- This is what I've ended up with.
- Sick.
Are you playing Bukowski, coming up soon?
- I could do Bukowski, I could do like an evil killer clown.
- Ooh. That gave me shivers.
- Hey There, Human with me Rainn Wilson.
Hey everybody.
It's me Rainn Wilson.
I think you've met Paul before.
I wanted to reintroduce Paul to everyone.
Paul, as long as he is in contact with a human,
can do pretty much anything.
He'll go anywhere and do anything as long as
there is human contact.
Say hi Paul.
Welcome to Hey There, Human.
My name is Rainn Wilson. I'm your host.
Guinea pigs are squeaking in the background
and Paul is here on my lap.
Nick Offerman is the guest today.
Isn't that exciting?
One of my favorite human beings on the planet.
I'm not sure if he's bearded right now.
I don't think he's as bearded as he usually is.
Paul, its time to go down. Love you, buddy.
When I started the show,
I really was pretty sure that by the end of May,
we were going to have some hard answers.
That scientists would have figured some stuff out
and we'd kind of know what was working and what wasn't.
We know a little bit more than late March,
but not a whole lot more than March.
So that is freaking me out.
How do you navigate through mental health hardships
when they arise? Well,
that is an excellent question.
And really what that is about
is that mental health is one
of the topics that we tackle here on Hey There, Human.
We talk about a lot of different tools that we can use
to help us in these anxious and difficult times.
And that's how I think about mental health.
As I think about having a toolkit,
just like a carpenter has a toolbelt
with all the different tools in the toolbelt.
When we have mental health hardships,
we have to develop a toolbelt.
So that when these things hit us,
we can pick which tool is right for the occasion and use it.
So what are some tools in the, toolbelt?
Yesterday was World Meditation Day.
That's a good tool to use.
So there's taking deep breaths.
There's going for walks in nature.
There's talking about your feelings, there's therapy,
there's art therapy.
There's learning to accept our anxiety
as a natural part of life.
There's all of these different tools that you can use
and find out there to help when mental health issues arise.
I'm going to look online and see if my old dear friend
Nick Offerman is on here somewhere. Oh, there he is.
Ooh he clean-shaven.
- Hello there.
- Just drinking you in.It just takes,
it always takes me a minute to just drink you in.
- That's the joy of character actors.
You never know what you're going to end up with.
- That's right. This is what I've ended up with.
- Sick. Are you playing Bukowski coming up soon?
- I could do Bukowski. I could do like an evil killer clown.
- Ooh, that gave me shivers.
- Right?
- You really, you're coming to us direct
from your woodshop.
- I am in fact, yeah, I'm here working
on a few personal things to keep myself
from going bananas.
- Talk to me about how making things
helps your mental health.
- This is a, I'll kind of nutshell this.
I grew up in a wonderful big family in Illinois.
My mom and dad grew up on farms,
a few miles from each other.
And I grew up on three acres of corn field,
right between the two farms, they grew up on.
- Wow.
- So its a big spread out family.
And everybody is wonderfully practical,
like Little House on the Prairie,
but with television and baseball cards.
And so growing up, the women and men
of my redoubtable family, everybody cooks, everybody sews,
everybody gardens, everybody's a carpenter,
everybody's a mechanic.
We mainly did it because that's the old fashioned way
to live a valuable life. That's frugality.
When you have a family, you can band together,
many hands, make light work.
So I just grew up with, these skills.
And of course, as a kid, I complained about them.
A great deal. I didn't want to be out, you know,
in the garden or cutting the grass or what have you,
or shingling the shed.
I wanted to be watching cartoons.
And so, I never thought about it and said,
Oh, working as an actor is very brutal.
It's a horrible business.
There's going to be a lot of rejection.
Why don't I keep making things as a carpenter with my tools
as a sort of sort of Zen escape
or retreat from the superficial world of show business.
It just organically happened that way.
It used to be a way to make money.
Like I needed beer as a 25 year old,
like work my hand and turn that into beer.
Then as I matured and needed beer less,
I still needed this sort of calm or, you know,
I needed to relieve my stress,
especially even when things are going great
in show business, it's still very stressful or can be.
And so I just learned that by,
manipulating objects for me,
by making things out of wood,
I get the same sort of Zen calm from cooking as well.
And I think the reason is, when I break it down,
it's because I'm engaging in a bite size way.
I'm engaging the problem-solving technology
that the human is equipped with.
Whether I'm making a stool or a table or a canoe
or a blueberry pie, they all involve a list of ingredients,
certain steps of manipulation that has to be carefully
adhered to, or you're going to screw it up
and ruin your beautiful materials.
And so you have to shut off distractions,
the distractions of the world.
