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You may know him as Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec, or as Amy Poehler’s co-host in the reality competition series Making It,  or as Megan Mullally’s husband.  But did you know that Nick Offerman is also a passionate supporter of sustainability and the movement for better meat?

Many of you will immediately recognize his dulcet tones as the narrator from my film Sacred Cow. Nick and I met through a mutual friend and fellow supporter of regenerative farming, James Rebanks, and continue a friendship through our shared interests.

In this episode, I sit down to talk to Nick about his latest book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play. Nick recounts some of his most memorable moments from his journeys and shares his inspiration for his travels.

Get to know Nick a little bit better as we chat about:

• Nick’s backstory and family history
• His inspiration drawn from Wendell Berry
• How Parks and Rec opened doors for new opportunities
• The good and bad of living in LA
• The necessary tradeoffs of living in the modern world
• The value of face to face interactions
• The problems with battling misinformation
• Nick’s current and upcoming projects
• Nick’s book recommendations

Resources:

• Solid Sound Festival 
• The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks
• Wendell Daily Twitter 
• The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
• Bewilderment and The Overstory by Richard Powers
• The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
• The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees: The Ash in Human Culture and History  by Robert Penn
• Girls & Sex and Boys & Sex by Peggy Orenstein
• Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Connect with Nick:

Website: Nick Offerman and Offerman Woodshop

Instagram: @nickofferman

Facebook: Nick Offerman

Twitter: @nick_offerman

Podcast: In Bed with Nick and Megan

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Episode Credits:

Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Meg Chatham, and our editor is Emily Soape. And of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.

A big thanks to Nakano Knives for their support of my work and the podcast. I’ve been using their knives for a couple of years now and I love them. They are beautiful, easy to hold, and a fantastic value. And just in time for the holidays, you can use my offer code DIANA for 10% off plus get a $25 voucher toward your next purchase. Who doesn’t love a new knife, right? 

This episode is also sponsored by Paleovalley, my go-to, grab-and-go source for products that prioritize nutrient density in an industry that prioritizes everything else. Their epic lineup of products includes Organic Supergreens, 100% Grass-Fed Beef Sticks, Grass-Fed Organ Complex, 100% Grass-Fed Bone Broth Protein, and low-sugar snack bars. Visit their website here and enter the code SUSTAINABLEDISH for 15% off your first order.

Quotes:

“We keep inventing new ways of distracting ourselves from the bad ways in which we’re stewards of the land.” – Nick Offerman

“The fact that we still think we can science ourselves out of our troubles is such a seemingly obvious fallacy.” – Nick Offerman 

“It’s just it’s been incredibly frustrating for me with the politicizing of diet. And I see that as inequitable for people who really need the nutrition of meat. And people aren’t understanding that it’s these large corporations that are benefiting from these messages that people are just automatically buying into as correct.” – Diana Rodgers, RD

“If everyone could just understand that their eggs will only get better.” – Nick Offerman

Transcript:

(Intro) Diana Rodgers, RD  0:01  

Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly who was a producer on my film sacred cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance and initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now onto our show. 

(Nakano Knives Advertisement) Diana Rodgers, RD 0:39

I want to take a moment to thank Nakano knives for their generous support of my work and the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’ve been using their knives for a couple of years now and I’m so impressed with the quality and the value. They’re beautiful, easy to hold, and they’re super affordable. There’s a variety of styles available. I personally love the ones with the no-slip wood handles and wood grain on the high carbon blade. You can also find some gorgeous bamboo bowls and utensils on their site as well. They make a great gift and everyone loves a new knife, right? Just head over to Nakano hyphen knives.com/diana. That’s N A K A N O – knives.com backslash Diana and enter code Diana for 10% off. Plus get an extra $25 voucher to use on a future purchase if you place the order between now and January 1, 2022. 

Diana Rodgers, RD  1:34

Welcome back to the podcast everyone. Today I’m so excited to have with me Nick Offerman. We’re going to be chatting about his new book Where the Deer and the Antelope Play and many other things. Welcome, Nick.

Nick Offerman  1:45  

Hello, thank you for having me.

Diana Rodgers, RD  1:49  

I’m going to start off you know when people find out that you’re the one who narrated my film, so now I’m bringing it all back to me and not nothing about your book. But your book and the film have similarities when they find out that you’re much more complex than Ron Swanson. I, you know, people are really surprised. So how did you get interested in regenerative agriculture? And you know, the work of Wendell Berry and kind of everything that my followers are excited about?

Nick Offerman  2:21  

Well, gosh, I mean, I guess the first big epiphany was when I started reading Wendell Berry in my 20s. I grew up in a family, like my mom and dad grew up on farms, about three miles in each direction from where I grew up. And so it’s a big farm family. They ended up becoming a school teacher and a labor and delivery nurse. But I grew up working on the grain farm with my uncles, and my mom’s folks had pigs till I graduated high school. So I grew up in and around this family. And so good salt of the earth people, you know, very frugal, very self-sufficient, incredible gardeners, incredible bakers of bread and sewers of clothing. And nonetheless, I grew up ignorant, or I grew up with a desire to be a proper American consumer. And so I devalued my parents’ homemade bread over… I was like, give me that pure white store-bought bread. Like, that’s amazing. And only later when, when I began to get some sense in my head, that I realized, Oh, I was, you know, I was turning down a BMW for a Pinto. 

