Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Nick Offerman

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Nick Offerman is an Emmy-winning actor, but that’s a small part of his identity. He’s also a woodworker, an author, and a devoted acolyte of the naturalist writer Wendell Berry. He talks with Rachel about the art of being satisfied, building up the courage for a home project and what he learned from a childhood that felt like “Little House on the Prairie.”To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Just a heads up, there's some strong language in this episode and also some very nice descriptions of woodworking. How do you think your life should be judged? I'll answer this at 3.30 this morning when I come awake from a deep sleep. Because, you know, that's the human condition, I think, is being able to look in the mirror and be honest with oneself. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me.

My guest this week is Nick Offerman. Figure out who you're going to love. Go to an independent hardware store. Get the things you need. Make some tongs. Cook some goddamn sausages. There's something about Nick Offerman that seems of another time. Maybe it's his deep affection for woodworking and penchant

for flannel shirts, or his impressive vocabulary and love of the naturalist writer Wendell Berry. Nick got famous as Ron Swanson in Parks and Rec, but he won an Emmy for his role as a survivalist in the HBO show The Last of Us. And in his acceptance speech, he used words like decency and fidelity, which sometimes feel like values of a bygone era. Nick Offerman is also a writer, and his latest book is a how-to on woodworking for parents and kids. It's called Little Woodchucks, Offerman Woodshop's Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery. I am so happy to welcome Nick Offerman to Wildcard. Hi. Hello, thank you. That was a really generous introduction. Well, I'm really excited to talk with you. Round one, memories. We get deeper as we go. Nick Offerman, are you ready? I'm ready.

Okay, let's go. I've been stretching for several minutes. Oh, good, I'm sure. Your calf muscles need to be stretched out, maybe a tricep, a belt. There's a hammies for me. It's a hammies for me. I got to keep the hammies loose. Oh. Yeah. I can't really speak extemporaneously unless my hamstrings are loose. First three cards, one, two, or three? I'll go two, please. Two. What's a place that shaped you just as much as any person did? What's a place that shaped me just as much as any person did? The workshop end of the shed. at Uncle Dan's farm, a few miles from the house I grew up in. My mom's whole family are still farming corn and soybeans. And Uncle Dan is the oldest of four kids, so he sort of became the de facto big farmer. That was a CB handle, big farmer.

And at his house was the enormous shed that housed a lot of the tractors and combines and farm equipment. And at one end of it was just called the shop. So you got the shed and then at one end is the shop. And the shop is where all of the tools lived. And it's where they were able to fix anything. There was a very Han Solo and Chewbacca feeling to the shed because if you could at all help it, you never paid anybody to fix anything and you never bought a new part.

you could help it. No, that's right. Uncle Dan and his younger brother, Uncle Don, would fashion new parts out of coffee cans. And, like, they were just incredible MacGyvers of inspiration. And so that was one of the main place. Remind me where this was? A small town called Manuka, Illinois, about an hour southwest of Chicago. Okay.

And so, I mean, just seeing what happened in there. And then as I became a teenager, Uncle Dan's son, Ryan, my cousin, who was my closest bestie growing up, he bought an El Camino, like a 1970 El Camino that he fixed up and did a paint job on. And he let me help him sometimes. And so that was one of the places where I just saw the way that we could affect the world around us with tools and injure. ingenuity and how that was much cheaper than going to the mall, but also sometimes more frustrating. My grandpa, my family are farmers, wheat and barley from Idaho, and my grandpa made all his tools as well, not all, but to this day, we still have, my sister has him in her house. He made these, like, medieval spears with like the real, you know, the tip, different tips on the top, just, For the hell of it. Like, he could make things.

He used things to make things. He was a potato farmer. He made, like, the potato storter, and he built all the instruments he needed to build those things. But the fact that he could, he would make these tools as art, too, was like this different way that he elevated his craft. And it just felt wild in his workshop. Right. Like, there's, like, the flame of things. And his hands were always, like, sooty and strong.

and yeah, although none of that work on. I love that about human ingenuity that when you have to make and implement, you know, he's a farmer. He's making things that he needed. But, you know, I was making a canoe paddle one time. And I really enjoy taking a rectilinear piece of wood and shaping it down to a canoe paddle. And you can start to feel the use in the paddle as it takes it. You're like, oh, wow, I can feel how this is going to work. Yeah.

