Buzz Knight:
On this special LA edition of Takin A Walk, I am so excited to be taking a walk with an actor, who simply put is prolific. It would take me days to name his amazing list of screen accomplishments. Ed Begley Jr. is my guest on the Takin A Walk series here in Studio City.
Buzz Knight:
Some of my personal favorite work of Ed’s are the many hysterical characters he plays in the wonderful Christopher Guest mockumentaries, Best in Show, Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration. Just fabulous work. Ed is also an environmental activist and he and his wife, Rachelle Carson, are a major part of the Walden Woods Project, which I so dearly love. Let’s go take a walk with Ed Begley Jr.
Announcer:
Takin A Walk with Buzz Knight.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Nice little neighborhood in Studio City. It’s called Colfax Meadows. It’s a lovely area with lots of mature trees, which is the big draw, People finally figured out a few years ago, one of the most prevalent, one of the most common denominators in homes that have tremendous value is mature trees. You know?
Buzz Knight:
Yeah.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Wherever you are and whatever part of the country, the world you are. We’ll go around this succulent here. Don’t get stuck, Buzz.
Buzz Knight:
I will not. I promise you. So in the series that you did, that was really about living green, which was a tremendous series. I loved it.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Thank you, Buzz.
Buzz Knight:
You had a neighborhood friend slash nemesis, I would say in the series. Is that fair to say?
Ed Begley Jr.:
Oh boy, you had to bring him up. You’re going to even say his name?
Buzz Knight:
Okay. I’ll say it. Bill Nye.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Bill Nye. Okay, here we go.
Buzz Knight:
Yeah.
Ed Begley Jr.:
We were having a fine walk, Buzz, and then you had to get into that. No, the truth is he’s my dear friend and it’s like a wrestling match or something. I’m going to take you down. I’m going to take you down the 23rd of March.
Ed Begley Jr.:
It’s a fun kind of competition that we have to see who has the lowest carbon footprint. And I’ll be honest, he was beating me for years, but only because there was one of him and the three of us. So per capita, I was doing very well over the years. I was his immediate neighbor. We’re about a mile apart now, but we’re not at all apart in our approach to this, and we want to promote sustainable stuff that people can afford. Not everybody can afford the kind of solar that I have, or some of the other things that I have.
Ed Begley Jr.:
You want to promote things that people can afford, the average Joe or Jane. So we’ve tried to do that. If you want to buy some highfalutin fancy car, that’s fine, but if you only have the money to buy some light bulbs and energy-saving thermostat, you should do that. Plant a vegetable garden, make some compost, ride a bike, take public transportation. All that stuff I just mentioned is very cheap. And so, that’s the way I started too.
Ed Begley Jr.:
People say, “I can’t afford X, Y, and Z, like you.” And I go, “Neither could I when I started.” You don’t run up to the top of Mount Everest. You get to base camp, and you get acclimated, and you climb as high as you can. So that’s what I’m trying to do, show what works and do it myself in my own life, but I hasten to add … This I didn’t get right away, Buzz.
Ed Begley Jr.:
For years, I’ve been promoting, do what you can and buy the energy-saving light bulbs and do everything important, what we do. That’s important, but that’s only one of three pillars. You need to have any environmental success. The other two are corporate responsibility and good legislation. And if everybody’s just doing stuff themselves and the government isn’t involved and businesses aren’t involved, you’re not going to get anywhere.
Ed Begley Jr.:
We needed the Clean Air Act to clean up the air in LA. It wasn’t just people like me driving electric cars in 1970 and beyond. It takes good legislation. That’s how we did it. And it takes corporate responsibility. And that’s how we did it. So you need all three. And if any of them short, you’re going to have a wobbly situation. You need to have them the whole of equal strength.
Ed Begley Jr.:
So that’s what I make sure people know, do what you can in your own life, but make sure that there’s corporate responsibility whenever you can affect. And they’re of course, related. The more stuff that you do, the more energy-saving light bulbs you buy, or green cars that you buy, then corporate America is going to be more inclined to make them. You know?
Buzz Knight:
Yeah.
Ed Begley Jr.:
You can influence corporate America with your purchasing power. You can vote on election day. You can vote in the supermarket aisles and the showroom floors. And then of course, good legislation, same thing. If you’re affecting what corporate America’s doing, you’re doing stuff in your personal life, you’re going to help. That will help make for good legislation. If you get involved as an activist too, and start influencing the way people vote and the way our legislators vote.