So I started reading Wendell Berry, and just a light bulb went off where I said, Oh, I have the values I was raised with the sensibility that a lot of these families in his writing are raised with. And I’m suddenly aware that I am not paying attention to, to the connection or, more poignantly, the disconnect between even me in the middle of this farming family. Like my uncle’s to this day are these wonderful heroic guys and, and their whole households, of course, run the farm. They’re growing soybeans and corn. And at some point, I just realized, I never get to touch the food. Or the produce that they’re raising isn’t actually food. It has to go to a factory, and it has to go through consumerism before it can come to my dinner table. I was like, what the *bleep*? That doesn’t make any sense. This is crazy. And that just sort of then just expanded that awareness.

So all around me, you know, I just began to look at anything and it continues to this day, you know because we keep inventing new ways of distracting ourselves from the bad ways in which we’re stewards of the land. And we keep distracting ourselves with bright and shiny new colors of running shoes and you name it, everything, everything is connected, you know that, that the window of awareness will never stop growing because it should encompass actually everything. We’re all part of this natural economy. And so as a huge fan of grilling and red meat and, and just food in general. At some point, I just became very aware, you know, when it sort of hit the news that red meat was no longer allowed, and it was criminalized, and, and all that kind of thing. There’s a while ago, you know, where it was a big news story that bacon was a carcinogenic. I was like, okay, hang on, I need to do some reading on this, because this is like, this is the air I breathe. And so you know, I just became more and more interested. And thankfully, I guess the visibility or the popularity of Parks and Recreation served as a sort of an ambassadorship where I was able to befriend James Rebanks and go spend time with his family. I was able to be asked to narrate your great documentary. And so things like that, thrill me because then I get to it sort of points the direction, points me in the direction of the people like yourself doing the actual homework doing the thinking that I want people to be doing. And so, you know, I’m glad to be a member in this conversation.

Diana Rodgers, RD  6:42  

What does it feel like to live in LA, though? Because that’s… I’ve been to LA. I have friends there. It’s not known for being a place where a lot of people who are super connected to nature live. Do you feel like you’re on an island there? Or have you found a community of people that are kind of similar? How… what’s your experience in LA, you know, with this sort of awakening that you’ve had?

Nick Offerman  7:08  

Well, the thing about LA, I do think there are probably more people than you would think that that have an affinity with nature. But the problem with LA itself is that the entire thing is anomalous to nature. It exists… it’s the biggest urban sprawl in the United States. And there shouldn’t ever have been a city built here, because there’s no water. Cities used to develop organically, where there was salt or water, or where the ships came in, or what have you. And Los Angeles was anomalous. And so everything about living here is this weird oasis. That, in the case of my wife and I, we live here, because it’s where our business resides, working as actors. But the beautiful thing about Los Angeles is between the farmer’s markets and the agriculture that surrounds the city within a couple hours, and the incredible natural beauty. There’s a mountainous park right in the middle of town called Griffith Park. And we’re surrounded by mountains, which are amazing for hiking, and cycling, and skiing. And we have lakes, and we have the ocean. And you don’t have to go too far to get to the desert, Joshua Tree, and Palm Springs, and stuff. So I mean, there’s a lot of wonderful things about it. But in terms of like, when you dig into the agrarian questions of like, how’s the health of your watershed? That becomes a little laughable, but I think it’s not super dissimilar from most urban areas. You know, I think if I lived in Chicago, or New York, or Boston, I’d laugh in the same way and be like, Yeah, I don’t know. Not sure. This used to be the river. Now, it’s Boston Common. How’s that working out? You know, that’s, that’s part of the conversation I’m trying to engender with my book is like, all of these questions that we’ve let fall by the wayside. Like, how did our city get this way? How are we dealing, you know, as members of this economy?

Diana Rodgers, RD  9:27  

Yeah. So so let’s talk about your book and how that relates, because so your book is, like sort of part memoir, and then part just you riffing on, you know, materialism and consumerism. And it’s really done in such a way that it’s so, you know, I felt… I think I told you this, but I felt like I was just your friend kind of along with us. It was really cool. And so let’s just chat about… and ironically, I’ve been to almost all the places that you mentioned. So Glacier National Park, you’re at the top. You’re at the summit. And you’re walking around with Jeff Tweedy from Wilco and the writer George Saunders. And there’s some folks yelling badger. Will you talk about… because you, you kind of come back to the people that yell badger a couple of other times in your book.