So efficaciously. this is the perfect shape for paddling and it's ergonomic. And so I had the idea similarly. He made spears. I started making a series of wooden, the first one I made is a felling axe out of a plank of mahogany. I just carved an entire full-size axe. So the head and the shaft are all just one piece of mahogany. Wow.

And I love this thing. I love to just hold it. feel this sculpture basically. You still have it. I love that about human creativity. Yeah, that we say, I mean, when I was building decks and cabins and people's yards in Los Angeles, post and beam structures, similarly, I said, oh, wait a second, I could make a dining room table. If I can put this gazebo up, if I just change a few things around, I could rest my beer on it. and my barbecue.

You could have made a fine living. I mean, we'll see where the cards take us, but I am interested in like, I guess I'll be an actor instead. But let's go to the next three cards. Three new cards, one, two, or three? Three. Three.

Was there a moment when you started seeing your parents as people? Yeah, a moment springs to mind. And I have, if there are two better parents in the history of mankind, I'd like you to show them to me. I have, I'll put my mom and dad up against anybody. They're just incredible. They raised four kids and we all have very good manners and we all aspire to the lives of service that mom and dad, the example that our mom and dad set. of course, being raised by very decent people like that can be a real pain in the ass sometimes if you're trying to have fun and figure, you know, push the envelope.

It can be a real bummer. And I think I, among my siblings who are all very smart and funny, and I really admire all three of them, I think the thing that I was probably the best at was seeing what. I could get away with. I was the troublemaker, I think, of the four of us. And so, you know, I spent my formative years doing that with my mom and dad and also with the world, with school, like seeing what rules I could break and still get into college and that sort of thing.

And so it was once I went away to the University of Illinois at age 18 to study theater, three hours south of mom and dad. I would on my own for the first time, you know, I got my first checkbook and was, you know, a fledgling adult. Like, okay, go fly. Right. Leave the nest.

And just being out in the world and being responsible for myself 100%, it just fell on me. I remember going, and this is 1988, so I had to find a pay phone and call. and call my dad and say, so, hey, dad, it's Nick. First of all, I just want to apologize for the last four or five years. I immediately, I immediately see how patient you've been with me and all the lessons that you and mom have given me, which are just be decent, work hard. If you're going to do a job, do it right. Treat everyone, everyone with the same risk.

respect that you would like to be treated. All, I mean, just these wonderful, incredible values, these bedrock moral lessons just landed on me. Because like I said, thank you. Did that come as a result of contrast? Were you making friends or being exposed to people who did not have such great parents? That definitely was the case. A lot of, you know, it's sort of a trope that people. end up in showbiz if they have traumatic childhoods or if they're not getting enough love

one way or another. So I definitely had a lot of epiphanies happening. And this is, mind you, it's in Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, like, still in the middle of the cornfields of the Midwest. But mainly it was just, I think, being out of the sort of nest of the nest of the security that I lived in with my mom and dad. And so just saying, okay, I have to take care of myself. I have to do my own laundry and pay my bills and be responsible in a way.

I have to cover all of these responsibilities that mom and dad have been taken care of. And that's when the epiphany occurred where I said, but I know everything. I know the right way to do everything. Yeah. It's so simple. It's all mom and dad have been telling me my whole life. Huh. They do sound like good parents.

They are. I mean, they're still at it. You still have them? They're still walking the world? Yeah, they're young and spry. And dad is the mayor of our small town in Manuka. He just ran unopposed for the second time. Wow.

Oh. And which means, you know, in the political cartoon, he'd be right. My mom would be carrying him around town on her shoulders. Like, it's that kind of household where they're both pretty heroic. Wow. That's amazing. I'm very grateful. Yeah.