Buzz Knight:
But you were a lone wolf at that time.
Ed Begley Jr.:
It was very odd to drive an electric car in 1970. Of course, they’ve been around for years before me. Henry Ford’s wife preferred her Baker Electric to his noisy contraption. That was a 1910 car called a Baker Electric. They’ve been around for a while.
Ed Begley Jr.:
But I did what I could, stood on the shoulders of people Rachel Carson and other people like that. She wrote Silence Spring. Henry David Thoreau, Emerson, people talked about the value of the natural world, and I chose to value it myself. Also, I got to give credit to my dad, Ed Begley Sr. He never used the word environmentalist really, but he was one. He had lived through the Great Depression. He was a son of Irish immigrants. So we turned off the lights and turned off the water and saved string and saved tin foil. So, by the time Earth Day came around, I was primed and ready to go. And he died within a few days of that first Earth Day. So-
Buzz Knight:
IS that right?
Ed Begley Jr.:
Yeah. So I did a lot of the stuff I did to honor him, because he was always interested in what I was for, not what I was against. And I said, “I hate this smog. It’s hurting in my lungs, dad. And I hate it.” He would say, “Well, I know what you’re against, which is smog. And I’m against it too, but what are you for? What are you doing? Go help build up green car, go down to the smog control district and testify about how we should clean up the smog, do something, get involved. Don’t just talk about it.”
Ed Begley Jr.:
And so, I got motivated in 1970 and I did a lot of stuff. And it all worked, what I did, what corporate America did, what good laws did, like the Clean Air Act. We have four times the cars in LA now from 1970, millions more people, but a fraction of the smog.
Buzz Knight:
Wow. Ed, describe the scene where we’re taking a walk right now, if you could.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Let me stop for a second, just point out what’s going on here.
Buzz Knight:
Yep.
Ed Begley Jr.:
This is the LA River. You can see a little bit of water in a secondary channel cut at the bottom of the larger channel is for flood control. I understand why they did what they did back in the ’30s. A lot of it happened in the ’30s. The Army Corps of Engineers decided to pave over, to control it, because there was a great deal … There was a certain amount of loss of life and a great deal of loss of property, because the LA River was a meandering river, that would be over here one day and over there. And farmers and people kind of dealt with it and built on higher up things. Like where my house is now, that’s higher than this area, you just walked from.
Ed Begley Jr.:
And so, Army Corps of Engineers channelized the river. That was what they thought was best at the time. We know better now. You can do what they did in Scottsdale, Arizona and other places. There are big spreading basins. You let the water spread out. Even if you’re a swift water rescue Navy Seal and you fall in this water, you might not make it till they pull you out.
Ed Begley Jr.:
The water’s very cold in the wintertime and it goes very quickly. And so, it’s like a freeway of death, this water. So what they’re doing more of, what they’re already have in place now called Balboa Park. It’s a wetland where the water is spread out over a larger area, allowed to do what its job is, which is to percolate down into the water table and do that. So we’re attempting to do what is downstream of here already.
Ed Begley Jr.:
There’s a permeable bottom. The sides are still channelized, but the bottom is not and the water goes down. And so, it’s not as much a rush of water as you go further downstream, we’re going to go up to the source of this Nile, if you will. The beginning of this LA River, in Chatsworth, in that area, it’s called Box Canyon up there, the west San Fernando Valley, and begin to break up the bottom of this LA River. So it begins to permeate down more. And the more you do that and continue to move, eventually make it to the ocean, Long Beach and places like that, where this all empties. Ballona Creek and Long Beach is where this all empties. Then it won’t be so much volume of water being wasted too.
Ed Begley Jr.:
We can meet more than half of LA’s water needs by just collecting our water by one, having it go back into the water table, and two, to do what I’m doing at my house, which is to let it all flow into a water tank underground. I have a 10,000 gallon water tank buried underground. The water goes into that. Then I can use it for emergencies, and I can certainly use it as I do every day for irrigation.
Buzz Knight:
Wow. Did your wife come along immediately in this passion?
Ed Begley Jr.:
Kicking and screaming, I’d say were the two words.
Buzz Knight:
I remembered that in the show, was a little bit of kicking and me. Yeah. But now she’s along for the ride, isn’t she?
