Rainn Wilson

speaker

443 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 26 Jul

Rainn Wilson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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TED Talks Daily · Sunday Pick: The Office’s Rainn Wilson on meaning and happiness | ReThinking with Adam Grant · 26 Jul 2026 podcast

Hi, everybody.

Thanks, Adam.

Nice to see you.

You're welcome.

Yes.

Not at all.

I was a nerdy little disturbed kid from suburban Seattle and I grew up kind of with a television kind of raising me and watching all of those great sitcoms from the 70s.

I would record Monty Python sketches on a Panasonic tape recorder held up to a PBS television station at like 1 a.m.

to record Monty Python and then memorize the sketches

And then when I started doing theater, I kind of thought, hey, you know, I'm pretty good at this and I can make people laugh.

Maybe I'll go to New York and study theater.

And that's really where I thought I was going to make my living.

So I spent 10, 13 years total in New York kind of pursuing a life in theater and never really making it above the poverty line as an actor in all truth.

So, you know, the idea of being like a

a star or a celebrity or making a lot of money and being a part of one of these most iconic shows, like one of those shows that I grew up watching as a kid, is beyond my wildest dreams and not at all the path that I thought I was going to take.

Oops.

Uh-oh.

I feel like it worked out okay, though.

It worked out just fine.

Look at me.

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