'What we're doing as a society is not working': Nick Offerman joins WNYC's ‘All Things Considered’

Comedian, actor, author and woodworker Nick Offerman joined WNYC’s Sean Carlson Wednesday evening for a live broadcast of “All Things Considered” at the Greene Space, WNYC’s events venue

The show focused on the city’s cultural scene – and how it’s changed since the pandemic. For Offerman, the Hollywood strikes are examples of cultural shifts brought on by the pandemic — which created a huge demand for new shows as people were stuck at home and then had a quick decline when people went back to their “normal” lives.

“In the last couple years, everybody I know has something getting canceled or dumped or curtailed,” said Offerman.

“It’s the dice that you roll,” he said. “It's why they call it ‘show business,’ and not ‘show-fun-with-your-friends.’”

But the conversation went beyond the state of the arts, spanning a wide range of topics, including: Offerman’s interest in nature, why you should “give a dang” about agriculture and what he’d tell anyone starting out in comedy today.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation.

Sean Carlson: We are glad to have you here at WNYC in New York City. Though the irony is not lost on me that your book is, in large part, about connecting with nature. And you're here downtown, in maybe the most urban place in America. How out-of-place do you feel right now? Or is it easy for you to slip between the two?

Nick Offerman: No, this is actually the ideal audience for my book, because the sense of the book comes from my own epiphany when I started reading Michael Pollan and the agrarian Wendell Berry, and realizing that we've been trained to no longer know where our food comes from.

That's my way into this subject matter and this book with a sense of humor is: If you eat, then you should give a dang about agriculture. You should think about the farmers and the people who catch the fish and grow the green leafy stuff that rabbits eat. You should think about all these things.

And so, coming to the city, in talking to you all about where to find nature and how you don't have to go to Yosemite or Wyoming, it's actually all around us. We're near some very beautiful parks right now. You can grow nature on your windowsill, hemp for rope only, for example, or tomatoes.

We should note that your book didn't just come out, and like so many things, the pandemic derailed your opportunity to come to talk about it here in the Greene Space with us. Do you think that America has become more amenable to what you talk about in your book since the pandemic?

I think the door that we're trying to pry open, the shaft of light is slowly growing. I think, because of the obvious effects of climate change, there are all sorts of astral, astrological, star-ish moments. These signals are coming to us that what we're doing as a society is not working. The internal combustion engine, the way we consume natural resources — be it wood, or oil or natural gas — or the way we grow beef in ways that use industrial terms. Factory farming, meatpacking plants. I am a huge fan of beef, but I'm a fan of healthy farming.

And so I do think that slowly but surely, incrementally, we're waking up to the fact that we need to live in a more sustainable way. I think the best way to do that is to go into the grocery store and say, "Where did this come from? Who grew it? Were they interested in my health and the nutrients of this carrot? Or were they interested in their checking account?"

There's a great John McPhee book I highly recommend, called "Giving Good Weight." It's from the 70s, but it's about New York City farmers’ markets. It's an incredible read, as John McPhee always is. But it really actually gets into some of these values. Because we've forgotten to understand that people are providing these foodstuffs. And if we begin to vote with our dollars in the grocery store, we can actually give them a better life. They can give us a better life, and we can all give Mother Nature a better life.

One of the things that you talk about – I hesitate to call it a prescription for society – but something which you've mentioned here, in terms of folks knowing where our food comes from, it's important right? And a lot of folks don't. I should say the first station that I worked at in radio was in Alaska. Shout out to Ketchikan, if anyone's listening.

Do you know Matt the Electrician?

From Ketchikan, Alaska?

No, he's a touring musician from Austin but he has a beautiful song about touring to Ketchikan, Alaska. Wow, I'm sure the folks in Ketchikan would love to hear that. It all started here.

Just don't call it “quaint.” They hate it there. It's not a quaint fishing village. That said, fishing is huge. I have to say, I have gone through the process of catching a fish and cleaning it and preparing it to eat. It's pretty grisly. You talk about in your book, how – correct me if I'm getting this wrong – every child in America should go through that experience.

Sure. I mean, I think it's important to understand, that's part of the problem. We've been inured to the way we treat our natural resources. We think that all of these food products just come from the store, and by giving our agency to the providers of those foods, they are then allowed to give those chickens and those cows and all of those creatures, as well as the plants and the microorganisms in the soil, they are all completely mistreated and we’ll never know.

