Celebrity Hometowns with Nick Offerman

[0] This is exactly right.

[1] And welcome.

[2] To my favorite murder.

[3] The Celebrity Hometown Edition.

[4] That's right.

[5] Celebrities, hometowns, it's all in the name right there.

[6] There's no mystery to this.

[7] It's easy.

[8] It goes down easy.

[9] That's right.

[10] There's no heavy lifting on the listeners' end.

[11] The way we do with all those other podcasts.

[12] Not this one.

[13] We said no more of the lifting.

[14] Our backs can't take it.

[15] Our souls can't take it.

[16] That's right.

[17] Guys, you're going to be very excited.

[18] excited about our celebrity today.

[19] Mm -hmm.

[20] Kind of, I'd say, a five -star celebrity.

[21] Absolutely.

[22] Wouldn't you?

[23] You know him from Parks and Iraq.

[24] You know him from the Great North.

[25] You may have seen him on his recent limited Netflix series, Colin in Black and White.

[26] You love him.

[27] He plays clubs and colleges all over this country.

[28] It's Mr. Nick Offerman.

[29] Hello.

[30] Hello.

[31] Nick.

[32] Hi.

[33] Thank you for being here.

[34] I'm so grateful to be here.

[35] I love your podcast.

[36] I feel weird because I was thinking about it this morning.

[37] Can a grizzled, middle -aged guy be called a murderino?

[38] Hell yeah.

[39] Yeah.

[40] That spans genres and ages.

[41] I aspire to murderina.

[42] It's a comfort.

[43] And for that reason, it's really a comfort to hear your voices.

[44] Like, you are podcast hosts that I know and love.

[45] Oh, that means the world to us.

[46] Thank you.

[47] Right back at you.

[48] Nick, can I just bring up really quick your book, which I have been reading like almost like, you know, just to kind of really relax me like a couple pages right before I go to sleep.

[49] And if you haven't heard of it, Nick's written a book called Where the Deer and the Antelope play, the Pastoral Observations of one ignorant American who.

[50] loves to walk outside.

[51] And just kind of a nice, clean, crisp title.

[52] Right?

[53] Will you tell the people about that book a little bit?

[54] Because it's really good.

[55] Yeah, I totally will.

[56] Thank you so much.

[57] And I just want to say, it's my fifth book and my publisher, I always want, I always pitch my titles to stand alone.

[58] Paddle your own canoe, gumption.

[59] It's been fun.

[60] And they're a corporation.

[61] And so they're like, we need to spoon feed the people who's going to buy a book called gumption or where the deer and the antelope play.

[62] So it's become this game that I try to enjoy where I try to make myself laugh with the subtitle.

[63] Yeah.

[64] So the pastoral observations of one ignorant American who love and that's basically what it is.

[65] It is my my sort of musings on our relationships.

[66] with nature or lack thereof and by our I mean us humans and you know the awareness I have through being inspired by agrarian writers like Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan and Aldo Leopold and their ilk Robin Wall Kimmerer reading their stuff and coming to understand how dumb we are when it comes to like knowing who makes our food for example and just I mean, and I'm somebody who's interested in it, and I can barely discern this information.

[67] Who, where did this beef come from?

[68] Where did these turnips come from?

[69] And how are we as a species treating our planet, vis -a -vis, like, creating our food and basically using the resources?

[70] So with a sense of humor, the book chronicles in three parts, travels that I've taken to national parks with my friends, Jeff Tweeting.

[71] and George Saunders.

[72] I go visit my Shepherd family friends in England, James Rebanks and his family.

[73] And then the last third of the book, my wife, Megan Malalley and myself, travel a bunch of the United States in an airstream that we bought.

[74] That's amazing.

[75] Yeah, there's a lot of hijinks, but also it's like asking myself and my reader's questions, like do we still want to be eating corn in 40 years, and how can we make that happen?

[76] Yeah.

[77] I mean, starting that book, I was like, I wrote down the phrase agrarian writers because you were talking about, I was like, now I have to do research on reading this book, but it is that kind of thing.

[78] I didn't realize there was actually this kind of history of people who have been recording these kind of states of the state and what nature means to man type of things.

[79] I guess I just never thought about it before.

[80] But from page three, I was like, ooh, that's very true.

[81] I need to look further into that.

[82] That's, yeah, that's the hook.