Nick Offerman  10:21  

Sure, I mean, that, you know, specifically, it’s one of the first trails you go on, and it’s one of the most accessible ones. So there’s all there’s, you know, the hard…, obviously, the harder the trail gets, the more you get down to like hardcore people who know how to walk up a mountain. But this, this is a little more of like a shopping mall-style crowd. And there’s one uninformed dad who sees one of the highlights of this particular walk are these yellow-bellied marmots. And they were incredibly cute. They were sort of beaver size, just charming little, like, if we were in Australia, they would have been the marsupial’s the Quokka. Or the what’s the next size up from Quokka? The wombat? It’s not the wombat. Anyway, the wallaby for all of your Australian listeners. It’s the wallaby equivalent. And this dad saw them and was shouting back to presumably his kids,” you guys, there’s a badger.” And it in so many ways, it was such an affront to getting into the grand jury of nature. You know, in the sort of introductory… this trail could have been considered like the foyer of the house of Glacier National Park. And instead of like understanding, the reverence with which we were all trying to enter into this guy instead was like you guys that have Nintendo. And so it was upsetting. And it was just it was that thing of like, taking a deep breath and saying, Okay, here we are at a holiday meal. And not every member of our family is who we would perhaps choose to sit down to the table with. But that continued to come up. And you know, it’s part of being a human being and living in a community is you have people like that. And I think later in the book, I say at some point, we’re all the ones yelling badger, because it’s easy in that moment to get high and mighty and turn my nose up and be like, Oh my god, I’m aghast at the terrible etiquette of this, this trail user. But I’m sure even on that same day, it’s the kind of thing where when somebody pulls out in front of you in traffic, you son of a bitch and you get all angry at them. And then something happens 10 minutes later, where you panic, and you pull out in front of somebody. And if you have any self-awareness, you’re like, oh, now I’m the son of a bitch. Or I’m the one yelling badger.

And so, you know, something that I’m constantly aware of, I’m 51 now. And the older I get, the more I can watch the news and you know, the questions in the news right now, or are really coming down to like, should we be decent to each other or not? And if so, how decent? Are these murder victims, victims? Can we call them victims? If wearing a mask prevents you from spreading a deadly virus? Should we wear a mask? All these questions smack of like, just decency and like making decisions for the common good. None of the answers of which are black and white answers where it’s like, Yes, everyone voted for the right or wrong answer. It’s just a sensibility of saying, well, what can we do that’s going to do everybody the most good. Taking it back to Glacier. It’s looking around and seeing the evidence of our human behavior, like the Native American genocide, for example. And then in hindsight, saying, okay, we can see all of the ways in which that was a very bad thing to do. And how can we fix that going forward? Can we make reparations? Can we write this wrong? And every decision all the way down to like, should I yell badger when I see a mammal, or should I go get my kids and quietly bring them to show them the mammal? Should I, you know, should I have the curiosity to confirm that that is indeed a badger? Or, you know, does that guy just yell badger like, if he sees a dog being walked, does he yell badger to his kids? That announcement of one’s ignorance stands as a symbol for me of my own ignorance, and that’s what keeps me curious and keeps me asking such questions.

Diana Rodgers, RD  14:57  

Yeah, definitely. I agree with you. I mean, and even from stopping when you get into town and you know, the urge to go to the REI and get the Patagonia sweatshirt or whatever, definitely there’s trade-offs there. And but you know, at the end of the day, we’re all living in modern society, we’re all consumers. And so how can we balance that out?

Nick Offerman  15:21  

Yeah, that’s the thing. I talk about nuance a lot in the book, because I think we can pay attention to our contribution to Mother Nature’s economy, which is kind of the battle cry of the book is like, let’s get back to understanding our part in the metabolism of the planet. Rather than holding ourselves apart from that, from that idea, thinking that we somehow have dominion over nature, or that we somehow exist outside of nature. Why can’t we address that and become better stewards of nature, and have a cute Patagonia sweatshirt? Like the… I feel like we can have both of those things. So there’s, again, there’s nuance to that question. And, you know, maybe we can have a cute colorful sweatshirt for each of three climates, instead of 11 cute, comfortable sweatshirts, like, it’s coming to that understanding where buying things in excess also has consequences. So forth.

Diana Rodgers, RD  16:30  

Yeah, and so getting to things, your woodworking, your value of craftsmanship, you know, I think there’s definitely, and I have the background too, of having been a woodworker, myself, this lack of value for things made well and paying people for their time to be craftsmen. You know, my, my kids High School here in Concord, Massachusetts, it’s the most expensive, greenest building in the whole state. And when they built it, it has no shop. It has, you know… so the only extracurriculars that kids can do is JavaScript. But there’s nothing, you know, and if so if they want to learn how to change oil, or build something with wood, that’s for the tech school. And I think, you know, not only does it deprive these kids have the experience of doing that. But it also I think, imparts a prejudice. Like, we’re not… that’s not worthy of our time. Do you want to talk about that at all?