Next three. Last one in this round. One, two or three. One, please. Okay. Well, this is a little bit. similar, were you intimidated or excited about leaving your parents' house? I was excited. This, I say, and I say this lovingly, I love my hometown, but it was a bit of a

cultural vacuum. At least my sphere was. So, we, you know, we greatly enjoyed top 40 music and what was on the three TV channels, you know. We certainly, had culture to enjoy, but once I got to theater school and I met my counterculture friends who said, you know, I was like, yeah, I love the Beatles. I want to hold your hand, right? And they were like, no, man, here is marijuana. Here's the white album. Here's Abby Road. And I mean, and it was just years of this of forming my tribe, which became this theater company called the Defiant Theater. In Chicago, they turned me on to, we watched twin, peaks religiously,

Laurie Anderson, David Lynch, the talking heads, they might be giants, all of these wonderful writers and filmmakers and musicians, that there just wasn't anybody, there weren't any tea heads in Manuka,

like, hepping me, you know, one of my first roommates, Rob Kimmel, gave me his dog-eared copy of On the Road by Jack Carrowack. And I was like,

Oh, right. I'm a hedonist. I'm a, I'm, like, I want to live an artistic life. Yeah. I want to be considered a member of the beat generation somehow. Yeah. So you were ready. So I was, yeah, like, I knew the, the world was out there, but I didn't know what it, what it would hold. And so it was pretty crazy because my three siblings, they all live within one block of mom and dad now. Wow.

And they have this, and it kind of drives me crazy not to be there with them because it's such an incredible resource when you do have a loving family that has meals together and takes, you know, there's child care, there's gardening, there's, you know, there are all these wonderful help meets and checks and balances. And so I knew, you know, that I, that I, I felt like I had, I don't know, I had a journey waiting for me out in the great wide world of marijuana and the revolver. Second reference. Just saying.

I mean, and other intoxicants. Yeah. I'm not a specialist. But I knew that, you know, that I was leaving behind the great comforts, the domestic comforts. My household always felt like Little House on the Prairie that had that kind of goodness to whatever narrative was happening to us on any given week.

Does that mean your dad was Michael Landon? I love Michael Landon. In hindsight, it's funny to me how many ladies on the way out of church would tell me how good-looking they thought my dad was. That starts to get awkward, doesn't it? It is a little weird, yeah. Now we're going to talk about your book.

Which, congratulations, by the way. Thank you. You've written about woodworking before. But this is the first time you've done something specifically for kids and parents. It is, yeah, for sure. The idea behind this one is to encourage families to make things together and to teach your kids how to use hand tools. But secretly, I'm aware. that like most of our population, more and more has lost the ability to use hand tools

and the knowledge to, you know, to fix things even around the house or on their vehicles or what have you. So, so not so secretly. It's like, hey, parents, teach your kids how to use these tools. And also maybe you could learn to use the tools. Right. And you might really find that they're really fun. I mean, I have no doubt that my 13.

year old and 11 year old boys would be into the idea. It's me who's the problem. I am intimidated by the process. I mean, I read the book completely, mostly because it's hysterical. And it, I mean, it's some good grown-up writing, too. There's more than one like, God damn it in there, which is just like a good grandpa swear word. But then you get to like the pages where there's pictures of all the tools necessary. for each item. And I just look at that. And that feels, that feels like a complicated trip to Home Depot.

And then I will purchase the tools and then I don't know what to do with them. But that's my own issue. It's like, you can't like solve all of my anxieties, Nick Offerman. But no, I appreciate the. But instead of being intimidated, the first of all, and I'm glad we're getting this on NPR, you don't want to go to the big. box store that you mentioned. You don't want to go to a big corporate home store because they don't have generally people who know much. In fact, there's a famous Ron Swanson scene where somebody comes

up to him at one of these stores and says, can I help you? And Ron says, I know more than you. And like flows past them. But that's not true for me. But I hear what you're saying. Like the Go to a place with expertise. Right. You have the right idea, but instead of a, instead of these big stores where just by the corporate template, they're not going to have all the, they're hiring young minimum wage people who don't pay.