[83] That's what got me in the first place is realizing, oh, that's right.

[84] We have been coddled into the great luxury of not having to think about where all of our shit comes from as consumers.

[85] And the corporations love that.

[86] They love to keep us completely in our dark bubbles where they're like, Just press this button, and we'll send you the new version of the thing.

[87] And now it comes in seven colors.

[88] And now we want you to buy silverware for every season of the year.

[89] Oh, my God.

[90] I have a question about nature.

[91] Do you have any advice for someone who say, like myself, was traumatized as a kid because her dad took her camping constantly, and now nature makes her nervous and see.

[92] seems like a lot of work.

[93] Is there something bigger than me that you can, or for people who don't really love camping, outdoorsy stuff?

[94] Oh, totally.

[95] I mean, the cool thing is nature is actually everything.

[96] Everything is actually nature.

[97] Like this Zoom meeting that we're having right now is a molecular version of nature.

[98] And so...

[99] That's insane.

[100] Camping is like in the genre of like getting out into nature, as it were, you know, like...

[101] Yeah.

[102] And achieving to your degree of comfort or not a sort of wilderness excursion, whether that means walking through your neighborhood park or going backpacking and, like, pooping in the woods and stuff.

[103] That's just one genre.

[104] There's all these other genres of, like, communing with animals that could be at your local shelter, could be at a local farm.

[105] the farmer's market is lousy with nature.

[106] It could be like, who makes the best strawberries?

[107] Or maybe I should start cultivating the best strawberries in my neighborhood or whatever that means.

[108] I mean, that's the thing is reminding ourselves or like who makes cloth or clothing or leather goods in your area, reminding ourselves.

[109] And for me, it comes hand in hand with my woodworking shop quite a bit.

[110] understanding just our materials and where they come from and, you know, looking at like the way our species rapaciously cuts down forests day in and day out, and how terrible that is for the whole ecosystem.

[111] So that's the, you know, that's the hilarious hijinks the book is full of stories.

[112] I love it.

[113] But I think that's really good advice because that's the feeling I had, like reading this book is, oh, I am not this way enough.

[114] And I have to like now drive myself like five miles into the forest to blub up whatever, where it's like, oh, no, I can actually just do half steps or beginner steps.

[115] You don't have to make that crazy adjustment to still appreciate and get connected to locally sourced, you know, family grown or like farm grown things or just a little being a little bit more maybe choosy and active in that like supporting nature idea.

[116] It's like when I when I buy the, do you ever buy those eggs that are like so free range that they come with a little slip where it tells you what the names of the chickens were that laid the eggs?

[117] Totally.

[118] Like I love that.

[119] It's like it's not, you know, I mean, hope to God that it's not, you know, as opposed to the horrible things you've seen with factory farming.

[120] It's like, oh, there's just a couple nice chickens.

[121] it is a good product there's actually a bit in my book about that very thing because the the USDA has the list of words that you can legally put on your eggs it's all it's all part of the bullshit industrial complex where it's like among the adjectives you can put on your eggs are organic and also 100 % organic those are two different categories oh man but i mean yeah that's that's that's the idea and and you make a great point karen is that i urge us all to enter into these conversations with a sense of nuance because when i myself think of these things i'm like oh conservation is so hard like do i have to join greenpeace and go like attack whale boats or something and and i even make fun of myself at the end of the book where megan and i are driving around in a forward expedition pulling a 30 -foot airstream, just guzzling gas like there's more tomorrow while I'm having these pastoral musings about our relationship with our natural resources.

[122] And the point is we all are complicit.

[123] We all exist in this incredible matrix of electricity and fossil fuels and so forth.

[124] That doesn't prohibit us from saying, okay, but let's wrap our heads around, what we need to fix what mistakes we're making.

[125] And yes, absolutely.

[126] When we are able to travel the country without burning tons of gas, I will happily sign up for that.

[127] But I think the answers lie less in our individual consumption and more in having our heads in the right place so that we can vote for the right legislation so that we can, as a country, make decisions that are good for the planet rather than allow our corporations to make those decisions.

[128] Yeah.

[129] Love it.

[130] Although corporations are people.

[131] That's true.

[132] That's where it's confused.

[133] Yeah, it's a, they blurred the line there a couple years ago and now it's just so baffling.

