The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Ed Helms

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

Ed Helms joins Andy Richter to discuss why he fell so hard for the banjo, his love for Appalachian mountain tales, and his new historical podcast SNAFU.

Hello everyone, Andy Richter here with another episode of The Three Questions. And I'm talking to an old pal today, and I'm talking face-to-face, which is always nice, because that's a rarity in these disease ridden times. But I get to talk to Ed Helms. Hi, Ed. How are you? Hey, pretty terrific. Yeah. Yeah. You're here. I mean, aside from your love and devotion to me, because you're into this podcast game now, too, right? I'm diving in. Is this your first attempt? Yeah. Well, I feel like I've been on a million podcasts just in this capacity as a guest. Right. But yes, my first time hosting a podcast and I'm really good at it as it turns out. I listened to the first episode. Did you really?

It was really good. Yeah. Oh, cool. No, I was being obnoxious by saying that, but I am really, really proud of it. Yeah. And it's a ton of fun. How did it come together? I had done so many podcast interviews

and I'm a big consumer of podcasts and I really enjoy them. And I just was wondering, like, where do I fit into this space or do I even fit into the podcast space?

You do. I do? You do. Everyone does. All right. My mother does. It's such an elastic form. Sure.

And it's like, sure, why not? There's no standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to hum for 25 minutes? There you go. That's a podcast. What was I just hearing? There are so many fun concepts

out there i saw tig notaro yesterday and she was telling me about who was it that has a podcast that's like picking up comedians at the airport and it's called like do you need a ride i think it's karen kildareff and and uh someone else ch Chris Fairbanks or something. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. It does present some logistic issues. I guess. Like you need guests that are coming in on, you know. You just find out and you bring your tape recorder. I guess you just hang around the airport too. With your tape recorder, right?

That's what you use. So where was I? Yeah, how it came together. Oh, you know, I have a production company and we uh we're always making movies and tv shows and we were thinking okay so what can we do maybe for a podcast and uh and we were sharing this with some of our good friends at film nation and who had just started a podcast branch because everybody's doing it right uh and they were like hey think we're trying to figure out a way to make a show about this really cool uh history story and um and i've always been a

little bit of a closet history nerd and and i'm out of that closet now wow yes congratulations thank you um into the streets uh-huh and just chanting history yeah history and so uh they they they just were like yeah there's this story it's about a nato military exercise in 1983 during the right the peak of the cold war that uh that the military exercise was interpreted by the Russians, the Soviets, as cover for actual war preparation. And there was tremendous fear on the Soviet side that a nuclear strike was imminent. Right. And so they, of course, then put all of their forces on high alert. It's a really wild kind of battle of psychological manipulation and misconceptions and all this.

But basically, it's a moment in history where we may have been closer to an actual nuclear war than ever before. And no one knows about it. Like it was kind of buried in the CIA classified archives for decades. And only in about, I think, 1998, it was finally mostly declassified. And since then, it's still taken a ton of really aggressive historians getting Freedom of Information Act requests to get more and more information. And so really the story is just emerging and it's a wild story. Like it's full of espionage and it's deeply and darkly comedic.

It kind of has these Kubrickian undertones. I don't know. It feels like a a dark satire well but it's real it's the name of your podcast is snafu which is the an acronym for situation normal all fucked up yeah and that is kind of like that that pretty much expresses because like i said i heard the first episode i don't know maybe it's just that when you are in the business of having enough weapons to destroy the earth, that like, yeah, absurdities will follow. Right. You know what I mean? You're not just talking about blowing up a couple tanks.

Right. You're talking about destroying the earth. So it's already nuts. Yeah. It's already nuts. It's already crazy. So, of course, then like any extra wrinkles that are thrown in are going to be Kubrickian. For sure. And when your policy is based on mutually assured destruction, like that's what's guiding your plan for nuclear missile armament. That's insane. right? And so what makes this situation,

Able Archer 83, especially insane is that the whole time that this is going on, we're being assured as a public that our foreign policy is perfectly legit. It's the best possible foreign policy. Yeah. And yet we were at this like very, very scary tipping point. I mean, when I say very scary, I mean existential tipping point. Of course. Like the end of humanity. Was this kind of like the work of a lot of researchers and stuff? I mean, are you a writer on it too?