You have to shut off any other channels
that might get your attention, which these days means.
Leave your phone in the truck.
And I just--
- That's the title of your next book.
- Leave your Phone in the Truck.
So, I mean, that's, for me,
that's kind of the answer to your question is like,
it engages my problem-solving.
It's, the same thing as doing a jigsaw puzzle,
just more complicated.
And at the end of it, you don't just have a puzzle.
You have a delicious pie or a table
upon which to eat your pie.
- That's amazing. I play a lot of tennis and for me,
tennis works in the same way where there is a,
I don't know how to describe it other than Zen.
I don't really know a whole lot about Zen,
but when I am playing tennis,
there's just simply not room in my head for worry
about other things, because I'm so busy breathing,
being in the moment.
There's so much to focus on.
There's footwork and turning and the circles,
the spirals that you're making,
you gotta keep your eye on the ball.
You can't kind of half focus on the ball.
It has to be laser-like focus
on the, ball and then where your opponent is.
So there's this constant stimuli that keep you in the moment
and then I'll play and it's an hour and 40 minutes later.
And I'm like, Oh, where did that go?
And my anxiety has gone down and I have more tools
to meet the world.
So I imagine when you're making a canoe,
it works in a similar way.
- Very much. I mean, and it's what loosely people,
I've heard people refer to as being in the zone as it were.
And you've just reminded me of something
I've gone into the, shipping area.
And yeah, it's not where I thought it was.
There's a quote that I will just butcher.
Somewhere in my book Gumption,
there's a quote by this psychology scientist
from the early seventies,
from the early seventies, mind you.
- Okay.
- That basically says, a surplus of information,
creates a paucity of attention,
- Wow.
- Which I think is so applicable.
The more information we have,
especially coming in through channels,
like what we're doing right now, the less,
the human animal is able to focus
on any given, any one thing.
We're like, Oh, I need
And, so I think that plays into this idea
of finding something that you love to do,
that you would, that you would pay to do.
You know?
- So Nick, one of the things we ask people,
and you've been talking about the tool of making things,
and we've been talking about that.
Is there anything else you can offer?
The good folks watching in this time of tremendous anxiety.
Something that's been working for you over the last two,
two and a half months to help keep your head on straight.
And that might be a valuable guide, a signpost,
a lighthouse for those watching?
- Sure. I mean there's a couple of things.
One minor silver lining in this strange time,
that's, you know, intense and tragic for some people,
is that by sort of doing our civic duty and staying home
as much as possible and keeping ourselves distant
from other people.
For the first time in my adult life,
my wife and I are enjoying our house in a way.
That we're never just at our house where, you know,
we worked so hard to afford this, beautiful shelter.
And so to simply do things like cook together
and spend domestic time together,
that's sort of been engineered out of our lives.
We're both busy actors, we don't have kids.
And so by and large, during the working year,
we do a lot less cooking and like sitting down to a meal
because you can have engineered these days.
You can get perfectly good.
Anything you want to eat, you can have it delivered.
It's all that kind of thing.
So to just enjoy our house and like sit and read a book
at all the places in my house that I've often thought,
boy, I'd love to sit and read a book right there, someday.
- But you never actually have.
And now this gives affords you the opportunity.
- Yeah. And then, coupled with outside, I mean,
we're, we have a little fountain in our backyard
where we'll go out and sit and just be fascinated
by the bird traffic coming through.
And whatever that means, if you live in a place where you
don't have a backyard, maybe there's a little park,
maybe there's just one plant.
Maybe there's a tree or shrub, or,
and if you don't have that, you can grow them.
You can get caterpillar's that you can grow,
watch, turn into butterflies.
You can grow plants on your windowsill.
And for me, that brings me so much solace and hope.
The fact that, I can plant a strawberry plant
and it will still, you know,
grow to reproduce fruit.
That tells me that the world will
still keep spinning and there will be strawberries.
- Nick, thank you so much for taking time
out of your very busy strawberry field,
hummingbird field schedule to chat with us.
It means a lot to the listeners.
- It's my pleasure, Rainn.
And it's always a joy to see you and talk to you,
and I love your soulpancake, your whole mission.
And so thank you for what you do.
- Right on man.
Thanks so much, really appreciate it.
Much love to you.
- Love to you.
- Say hi to Megan. So long.
- Alright.Bye.Bye.
- Bye.
How about that? Nick Offerman?
What a wise gem.
what a wise gem of a human being.
So, much love to you all.
Thank you for tuning in to Hey There, Human.
This was a thank you to our wonderful guests, Nick Offerman,
what a great person and had a great time.
Thanks so much guys.
♪Hey there human ♪
♪ Hey there human ♪