Nick Offerman  17:36  

Yeah, I mean, I find that really upsetting. And it’s something  that I am curious about, on a national level, I’ve looked into this subject over the years, on and off again, and I’ve, I feel like I’ve kind of dropped the ball and I want to get back into it because it is in a very Wendell Berry sensibility, it’s degrading the honest work that makes the world go round. It makes us… our civilization is not run by people who can write software, or, or play the stock market, you know. Our civilization is run by the person who keeps our vehicles and our homes, and our infrastructure running. And that involves working with our hands, more often than not, and that’s something that’s been devalued in modern society. To our absolute detriment. I suppose it wouldn’t have occurred to me, even growing up in a very self-sufficient family, until I became a woodworker. When I used to build scenery professionally, I started framing houses, where you’re just pounding together, timber, you know, two by fours into walls and rafters, and then scenery you’re slapping together again. It’s not about the… you’re not thinking about the quality of your materials, because ultimately, it’s the facade. You’re creating an illusion. So finally, when I became a woodworker, and suddenly said, Oh, actually, this wood, the wood itself, is a gorgeous, organic, magical material. And I suddenly began to then have a conscience about, oh, where’s this material coming from? Why can’t I get old growth in so many species anymore? Because we’ve rapaciously consumed the entire forest is the answer to that question. And so and that then led me into the sensibility of when you make things with your hands, whether it’s woodworking, or knitting or leatherwork, or blacksmithing, or food or whatever it is. You necessarily need to understand where your materials are sourced. And then the next step is oh, and can I get them again next year? Suddenly, you’re in the circle of sustainability where you’re like, okay, my family makes barrels, my family makes wine kit, but we want to keep making it every year, ideally, with at least the same profit margins. And so we better give a *bleep* about the health of our soil, and the health of all the other parts of the ecosystem. The pollinators, you know, on and on and on. And so it’s just a slap in the face. Like, I was like, Man, I’m a total *bleep*  if I’m not suddenly fully aware of this dilemma that we’re in. Understanding how we’re using the resources of nature. Wendell Berry speaks wonderfully about. And this is something that you also weigh in a lot on. And I’m grateful for that. The idea that if we have a food sourcing problem, for example, if suddenly, civilization wakes up to the ills, and the poisonous ills of factory farming, let’s just say of livestock, the solution, you know, everyone says, hamburgers are terrible. They’re the devil. We have to create a new hamburger. Let’s science one up out of anything, but what nature would provide. The fact that we still think we can science ourselves out of our troubles is such a seemingly obvious fallacy. No, we’re not gonna we’re gonna fix our pollution by making exponentially more pollution. There’s no that we’ve never solved a problem with human technology. That was like, Oh, phew all we had to do is dump a bunch of DDT in that lake, and all the bugs are dead. Instead, it’s a sort of awakening to the idea that civilization has only survived by living in harmony with our usage, and our participation in nature’s economy. And I think having shop class and home economics, and just, you know, agrarian subjects across the board is going to be imperative if we’re gonna keep getting to have cheeseburgers.

Diana Rodgers, RD  22:28  

Yeah, the same thing with art to my I used to be an art teacher, and creativity is just not even valued anymore in school. I mean, it’s like coloring inside the lines is what everyone’s taught to do these days. I think there’s a huge… people who work with their hands. Woodworkers, and farmers, and barrel makers. It’s all the same person to me. They’re questioners. And so that’s how I learned about you is from James Rebanks. So I actually had no idea who you were until James mentioned that you were coming to the farm, like the day after I was shooting with him. And so how did you end up meeting James and developing such a close bond with him?

Nick Offerman  23:11  

Well, first of all, I’m grateful. I mean, James, and he and subsequently you are great reasons when people say, What good can come of social media? And you guys are part of the answer. Tangentially, I don’t know. I know we’ve talked about woodworking, obviously. But did I tell you that I’m on the board at North Bennet Street School in Boston?

Diana Rodgers, RD  23:34  

No, you didn’t. That’s um, it’s very similar to the program I attended, which is no longer in existence, which was the Leads Design Workshop out in Western Mass.

Nick Offerman  23:43  

I’ve heard of that. Yeah. Well, yeah. Sorry. No, we’re just friends chatting. But do you? Do you know that Jeff Tweedy has a festival every other year at Mass MoCA?

Diana Rodgers, RD  23:58  

I did not know that. But I actually was just here this weekend.

Nick Offerman  24:02  

I know, I saw that. And I freaked out because his festival is called Solid Sound. And he does it every other summer pre-pandemic. So I’m not sure if it’s going to be this year next year. But anyway, there’s a lot to love in your neighborhood across my interests. But James, strangely through like… Wendell Berry is obviously not on Twitter. But there’s a couple of accounts, where people… one’s called like Wendell Daily where people will put up a line of his or something. And so I was following that and somehow through the Wendell Berry fan universe, I came across James when his first book, The Shepherd’s Life came out. He actually had a tour, a book tour in America, and he spoke with Wendell. They did an event in Louisville. And so I just was like, Oh, who’s this guy and he And you know, he’s funny and a great like smartass, and very pithy, you know, suffers no fools. And I just took an immediate liking to him. And I guess we’ve actually tried to puzzle this out. We’re not sure which one of us began, we started just… like… 

Diana Rodgers, RD 25:19

Who swiped on who?

Nick Offerman 25:20

Yeah. We became friends. And it’s always a little weird for me because I’m never sure when I meet people if they are fans, perhaps of Parks and Rec, or quite often they have kids who are fans. And so, in any case, we made friends over Twitter. And casually, you know, he said, Well, if you’re ever in our neck of the woods, you know, you got to come check out the farm. And I blindly was like, Yeah, sure, that’ll happen. Like, I’m going to get to the northwest corner of England anytime soon. But then, you know, serendipitously, I got an acting job that took me to the northwest corner of England. And so that’s my… his family and their farm is just, that’s my Disney Land. Like, I know, my life took me in another direction, which is, which is creating content and entertaining people. But I’m so like, that’s what I grew up being prepared for. I am ready to build a log farm and like farm with horses and, and James and his family are such great examples of, you know, people just with a powerful curiosity and passion for doing things right. And as human beings, that always first involves recognizing what we’ve done wrong, which there always is something, you know, that’s, that’s the thing I don’t understand when I watch the news these days. And I’m like, you guys are talking like, you haven’t ever screwed anything up. And we’ve all like… so it’s cool. I’ll screw something up today. I’ll you know, spill coffee on this laptop keyboard if I’m not careful. So it’s okay. Like, that’s part of the nuance we need is, is that the way that James looks at his dad and his grandfather’s irrigation plan. And sees oh, this actually, yes, it distributed the water more evenly, but it killed off these bugs and these frogs and these birds and so forth. So let’s try and get back to a happier Mother Nature. And sure enough, that just makes his grass happier. And that makes his sheep happier. And that makes us sweater-wearers happier.

