Galifianakis Goes Gardening

Zach Galifianakis came on to promote his new Netflix series This Is a Gardening Show, which debuts on Earth Day, and the full-length interview turned into one of the more delightfully unpredictable hours the show has run in a while.

Galifianakis has been gardening for more than 20 years. He's not good at it, by his own admission, but a producer team pitched him a show that let him ask every question he'd ever wondered about gardening, and he said yes. The premise is half instruction, half foraging, half composting manifesto. He walked Rich through the trick of stressing apple trees by tying the tops down, which is what pushes them to produce fruit. He preached the gospel of composting. He talked about his family's tradition of hunting mushrooms together as a reminder of what humans used to do for every meal.

Then the conversation turned to Between Two Ferns. Galifianakis said he's not sure the current climate fits the tone of the show. The bit works because the audience is in on the joke, and he's not convinced that context still holds. He told the story of filming the Obama episode at the White House, being wildly nervous because he's not a cool cat and Obama very much is, and then getting a phone call from the former president at a construction site weeks after the episode aired. He took a picture of the empty chair next to two traffic cones to commemorate a call he had no one to share with in the moment.

On The Hangover, Galifianakis confirmed the Brad Pitt gum scene was his ask, then walked Rich through the Mike Tyson punch sequence. Todd Phillips did 30 takes. Galifianakis felt Tyson's fist graze his hair every single time. He figured if Tyson ever actually connected, at least he'd have an excuse for reconstructive surgery.

The soccer scholarship story is the moment that may outlive the interview. Galifianakis told Rich he got two soccer scholarships coming out of North Carolina, one of which he's pretty sure was to Mount Olive, whose mascot he thinks was a jar-of-brine reference. He passed because he couldn't play for that team name. Rich's team googled it in real time. Mount Olive's mascot is actually the Trojans. The North Carolina School of the Arts mascot, however, is the Fighting Brine Jars. Galifianakis conceded the whole story may not exist. He thinks he kept the letters somewhere. He'd have to dig through his archives.

He also talked about his new AMC show The Audacity, a dark comedy about Silicon Valley and the people designing the tools running our lives. He admitted technology scares him. He cited a recent doctor visit where the physician mentioned ChatGPT can hallucinate and even start forming your opinions. That, he said, is exactly why there should probably be guardrails, and exactly why there aren't any.

The thread across both shows is the same. Get closer to the dirt. Stay skeptical of the screens. And if the next generation of kids doesn't know how to compost a banana peel, someone should probably teach them.

A return trip is already on the books. Next time, Rich wants the truth about the mascot.