It's not their business model. Right. They don't know. Yeah. And if, so what you, what you need to do is go to a smaller independent hardware store. Uh-huh. And that's,

the thing is, it's so fun because you'll find people that care about these things. Yeah. that aren't just in retail selling you like a new flip phone or something. They're like, oh, that's fun. And they'll say, well, here's this kind of glue. And here's are the pros and cons. Or here's this other tight bond three.

This is good for exterior. Or C clamp. Yeah. I learned what that was reading your book. It's incredible. It's so fun. And so, and then there's another part of what you touched on is when you feel nervous about this yourself, if you have, if you have, would you say your boys are 13 and 11?

13 and 11. I mean, you're, you're, your, your, the, my perfect, I'm in the sweet spot, uh, demographic, yeah, because if the three of you do it together, what you'll learn is one of you will be the best at something, one of you will suck at something, and, and you'll mess things up and you'll, but you'll figure out together. Yeah. And the, and the, and the, and the thing is, some, one of, it's, like, somebody's going to be, uh, an ace at, like, cutting to a pencil line, let's say. But then the other one or two of you are required to hold things in place and to do all of these actions together. And it is so much fun. It's like doing

a jigsaw puzzle, but more substantial. And when you're done, you actually have a tool or a toy or an implement. You've made a set of tongs that you can use to flip your sausages. The tongs are the best thing in there. And you said that it's easy. I felt like that's what I would start with is like making little tongs that you can use all the time. That's your gateway project because it mainly is gluing and a little bit of sanding. Great. And when you see what Woodgour can do, you feel like a superhero.

You're like, oh, my God. I took these useless tongue depressors and now I can pull my toast out of the toaster. This life is gorgeous. Also, a thing I love is that I'm always talking to my kids about how to be uncomfortable, right? Like, just like seek out new experiences and test yourself and take risks. And I think what I like about this idea is that this is very intimidating to me. I am not a fixer. My sister was always someone who could put things together.

I'm not that person. And it's almost become part of my identity. And I think it would be powerful if I tried to make a thing. And they saw me getting out of my own comfort zone and maybe not sucking as bad as I think I'm going to suck at it. I don't know. You've inspired me. No, it's huge. It's a huge life lesson that I still get constantly in the wood shop.

I can never reiterate this enough. We all, I mean, I've been at it for decades. And if I'm making anything, a footstool, a table, I buy extra wood because I know I'm going to make mistakes. And if you understand that in your life, that anything you want to excel at or achieve a degree of mastery, that you're not going to do it out of the gate. You have to, you have to break a lot of eggs to, like, make an award-winning omelet. We're back in the game. Round two. Insights. Three new cards. One, two, or three. Three, please.

Three. What's the biggest risk you've ever taken? Amazing question. What's the biggest risk I've ever taken? The thing that I was most afraid to do, I did a play in 2000 with my estimable bride, Megan Mullalley. And I met her for the first time, and she was about to win her. first Emmy for Will and Grace for playing Karen Walker. And I was living in a dirt basement in Silver Lake. And so... Part of L.A. Yep.

It was quite, it was quite terrifying because she seemed like another species. Like, what... In what way? She just was so gorgeous and sophisticated and cultured and, like, and, like, she had been, you know, she had been a sort of leading actress on stage and screen for years in a way that she just knew so much more about the world and was also so funny and smart. So I loved getting to be, I fell in love with being friends with her quickly, but just really quickly, I was like, wait, telling my best friend, like, I think there might be something

going on here. And I'm already just scared shitless. Like this, it's, you know what I mean? It was like if Merrill Streep or something showed up, or, whereas just like, I think Maril Streep and I are in love. But it's, but that doesn't seem possible. Or right. Like, there's something wrong with her.

Someone should warn her. Yeah, we're achieving an emotional intimacy that just seems like a really bad idea for her. And so we started dating and we started living together. And I was driving. I used to hang lights for Disney, for the Imagineering Department, who creates all of the parks and maintains the parks and rides around the world. And I was driving up an hour north of L.A. to Valencia. There was a campus up there.