Ed Begley Jr.:
She definitely is, because a lot of it makes financial sense. And I finally ceded control over stuff that I really didn’t have that big an interest in. She didn’t want to see solar panels for some reason. I like the look of them. I just do. But a lot of people like my wife doesn’t. So they said, the architect and her and the builder said, “We’re not going to see any solar panels.” I said, if you can pull it off, that’s great,” because they’re up on a flat roof. But all they did was build a parapet wall, this big. I’m holding my fingers about five or six inches apart right now, Buzz. And that’s all a little wall that tall is all that it does, because the first solar panel down at the bottom of it is just a quarter-inch below that lip. And then they go up at an angle that is a straight line from that. So you can stand anywhere in the property and go, “This Ed Begley is a liar. He doesn’t have one solar panel on that roof.”
Ed Begley Jr.:
You need a drone to fly overhead to see. I got lots of panels, got nine kilowatts, but the wife didn’t want to see them. And we can do that. Aesthetics. We’ve got beautiful walls, or stucco, and what have you. She wanted that of French Mediterranean design. We did all that, but what’s in the wall is mine. I own that stuff in the wall, the insulation and the thick walls that are 12 inches thick. So now it’s much easier to heat or cool that envelope, that very well sealed up home. So she gets what she wants, and I get what I want, which is the gearhead stuff, the nuts and bolt stuff. And she’s in charge of aesthetics
Buzz Knight:
Was there some counseling involved that got you guys through
Ed Begley Jr.:
Very much so. We somehow made it and nobody got hurt.
Buzz Knight:
Now-
Ed Begley Jr.:
She’s much stronger than me. You’ll meet her in a minute. She can take me pretty good at this point.
Buzz Knight:
Now, how did you get involved with a passion that I share with you, with the Walden Woods Project?
Ed Begley Jr.:
Two words, Don Henley. Don is a dear friend of mine, since the early ’70s. We met at the Troubadour bar there in the Troubadour club. He was on stage, wonderful guitarist, songwriter, drummer. He’s a brilliant musician. And with Glenn Fry, they wrote some great, great songs.
Buzz Knight:
I would say.
Ed Begley Jr.:
And he’s written some great songs on his own too, of course. He’s a dear friend, and he wanted to do something. He had heard about this property that was going to be made into an industrial park or something, or they were going to develop this area, where Henry David Thoreau wrote, and walked and lived. And so, he thought that was like firing up a foundry in the Sistine Chapel. And if we could save Walden, maybe we could save other places too. So he said about doing that. He enlisted my help, and Bonnie Raitt, and James Taylor, and lots of friends, and Sting. And people over the years, have all helped. And he’s done a good job.
Buzz Knight:
It’s one of my favorite places to go take a walk. In fact, the first two episodes have Takin A Walk actually were recorded there. The first one was with Jeffrey Kramer, the-
Ed Begley Jr.:
Oh, yes. I love Jeffrey
Buzz Knight:
… curator. And then the second one was with a former morning host of mine from my radio days, a guy by the name of Wally Brine. Do you remember the first time you took a walk in the Walden Pond area?
Ed Begley Jr.:
It was with Don Henley and Kathi Anderson. It was the first Walden Woods walk that we had. We had an event there to raise money, to buy the land. And we did. I think that was the early night ’90s, like ’91, or something like it.
Buzz Knight:
That sounds right because I met you and Don for the first time when I programmed the classic rock station WZLX, and you guys came up and did an interview. So that was around that time. That sounds like ’92, something like that.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Was that in Boston, or Concord?
Buzz Knight:
That was in Boston.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Yes, I remember that now.
Buzz Knight:
And we ultimately met at a Niki Tsongas-
Ed Begley Jr.:
Oh, yes.
Buzz Knight:
… benefit in Concord at-
Ed Begley Jr.:
That’s right.
Buzz Knight:
… the Rasmussens’ beautiful-
Ed Begley Jr.:
I love their home.
Buzz Knight:
… house there. Oh, my God.
Ed Begley Jr.:
And I knew Paul Tsongas too. He’s a wonderful man.
Buzz Knight:
Wonderful man. Yeah. So walking for you is important.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Very important. That’s my transportation hierarchy. I quite deliberately moved to an area where I could walk to restaurants, walk to the bank, walk to the post office.
Ed Begley Jr.:
I’m known for electric cars. But my number one form of transportation is walking. Number two is my bike. Number three is public transportation. So the electric car is a distant fourth. And I try not to fly too. Recently, it’s been a lot easier because nobody was flying much. But I went two and a half years recently without flying. And I was very happy with that.
Buzz Knight:
And does walking, does it clear your head if you’re in a creative log jam?