Do you kind of sit in on that process? Yeah, we have a great producing team between Film Nation and Gilded Audio and our partners at Gilded Audio and in my company, Pacific Electric. They're a handful of writers. I do a lot of editing and I did a couple of interviews. Our producers did a ton of interviews and it's a really collaborative process. We do a lot of listening together and noting and kind of editing. And the idea was we didn't just want to have like a storytelling narration. We really wanted to build an audio experience. We wanted it to feel like a collage with narration. So one of our models, of course, is that is the mother of all modern podcasts, in my opinion, Radio Lab, which just, you know, really reinvented sound design for or reinvented the use of sound design in documentary storytelling. And Jad Abumrad is a college friend of mine.

We go way back. And I just think that he is, he's a pioneer. I mean, everything that we're hearing now feels like a descendant of Radiolab in some way or another. And we are too. And we're a proud descendant of Radiolab. way or another. And we are too. And we're, we're a proud descendant of radio lab. And, and so that just means like, we've really paid attention to this kind of wanting it to feel cinematic, even though it's audio only, obviously it's you're getting soundscapes. You're getting the, the dialogue is woven together. The, the interviews are woven into the narration. It's,

it's a fun, fluid listening experience. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, lots of different textures, as they say. Sure, textures, audio textures. Is this, well, I mean, aside from The Daily Show, which was nonfiction but always playing for a laugh, really. I mean, is this the first thing you've done that's kind of a nonfiction kind of thing?

Because up until now, it's been very much acting and mostly comedy acting yeah uh well of course with the notable exception of the hangover which is completely real um uh and the office and the office which was which is an actual the office was an actual documentary documentary so right right all those people were exactly who they were kate flannery what a drunk um i think that yeah that this is it's uh that's a it's a really nice kind of reference to the daily show because they do kind of rhyme with each other um this they're sort of satirical storytelling based in reality yeah yeah and i um I hadn't thought of that, but that's astute. But is that something, I mean, is it something you'd kind of like to get more into?

I mean, you know, now that you have a company and you're doing this, is it like, hey, this, you know, like maybe television projects or something that would do that? I have to say, the more we dug into Able Archer, the more it just feels like an exciting series or something. I don't know what will happen. But yes, I think I enjoy a true crime podcast here and there. But I really do love I love just storytelling.

Yeah. And I I'm a sucker for based on true events. Yeah. I can watch the shittiest thing in the world. But if they're telling me it really happened, I'll stick it out, you know? Yeah. Randall Park and I had a show on Peacock last year called True Story. And we would just sit down with people who had insane stories, just like random insane stories from their lives.

You know, one guy tells the story of the night he saw Van Halen as a teenager and it was like this odyssey of a night. Or this woman told a story of how she almost went into anaphylactic shock from allergies during her wedding vows. And, and, you know, just all these crazy stories. And then we shot reenactments,

you know, we did like heightened comedic reenactments that are kind of woven into the storytelling yeah um kind of in the drunk history vein yeah yeah um but and that's a great one because i mean especially i mean how did you find people's stories did that just kind of everyone touched on people in their lives because everybody's got something nutty you know we really had to dig because everyone has a crazy, everyone has crazy stories, but they don't always necessarily translate into a good TV segment. Right.

So we really scoured a lot of local news stories going back and and and then storytelling venues like the Moth on NPR, a great storytelling show and and lots of other just kind of storytelling context. Yeah. That where people had already shared these things. And and then we reached out and we wound up with with a great and just a phenomenal group of people. And we we shot a season of this, this show, true story. It's really, really fun. Yeah.

And, and I think what makes it special to your point is it like, you can't believe it's true. Like these are totally true stories and they're, they're so human. Cause you're hearing the person who lived it. Yeah. Tell it.

And, and Randall and I, we would sit down with the person and our producers knew the story, but we didn't Randall and I had never heard the story. i we would sit down with the person and our producers knew the story but we didn't randall and i had never heard the story so we would just nice uh we would just hear it for the first time and in that that's my level of prep that's what i like go into a thing and on purpose not know anything yeah yeah right do i not have to do anything yeah yeah sign me up well how much prep none sounds like my kind of thing even

better um and so in that way we were sort of the surrogate for the audience because we because we would then ask all the questions that just came to us organically like wait what you did this you said what and uh it's super fun i i don't know if we'll if we'll do another season or not but man that was a fun sounds fun show, I want to check it out. I wasn't even aware of it. Way to go, Peacock. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, did this love a storytelling?

