YouSaid · the spoken record

Ed Helms

lines on the record: 59
first: 2025-04-28
most recent: 2025-04-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I really wish the opposite of a sound. Well, the awareness now, but just had I had an earlier intervention of some kind or the awareness or curiosity to kind of like take that tack a little bit earlier or a lot earlier, that some things Could have gone differently. That said, I have very little to complain about.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so for me to think back on so many of the things that were so hard for me or so confusing or scary or unnerving for me, both socially and in terms of like just steering and navigating life, my heart breaks for that younger me being so confused and isolated in those feelings. I sort of think of that as like a snafu in the sense that”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like managing just aspects of one's life, right? Logistics of life always confound in me. And has always been a struggle for me. And this is, I'm not unique in this sense, but I went to therapy for many years in my 20s, again in my 30s and 40s, and I still couldn't sort of crack this feeling that I'm different and that I wasn't clicking in some way. I finally read a book called Driven to Distraction, which is one of the original sort of academic texts on the ADD or ADHD phenomenon. And I wept reading that book because there were so much about my life that I saw and understood in this book. That was just this epic awakening. And also, this was just a couple of years ago.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh boy. What I'm I think for me a personal snap foo that I can point to, this is a little heady, but I moved through life for a very long time feeling a little detached from the world, feeling like I didn't quite understand the world around me and that people operated differently from me or thought differently from me and that that was a little always this kind of unnerving feeling that I had. And I always like it always get along well and move and I had close relationships. I'm lucky to have had wonderful people in my life who I love dearly. So I wasn't really adrift, but I always felt like I didn't, there were things I didn't understand. I didn't understand how people. Did certain jobs, or how certain things came so easily to people. And some of these things are maybe like”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We all have those stories. I have almost a very similar story with lots of big stars in a big funny TV show with a famous creator. Get picked up. And no one wanted it. And it's like, but we did the math on that. But it is, so that's scary and unnerving and a little frustrating, but at the same time, always anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit is going to be just looking for those avenues. And it's still fun. I mean, it's still, it just, it reinforces the core of the process, which is to focus on what you love. Like what do you love to create and make and what's going to inspire you? And it's what's, I'm so lucky to have had the opportunity to work on things that I love. And to now have like the expansion of the landscape has allowed me to kind of, oh, take this hobby, like an interest in history and make a cool podcast. And there's infrastructure. There's money for that. We can get, you know, iHeart and film nation.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What does Million Well, I miss it only because it I understood it and now I'm a little bit, now I feel like Everyone's a little more adrift and figuring things out. And I think maybe the hardest thing in this moment is it's so unclear what buyers want. So when you're developing a show or a movie, you're like, well, maybe this streamer will like this, but those three won't. And is there something? So whereas you used to be able to take something to the town with a pretty decent idea that like these movies are working or these kinds of TV shows are working and that's what people are buying now it's so hard to tell and that's a little bit scary but yes they don't buy what you”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Andor a TV show. I know that I'm going to pitch to this person, and then if they like it, they're going to take it to this studio and so forth. Like there was a way of understanding things. has largely evaporated and now there's a much bigger emphasis on kind of building something holistically and then presenting it to a buyer. The other hard part is you used to be able to rely on the The person in the cubicle next to you even knows that show exists.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The simplest answer is I am confused and a little bit scared of the industry that I have come up in because the rules that I came up with and the structures that I came up through have been so dramatically altered and dismantled that it's confusing. And at the same time, of course, there's tremendous opportunity also. And so it's a matter of trying to focus on that. There used to be a sense of like, I know how to get a movie made. At least I know the steps I needed to take to get a movie made.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think looking at past mistakes is like a triumphant exercise. It's like, look where we are. Look what we got through that thing. Look how we emerged. This new executive order about the Smithsonian, that's very unnerving because it does seem to be like We don't want to, or we're scared of our history. It's such a fearful posture. Like, no, no, history is inarguable. History is not something we can And we either reckon with it or we don't. And if you don't, then you're just living a kind of this false kind of like cardboard cutout of people.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've all been telling ourselves that America is a certain way or has a certain story to it. And suddenly things are shifting and like, oh, maybe. I didn't understand things the way I thought I did. Anyway, that's the origin.