Ed Begley Jr.:
It does. It’s wonderful when you’re writing or just going about the business of living, going about the business of the day, to just take a walk, let it all peel away and drink in the moments like this one right now, where everything is perfect. I have everything that I need. The river is flowing. Even though we haven’t had much rain lately, you can see water down there. That’s coming from something called the Hyperion Plant. They take all the raw sewage in that end of the valley. Well, the middle of the valley really, is where it sits, from uphill there in the San Fernando Valley. And they treat it, so that is really nearly drinkable water. I suppose you could drink it if you’re in a real pinch, but it’s been fully purified and what have you. And now it’s part of the ecosystem.
Ed Begley Jr.:
That water’s running year round, because it’s raw sewage, it’s been cleaned. And so, there’s birds and other aquatic life that depend on it now. And it’s not harming them. It’s not toxic the way it used to be that because of the manner in which they treat it.
Ed Begley Jr.:
And that’s the important thing people have to realize. The environment isn’t just Walden Pond. It isn’t just the rainforest in Brazil. That’s of course, the environment. We have to protect that, that’s essential. But the environment is also here in this concrete channel. This is part of the environment. South Central is part of the environment.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Love Canal is part of the environment. We just need to set about cleaning up those things where we’ve made a mess and protecting all the areas, this and everything that we have developed. We to make sure that it is in some kind of balance and we can continue to live and thrive with what we need from the natural world.
Buzz Knight:
So, are you currently working on any script processes for movies or television these days?
Ed Begley Jr.:
I’m writing these days. I’m writing my memoir, believe it or not, I’ve finished it pretty much. I’ll wait and see what a book or a publisher has to say about it. I’m certainly open to changes, but I finished it. It’s 54,000 words or something. I think that’s a good length for a book like that, and I’ve enjoyed writing it. To remember all that’s happened in the past 72 years has been a joy.
Buzz Knight:
And did you do that during the last couple of years, where you were particularly focused on it?
Ed Begley Jr.:
I just started it, just after Christmas and before New Year’s. I just started a few months ago and-
Buzz Knight:
Really?
Ed Begley Jr.:
… and it just poured out. I just felt-
Buzz Knight:
Wow.
Ed Begley Jr.:
… one event connected to another. And let me be clear here. A lot of these are stories I’ve told many times over the years. The story about Marlon Brando and the electric eels is a story I’ve told many times. A story about having a car accident on Christmas Eve on Sunset Boulevard and San Vicente, that’s a story I’ve told many times. And so, I just wove all those stories together in some hopefully coherent manner. And pretty soon, it’s a book.
Buzz Knight:
And did you have fun writing it?
Ed Begley Jr.:
I had great fun because the process of writing that stuff, that’s part of your life. The keyboard becomes like a Ouija board, but one that’s not bogus, one that actually works. Wait a minute. Why am I being pulled over here to this event? What’s happening? The Ouija board’s trying to tell me something. But it really is. One event connects to another. You open a doorway you haven’t opened in a while, and the process of that door blows open other doors down that same hallway that lead to things you haven’t thought of in 55 years.
Buzz Knight:
Wow. That’s outstanding. When you list some of the characters that you’ve played, are there favorite characters in particular? I mean, there’s so many characters you have played. It would take me days to list them, but are there particular favorites of yours?
Ed Begley Jr.:
Just by the longevity of it, by the length of it and the quality of it, St. Elsewhere was a great show. And that took place in Boston, of course. I was a California native, moved to Boston to study medicine. And I did that show for six years with Denzel Washington, and Bonnie Bartlett, and Bill Daniels, and Ed Flanders, and Christina Pickles, wonderful actors all, David Morris.
Ed Begley Jr.:
I mean, the quality of the acting, the quality of the directing, the quality of the writing. Bruce Paltrow literally changed my life by giving me that job. I didn’t get the job I wanted. I wanted to play Dr. Peter White, but he got killed three years into the show. And my character, which was a minor character, the pilot, like one or two lines, became one of the major characters. It’s sometimes better if you don’t get what you want, Buzz.
Buzz Knight:
Wow. And what was it like working with that whole crew around the Christopher Guest mockumentaries? How did you just get through without completely being in stitches all the time?
Ed Begley Jr.:
It’s nearly impossible to work with Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. They’re trying to check into the hotel in Best in Show. There’s no script, there’s a treatment. You know that the slug line that you have to operate off of is Gerry and Cookie Fleck, which is your Eugene and Catherine, try to check-in the hotel, their credit card doesn’t work. That’s all you have. But then you’re dealing with those two and look out.
