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The Ezra Klein Show

Lessons on Living Well, From Nick Offerman

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.611K Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2021

⏱️ 70 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nick Offerman is best known for his role as Ron Swanson, the mustachioed, libertarian outdoorsman who led the Pawnee, Ind., Parks and Recreation Department on the beloved show “Parks and Recreation.” But there’s more to Offerman than Swanson: His new book, “Where the Deer and the Antelope Play,” was inspired in part by his conversation with the agrarian poet-philosopher Wendell Berry, and a hiking trip he took with the writer George Saunders and the musician Jeff Tweedy (both of whom you may remember from past episodes of this show). Offerman is fascinating. He plays, inhabits and ultimately subverts a kind of camp masculinity. Some of it is real. He really does own a woodworking shop. He really did release a whiskey with Lagavulin. But some of it is a container Offerman is using to try to get people to think about different ways to live. Like his famed character, Offerman loves the outdoors and thinks we’ve lost touch with the role it should play in our lives and the role it has played in our past. That’s the subject of his book, and to some degree, of this conversation. But Offerman is also just a wonderful storyteller and possessed of a generous, earthy wisdom. So this one is a delight. Mentioned: The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry Book Recommendations: Fidelity by Wendell Berry Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein Boys and Sex by Peggy Orenstein You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of "The Ezra Klein Show" at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld, audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin. Love listening to New York Times podcasts? Help us test a new audio product in beta and give us your thoughts to shape what it becomes. Visit nytimes.com/audio to join the beta.

Transcript

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0:00.0

So much has changed over the past few years.

0:03.4

Oh yeah, the shift to remote work, supply chain demands, sustainability concerns, it can

0:08.5

be tough for leaders to keep up, but we're here to help.

0:11.6

I'm Elise Hugh.

0:12.6

And I'm Josh Klein.

0:13.9

We're the hosts of Built for Change, a podcast from Accenture.

0:16.9

On Built for Change, we've talked with leaders from every corner of the business world,

0:20.6

to learn how their harnessing changed to totally reinvent their companies and how you can

0:24.7

do it too.

0:25.7

And subscribe to Built for Change now to get new episodes whenever they drop.

0:35.6

Hello, I'm Ezra Klein.

0:36.6

Welcome to the Ezra Klein Show.

0:41.6

I'm a big Nick Arthurman fan in the sense that I'm a big Ron Swanson fan.

0:55.6

And if you don't know who Ron Swanson is, he's the head of the Pony Indiana Parks and Recreation

1:01.1

Department on the show Parks and Recreation, which I have watched many times.

1:07.5

I've watched it so many times because I'm nothing if not a parody of myself and I enjoy

1:12.9

gentle comedies about government bureaucracies.

1:16.6

But Swanson is a fascinating character who turned off from in into something of a human

1:21.8

meme.

1:23.2

He's a libertarian naturalist who's got this almost camp masculinity, got a big mustache

1:29.0

and he only eats red meat and he lives off the grid and he's a privacy nut.

1:34.7

But he's also ultimately sweet and vulnerable and he sees other people really clearly and

...

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