Because I'm the same way. I love stories, and I love plot. And there's so many times I've lost so much sleep in my life watching something shitty and being like, oh, fuck, I got to know what happened. Yeah, totally. It's not, you know. Yeah. And I imagine the villain dies.

Yeah. Like that's probably what happens, Andy. You can go to bed. But no, I have to see it. I will say like at some point, and it was around Damien Lindelof's Lost. Yeah. Like the creation of that show. Damien Lindelof's Lost, like the creation of that

show, it was right around there that the TV writing community really realized the kind of crystal meth of cliffhangers. Like that they can really hook you with a certain

kind of storytelling by just introducing open questions. and uh and then you're and then you are hooked because you just want to know the answers and i remember watching lost and i i have such deep respect for that show because it i think it pushed a lot of uh boundaries at the time but i'm also furious at that show because it i watched one or two and i was like i don't believe that these people know where this is going i'm out fuck you if you don't know where you're going it's i'm not getting in the car with you it's so fun it is such a fun ride that i've heard but but i will say

there were so many times where i was like hold on guys if that if if this character would just walk over there and talk to this character, you could settle this whole plot line. Yeah. Yeah. But you're just not letting them talk. Yeah. That's infuriating. Yeah.

Yeah. And there was a lot of that. On an island. Yeah. Where there's only a certain amount of people. They just won't mention it to each other. But that said, they really found a way to just open questions that I feel like was revolutionary in storytelling. I mean, obviously, cliffhangers have been around a long time.

I mean, even I remember the Dukes of Hazzard would have great cliffhangers when I was a kid. But like this way of just kind of constantly leaving you with like five things that you're desperate to know. Yeah, yeah. All of a sudden, so many shows were doing that. In classic TV tradition too, they broke it. I watch one of my dorky dad shows is Forged in Fire, the knife making show. Have you ever seen that?

No, but it sounds heavenly. It's like four weirdos come in and they're given a challenge to make a knife. And then there's like knife makers and a hunky host. And then they make the knives. Every fucking act is a cliffhanger. Like, you know, well, I just got to hammer this thing out. Uh-oh.

There's an impurity. And then cut to commercial. And then the uh-oh is just like, you know, dropping my hammer. Oh, God, I got beard oil on the blade. What do I do now? Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, no, cliffhangers now are done to death. It is interesting if you watch a lot of those shows. And there was about a year, maybe a year and a half, where my wife and I and a couple of friends just had like a bachelor, I don't know, addiction. Like we were watching it all the time and kind of just. But obviously, and I think enjoying it in the way that most people do, which is like you just feel superior to everyone. Yes, yes. And you're like – Yes.

But you're not. I mean, you're really not. But the funny thing is if you watch – You're watching them. Yeah, exactly. So who's really – Who's controlling who? Yeah, who's in the high status position there?

But you do – if you watch enough of it, you really start to see a lot of patterns emerge. Yes. And then you're starting to see like the production. Yep. Like how the producers are manipulating the stories. Yeah, you start to hear the producer's notes. Exactly. Like you gotta really be angry at her. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Or like the producer is sort of teasing a question. You'll hear like four characters kind of answer the same rhetorical question. Right. And you're like, oh, clearly the producer sat them down and asked them the same thing. I wonder where she was last night. Yeah. Where was she last night?

Where was she last night? Yeah. You know. And that's kind of when it – I think a lot of people don't mind that. Yeah. Like they watch that and that's part of the fun. It's comforting too, I think a lot of people don't mind that. Like they watch that and that's part of the fun. It's comforting too, I think. But then you start to see how the contestants on these shows

also understand those patterns and those dynamics. They start to play into all of the archetypes and the roles and like, oh, this person's clearly like chosen to be a villain and they've chosen to sort of like be the mean, rude one and they're getting a lot of mileage out of it and they know it and they're chosen to sort of like be the mean rude one and they're getting a lot of mileage out of it and they know it and they're having a blast and i once i got so steeped in those patterns i was like this isn't fun anymore yeah but i also but i i can appreciate how that's also kind of fun to watch watch it through that with that lens and kind of get it but that kind of tv

too is always fun when you watch it with somebody you know like that's it it's something that like it's a shared experience it's so much better than you know like if you're just watching it by yourself um now you you grew up in atlanta right and um was there like a lot of emphasis on kind of storytelling i mean your was your family your family family, they weren't really in any sort of creative type of things, were they? No one was like in any kind of entertainment profession. But I will say, so I grew up in Atlanta, but I went to summer camp up in North Carolina in the mountains and and my mom worked at a camp up at a different she worked at I went to an all boys camp she worked she worked at a girls camp