Buzz Knight:
Oh, my God. And I would imagine you were channeling in some instances, hotel employees at check-in that you probably had dealt with. Is that-
Ed Begley Jr.:
Exactly. And trying not to do what they did in so many bogus scenes and movies that I’ve seen, where, “Sir, your credit card doesn’t work.” When I’ve seen that happen, when somebody’s credit card doesn’t work, and even mine didn’t work, they pretend it’s not really happening. They’re anything but confrontational. Must be the strip. Maybe it’s the bad strip. Let me try it. No, it’s actually saying declined. Is it possible-
Buzz Knight:
Yeah.
Ed Begley Jr.:
They’re not trying to make you feel bad. They’re trying to pretend it isn’t happening to help you feel better. So I tried y to use that as my guiding force with this and just keep it real with those two, with Eugene and Catherine. And then Michael McKean and Michael Higgins check-in to the hotel too. I mean, that was nearly impossible to keep a straight face with those two.
Buzz Knight:
Oh, my God. Do you watch your work from the past ever?
Ed Begley Jr.:
I do. I’m very objective about it. There’s some stuff I don’t like, but I mostly like it because I work with good people. It’s not that I’m so good. I’m working with Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. I’m working Michael Hitchcock. I’m working with Michael Higgins and Michael McKean, Fred Willard, all these great actors, actresses, and the incredible Chris Guest. Parker Posey for God’s sake. I just try to keep up with those two. I just hang on to them for the ride is what I do.
Buzz Knight:
Is there anybody that you haven’t worked with that you’d like to work with?
Ed Begley Jr.:
There’s a boom man at Burbank Studios at Warner Brothers, I haven’t worked with. And there’s a dolly grip at 20th, I’m going to have lunch with him this week. I’m going to put an end to that. There’s two people that I haven’t met.
Ed Begley Jr.:
I was born here, Buzz. What am I going to do? Born here in ’49 at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. Didn’t get any more Hollywood than that.
Buzz Knight:
How has Hollywood changed?
Ed Begley Jr.:
It’s changed in some good ways. As I mentioned, there’s a lot less smog now, because of everything we did right. There’s a lot of development. There’s sadly, a lot of problems with homeless people now. We need to find housing for those people as best we can. It’s a challenge. Not everybody in LA wants to make room in their neighborhood for that. So we’re trying to be understanding of everybody’s position that and do what’s best for all. And hopefully, we’ll get to that.
Ed Begley Jr.:
So it’s changed a lot, but there’s a lot that’s good. Besides clean air, there’s more opportunities for a lot of people that should have had opportunities years ago. Not just with voting, but access to jobs and what have you. I finally became aware of …
Ed Begley Jr.:
I think I was 30 years old before I really realized that I won the lottery, being born Ed Begley’s son. I really think I was that old a man until-
Buzz Knight:
Really?
Ed Begley Jr.:
Something like 31. Wait a minute, I got a great deal here being born his son. A lot of people didn’t have that kind of privilege and that opportunity. And so, that’s being addressed now. And I think that’s a wonderful thing and long overdue.
Buzz Knight:
Who were some of his friends that you remember meeting when you were young?
Ed Begley Jr.:
I hadn’t a clue who I was meeting sometimes. We would go and stop at the couple’s house in Santa Barbara. His name was Paul and her name was Bella. The two of them lived up there in Santa Barbara. And it was like, “Dad, I want to ride the cable cars in San Francisco. When are we going to get out of here? What time are we going to leave?” And they were talking about stuff, acting perhaps, and other things, and just life. And I always wanted to get away from that. It was Paul Muni, the great actor, Paul Muni. I was in the presence of greatness.
Ed Begley Jr.:
As a kid, you don’t know that. So then I cherished and tried to remember those stories, when I realized who I was dealing with. I hadn’t seen Fugitive From a Chain Gang. I didn’t see he and my father on Broadway in Inherit the Wind, for which they both won Tonys. So, it was just some guy.
Ed Begley Jr.:
But he had a lot of normal friends, too, guys he worked with at a factory in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was born, called the Wiremold factory. Literally, the kind of conduit, the molding that they had, they used to run a wire to an overhead fan, into a light bulb in an office or a home. It was called Wiremold. And you put the wires in there. You didn’t want them to short out or somebody to cut them accidentally. And my dad worked at the Wiremold plant for years. So, he had these friends that worked at that plant with him.