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Civil War, and he's built his entire identity around this. He's created a museum about his family and so forth. We were talking about this with another friend of ours, Sierra Ornellis, who's a Native American comedy writer. And then it was like, oh, you know what? There's more story to tell here. Maybe this is a guy who believes his family did the right thing by the Native American community. And then we roped Sierra in and she became a showrunner and co-creator with us. And Jana became my co-star on that show. And it really emerged into what it became, which is really a story about reflecting on the narratives that we cling to. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what happens when maybe you're wrong or those things fall apart. And I think, and weirdly in this moment, I think a lot of people have, we've all, I know for myself.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rutherford Falls emerged as Mike Schur was one of the writers on the office and also went on to create amazing shows like Parks and Rec and others. He and I have always been close and always sort of like, when are we going to work together again? What's it going to be? And a bunch of years ago, we just started having these open-ended phone calls, long conversations or visits. We'd go to each other's offices and just hang out and just explore like what's activating us right now. And this was during, I think the first Trump campaign around 2015. And we were sort of wanting to tell the story of a guy who didn't understand historical context and had a lot of beliefs and an obsession with his own family origin story. And we wanted to sort of like pull the rug out from this character. Like, what if he learns that he always felt like his family was like a very noble and courageous family that did the right thing through?”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, what was Zach Woods' character? Something about something there, like intense loyalty of subscribing to a hierarchy with dedication and like actually being well spoken in the midst of all.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it feels like you're right. He's living this, like he's just signed up for a life that is so against who he is at his core. And so he's living a lie. And in some ways, that was Oscar's sort of thing.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hard because I love the characters in the office that I struggle to like. But he's a little bit of Oscar Nunez because you never see Marcos smile. Like he's so, he feels so tense to me.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. You know, when somebody messes up something huge in the office, like it's a paper company, like it's not, there's no reverberations across the globe. But Gosh, let”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's really interesting. Well, part of what made the incompetence on the office so funny and lovable is that the stakes are so low.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Buy my products and I rely on those people for my wealth, but it's my wealth and I'm not going to, I don't know, it just is, there's so the lack of gratitude, the lack of perspective, the eagerness to troll and harm and hurt. You know, when he tweets about someone, they get their lives can completely unravel. They get doxxed and stalked and death threats and everything.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's sad to me. It's sad. It's like, I mean, trolling is so. It's such a window into primal darkness in humanity, I feel like, trolling behavior in general. And it's one of the things that the anonymity of the internet has just shown us in this black mirror, oh, this is really who we are. Like we're pretty awful. Humans are pretty awful. And I think it's really sad and disgraceful that someone who has built such an empire has so little gratitude and so little of a sense of, wow, a lot of people have contributed to my success. A lot of people still work hard in my factories.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a great one. You know, I think you can just take the dumbest possible take, which is that Doge is a massive success and that it is that it's doing amazing work and you butter up Elon Musk and that he's not leaving for like how cynical is it to think he's leaving because Tesla is tanking or that Doge is failing. That's a cynical take. The right take is that This is a victory he's taking a victory lap and he's”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gosh, it's hard to say. But you know what's interesting, listening to that and hearing this sort of the angle of attack that we used as correspondence on that show purely in the service of satire and comedy is also what you're seeing unironically with Jesse Waters or some of these guys. And it's...”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now that gay marriage is legal, Massachusetts ranks dead last in illiteracy. 48th in per capita poverty, and a pathetic 49th in total divorces. Somehow, Don and Robert, one of the state's first married gay couples, don't see the problem.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through these things, we get through them, and there are generally some heroes to these stories, and we can look to those heroes as fucked up as a situation might be. We can look to those heroes, for example, on how we can do better in the present moment.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel like that Jadegar Hoover's sort of reign of terror of the FBI for so long is incredibly instructive to this moment, in part because the DOJ and the FBI have become basically just political arms of the president. And it happened so quickly. And it's very, I think that's scary, but also looking back at Jade Garhoover, we're able to see, yes, that was also an extremely scary time and it took a lot of courage for a lot of people to bring that to light. And like I say in the introduction to the book, part of what looking back at Snafu's does for us with distance, like looking at these horrible things from a distance gives us at least a little bit of a high altitude sense that we move.