it was kind of the sister camp so we spent a lot of time up in the in kind of up in Appalachia as a kid and that's really where I, where I think my love of mountain music and bluegrass and I'm, you know, a big banjo player and all that stuff. Um, but also the great storytelling traditions of Appalachia kind of seeped into me and I, Oh, camp. Yeah. So, so, so we would have these, uh, these visitors, you know, come to the campfire ceremonies at camp and just and they're like basically professional storytellers. But they were mountain people that would come and just, you know, tell these great old tales and they go by different names. There are some that are that they call grandfather tales. And then there are some they call Jack tales because they're there are derivations of the of the classic British fairy tales about Jack, like Jack and the Beanstalk and all that stuff.

But they're they're different. They're they're through a an Appalachian lens. So they're about these kind of like really clever characters, Jack and his brothers, Tom and Will. And and, you know, sometimes all three of them would be in a story sometimes it's just Jack they were colloquially just called Jack Tales that's what I remember and I just loved these

storytellers that would come and sit and just a whole you know 50 kids would sit on a gymnasium floor just wrapped in attention and this, this person is just telling these wild, tall tales and they're, they're ridiculous. You know, it might be a version of Jack and the Beanstalk, or it might be a version of, you know, Jack and the outsmarts the devil or, you know, some, it's just, it's just riveting, awesome, wonderful stories that, you know, told by people who who have really honed the craft of storytelling.

And I think that really, really resonated with me. And I have now I've collected some books of a lot of those old Appalachian stories. And they're so wonderful. They're just like they're just such rich tales and it's also kind of like something that we've been doing before we could write oh yeah you know i mean it's like it's an old person sitting telling telling kids a story that's been told a million times before yeah like you know we were just barely out of the trees and we started doing that. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, these great Greek epics and so forth like that, you know, and these were these were stories were memorized by. Yeah. By individuals. They're hours long. Right. And or it would take a week to tell a story. And and people just internalize these things.

You're right. But it's such an incredible, I think, part of the human story is how humans craft narratives. Yeah. And the narratives help us make sense of the world. There's a lot written in psychology now about how you write your own story, like your own history. How you write that story can have dramatic effects on your mental health. towards an optimistic outcome, you're gonna have a healthier outlook on life if you look back and you tell your, and your story is a struggle

with a more difficult or downward outcome. You might have more mental health struggles. And these aren't just arbitrary things that we can choose to do. These are kind of reflexive things. But there are ways, it seems, that the stories we tell, whether it's about ourselves, about the worlds we live in,

the relationships that we have, that can have really powerful impacts on our, like sort of the prism through which we see the world. Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I have here is that you had like a serious heart surgery when you were 13 and I'm wondering how impactful that was on just kind of the formation of a worldview and I mean and had this heart condition like uh hampered you when you were growing up were you like one of those kids that your mom and dad were always worried that. That's really funny. I remember telling this story on Conan, on one of my first Conan appearances.

Oh, really? Probably like 20 years ago. Yeah. And you haven't talked about it since? Never. No. No one's ever brought it up. No, but it's, yeah.

So it's an interesting question. I was diagnosed at birth with basically a heart murmur, which is something a lot of people have, and they can often be benign. But it's caused by some irregularity in the shape of your arteries or in the shape of your heart chambers or in the valves themselves. Some irregularity. chambers or in the valves themselves. Some irregularity. I had a narrowing, like kind of an hourglass narrowing on my aorta and pulmonary arteries. And so I had a kind of a double murmur, actually. And it was not a problem when I was born. It was just, it was something that was observed and noted. And my parents were told immediately and they were very, very worried. But, but we had this amazing pediatric cardiologist who became a dear, dear family friend, Dr. Plouth. And,

and he basically kind of nurtured us all the way through. And the prognosis at that time was he's fine. You know, this kid is fine, but we're just going to keep an eye on it. Yeah. And then there's a chance when he hits puberty and has a growth spurt that the kind of relative difference in the deformity could become problematic. And it did. So when I hit about 12, they were seeing that these narrowing parts

were not growing at the same rate as the rest of me. So they became worse, essentially. Could you feel a physical effects of that? Yeah, so most of my childhood, nothing at all. You know, I was a very rambunctious, active kid, you know, tons of sports and craziness. And then I think around 11, 12, I just couldn't keep up in gym class the same way. Like, you know, we'd be running around a track or something and I was always kind of towards the back of the pack, if not last. And I, I didn't really, I was very frustrated by that, but I, but I didn't, I didn't notice that, that there was any problem. I just didn't have

