered.

I was just like, I don't know if I want to make it or not.

But I started there in January of

98.

And on day one, I love this.

When I walked through the office, I met the woman who would later become my wife.

Oh, I didn't think that's where you were going.

JJ.

JJ.

And she'd been there for a while.

She'd been there for like a, I think she just started earlier that year, maybe halfway through the year before.

I can't remember.

But like, we, you know, I was being shown around and she was the writer's assistant at the time.

And they were like, this is Mike.

He's a new writer.

And said, hi, nice to meet you.

We shook hands.

I moved on.

That was it.

And then now we've been married for 20, almost 20 years.

And Mary and I are giggling every night that we sit down to watch.

Is it only Murders in the Building?

Is that the full name?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And see JJ's name.

Yeah, there she is.

Producing and writing episodes.

Where did you think I was going with that?

What were you expecting me to say?

Where?

Oh,

I thought that you arrived and someone died and somebody or somebody

was all of a sudden an empty set.

Well, it had happened over that sort of holiday break as Chris Farley had died.

And

a couple of days earlier, I think Norm McDonald had been fired from Weekend Update by Don Olmeyer.

Don Ollmeier running NBC and Norm in classic Norm McDonald fashion

had been telling jokes about O.J.

Simpson for, at that point, like, you know, four years.

And the trial had long since come and gone.

And he had long since been

declared innocent.

And Norm just kept right on telling jokes about O.J.

Simpson.

Don Ollmeier, I think, was friends with O.J.

Simpson and called him and said, like, hey, knock it off.

And Norman, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll knock it off.

Yeah.

And then, uh, and then didn't, and then just kept doing it and did it so often that at the end of that half season,

uh, Olmeyer fired him.

And it's, it's one of the only

times I think I've ever known about when Lorne was like overruled by someone at NBC.

Like Lorne is the king of that, right?

Of fiefdom.

Um, but in that instance, they had fired Norm.

And so the place was in chaos.

It was, they had fired Norm.

Colin Quinn was taking over update.

Chris had died.

People were mourning his death.

And he had been, he had hosted the show like a month earlier.

And so I started at a very weird moment.

And

I wrote about this in the book.

Like it was the luckiest possible thing for me because no one paid attention to me at all.

Like SNL is a big rambling mess of a place.

There's tons of writers and actors and it's very sort of like, let's put on a show community theater kind of vibe.

And so I was, I sucked at the job and was allowed to suck for a good, you know, half a season because no one barely even knew I was there.

And that's probably what saved my job.

But then you got,

didn't you produce the

news that weekend up?

So I eventually sort of figured out how to do the job, got a little better at it, had some success.

And then my friend Robert Karlock left to go write for Friends.

And he had been writing

Who You Know from Mr.

Mayer.

And

he left to go write for Friends.

And they gave that job to me.

So the second half of my time there, I was producing Make an Update with Tina, Faye, and Jimmy Fallon.

Let me ask you, I know several, not really, really well, but several.

people who had been on Saturday Night Live.

And it was, I mean, I can't remember what your quote was that involved, you know, heroin.

And it was, the story was, this was the most supercharged example of comedy writing you could possibly endure.

Yeah.

It was so high wire.

You know, you had, you started with nothing and by Saturday, you had to be live and all of that.

A lot of people walked away because it's also very competitive

to get your material on.

And a lot of people, the combination of the stress of just the logistics of having to perform every week and whether you'd get your material on the air left them with a little bit of post-traumatic stress.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of some people thrived, you know, and where did you fall on that line?

You weren't performing, so you didn't perform.

I think the performing is really,

is really hard for folks.

It is weird because it's one of the only shows where you're in competition with the other people that you work with.

Most shows are team efforts, right?

All the writers are working on scripts, and all the actors are in a cast, and

one person's success is sort of everyone's success.

And whatever.

SNL is Darwinian.

It's

sink or swim, kill or be killed.

Nobody

famously, like when you show up on your first day, no one tells you where the bathrooms are.

Nobody tells you like how to use the elevators to get down to the

8H.

And it's just sort of by design.

It's a little bit hostile by design.

Can you swim?

I hope you can.

And so

I had a very hard time with it, as I think a lot of people do early on.

And I remember

I was walking to, I was 22 years old when I was hired.