One day, and I remember exactly where I was on the Five Freeway, when it occurred to me that I would be marrying Megan, that this was it. I was 29, I think, or 30. You had not asked her. She had not asked you. No, no, no, no. This awareness that it was going to happen.

It just occurred to me that this was it that had arrived. And I shook my fist. I literally shook my fist at the heavens and said, I would have liked to have been consulted about this. Like, you just, it's just here? And so, obviously, after 25 wonderful years together, I'm so, obviously, after 25 wonderful years together, I'm so grateful. But this felt like the biggest risk. Absolutely, absolutely, because I hadn't done any arithmetic. Like, I'm a pragmatist and a frugal person.

So, like, I hadn't given it as proper consideration by any stretch. You know what I mean? You're just going with your head. Not with your head. You were going with your heart. Yeah, the boy in me was like, well, I'm sure someday I'll settle down. But and somehow the voice of Mother Nature was like, guess what, buddy? It's a rhyme.

It's happening now. You are here. You're becoming a husband. And it was and it was terrifying. And in some ways it still is. And that's what's wonderful about being in love is like, to me, that's what makes my life happy. And it's what it's the whole point of living. It's what that script, that wonderful stuff.

script that Craig Mason wrote of the episode of The Last of Us that got all that attention was just about like figuring out your purpose is the people that you're going to love and take care of. That's otherwise what's the point? Yeah, yeah, totally. Figure out who you're going to love. Go to an independent hardware store, get the things you need, make some tongs, cook some goddamn I'm sausages. Call it a day.

Do you really make your own sausages, by the way? There's a lot of sausage references in the book, and it led me to think, do you make you? No, you mean from scratch? Yeah, I mean from scratch. You maker guy, you? Oh, okay. No, no, God. I mean, I probably will make my own sausage, like knowing myself.

Right. Eventually, you're going to get there. Yeah, it's, I admire. there was a wonderful guy that taught school with my dad named Lou Virjamack, and Big Lou made sausage. And his Bratworth, as a kid, I think that was the formative, that was my gateway meat delivery system where I was like, I want to be, I'm going to try to make being a carnivore part of my brand. And by God, here we are. Check. Yeah.

Three new cards, one, two, three. One, please. What emotion do you understand better than all the others? What emotion do I understand better than all the others? Gosh. I mean, my family and I are famously taciturn. And so I keep... the answers that occur to me are not emotions. They are states. Like, I'm like, well,

patience, satisfaction. Wait, see more about satisfaction. Well, I mean, Wendell Berry says, good work. Oh, hell, now I'm nervous. Good work is our joy and salvation, I believe. And what that means is looking in your life and understanding, seeing the work that needs doing. And it often involves stewardship, caring for your people and your property and your agriculture, which in my case, I don't grow a crop. I grow woodworkers and things made of wood. Like it's an easy analogy to make. everyone is a gardener or should be. And so I have good work to do and I do it and I do my best at it. It's flawed. I haven't won a lot of trophies for a lot of my work. But I feel very satisfied knowing that I'm not a wasteral. I'm not, you know, I'll always be a flawed donkey, but I'm

But I'm going to, I think, get good grades in the final reckoning because I'm not spending a lot of time down at the pub or avoiding my work. But ultimately, that keeps me, you know, a lot of people in showbiz, and I think just in modern life in this information age, suffer from anxiety. the deluge of information and choice is very bad for people. Because that's the thing about the fear of my marriage is like, have I considered all the options? Right. You know, is there another, is there an app I haven't even heard about that I should, you know? And ultimately, I love the simplicity that I've achieved. and that allows me to be to be satisfied, you know.

Yeah, I think to be satisfied is an emotion. We get to define the terms here, and I think it qualifies. Well, then I'm grateful. I like to live in a way that if showbiz calls up and says, okay, Nick, your cheekbones are not cutting it anymore, and we're going to cancel you for any one of the reasons that you know, You know why. And I would say, okay, I've been kind of expecting this call.

It's been a good ride. And you know what? I'm satisfied. I'm going to go to my shop and now I'm going to learn how to make sausage. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You know what?