[134] I haven't found a corporation that was brought up well, is the problem.

[135] Never, never found a corporation that picks up the check.

[136] Yeah, that's right.

[137] No manners.

[138] So what you're saying is that climate change is real.

[139] Yes or no?

[140] This is the bad news.

[141] That is what I'm positing.

[142] Got it.

[143] Breaking news.

[144] Yeah.

[145] Call Wolf Blitzer.

[146] Yeah.

[147] All right.

[148] Well, I'm definitely getting a beehive now based on this conversation alone.

[149] It is, I mean, it's funny because I'm very passionate about the subject matter, but I think it is a very enjoyable book.

[150] People have described it as like sitting on the point.

[151] porch with me while I describe running into people on the trail.

[152] I love it.

[153] Well, also I think your voice is so distinctive and your manner of speaking is so distinctive that the second you begin to read your writing, you can hear your speaking voice and your word choice and your, it all is very, it's borderline audio book, even though I'm reading the hard copy book.

[154] I appreciate that, thank you.

[155] It's a distinct style.

[156] comforting.

[157] Very much so.

[158] Yeah, it's great.

[159] Anything else that's go?

[160] I mean, I saw some of the pictures of you guys on the road.

[161] I mean, did anything crazy happen to you guys when you were driving around the country?

[162] Not super crazy.

[163] I mean, it was very pandemic style, and we're also private to begin with.

[164] And so we were actually sort of helped by our penchant to wear masks whenever.

[165] around people.

[166] That's one thing that's a little weird about hiking with Jeff Tweedy.

[167] And George Saunders, who's less recognizable because he's an author, it's funny.

[168] Because I'm an actor, people would recognize me the most.

[169] And then sometimes they'd recognize Jeff.

[170] And we would always be like, but.

[171] But this guy.

[172] And this is the full wizard that you wish you knew.

[173] Like afterwards they Google him and then like, oh my God, I met him.

[174] Totally.

[175] That's why you've got to look at the picture on the book flap.

[176] Every time, it's your job as the reader.

[177] It's true.

[178] And so, I mean, it was, you know, for us, it was our first time.

[179] We're new to the airstream life or stream -in, as they say.

[180] And so it was an exciting adventure, but pretty banal.

[181] you know, like I had some real struggles hitching the trailer to my expedition the first time that I do relay with a lot of self -deprecation in part three.

[182] Was there a city?

[183] Because all I care about when I travel is food.

[184] That's mine and my husband's thing.

[185] Was there a city or like a town state that you think has the best, best food?

[186] Well, the things that spring to mind are, there's a couple things.

[187] In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we stumbled onto this coffee shop.

[188] And I wasn't super familiar.

[189] These are especially around New Mexico.

[190] It's sort of Mexican and even South American, Central and South American -related coffee chocolate tradition, these elixirs that are consumed like a coffee shop.

[191] but there are different recipes of chocolate.

[192] And it was called Cacawa Chocolate House, with spelled out of the UK.

[193] And it blew our mind so hard that we went hours out of our way on this road trip.

[194] We went back like three times.

[195] Oh, my God.

[196] We would be cold in the mountains and say, what if, you know, you don't go down pretty good right now?

[197] Santa Fe chocolate drink.

[198] Was it spicy a little bit?

[199] Yeah, that's the best version of a combo.

[200] chocolate and like different chili peppers.

[201] That's good for you.

[202] It's healthy.

[203] It's really great.

[204] And I loved it, especially when I then had to drive for some hours because, boy, are you wired after a big mug of hot pepper and chili?

[205] Yes.

[206] That sounds amazing.

[207] That's actually perfect road fuel.

[208] That's just like every part of you is awake.

[209] And deliciously so.

[210] Yeah.

[211] you know I'm all about vintage shopping.

[212] Absolutely.

[213] And when you say vintage, you mean when you physically drive to a store and actually purchase something with cash.

[214] Exactly.

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[230] Goodbye.

[231] Well, Nick, do you want to tell us about your hometown?

[232] I will.

[233] You know, I grew up in a small town called Manuka, Illinois, that is very conservative.

[234] Just a couple, a few thousand people when I was growing up.

[235] It's grown, I feel like it's up to maybe 12 ,000, which we recently.

[236] found out because my dad is actually the mayor.

[237] He was just...

[238] What?