I just turned 22.

And I was walking to work.

I was walking to 30 Rock.

I stopped in the Dunkin' Donuts.

I always stopped in.

And I got a cup of coffee.

And I was walking toward 30 Rock.

And all of a sudden, I was like, oh, my God, I'm miserable.

I hate my job.

Like suddenly it just.

popped into my head that I was hated it.

I hated it.

I was so unhappy.

And I think what happened was that I was like,

what had happened before that was I'm 22 years old.

I work at Saturday Night Live.

Every party I go to, when I tell people what I do, it's the coolest answer that everyone, that anyone has.

Like everyone else is like, I work at Goldman Sachs.

I work at Morgan Stanley.

I work at Solomon Brothers.

I work at Saturday Night Live.

Everyone

was more interested in me than everybody else.

Right.

And I think I hadn't allowed myself to conceive of the possibility that I wasn't happy.

And when when it finally popped into my head that I was miserable, I had two thoughts.

Number one was, what a relief to admit that to myself.

And number two was, I think I have to go to therapy.

Like, I think I need therapy.

And I had never considered therapy before.

And I suddenly was like, I have to go to therapy.

And I found a therapist and I started going to therapy.

And when, as I did, you know, learned a lot of stuff about myself that had nothing to do with Saturday Night Live, which you might expect.

But that basically, that moment is the line of delineation between me sucking at that job and me being good at that job.

It didn't happen immediately, but as soon as I was able to admit that to myself, I started getting better because I wasn't a clenching.

You didn't have a secret.

Yeah.

And

it actually created this kind of like

organizational like

theory that I have carried with me ever since, which is I believe that no one can do good work in in a writer's room if they are not,

if they don't feel safe and happy and comfortable.

Like it's just impossible.

And I know that because I did not feel comfortable and happy and safe before that moment.

And I was writing crappy sketches every week because I was just too tightly wound.

I was not, I was not like, it was not sort of like, I wasn't enjoying myself.

I wasn't having fun.

And so my goal literally ever since I got into into a position to actually hire people on shows, was to say to myself, my job here is to make these people feel safe and comfortable and happy.

And if they don't, they're not going to be good at this.

So it was a very important moment for me.

And it was the, like I said, it was the

everything before that that I had written sucked.

And after that, some of the stuff I wrote still sucked.

Let's be, let's be clear.

But the stuff that I wrote that didn't suck was not possible until I had that revelation.

Were you and JJ together at that

Uh, I don't remember if we were together at that exact moment.

So, we started dating.

She had a boyfriend at the time.

There goes the whole ethics conversation.

No, wait, wait, Ted.

So, she was going to quit because she was going to move out here to be with him.

And, like, literally two days or something before she was supposed to move, he called her and broke up with her on the phone.

And so, she stayed.

Wow.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, sad, sad for her in that moment.

Good for me, because like maybe a few months after that,

we got together.

But it was SNL is very weird and it's a very strange place.

And we were kind of like, we don't want to like make this public.

Yeah.

So we sort of dated like in secret for a while.

She became a writer on the show.

She was promoted from Myers Assistant.

We dated secretly.

That is not a good idea.

It never goes well.

And it was very rough.

And we were on and off for a long time.

She eventually moved out here to take a writing job.

We dated long long distance.

We were on and off a million times again, long distance.

It was, it was a mess.

And then we broke up like for good in like 2002.

And then a year later, we sort of got back together.

And then it was like, if this is going to work, one of us has to move.

And so I was like, all right, I'm going to move.

So I quit SNL

after the 2004 season and moved out here to

look for work.

And that's when I got hired at the office.

And if she had moved to be with with you in New York, you probably wouldn't be together.

I don't think we would.

No, this was the right move.

I want you and I'm willing to come.

I think it was the right move for a bunch of reasons.

Number one is we had already been dating in New York and it had a, it was like, New York is the best.

I love it.

I miss it every day.

But like, it's not an easy place to be in a relationship when you're, you know, in your mid-20s.

But also, we just needed a fresh start.

Like the two of us specifically needed a fresh start.

And it was like, the way this is going to work is if I move there.

So I, so I left the show.

Was she working?

She was working on a show.

Yeah, she was working on a few shows.

In fact, oddly, the show she was working on when I moved out there, she'd been on a couple of other shows.