the same stamina. And around that time, my cardiologist, pediatric cardiologist, was saying, yeah, I think we're going to let's start talking about surgery because this is going to need we're going to need to correct this. And so it was a long ramp into the surgery, about a year where we were talking about it and kind of consulting with the surgeon, this amazing surgeon, Willis Williams, who has since passed away, but really like a remarkable pediatric cardiologist surgeon. And so that's all to say it wasn't sudden. It wasn't something that was like, oh my God, he like wheel him into the, you know, the operating room right away. It was, it was this thing that had been building and I'd had lots of tests, heart catheterizations, which are kind of these unpleasant tests where they stick a camera up your, what's the artery in your thigh? The big femoral. Yeah. Is that your femoral? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah yeah so they they go in through your thigh

and they put a camera they stick a camera all the way up into your heart and they can get really good view of what's going on and i'd had a few of those and they had a really good idea of what the problem was and exactly how to fix it and um and the surgeon was incredibly confident and reassuring and so i think we were all my, my parents and me were all somewhat anxious, but also feeling fairly like this was an inevitable thing. And here we go. We're going in to do this. Was it scheduled around school?

Like, was it scheduled so it ruined your summer? Yeah. Well, so it was scheduled the first day of spring break. And so I went into surgery on, I mean, I think I went in on Monday. And then I was in the, you know, intensive care for a few days. And then the regular hospital for a few days. And then I was home after about eight days recovering and I recovered very quickly, you know,

because I was just a kid, like I was just a really active kid and I was back at school like two weeks later but just sort of going for like a couple of hours and then coming home and the real worry was not, what my cardiologist said said was the thing I'm most worried about is some kid running by you in the hall and like bumping into you. Yeah. Because your sternum is still healing. Right. Wow. Like it's such an invasive operation. And and that's that's way more dangerous than anything you're going to do. Just to your heart. Yeah. Actively. Yeah. Like your heart is healing

and everything's looking good. And then it was an incredibly successful outcome. I became a varsity swimmer on my high school swim team. Oh, wow. To just, yeah. And I still, I see my cardiologist regularly now and, uh, and it's, it's still a really great outcome. That's great. Oh, I'm so, I feel like I was really hoping for like, it made you, you know, like a dark weakling. Yeah. Who, you know, who was shunned by society

and then decided I'll get on the daily show. Yeah. A lot of rage. Yeah. At the, at the, all these, you know, the things that you can't control.

It did give me a really powerful college essay because I remember, I remember filling out my college applications and I had just seen Dead Poets Society and I was obsessed with Carpe Diem. And I was like, you know, this is, yeah. So I just got a new lease on life because I got this heart surgery. And I was told that I would probably not have lived past my early twenties. Wow.

And that I would have declined pretty rapidly from my late teenss. Wow. And that and that I would have declined pretty rapidly. Yeah. From the from that, you know, from my late teens into my 20s and then died. And so knowing that, you know, I still was just a rambunctious, bullheaded idiot kid. And so that none of that really sank in. I don't think kids can process that sort of existential insanity. No. And I mean, thank God they can't. It's a survival mechanism. Totally. And you're so invincible as a kid.

Yeah. But I did understand intellectually like, oh, this is something I can spin into a good college essay. can spin into a sure a good college essay can't you tell my loves well you went to college what were you going to be did you did you were you still kind of in this kind of feeling of storytelling mode and music and and were you playing music by that time oh yeah yeah it started was it did you have a musical family because you're you know i mean, I mean, I've gotten the feeling and I've been around you in a musical context that you might do that if you had to choose acting or music.