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it is incumbent on people who are passionate about history and whether it's a professor at a university or a teacher in an elementary school or someone with a podcast to convey these narratives, these historical That where we're so just Wash with distractions and insanity. It feels like, especially with the way that Pete Hegseth is like, you know, washing the Pentagon websites of female or African American or any prestigious accomplishments, it just is insane. This is a moment where we have to be extremely skeptical of our sources of history as well. So like if you're looking at a government website for history right now, you need to be asking, am I getting the full picture and really assuming that you're not.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I honestly felt a little bit like I'm in a bubble with a lot of this stuff. And I'm eager to engage more. I've been doing a ton of podcasts over the last couple of years as a guest to help promote my podcast and this book. And that's opened me up to a lot of what's going on out there more. And I'm really hoping on this book tour I have coming up that I get to meet a lot of people from that space. My brother is a history teacher in Washington DC. Yeah, middle school history teacher. I'm insanely proud of him and he's been an inspiration and someone that I feel like is part of my connection to like history on the ground.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure In the broadest sense, I would just say government overreach is sort of the biggest parallel. But gosh, where do you start? There's so much going on right now that feels like it's mean-spirited and harming people. During prohibition, it's, I don't think that this behavior was that adding poison to alcohol was necessarily mean spirited. It didn't come from a place of like we want to punish these people. It was more like this is going to help us get people to stop drinking. It was an incredibly flawed logic. But now it does feel like we're in a moment where pain and suffering are an objective.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a wild one. So, during Prohibition, of course, there's still industrial alcohol that needs to be produced and distributed around the country. The industrial alcohol supply Is also what bootleggers are stealing to then turn into consumer alcohol. The government knew this. They understood this, and they started adding For a long time they'd been adding chemicals to alcohol to make it basically gross, like unpalatable, undrinkable because it just tasted so bad. And that process is called denaturing alcohol. During prohibition, they thought, well, what if we add some poison to this so that people aren't just getting, you know, a little bit nauseous or that it tastes bad, but it's just starting to kill people. And thousands of people died as a result. It's an incredibly tragic story. It's darkly also weirdly funny in some ways. It's an example of how the most”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sending letters to Martin Luther King to try to get him to kill himself and all these things. And that led to the church hearings, which is the only reason we now have any congressional oversight over all of our intelligence institutions, the NSA, the FBI, and the CIA.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But these activists feeling that they had no recourse broke in and at massive risks to themselves and their families. And these weren't criminals, but they staged an unbelievable heist. And I'd strongly encourage your listeners to listen to Snafu season two. It's a very thrilling and heroic story. But it basically uncovered so much of the corruption within the FBI, so much of what they were doing that was explicitly illegal, and some of it evil, you know, like trying to...”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I mean, but I don't know. Season two of the Snafu podcast goes really deep on the FBI in an incredible story about a group of activists outside Philadelphia who broke into an FBI office in media, Pennsylvania, stole all the files, and began leaking them to the Washington Post in 1971. The reason that they broke in is because they could tell that the FBI was surveilling and harassing. People and in very illegal, threatening ways, but there was nothing they could do about it. They couldn't go to the FBI and say, hey, some of your guys are bad. It was like they were caught. And this is part of why this moment that we're in right now feels Kind of scary, but also familiar in this, in a J. Edgar Hoover way.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Speaking of cats Oh, no, I've never had a particularly good impression of the CIA. I mean, there are so many Examples of just”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but. There's something, you know, what cracks me up about these things is they just feel like something that a 10-year-old thought of. Right? Like, maybe one of these CIA guys was just like over dinner. Like, how are we going to listen to the spies? How are we going to listen in on them? And the kid's like, oh, you can strap a microphone to a cat. And You're on to something.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it was obviously a debacle. The other one you mentioned that is very funny too is trying to put little backpacks on pigeons with surveillance equipment. Now what's crazy is like with drone technology This is happening in a kind of a whole new way but”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How who needs to research whether or not you can train cats? We all know this you cannot train cats. Siegfried and Roy unfortunately learn this very hard way It's they try”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Surgically into a cat's ear because cats have directional ears and they always, they're incredibly sensitive and they're perfectly shaped to capture sound. And isn't this a great idea? And then we'll train the cats to go and sit next to bad guys in parks or wherever and listen to their conversations and we'll be able to hear it and record it.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So basically the CIA is always looking for ways to surveil, always looking for ways to be sneaky about getting Intel. And so basically the idea was we're going to insert a microphone.