And then she was working on a show called Coupling, which was an adaptation of a British sitcom that had very, it was on NBC.

It had very high expectations.

It was introduced as like, this is the next friends.

It's about six single, good-looking single people in LA.

And it was a really hot show.

Fief Sutton, who wrote for Cheers, ran that show.

And

it was like, wow, her career is really taking off.

And then that show didn't work and got canceled halfway through the first season.

And then I came out to LA and I interviewed and the show I got hired on was The Office, an adaptation of a British show.

It's going to be at NBC.

No one really believes it.

Soon.

Right away.

So I moved out in, I moved, I interviewed for it in

February, March, April, somewhere in there, got the job.

And that, so I went out.

I was year one or two?

That was year one.

It was right.

So so I moved to LA in June I started working at the office right away um but it was sort of like oh boy here we go again an adaptation of a British show this thing has no chance of surviving and then it lasted for nine years right just brilliant show I didn't watch it Mary did when it was on the air you know why didn't you watch it I'm curious because I was I think

jealous

of how good it was.

And I knew it was good even without watching.

I just knew it was really good.

And I think I was at the point where I'm going, I'm not sure I'm any good at this anymore.

And we had those kind of doubts.

And Mary kept telling me, you really need to watch.

And I went, no, no, no.

I know, I will.

You know, and finally did.

And

actually, not finally.

I think.

I think we even became great friends with John Krasinski and Emily.

And then I started watching it.

Oh, wow.

And was just

blown away at how brilliant it is.

And let me just, you know, this story, sorry, but John Krasinski was the person that I

blew it with you.

That's right.

You know, because, you know, first year of.

Wait, we have to set this up properly.

Okay, do it, please.

So

when I pitched you the premise of the good place, I pitched you the whole thing all the way through the twist.

Right.

The twist being, spoiler alert, that you are not actually the architect of the good place.

You are a demon.

This is the bad place.

The whole thing is an illusion meant to torture the four main characters.

The only people I told this to were you and Kristen, because again, I felt like in order to sign on, you should hear the whole story.

We didn't even tell the other four main actors in the show, Manny, Will, Jamil, and Darcy.

They did not know for most of the first season.

what was going to happen to them.

Or a lot of the directors who showed up.

Most of the directors did not know.

Morgan Sagant knew, David Miner knew, but like most of the crew didn't know.

And I, and I had said, Look, we are making a huge bet here.

And the, and the bet is that we can get all the way to the end of a season of TV and have something be a real surprise.

The way that like Lost provided real surprises at the end of their seasons.

Like that's, I, and this has to work.

If this leaks out, it could blow the whole thing.

Yeah.

And you were like, absolutely.

I hear you, buddy.

I hear you loud and clear.

And then

we get all the way to the end, and miracle of miracles, we pull it off.

Yeah.

And

the season one finale airs and people are genuinely surprised.

It has a genuine

reaction from audiences and critics that was like, wow, that was incredible.

Didn't see that coming.

That's amazing.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

As soon as it airs, you say to me, oh, thank God.

Because it turns out you had told everyone.

No.

No,

you told John right away.

I told John right away.

But in my defense, in my defense, John,

I only get, I'm only competitive, by the way, with people who are at least 30 years younger than me.

Smart.

Because then it's worth the challenge.

So,

you know, I would try to beat John in a foot race and he would clubber and come.

So anyway, he was off to make some amazing movie.

And he said, what are you doing?

I said, well, I'm about to work with your buddy, Mike Shur, and we're doing something called The Good Place.

And I described without blowing the secret, I described, you know, it takes place in the afterlife.

And I could see, this is my interpretation, you may have another one.

I could see his eyes kind of dim a little bit because he was going, oh, I get it.

It's the office in heaven.

And I saw that.

I went, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.

See, at the end of the first year, it turns out I'm a demon.

I'm not the good guy.

I'm the bad guy.

And he went, oh, that's pretty cool.

And I went, yeah, fucking A.

And, oh, shoot

and then had to sit there with you know little miss goodie two shoes but wait didn't you also tell me that you told larry david or someone you you told someone else someone i i tell larry david's secrets to the world oh okay but i i don't know who i'm sure if i told one because if we we had been laughing about and sharing the story about you telling john krasinski with other people for a while and then i remember there being someone where you're like oh yeah you know what i also told this person and I'm sure, I'm sure.

Hey, if it's a secret that is

important,

like your personal life, I'm good.

Sure, I'm good.

But if it's something that will advance people's impression of me in the moment, forget not advance the work you're doing, but advance, advance, it will increase your status amongst another celebrity.

Yes, yeah, yeah, then all bets are off, especially if they're lording it over me, especially if they're 30 years younger.

Well, we got away with it.

The point is,

you have nothing to,

you don't have to feel any regret or shit.

No, and at that point, I was, you know, a demon who hadn't become humanized.

So my ethics did suck, but it was for the park.

I did it for the part.

That's a good excuse.

Let me, I don't know how much time we have, but let me let me ask you something that I have, then we'll wrap up.

And I clearly adore you.

I'm so grateful grateful you came in.

It's so much fun to talk to you because so many times I need you to be doing what you're doing, which is making this amazing thing that I can play in.

I'm supposed to be there right now.

Oh, I'll cut this short.

Sorry.

I don't even know if there's anywhere to go with this, but.

Taking the world that we see on CNN or whatever, wherever you get your news,

and then answer this question.

I grew up around scientists.

My father was an archaeologist and anthropologist, but we had scientists from all over the world around me growing up.

And I remember always hearing about pure science and then applied science.

And applied science was kind of looked down on, meaning pure science is in a vacuum.

You just are going for that truth

in that scientific moment.

Whereas applied science, you are applying it to make something better in the world.

I don't think that there's such a thing as pure ethics or philosophy anymore.

I mean, I think, yes, there is, but I don't think, I think it's a waste, personally.

I think you need to apply.

It has to be applied ethics.

It has to be applied philosophy.

Where do you come down on that, if it's a worthwhile question at all?

No, it is.

And there are folks

who, I would say, specialize in applied ethics.

There's a similar dynamic in ethics.

I think the line

between the two maybe isn't as bright and clear as it is

in science, in part because the nature of studying ethics requires you at certain points to lay out a theory and then kind of road test it, right?

You say, like, okay, well, here's my theory.

Now, let me devise a scenario in which I could test out how this theory would work.

And so even if those thought experiments are purely imaginary,

you're still trying to apply it to the real world.

That's what the trolley problem is.

It's what all of those problems are.

Is you're saying, okay, well, let's try to figure out how this theory would function in the real world.

And I don't think that in this day and age, there's a lot of tolerance for theories that have no practical application because the problems that face us are enormous and they're everywhere.

And we are constantly wrestling with them, whether it's

climate change or racism or misogyny or any of the sort of big, gigantic, overwhelming issues that are causing pain in the world.

If you come up with a philosophical theory, it's like, all right, well, does it work?

Like, do something with it, right?

And so I think it's certainly, it's obviously worth thinking about.

I just think that the, I think the scientific version of it is a little more like, because it's science, it's a little more nuts and boltsy.

It's a little like, okay, well, instead of like abstract mathematical theories like let's try to figure out how to launch this satellite into orbit and keep it there so that we can all talk to each other on cell phones the the philosophy part of it is

it's it's not as satisfying i think because these are problems without immediate solutions they're they don't have tangible outcomes if we manage to

If we manage to come up with some philosophical theory for why that's really solid and really well-reasoned for why we should all drive electric cars, that's great.

If we can come up with a scientific object that captures carbon from the atmosphere and reduces climate change by 8% over the next two years, that's life-saving.

So

I think people just are less

focused on the philosophy than they are on the science for good reason.

We have scientific problems right now, in addition to these massive philosophical ones.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I had so much fun talking to you, and I can't wait for us to, you know, new adventure.

New adventure.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Thanks.

That was Mike Shur, everybody.

I am so grateful that we got to work together on A Man on the Inside.

All eight episodes are available on Netflix right now.

I really hope you get to check it out because it's one of the things I'm most proud of.

That is it for this week's episode.

Hi to Woody, and all is forgiven, buddy.

Come on home.

And thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

If you like these episodes, please tell a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

If you have some time on your hands, a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts helps a lot.

We'll see you next time, 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 Leal.

Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer.

Our senior producer is Matt Apodaka.

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

Research by Alyssa Grawl.

Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

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

Special thanks to Willie Navarre.

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

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