I feel like you might prefer the music. Yeah, I do. I love it so much. And my family was musical, but not seriously. Yeah. Like everyone could, everyone was good at singing, carrying a tune, loved singing. No one really played an instrument, but I think my mom could dink around on a piano. My grandfather in Nashville was really,

he was very musical, had lots, tons of instruments around and, um, and a lot of toy instruments that were so fun for us as kids. And, and, um, and I just really, I started taking kind of dinking around on a piano when I was eight or so. And then I got lessons, I think when I was 10 or 12 on the piano. And then I started, I got my first guitar at 13 and started taking lessons immediately. And I just had this awesome teacher who, who, who was exactly what I wanted. He was really steeped in a lot of the great folk traditions and bluegrass traditions. And he was an amazing banjo player too. And so he just taught me, like just opened my brain up to all this awesome that I was curious about,

but I didn't have any access to. And he kind of saw that curiosity and was like, well, there's this and there's this and this. You should listen to Bill Monroe and stuff like that. Exactly. And that's really and then he taught me some some banjo and that was uh that that's how i got that was into that was the gateway drug exactly the blue hardcore bluegrass junkie um i i actually at that time

all i wanted to do was comedy you know I was I was this is such a generic story but it is also mine which is that I had watched Saturday Night Live obsessively as a kid like starting at eight years old yeah with you know Martin Short and and Joe Piscopo and all those guys yeah and uh and then watched it all the way obsessively through I think Martin Short would really be happy that you, those are the two names you pick. Yeah. He'd probably be like, oh, yes.

Me and Joe? Me and Joe. Really? Yeah. Frickin' frack. Yeah. Oh, we were thick as thieves. No, but I, so when I went to college,

and there was a thing on my college application that was like, you know, what do you want to be? And I wrote like, I'm going to be in TV production because I just want I knew I wanted to work in comedy. Yeah. And you're probably a little too shy to say the, you know, like the boastful thing of like, I'll help people look at other people. Not I want everyone to look at me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was also very protective of my aspirations because I didn't come from a background that understood or supported that kind of aspiration. And not because my parents weren't supportive or my friends weren't supportive, but just because they literally didn't understand how anyone could do that, How it works.

And I was like, I don't want to hear anyone's opinions. I don't want anyone to tell me I can't do it. So I just kept it to myself. But I was very excited to go to a place like Oberlin, which has an incredible performing arts tradition across the board. Obviously, the music there is incredible. There's a conservatory that's world renowned. And that was really exciting to me.

Like one of the top two or three in the country. Yeah. I mean, in the world. It's up there. And then, of course, the theater and dance programs and all the arts programs are just a big deal there. And that just was very exciting to me. And I loved Oberlin. I had such a great experience there.

And it really pushed me creatively. And then I graduated and went straight to New York City. Oh, wow. Yeah, jumped right in the comedy trenches. Yeah, yeah. Right away. Doing that. I always wonder, because I have a couple comedy friends who play banjo,

because I have, you know, I have a couple comedy friends who play banjo and I wonder if Steve Martin was a inspiration to you for. It's Steve has, Steve is a huge inspiration to me in a thousand different ways. Yeah. He's not the reason I took up the banjo. Oh, okay.

I was. Cause I have a couple of friends who play banjo and it's like, I could, it's kind of like, yeah, just Steve Martin did it. It looked cool. I liked the sound of friends who play banjo and it's like, it's kind of like, yeah, just Steve Martin did it. It looked cool. I liked the sound of it. Of course. No, I think he did so, he's really in so many ways an ambassador for banjo, like a bluegrass ambassador.

Because I think he's a point of entry for a lot of people. They're like, this is great. This is just great music. And he writes such wonderful music on his banjo that I think just welcomes listeners and gets people exploring other stuff. But I got into the banjo, I got into that music because growing up in the South, I was a little bit of like an angsty adolescent. And I really, you know, I had that kind of like Holden Caulfield complex of like everything's, everyone's fake. Everyone's a phony. Like I, you know, I got to find the real stuff, like the most authentic stuff.

And so I didn't, you know, everyone was listening to, to pop rock bands. And I, I just was like, that's for the phony idiots. I want to find the source material, like where did this all come from? Right. And I sort of dug deep into blues and that, and then bluegrass and, and being up in the mountains in the summertime and, and having a little closer access to that world was incredibly exciting to me. And I just found it intoxicating. Like this is the real deal. And you know, it's just one more iteration. There's stuff before that, of course. But to me and my sort of simplistic analysis at the time, it was was the origin like this is this is early

early stuff and i and i i got sort of drunk on that like authenticity high of yeah of roots music all kinds of roots music yeah and and so i became a bit of a snob and that i think well i i think also too you just that you have a gene for it or something, because is there something about the kind of unchanging nature of it that gives you comfort or something like do you do you like the fact that it's that it's kind of timeless and that like you can do bluegrass versions of more modern songs, but they're still bluegrass like there's not it like you're not really going to like i mean i'm sure that there's people out there doing it but like avant-garde bluegrass seems like a contradiction in terms you know well there there really is in the last uh 10 or 15 years uh well really go i mean it goes back a lot further than that. But, you know, artists like Bela Fleck, who really pushed the banjo into incredible new horizons and into jazz and all kinds of stuff. I mean, that's not bluegrass. You know what I mean?