Diana Rodgers, RD  27:51  

Yeah, I definitely felt like it was probably the most beautiful place. It ties with New Zealand. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the South Island in New Zealand. But that pretty much blew my mind. But the Lake District of England is pretty close to it, if not equal to the beauty of New Zealand.

Nick Offerman  28:09  

It’s pretty it’s crazily storybook. I mean, although I have to say, growing up in Illinois, Massachusetts is pretty astonishingly gorgeous. But yeah, the Lake District is quite something. I’ve toured to New Zealand as a humorist, but unfortunately, have not had time to go to the places that make you say that. So that’s still on my list.

(Palleovalley Advertisement) Diana Rodgers, RD  28:33  

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Diana Rodgers, RD  29:29

So another thing you talk about, like later in the book is the value of face time. And I think… I worry now that we’re sort of in this post COVID world, right where people are just more and more kind of working from home and potentially just isolating themselves from society. You know,  I hope it comes back and I think there are people that want it to come back. But you talk about you know, going and talking to the loan officer And, you know, building relationships in person. And I definitely have felt that I have made so many great friends just through professionally just through, you know, meeting them at conferences and having dinners with them, not just these zoom things. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Nick Offerman  30:17  

Yeah, it’s something… it’s quite a conundrum. Because it’s, it’s not really quantifiable. You know, it’s the idea that I could get in a fight on Twitter with somebody, and just like, excoriating each other, whatever the, you know, the slings and arrows that were thrown at each other might be. And then unwittingly, I could get off Twitter and go walk on a trail and run into the exact same person, be like, hello. And we would be so convivial and friendly. And it’s, it’s sort of hard to quantify just in the world in general, but it’s, it’s trying to pursue that sensibility of understanding. You know, dealing with people in person as much as possible. Which when you say the face time problem, I always want to make sure people don’t think we’re referring to the app, FaceTime, but actual face-to-face interactions. Because that’s the idea. And, you know, one of the reasons I was so thrilled to take Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders hiking, and get to just glean their beautiful philosophy, because these are just two of our most beautiful poets working today. And Jeff said, that wonderful thing about this very topic, actually, we were talking about how nice everybody was on the hikes. It’s taking that idea that if I run into you that I’m going to, I’m going to use my manners and say, Oh, come on up on the porch. What can I get you? Are you hungry? Would you like a drink? Would you like a seat? And the steps that it takes. You know, then you go over there across the street and put a sign in your yard that says, I’m going to vote for the other guy, and suddenly, I’ll never give you a *bleep* sandwich, you son of a bitch. And it’s just extrapolating out of that sensibility. The idea that everyone is on your porch, and understanding that we ultimately have to give a *bleep*  about everybody. That’s, you know, nothing’s… we’re never gonna stop having these vitriolic arguments until we treat everybody like they’re deserving of the same rights that we have.

Diana Rodgers, RD  32:36  

Yeah, and bringing this back to the meat debate, because it’s, you know, whether or not you eat meat has become sort of this red or blue kind of situation. And definitely, I noticed when I was in LA, it being extremely antimeat focused. How do you why do you think meat has become this polarizing thing? This, you know, if you do eat meat, then you must be red. And if you’re, if you’re at all conscious of the environment and your health, of course, you’re not eating meat. No one eats meat in my town. And for me to say that that meat is healthy and can be good for the environment is… the local bookstore doesn’t even sell my book. 

Nick Offerman 33:23

What? 

Diana Rodgers, 33:24

Mm-hmm. So because it’s an unacceptable thought, so how did we get to this place where we don’t even want to have conversations, and you know, where we’re in this place of deciding what’s acceptable and what’s not, and just shutting down completely?

Nick Offerman  33:41  

It’s really tough. I mean, that’s, that’s my biggest frustration is just like battling the tsunami of misinformation, and misperception that’s fronted by, in this case… And the thing is that none of these questions are binary, like, who is behind the misinformation for example? Well, there are corporate interests who are making a lot of money off of like, Impossible Burgers and that ilk. Which I’m pretty ignorant about, like, I know, that’s a brand name. I don’t know, I know, there’s a lot of players in that market. But like, they see an opportunity to make, you know, to cash in on this trend. So they’re taking advantage of our simplistic attention spans. And they say, here’s the carbon footprint of your cheeseburger.  It’s, you know… ahh! Boo! And they say, here’s this… but here’s an incredible, you know, magical plant burger that we invented, that you can’t even tell the difference. Boom, done. Just don’t read the label. Just don’t

Diana Rodgers, RD  34:53  

Don’t ask how the food was grown to get in there either.

Nick Offerman  34:57  

Yeah, it just magically… and also The idea of like, if you do need to replace… let’s just say for some reason, there is a global, you know, virus that wiped out all cattle. So there’s is no more beef in this hypothesis, I then would turn to what protein source I would replace the beef with. I don’t need to make meat in a laboratory. So much, of the replacement ideas to me are so much more disgusting than participating in the metabolism of Mother Nature. This is all been going great for the planet for the animals and for us, for the history of humanity until us jackasses come along, and we’re like, hey if we take these cows, pigs, chickens, you know, cod, salmon, you name it, and we put them into a factory setting. And exponentially, you know, if we grow 3000, head of hog on a piece of land that should only hold 300 head of hog. We’re going to get rich. Oh, *bleep* there’s a whole bunch of problems we have to deal with. Well, let’s, let’s try and hide that. Let’s try and get around that. Using these incredible profits from selling this pork. That is, all of that we’re in agreement is disgusting and horrible and just terribly sinful. It’s an abomination to man and nature. But the answer is not to stop eating pork and beef. It’s stop farming them in these horrible factory settings. That seems pretty simple. And the fact that I’d kind of like to write a letter to your local bookstore because your book is a well-reasoned, scientific piece of nonfiction. You know what I mean? It’s not if you’re… I could see maybe on a couple of other hot button issues. But the fact that a bookstore would not present, that part of the conversation is exactly the problem that we’re dealing with.

How do we convince people of the efficacy and the natural integrity of things like a vaccine or mask-wearing when their entire news source… you know, their source of information, tells them the opposite? So people that as far as they’re concerned are perfectly decent people watch their information source and the information sources, apples are not good for you. Then the rest of us living, in reality, are like, hey, why aren’t you buying our apples? They’re like, watch the news, dumbass. Like, how do you? How do you fight that? I? I think the answer is you don’t directly fight it because it turns into a pissing contest and you end up with the kind of jackasses that we have in Congress right now that are like, all show and no policy. And instead, I mean, the speaking just for me is just to say, I’m just going to do my best to be patient and gently continue to present this information with positivity. And that includes your work. James’s work, the work of agrarians there’s no sense in getting into a pissing contest because that can never be won. All that’s gonna do is create more vitriol. And I feel like with any luck, using decency and good manners and patience, and empathy, you know, I’m not trying to empower the white race. I’m not trying to like greedily keep anything for my tribe. I’m on the side… attempting to be on the side of like, equitability and reparations, and civil rights and human rights. And so if I just gently say, look, for what it’s worth, you know, we’ve *bleep* up in this x, y, and z way. So let’s try and continue treating everybody equitably.

Diana Rodgers, RD  39:40  

Yeah, it’s been the association of the antimeat with this idea of being progressive has definitely been a huge challenge for me, because I’m automatically seen as… you know, saying that you know, people should access meat is something that… I’m obviously just right off the bat, black or white. And I agree that as I’ve gotten older and have increased my empathy, my ability to see nuance in every situation and try to understand the experiences that lead someone to have the opinions that they have are different than the experiences I’ve had. Or maybe I just tend to question things more than somebody who maybe doesn’t. I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going with that. But it’s just it’s been incredibly frustrating for me with the politicizing of diet. And I see that as unequitable for people who really need the nutrition of meat. And people aren’t understanding that it’s these large corporations that are benefiting from these messages that people are just automatically buying into, as correct.

Nick Offerman  41:00  

Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing they have by far the loudest bullhorn and the corporate interests, instead of trying to defend their factory farming, they just shift and say, Oh, now we also offer the Impossible Burger.  Nobody in American Consumerism is ever going to say, okay, everybody, hold on, hit the brakes. We… this is… we are deeply screwed here. Our food system is a few generations into the toilet. And so to fix it is going to require a profound and radical change. To suggest to this country, let alone any of the rest of the world that like the fast food industry has to be completely overturned. Like, the ease with which we have learned to… that we have access to these cheap, quote, meat calories has to be abolished, you know. That’s the answer. Well, before fast food, you didn’t have meat more than once a day, and even once a day was like living high on the hog. You know, it’s getting back to that sensibility of what is what’s not affordable, according to your pocketbook. But what is affordable, according to your ecosystem, or your watershed. And that, and human beings don’t like to hear that, you know, we all are just doing our best to like make our rent and take care of our kids and get our *bleep*  done. And so not only fast food but the food systems that the vast majority of Americans depend on, we have to overturn them, we have to overhaul them radically. To do away with beef, and pork and dairy, and so forth is not the answer. It’s simply to revolutionize it back to where it is being conducted in equity, with the sustainability of the places it’s being conducted. And that’s an incredibly uphill battle. You know, I hear you, and I’m grateful because once you see the science of it, you can’t unsee it. That’s, that’s why I, I could probably sell a lot more books, actually, if I just wrote 33 fart jokes from the guy that played Ron Swanson.

Diana Rodgers, RD  43:33  

I have to say, I even wrote it down. This makes me *bleep* little green apples. I mean, sorry, that was that absolutely hysterical. And I don’t even know like, how you would even think of something like that to say,

Nick Offerman  43:51  

I come from a long line of farmer politicians. But I mean, I can’t that’s the thing is, I mean, I don’t know, even even as an actor, I could actually be… I turned down a lot of work that would make me arguably more famous and more wealthy. But I don’t have the particular makeup that I want more of those two things more than I want to deliver medicine that I think has value. I do my best to be entertaining and to deliver, you know, earnest content while still getting paid and stuff. But that’s kind of what we’re up against is. I don’t know, I’m glad for it. I’m glad that those of us that are in this conversation, have the wherewithal to just stay in it. It’s exhausting and often thankless. If you ever want to cheer yourself up, look at the handful of Amazon reviews that I have on this new book where people literally say, this is not a book about nature. This guy hates… you know, like, the sort of ignorant blind commentary just fuels my tank or we’re like, okay, others, there are still people to reach. I try to get these points across with humor, and common sense. And I’m a human being. So you know, I’m only going to have a certain success rate. But still, I eventually would like everybody to come around to understanding the points we’re trying to make where it’s like, we can revolutionize our meat systems and everyone can still be happy and still have a cheeseburger.

Diana Rodgers, RD  45:50  

Yeah, and, you know, speaking of reviews, this is very clever on the back. I’m just nodding. So anyone who gets the book, definitely please read the reviews from Henry David Thoreau, Mother Nature, and John Muir, on the back of your book. 

Nick Offerman  46:07  

Thank you. It’s tough to get blurbs from people. But…

Diana Rodgers, RD  46:11  

Especially Thoreau. He’s buried, like, two blocks away from me.

Nick Offerman  46:15  

Oh yeah. He… it took some doing, but I managed. It was through a series of taps that he communicated his.

Diana Rodgers, RD  46:26  

So when you inscribed it, you wrote, this should fix everything. And which I thought was a funny thing to say in a book. And then towards the end, you write about this should fix everything and the fix for everything.  And, you know, maybe are even creating more problems, because it’s a book and it’s paper. And this is just more killing trees, everything. So how do you? I mean, I guess we were just talking about that a little bit. But moving forward, what are your hopes for fixing?

Nick Offerman  46:56  

Well, I mean, that my sense of humor is, you know, I worked really hard on this book, and I, and I love it. And, I’m so grateful that my life has led me to a place where I can write such a book, to try and entertain and engage in this conversation with my readership. And that said, you know, I understand the flaws in my book and, and myself, and, and so, I guess that’s just part of my upbringing is when I do my damnedest, whether I’ve just built a house or a sandwich, I might give it the same review and say, alright, here’s your Reuben, this should fix everything.  With the idea that of course, nothing we ever do will fix everything. And even if we did, I use the example a lot of like, suburban full of kids. If you can negotiate where everybody’s satisfied in a suburban full of kids, congratulations, number one. Number two, it’s not going to last very long. You know, at some point, somebody’s hair is going to get pulled or somebody’s ice cream is going to fall off the cone. And, and I look at humanity that way. Like, we’re always going to be a bunch of *bleep*, copulating mammals. And so if we can do our best to keep everybody as well taken care of as possible while moving forward. That’s the best thing we can strive to do. But we’ll never be done. It’s always going to be an ongoing maintenance project. And so that’s what keeps me infused with a healthy dose of humility, and keeps me from becoming like a preacher or something where I’m like, No, I prefer comedian. Because I love talking about these ideas and these improvements that we can pursue, at the same time recognizing, you know, what a  dip*bleep* I am.  And so when I say this, this should fix everything. That’s me, saying, I hope this fixes a little, but I’m afraid we’re gonna have to keep writing books.

Diana Rodgers, RD  49:15  

Well, I think that makes it exceptionally approachable because I think that people who appear to have the solution are incredibly repulsive because it’s just not true. Nobody can have the answer to everything. So I am sure everyone who’s listening is curious like what you’re working on professionally, any other books, any other special projects? Are you going on tour anytime soon where people can see you?

Nick Offerman  49:43  

I am thrilled to tell you… I’ve done I’ve had a good pandemic as these things go. In terms of I’ve gotten to work on a handful of great limited series. I recently had one on Netflix called Colin in Black and White, produced by Colin Kaepernick and Ava DuVernay that I’m so thrilled to be a part of. Those are just two of the most powerful heroes we have working in our culture today. And so to get to be a supporting collaborator with them was wonderful. It’s sort of the origin story of how Colin began to notice how he was being treated differently because of the color of his skin when he was in high school. And it’s a really innovative and moving series. And a trailer just dropped for a new series on Hulu called Pam and Tommy, which is the true story of the Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape from the mid-90s, which I have a really fun supporting role in with Seth Rogen. And then later in the year, A League of Their Own. Abbi Jacobson from Broad City is making an Amazon limited series of A League of Their Own. I play their coach for a few episodes. And a couple of other little things here and there. But I’m tickled to say that I’m taking my own advice. And I’ve got at least three or four months of quiet in front of me, just to take care of some domestic issues like some stuff around the woodshop. I have some ukuleles demanding my attention. And I’ll just get to do some hiking. Like in this day and age, it’s so easy for your whole life to sort of become part of the embroidery of whatever your content is. I try really hard to keep myself out of engagement on social media, I try to use it a lot more to glean information rather than feel like I have to participate. The woman who runs the shop… my woodshop office has started doing… I finally started having someone do the nuts and bolts. I will always write anything that is ostensibly coming from me is written by me. I’ll never have somebody write my tweets or something. But I’ll send it to her and have her do the posting, which is so wonderfully freeing. And so yeah, I’m gonna, you know, spend a lot of time with my bride and our dogs. And the nice thing is, besides the obvious, like, get some quiet time, smoke some meat, dig into some grass-fed ribeyes. It also… I have found the few times in my adult life when I purposely create this kind of daylight in my calendar something really good comes from it. I tell them I had to explain to my agents, what a fallow field was. And I said you know, we’re letting the microorganisms repopulate and some good *bleep* is going to grow that might be very surprising to us. You know, some volunteer sunflowers might show up. Let’s just see what happens.

Diana Rodgers, RD  53:19  

I love following the work of your woodshop. It’s really exciting to me. And I hope to read more in the future. And I’ll be looking out for it. Are you reading anything these days yourself? Or is there anything you might recommend to folks? You know, obviously, Wendell Berry. I would recommend maybe starting with The Unsettling of America might be a good entry book. Anything else that you’re currently really excited about right now?

Nick Offerman  53:52  

Well, yeah, I mean, finishing a book, for me, always then allows me to attack my reading pile that’s been accumulating across the many months that I’m working on the book. I loved the Pulitzer for fiction. I think two years ago was The Overstory by Richard Powers, which is astonishing. I highly recommend it. And also in that in that ilk, I would add, I think it’s called The Secret Life of Trees, by a German named Peter Wohlleben or something like that. It’s an incredible piece of nonfiction about a beech forest that he maintains, and how it communicates with itself. And the two are incredibly connected, actually, The Overstory and then Richard Powers has a new novel called The Bewilderment that’s quite beautiful that I just finished. There’s another book that’s a little older but just sprang to mind from The Secret Life of Trees. Then you might read a book called The Man Who Made Things from Trees, and I can’t think of the author’s name, but it’s actually, I think, a very bad title because it’s about the ash tree. It’s written by a British man. And he historically goes through all of the many implements that we humans have made from the incredibly strong ash tree from the wood of the ash tree. And it’s just a gorgeous sort of sociological biography, or like ancestral history of this particular tree. And the value it has had to the human race. I found it really fascinating. And the reason it’s a bad title is because it sounds like it’s about one man who made many things, but instead, it’s about one tree.

Diana Rodgers, RD  55:52  

For baseball bats mostly right? Isn’t it? Like super, super hard wood that you can’t really… 

Nick Offerman  55:56  

It is. Yeah, I mean, most famously, in our country, baseball bats, ax handles, you know, long tool handles. But historically, the parts for wagon wheels and the British sport of hurling. The hurling clubs, but it’s just a drop in the bucket the uses for the ashtray will delight and astonish you. There’s one other pair of books, I’ll mention that Megan shoved my way by Peggy Orenstein. And they’re called Girls & Sex and Boys & Sex. And they’re just… she just interviews, scores of like college-age, young women and young men around America. And it’s,… I just wish I had been handed these books when I was like hitting puberty. And I wish it was just required for everybody. I mean, but especially young people, it’s just about, again, it’s just about decency and consent and treating everybody like they are deserving of the same respect. But you know, something that we’re very loath to talk about in our repressed society is just like honest sexuality and the issues that come with it. And I… It is just an open look at how and the disparity between how these young women view themselves and their sort of responsibilities in the sexuality of their lives, versus how the young men… it’s quite eye-opening and pretty shocking. And I think that it would straighten a lot of people’s clocks to give those a read.

Diana Rodgers, RD  57:55  

Well, thank you so much for all of your time, for agreeing to be part of my project for writing this amazing book, which I really related to on so many levels. Anything else before we go?

Nick Offerman  58:09  

No, other than number two, I’m looking at my five, my stack of five, and number two is Ishmael right now,

Diana Rodgers, RD  58:19  

Thank you.

Nick Offerman  58:20  

We’re getting close, I’m dying, it’s gonna be a huge letdown because…

Diana Rodgers, RD  58:25  

I know. It is.

Nick Offerman  58:27  

I’ve been dying to read it for a long time. But  I’ll try and keep my expectations tempered.

Diana Rodgers, RD  58:36  

I almost wore my Read Ishmael t-shirt, that I have.

Nick Offerman  58:40  

I’m on it. I’m good with assignments. They just take me a little while sometimes. But let me just before I sign off, say thank you so much for your great work I… when I’m one of the things I’m aware of when I’m writing is how bad of a journalist I am or how much I’m not a scholar. And so I’m really grateful to the people like you who are the scholars and journalists upon whom I depend for doing the actual hard library work and research. And especially fighting the fight that you are. Hopefully will, you know will continue to try to bring people around to regenerative farming, if everyone could just understand that their eggs will only get better.

Diana Rodgers, RD  59:29  

Totally. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I hope you have a great afternoon. Thank you so much for your time.

Nick Offerman  59:38  

Thanks for having me. We’ll see you next time.

(Closing) Diana Rodgers, RD  59:41  

Thanks so much for joining us on the sustainable dish podcast. If you like the show, please leave us a review on iTunes, and don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter at Sacred Cow dot info. See you next time. Thanks for listening.