Ed Helms on The Office, comedic snafus, and learning from failures | ReThinking with Adam Grant

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

August 8, 2025

Duration

19m

Channel

Re:Thinking with Adam Grant

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

You may know Ed Helms from his roles on The Office or in The Hangover, but building his career as a successful comedian required many moments of failure and embarrassment. In this episode, Ed joins Adam live at the Authors@Wharton series to discuss his new book, SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History’s Greatest Screwups, look back on what Ed learned from some of his own mistakes, and uncover the common patterns among historical blunders. Follow Host: Adam Grant (Instagram: @adamgrant | LinkedIn: @adammgrant | Website: adamgrant.net/) Guest: Ed Helms (Instagram: @edhelms) Links Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History Greatest Screw Up Subscribe to TED Instagram: @ted YouTube: @TED TikTok: @tedtoks LinkedIn: @ted-conferences Website: ted.com Podcasts: ted.com/podcasts The TED Audio Collective is a collection of podcasts for the curious. The TED Audio Collective videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy (https://www.ted.com/about/our-organiz...). For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at https://media-requests.ted.com. 00:00 Intro 00:36 Learning to love failure 02:27 Ed's worst standup bomb 05:12 Breaking into showbiz 08:33 Lessons from The Office 09:53 Snafus in history 12:46 Lightning round 17:36 How to face your next snafu

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Adam Grant

  host

  Organizational psychologist, author, and host of the podcast ReThinking with Adam Grant.

• Ed Helms

  guest

  Actor and comedian known for playing Andy Bernard on The Office.

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Re:Thinking with Adam Grant, featuring Adam Grant and Ed Helms, Ed Helms on The Office, comedic snafus, and learning from failures | ReThinking with Adam Grant explores Ed Helms on embracing failure, community, and avoiding groupthink snafus Ed Helms argues that standup comedy trains performers to “love bombing,” treating failures as callus-building practice rather than as identity-defining events.

🔗 RELATED EPISODES

How you can do more for others with Rutger Bregman | ReThinking with Adam Grant | TED

Helen Lewis on why genius is a myth | ReThinking with Adam Grant

Whitney Wolfe Herd on returning as Bumble CEO, AI, and self-love | ReThinking with Adam Grant

Your attention span is not broken with historian Daniel Immerwahr | ReThinking with Adam Grant

Why your nose and sense of smell is secretly controlling your life | ReThinking with Adam Grant

Ron Chernow on writing about great Americans | Rethinking with Adam Grant