Ed Begley Jr.:
He was really basically, a factory worker that made it late in life, like when he was about 40. He started to-
Buzz Knight:
Wow.
Ed Begley Jr.:
… make it in radio and Hartford, Connecticut. Then he went on to New York and did better in radio. Then he did stage plays in New York and then finally movies. And he got nominated for and won and Oscar for Sweet Bird of Youth. So he was-
Buzz Knight:
12 Angry Men
Ed Begley Jr.:
12 Angry Men.
Buzz Knight:
Not a bad movie.
Ed Begley Jr.:
What a cast.
Buzz Knight:
Unbelievable.
Ed Begley Jr.:
What a Wonderful movie.
Buzz Knight:
I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, by the way.
Ed Begley Jr.:
Oh, great.
Buzz Knight:
And I started in radio actually in that area. Fairfield County, Connecticut. So where your father started is a kind of a special place
Ed Begley Jr.:
That’s great. TIC-
Ed Begley Jr.:
It’s still there, isn’t it?
Buzz Knight:
It is WTIC AM and FM. Yeah.
Ed Begley Jr.:
That’s great.
Buzz Knight:
There was a guy named Bob Steele who used to work there. I think he was there for-
Ed Begley Jr.:
That name is familiar.
Buzz Knight:
I think he was there 60 years before he ultimately retired from his-
Ed Begley Jr.:
Wow.
Buzz Knight:
… from his craft. So when you think of your craft-
Ed Begley Jr.:
Should we start walking back?
Buzz Knight:
Yeah. Sure. When you think of your craft, is there something that you haven’t learned maybe, that you would like to learn?
Ed Begley Jr.:
I’m enjoying life right now. Whatever my position in the food chain is, or whatever work I have before me, I feel like I’m right on schedule.
Ed Begley Jr.:
I’m just taking what comes my way. I’m not very aggressive about seeking out parts. I’m very lucky in that people come to me and ask me to play part X, Y, or Z. And I enjoy it. If I don’t enjoy what I’m reading, I won’t do it, of course. I don’t have to audition often, which is nice. I just get asked to do a role, and I do it. And it’s a pretty nice setup to still be in Hollywood, still be working 55 years later. I just feel blessed.
Buzz Knight:
So when you think of the world today, with the conflict that’s going on, the Ukraine conflict there, which is just so horrible, when you consider what entertainment means to people now, how important is it, in light of the terrible things that are happening, in that war?
Ed Begley Jr.:
I think entertainment has tremendous value to people, whatever situation they’re in, if they’re doing well or doing so-so, certainly doing poorly. I don’t think the people in Ukraine can really think much about entertainment right now. They’re just thinking about getting water and food and getting shelter from the elements. But there’ll come a time where they will be able to appreciate art again they. I’m not saying they don’t appreciate it now, but they just have other things to focus on.
Ed Begley Jr.:
We need to help them in every way that is humanly possible. And there’s relief organizations that want to do that. But sadly, right now, as we walk along this river today, the relief organizations are having a lot of trouble getting to where they need to get to, just because of infrastructure problems, supply chain problems, to get enough fuel, to get on the bus that’s going to get them there to give relief, to get a truck loaded up with food or water, to get to the people.
Ed Begley Jr.:
It’s hard to get fuel for that truck even. So we all need to pitch in and every way we can and help those people and help those relief organizations that can eventually do something to better the lives of the folks in the Ukraine.
Buzz Knight:
Well, and it’s so important also to acknowledge how so many nonprofits have been challenged, certainly during the COVID crisis. And I think there are so many of them that need help, certainly, because it’s just been such a tough couple of years, right?
Ed Begley Jr.:
It has.
Buzz Knight:
And I love the fact that Kathi Anderson from the Walden Woods project told me that during COVID, that the amount of people walking at Walden Pond increased massively during the last couple of years-
Ed Begley Jr.:
Wonderful.
Buzz Knight:
… because people are seeking the outdoors and-
Ed Begley Jr.:
I didn’t know that, Buzz. That’s great news.
Buzz Knight:
So I think that is really outstanding news. And I have to thank you so much for taking a walk with me. I’m such an admirer of your work, but I’m such an admirer also, of what you’re so passionate about, your activism, and how you bring it forward to people, and with honesty and dignity. And I’m just so grateful that you and I got to take a walk here in Studio City,
Ed Begley Jr.:
Me too, Buzz. It’s really great to see you again.
Announcer:
Takin A Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
About The Author
Buzz Knight
Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.
After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.