There's always more work to do. I'm telling you, if you see within five years Offerman sausage hitting the shelves, I'll probably quote you on the label. Like it's, I mean, you have, you have, it's all I can think about. I love a pork product. I'm just saying. How am I not grinding my own sausage meat? All these beautiful pictures of cured meats in this woodworking book.

And I was like, did you make these meats? You know what I need for my sausage? What? Seed. Fenel. Fennel. Fentle seed. That is easily procurable.

This is exciting. Round three. Beliefs. One, two, or three? Three, please. How do you think your life should be judged? I'll answer this at 3.30 this morning when I come awake from a deep sleep. Because, you know, that's the human condition, I think, is being able to look in the mirror and be honest with oneself. say how should my life be judged.

You know, I get a lot of work done and I feel really good about my work. And I, you know, I recently had to move my wood shop. After 20 years, landlord-developer reasons, we had to move the shop. And it was so traumatic because once I was faced with that, I realized that the shop itself, was probably the best thing I've ever made. But I hadn't thought about it as something that I had made until it was going to go away. Like compared to even your body of work as an actor? No, I mean, as a woodworker.

As a woodworker, okay. Yeah. And so it was very traumatic. And something one of the choices was, well, this is going to be such a pain in the butt and really expensive to move the shop, to find. L.A. real estate that's not an hour away that's affordable and that all of my woodworkers who have chosen the sort of hippie life of riding a bicycle to the woodshop to, you know, to make things out of wood, how can it service all of them? And so the first obvious choice was, well, you should throw in the towel, like let it go. It's, you know, it's, it's, I, it's, it's,

It doesn't make a profit. It's not a, you know, it's not a money-making scheme by any stretch. And I just, I didn't think about it very long at all. I was just like, no, I think I love, it's part of my gardening. It's, I love trying to make a happy, healthy life for four or five people who have chosen the life of a woodworker in Los Angeles. And so, you know, we went through the trouble and expense of moving it. And so all, I try to make choices. I try to err on the side of generosity and taking care of others.

I, you know, I think that I think I won't fail. I think I won't get a failing grade. Yeah. I think you're okay. I'm doing my best. And that's the thing. and dad taught me to just do my best, and I am. Yeah.

Three new cards, one, two, or three. Two, please. What's the most religious thing about you? What's the most religious thing about me? I was raised in the Catholic Church. My mom and dad are still great examples of, they're the greatest Christians I've ever met. And guess what? They never have said to anybody anything about Christianity.

Right. They literally, they're like they are the, they both work at the church, you know. They just live it. They just do it. They live it. And they lead by example. It's, I just wish, yeah, I wish everyone could understand that. But what about you?

Well, I'm setting up the foundation where I, so I was brought up in the Catholic Church and I was an altar boy. It was a big part of my life. But I knew the whole time that the Catholic Church wasn't for me. Sitting in a congregation, which, you know, I came to learn that was part of what sent me to the theater. sitting in a church, a full church, and hearing the lack of enthusiasm. And the general, what I perceived to be a pretty ineffectual delivery of storytelling. Right. Could be so much better.

Right. Yeah. I just felt like it was, it's not a good system, you know? And lo and behold, and it's funny, I haven't actually made this. connection until now. But lo and behold, I went, I was like, I need to go to the theater. Like I, and I had seen some theater as a kid around. But like, I'm interested in the, in the connections. People are at the, at the pulpit and there's stories that are being told. And intuitively, you're like, that person's not a good

storyteller. I know the impact of that story could be more profound. And I think I'm going to take my shot, maybe telling some different stories. Exactly. And so, I mean, I was led, you know, like a Parsifel, the fool. I was like Sidhartha. I was led to the theater. And my sensei, shows Osato, one of the many sort of Zen Coens that Sensei passed along to me and his many students was the way of the.

art is the way of the Buddha, which means that everyone has a gift. Everyone, mother nature, has made us all the greatest at something. And our job in life is to discern what that gift is and then discern how to use it to be of service to others. The way of the art is the way of the Buddha, which means, so your art, whatever your art is, and you could be an accountant. You know, It doesn't have to be a literal art, but whatever your art is, that is what is holy about you. That just really struck me. That's part of why I still have my wood shop. And it's part of why, you know, I don't have to write books.