Right. No, it isn't bluegrass. You're right. But when you say avant-garde bluegrass, I think of bluegrass as like an instrumentation. So like a guitar, a banjo, a fiddle, a mandolin, and a bass, and maybe a dobro. And that structure of a band to me is like a traditional bluegrass setup. with bands like the punch brothers and, and many others like them,

uh, are doing like really, really wild, cool, progressive and fascinating and riveting, exciting things that, that bluegrass bands traditionally never did. Now, the cool thing about the punch brothers is they can play a Jimmy,

play the shit out of a Jimmy Martin tune, you know, and it's just the best bluegrass version you ever heard. And then they'll go into a punch brothers original. That's just this like really cool out there, uh, progressive piece of music. And they can just vacillate between the two, like no problem because they're steeped in the, in the tradition. Um, but just pushing boundaries, Chris Thiele is the mandolin player, and really, I think he's a great example, like Bela Fleck, who just took this instrument and was like,

there's so much more that this thing can do than what the bluegrass traditionalists have done. And, I mean, mandolin has a rich classical history going back hundreds of years. But but it it also now it's just it's such a it's so fun to see the growth and progress of of that art form. Yeah. Well, what's what do you how do you see your future unfolding? I mean, do you think I mean, you're a dad, right? Yeah. And and, you know, do you think you're going to kind of continue to try and do more television stuff? Are you kind of going to be dilettante ish and do a little bit of everything, you know? I just have been so fortunate in my career to work with so many awesome people. And I've worked long enough and with a wide enough variety of people now that I kind of know who I want to work with. Yeah. And that to me is the most important thing now.

It's like, I just want wanna work with people who are incredibly inspiring and then I just get along with really well. And- The people you have to spend 12 to 14 hours a day with. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, or the people that just make me cry with laughter on a regular basis. And then I just wanna spend time with my family.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's my immediate family and also my extended family. We're really close with my wife's family and my family. I feel really lucky just to have a lot of things going on and to be at a place where I can be a lot more picky professionally. I'm really excited and eager to cultivate music in some new and different ways in my life. And at this point, I used to play out in Los Angeles pretty regularly, had variety shows and stuff, and with a lot of different musicians. I haven't done that in a

bunch of years now, mostly because I think of fatherhood, but, um, but I am playing a ton of music now with my kids and so, or, or, or kind of for my kids. They're not, they're not really playing yet, but, um, but I find myself just picking up a guitar even more than I have in a long time just to have fun with them. And, uh, and so I'm eager to, I don't know, I think music is going to be a meaningful part of my professional existence in the, I don't know, in the near term. Well, I mean, you've had some successes

in some big franchises that kind of is a nice bedrock of security you know so i mean is it do you worry about like oh i can't be out of the public eye that much is that something that kind of that that you feel there's a pressure like you know i'm gonna i'm gonna be picky about what i want but i can't be too picky because i don't want to recede too much from being on people's minds. Yeah. I mean, there is always that gnawing insecurity that sort of your value as like an actor or as a public figure kind of is a function of your exposure in different media. of your exposure in different media. So yeah, I think I used to really feel a lot of pressure about that and probably too much.

I think like to an extent, my insecurity was outran reality, right? And so I was eager to jump into project after project and I just, I love what I do. And so I just, to jump into project after project. And I just I love what I do. And so I just I love to work. Now, I don't feel that same pressure. I think there's I feel some of it. And I do feel like it's important to just that it helps your career to stay active, but, um, but I am not, I don't

feel the same urgency. I re and I really, like I said before, it really, I'm so much more, um, committed to just working on things and with people that I, that I love that are going to inspire me and keep me a happy person instead of just employed. Yeah. And you're right. I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to do that. Yeah. The final of the three questions, which you didn't know what they were, although they are on the tip of everyone's tongue, is what have you learned like throughout life? like what do you do you have like kind of a a guiding principle that that you know your your path through all of this stuff has has informed you of

i hate this question well all right just make something up uh stay hydrated yeah um that's that's one get a lot of sleep that's another yeah and add and this is just as hacky and trite as anything but um but i i found that um that yeah i mean it's hard to say because it's so trite but staying a student. Like staying humble and staying curious and, um, and just never really, uh, obviously we all want to feel confident. We all want to feel like we know what's going on and what, and, and understand how to, how to control our, our path through life as best we can. But, um, but, but just staying humble and remembering that we really don't know shit in this world. And and the more I will say that one of the kind-helpy stuff that's just like exploring different ways of thinking or being or interacting or ways that maybe that we don't understand ourselves. And and so, yeah, I just I just think staying curious and staying humble and and and humble doesn't mean like small.