I'm so grateful that my parents taught me to catch fish and clean them the same way that people who participate in subsistence hunting. It's wonderful because you have first hand knowledge, Or as a woodworker, you also, when you come across an oak tree that's down in the forest, you put it out of its misery. You clean it, you process it. When it comes to trees, you should hunt smart and kill clean – so that you know where your table came from. It didn't come from a table factory, it came from a forest.

Maybe this is because of your public persona based on “Parks and Rec.” But I appreciate your frankness in your book about a white guy who's in nature appreciating the splendor of America and the beauty out there, while at the same time acknowledging that alliances are a pretty ugly legacy when it comes to the people who had been living there for thousands of years beforehand. You show a lot of self-awareness and being out in that and kind of squaring that. How do you square that?

Lose the how. Do you square that? I think the way we square that is to talk about it and recognize it. We're all in this together. All of these things aren't, we didn't know where mistakes were, they were a great idea.

The automobile was a great idea. Burning whale oil was a great idea. But eventually the waiter brings the bill and we say, "Oh s---, didn't realize we were being charged." Japanese internment camps, you name it. Everybody gets scared and says, "Well, let's round up the people that look like this and put them inside a fence because we're scared of them." Then eventually we say, "Oh, actually, we need these amazing people that are really valuable to our diverse society." And we correct that mistake.

But instead of forgetting about it, it's good to remember it. So we don't repeat it. And maybe that's how we square ourselves. When I go out in a national park and at first I ignorantly think, "Amazing, mankind has never set foot in this pristine wilderness." And then you don't have to look very far to say, "Oh, wait a second. What's that reservation on the other side of the hill? Oh, you were over here. And you're asked to leave in a variety of ways that are not that prideful."

We wanted to bring the discussion around the theme of the show that we're doing tonight, here in the Greene Space, the future of the arts industry, in a post-pandemic New York City. You've no doubt performed here many, many times. Been here many times. Know a lot of folks in the industry here. What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in the industry just in the past couple of years?

Gosh, it's an interesting question. My mind leaps to the fact that we're on strike. The Writers Guild has just finished being on strike after a very courageous and tenacious strike took a lot of courage and a lot of suffering for a lot of people. The actors are hopefully just wrapping up our strike on some of the similar issues. That's what I've noticed in recent years.

Because there was a pandemic that had all these big social shifts, where, for example, suddenly people were at home, demanding as much content as possible. These large corporations heard that and created as much as possible, and proceeded to hoard as much of the income from them as possible.

That was one of the main reasons that made us stand up and say, "Hey, guys, remember how we have struck in the past so that you fairly give us the tiny fraction of 1% of wealth that you earn from what we make with our hands and talent?"

Suddenly, everybody has a show on a streamer. There's sort of a glut of content. People started going back out, the world opened up again, and so that crashed.

So suddenly, in the last couple years, everybody I know has something getting canceled or dumped or curtailed. Instead of 16 episodes we'll give you eight, et cetera. It's hard. It's, you know, it's the dice that you roll. It's why they call it "show business," and not "show-fun-with-your-friends."

And so, if you're lucky enough to work with Mike Schur on the shows he creates, like "Parks and Rec," for example, he's rolling those dice. He's saying "I want to put my heart-filled comedy shows in front of as many people as possible, so I'm going to work with this corporation who will invariably break my heart at some point, because they're a business. To them, I'm a number, not a beautiful poet wizard."

I'm lucky enough. I'm very grateful that when we went on strike, and it seemed clear it was going to last, I called my agent and said, "Can I please book some live shows and go sing songs to audiences?" I'm currently doing a bunch of material about the late great Gordon Lightfoot, who I'm taking apart piece by piece, on stage to the audience's great delight. You'll be surprised.

I'm sure. We have about a minute left here. So we wanted to ask you, given everything you're saying about how the industry is changing .... What would you say to younger performers and comics coming up? Should they even go to say, stand up comedy clubs anymore? Is that still a thing? What do you think they should do if they're trying to break in?

I don't have much expertise on stand-up clubs. I've actually never been to a comedy club, even though I tour as a humorist.

That's true?

No, it is true. I'm a theater actor from Chicago, who mistakenly was then invited to come perform at colleges and I decided to then learn to act like a comedian, which is why I call myself a humorist. Because then I can talk more slowly.

But to answer your question, I would say don't ever give up. Don't ever stop doing live stuff. We will never lose the magic of the human being. There will never be anything more fascinating than a person on a stage in the light, because that son of a gun could do anything. Computers, ultimately, algorithms ultimately are predictable.