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and also no one in Greenland was aware of this. The president of Denmark was like, you know what? Just don't tell me. Do what you guys want, but don't tell me, and it's fine. But then, of course, because of nuclear waste, people in a nearby village were getting sick. And then it was revealed. And it just is, and now, even now, there's nuclear waste frozen in the ice there along with like years of human waste from the fort that they built there. And that's all going to thaw in due course with global warming and be exposed and just be a terrible hazard once again.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's kind of a, it feels like a crazy hair brained plan. And so to test this as a possibility, they built basically like a fort on Greenland and they started digging tunnels just to kind of experiment and see if this would work. And they also added a nuclear reactor there for power. It didn't work. It did not work at all. Basically, they were tunneling into the ice and it was caving in around them and on top of them and over time they realized this is just not a good idea.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this is an incredible story. So Project Iceworm was this insane idea to build tunnels underneath the ice sheet of Greenland so that they could maneuver nuclear missiles all over the island nation undetected and then launch them from wherever they wanted to. Yeah.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think it goes back to the whole reason I engage with Represent Us and why I engage with politics to begin with. There's just something so frustrating and unnerving about institutional chaos or hypocrisy or even just downright dastardly behavior. And yet, there's just no shortage of it. It's been all around us for centuries. Well, for thousands of years. But in American history, It's fascinating to look back and just call attention to these things that I think make people think and also give people a little bit of context for the present moment.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And same with the book, by the way. There's a reason there's no chapter in the book that's just like World War II. These are the curation of the book is much more about”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I have a podcast. I started a podcast a couple of years ago called Snafu, and season three just came out. Each season is a deep dive into one big sort of major historical snafu, but we tried to kind of find things that are off the beaten path, some things that you may not know about.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Snafu is a term, it's actually an acronym that emerged during World War II. It stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. So it's basically like... You know what? Everything's fucked up, but isn't it always? And it kind of describes the moment we're in right now.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh my gosh. Pretty easy. I know. I was trying to write a fun, like a book that's just sort of a fun cheeky look back and all of a sudden we're in this moment where it's like, yeah, so this is”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I don't think I used to be surprised at how at the sort of rise of Fox News, but I understand, you know, looking back through history, it just feels like we're at a moment where the American population is severely lacking in general sort of civic education and economic education A lot of people are struggling with economic opportunity and that has people on edge and when people are on edge, they're likely to be gravitate towards simpler and or fearful fear-based messaging.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think this is you're getting into a question about a fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives. And I think that progressives tend to think too hard and analyze and even navel gaze a bit. And that's a great landing pad for irony. And conservatives tend to love things that are very simple and black and white and clear. And the more you analyze something or get into the nuance, something, the more frustrated they're likely to get. And they're going to want to cling to the simpler ideas. And that's a more primal response in some ways, which I think also speaks to the fear, you know, gravitating towards fear.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was just so cynical. Like, they're so overtly unfair and unbalanced. But to say that seemed almost like a snark. Like they're just kind of laughing at us.”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and then they're thinking about it more. But I do think the mainstream media, where I get the most frustrated with... I mean, first of all, like, what is the mainstream media, but sort of our bigger institutions like CNN and Fox News and the New York Times, et cetera? Is the horse race of election coverage so sensationalized. That it dramatically diminishes the integrity of the message, of the candidates. And then, of course, with Fox News, Fox News was really blossoming while I was on the Daily Show. And I remember just being feeling kind of heartbroken that this thing was emerging and their slogan at that time, they sense abandoned it, but their slogan was fair and balanced. Do you remember that?”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're not getting any vegetables, but I think you need both. I think you need the establishment media sort of doing their best. And they've dropped the ball quite a lot. But then you need the sort of peanut gallery, which is the daily show and comedians just lobbying satirical bombs at the media that just kind of keep them honest, but also keep the public entertained and engaged and reflecting a little harder on these things. That's what I think John always did so brilliantly was like, was just be a funny gadfly that would make you or make audiences laugh, but then later on they're still thinking about something like, oh yeah, that thing that he pointed out that, you know, Mitt Romney said, that was so hypocritical. Like, what?”
2025-04-28 · On with Kara Swisher · From The Office to SNAFU: Ed Helms on History, Politics & Comedy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT