Whether you are a long time or a newish listener to our show, you've probably picked up on something important about our approach.

We take seriously the challenge of living with integrity and trying to make a positive impact on our community and relationships.

And we also try not to take ourselves too seriously.

There is a lot of absurd and hilarious stuff that you run into as you try to live a good life.

And actor Nick Offerman's work strikes this balance too.

He was on a show back in 2018, and there's a link to that charming conversation in our show notes.

And this week, he's on the show again.

I invited him back because I've been watching his work over these past few years,

and I just keep thinking, this guy is making really interesting choices.

There he is, in The Last of Us on HBO, playing a grizzled small-town prepper in a gay romance.

Or in the movie Sovereign from this year, he plays a real-life anti-government activist.

Or last year, when he played the Maga hat-wearing plumber in the movie Origin, the book based on Isabel Wilkerson's blockbuster book cast about social hierarchies and oppression across cultures.

Nick is pushing us to see more dimensions in American characters that we think we know well.

And alongside that, he's kept writing books,

like where the deer and antelope play, a celebration of American landscapes where, among other things,

he writes about buying a bunch of expensive outdoor gear with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy before they

head out on a camping trip with writer George Saunders.

Nick has a new book out. It's a woodworking book for kids called Little Woodchucks,

Offerman Woodshop's Guide to Tools and Tom Foolery. And it's a real how-to. If you have a

child in your life that you'd like to make stuff with, try this book out.

It just came out this week, and he launched his book tour at the Berry Center in Kentucky,

which houses the archives and celebrates the work of Wendell Berry,

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