I'm doing really well as an actor. I could, like, buy a boat and smoke cigars and get fat. but it's that that took root in me. The way of the art is the way of the Buddha. And so for whatever contribution I can make, whether it's like literally profound, good writing through a dramatic role or a really stupid comedy that makes people, you know, people in a hospital bed laugh and forget about their aching pancreas. or if it's something in my wood shop or anything in between,

all of these things that I feel religious about. Yeah. Last one, Nick Offerman. One, two or three. Three, please. Well, I think you have answered this in different forms, but I will ask it because that is what is on the card. What does it mean to live a good life?

What does it mean to live a good life? for me, it's paying attention. Wendell Berry says that it all turns on affection. And so, you know, when things make me mad, which they often do or people make me mad, I, you know, I'm of a mindset and sometimes I succeed at finding my affection for them. And that said, for me, I have an on-board skepticism that I guess came factory standard where I have a mistrust of humanity. Okay. You know, what we have done with our incredibly clever technology and wealth and ability to

to create more and more comforts in our daily lives is being used to the detriment. Ultimately, we're slowly destroying our planet by making ourselves so comfortable. Right. I really wish that Wendell Berry, his sort of white album, as it were, is a book called The Unsettling of America. And you can actually get the audio version of it, read to you in a voice that sounds a lot like this slow talking guy. I really wish that would be, I did, yeah. Honestly, that may be the peak of my, of anything I get to do. To get to help get his writing to people is a hell of a lot better than anything I could ever come up with.

But I wish the unsettling of America would be required reading for every maybe freshman in high school. And it's just, it's about this. It's simply maintaining awareness, pulling back the veil that all of our wonderful consumerist products have placed over us. We're too busy giving our hot takes on Instagram. to worry about the health of the soil and our livestock and so forth. So it's just paying attention, I think, because when you do, when you pay attention, then you notice the health of your family members, your community members, and so forth. You just keep expanding that.

And again, it's a bunch of neighbors sharing a piece of land that happens to be a planet. We end the show the same way every time. You take a trip in our memory time machine. You pick one moment from your past to revisit, but it's not a moment you change anything about. It's just a moment that you would linger in a little longer. Yeah, it's funny. The wheel of life, like all of these things are passing.

But I'm going to stop at Grandpa Mike. It occurred to me earlier when I was talking about, I think, the first question, the shed and the shop in the shed at Uncle Dan's. Their dad, my grandpa Mike, he was, you know, the patriarch of that tool tradition that, you know, that has carried on through the general. generations in our family. But the memory I'm driving toward is quite simple. It's my grandpa Mike and Grandma L. Eloise, they lived in this really nice, humble old farm on Ridge Road on top of the hill, and they had a nice garden out back. And I'd go out there with Grandpa Mike on a break, and he would pull up a turnip. And he kept a little salt shaker on a little fence post. And he would take his pocket knife and holding the turnup by the greens, he'd peel, he'd pare back the turnup,

the purple skin revealing the white, wet, wet, fleshy inside, and sprinkle some salt on it and cut us each a slice. and that was as good of a family moment and a snack as any sausage you have ever come across. And I mean, that was really formative. You can grow a turn-up. Most people can grow a turn-up, and you can share it with your family. But don't forget the salt. Nick Offerman's newest book is called Little Woodchucks, Offerman Woodchop's Guide.

to tools and tomfoolery. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. If you like this episode, I would recommend listening to my interview with John Lithgow. He and Nick are both the kind of actors who are just as articulate and insightful

off the screen as they are on it. This episode was produced by Lee Hale and edited by Dave Blanchard. It was mastered by Patrick Murray. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolonna Sanweni, and our theme music is by Romteen, Arablee. We're going to shuffle the deck

and we will be back with more next week. Talk to you then.