Yeah, it just means it just means like open to the ways that you may not understand things. Yeah, you might be wrong. Open is the word that I use. And I think of it now like being, you know, a middle-aged man. And, you know, I look at so many people older than me who are just closed, who are just like they've decided, I've seen all I want to see. I'm just going to kind of, you know, like those people that kind of pick a hairstyle when they're 28 and then just do it for the rest of their life. Like there's like a psychological, spiritual way of that. Like, nope, nope, I decided this is the way it is. And then they just stay that way. and then they just stay that way. And it's just, it just seems like dying before you're dead in a way because you're not open to change.

You're not open to, you know. And I think also it inspires a lot of fear. Because then if you decided I'm not going to introduce any new information, when new information comes along, you're like, no, I don't know. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think that once you think you understand the world, once you think you understand your place in the world perfectly and how everyone else is either right or wrong in the way they move through the world, once you have those fixed positions, you're kind of screwed.

You're going to just get angrier and angrier. Because I think there's Carol Dweck, I believe, is the author who wrote a book. I think the book is called Mindset. And basically, it's about this. It's about having a fixed or open mindset in how you navigate life and, and the value of an open mindset, it really leads to such a, a deeper sense of, um, equanimity because you can, when you're, when you have an open mindset, you can just accept, uh, outcomes that you didn't want a little easier, or you can, or, uh, you know, you can accept your, um, that you don't have control over things that you want. You, we all want control. We all want to be able to

just move through the world exactly how we want and, and make sure we, everything stays safe and perfect, but, uh, it just isn't like that. And, uh, and I And I think having an open mindset just lets you navigate that with a little more grace and peace. It's funny. When I became a public figure through – which was sort of gradual through The Daily Show and then on The Office and then The Hangover was just this huge point, like, oh, now, okay, now everyone knows who I am. And that was incredibly exciting, obviously, for a million reasons, but also very terrifying because there's no going back. And suddenly, you, as a famous person,

you can no longer control your environment, how you move through an environment. Right. Because there's so many people reacting to you. And you lose your anonymity. You lose the power of being invisible. And that, I think, was terrifying. through how to the value of relinquishing control and just kind of rolling with the what the way that it had to be that um that reinforced some of these ideas for me yeah not only do we individually

want so desperately to control our little micro environments but we as a species need to control our our macro environment yeah it's uh it can't end well no like can't we as a species need to control our macro environment. And it can't end well. No. Like, can't we as a species be a little more, have a more open mindset? Well, I mean, we're learning, like, you know, it's like the planet is fighting back by like, you know, the sea level rising.

I don't even know that I would characterize it as fighting back as much as just sort of like snickering at us. It's just like flicking us. Well, thank you so much. Let's end it on that positive note. Way to go. Humanity. Uh, the new, the new podcast snafu, uh, is it out now? Yeah. So, uh, I don't, it's, there are a few episodes out now. It's weekly comes out on Wednesdays on I heart, now it's weekly comes out on Wednesdays on I heart, but it's anywhere you listen to your podcasts. It's, uh, you can get it and, um, anything else you want to check it out. Any other stuff you want you got out there? Rutherford falls. Yep. I'm so proud of that show. It's on Peacock and the Randall park show. Uh, true story. That's another recent one that I love.

And, uh, yeah, I think, um, that yeah, I think that's a healthy dose of Helms. That's enough. Yeah. That's enough. Don't OD on Helms. Well, Ed Helms, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you spending the time with us. And I appreciate all of you out there spending your time with us, too.

And I'll be back next week. The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a team coco production it is produced by sean doherty and engineered by rob schulte additional engineering support by eduardo perez and joanna samuel executive produced by joanna solitaroff adam sacks and jeff ross talent booking by paula dav, Gina Batista, and Maddie Ogden. Research by Alyssa Graal. Don't forget to rate and review and subscribe to The Three Questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.