Jake Johnson and Gareth Reynolds Tried to Pause Their Podcast. Fans Wouldn’t Let Them
In December, Jake Johnson and Gareth Reynolds announced that their advice podcast, We’re Here to Help, would be coming to a temporary end. The duo had released more than 140 episodes, sometimes devoting five hours a day to recording, and it became unsustainable. Reynolds, a touring comedian, was often Zooming in from the road and Johnson was in the midst of producing a new movie. It made sense to hit pause.
“It kept growing and it got way bigger than I expected,” Johnson says, speaking from his home studio in Los Angeles. “It got better, bigger, and we kept changing it.”
Reynolds, on the call while in his parked car, also in Los Angeles, adds, “Suddenly we were doing two a week, instead of one.”
“It became way more of a job than I originally thought it was,” Johnson continues. “We felt like the energy we had to put in the show, because we both really care about the material, was just not as great. We thought, ‘If we don’t have the time to do this right and if we’re not going to do it right, let’s not do it.’”
We’re Here to Help launched in August of 2023 as a casual advice podcast with Johnson and Reynolds as co-hosts. The duo took questions from callers and offered potential solutions, although, as Reynolds noted in the premiere, “We really make no guarantees.” It aired twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, and it quickly evolved to include guest hosts, like Johnson’s New Girl co-stars Lamorne Morris and Zooey Deschanel, and accompanying video versions on YouTube filmed in a studio. Soon, there were more than 100 episodes.
Before the 2024 holidays, Johnson announced the culmination of Season One, telling listeners they intended to bring the podcast back at some point in the future, but were unclear when. Typically, that would be that. Instead, the show’s fans sent in thousands of emails, begging Johnson and Reynolds to reevaluate.
“There were so many going like, ‘Come on you assholes, you can’t do one a month?’” Johnson says, laughing. “[It was] a staggering response to a couple of 40-year-old babies saying ‘We can’t do this.’”
“We’re better at the show, which makes it more fun”
The solution came surprisingly easily. Podcast network Headgum called and offered a 52-episode deal for 2025. The show would run as one episode per week on Mondays (although Johnson and Reynolds say they might air bonus episodes on occasional Thursdays). There would be no YouTube component, although fans can still subscribe to the podcast’s Patreon for video. For Season Two, the hosts brought in “new blood” behind the scenes and shifted the format of the show back to its roots: Johnson and Reynolds offering advice to callers together, with only the occasional guest (so far Michael Cera has shown up in Season Two). It’s far fewer hours recording and, as they are quick to admit, much more enjoyable.
“Now that we’re doing Season Two, it does not feel like the [same] level of work doing one a week,” Reynolds explains. “And it feels like we’re a little bit better at doing the show, which makes it more fun.”
“What I love about this is it can keep changing and growing, and there’s no rules to it,” Johnson says. “There’s no real studio behind us. We don’t control our ads, but we do control the creative output.”
The hosts were generally aware of the community they’d built with We’re Here to Help since it launched in the fall of 2023. But Johnson was more surprised by the intense reaction than Reynolds, who regularly comes face to face with the fans while doing stand-up.
“I’m like the candidate out on the road shaking hands,” Reynolds says. “The thing with podcasts is that para-social relationship really is so vastly different than anything else. Jake obviously was on one of the biggest TV shows of the last 15 years, and that is enormous fame. But the podcast fans are different. You listened to me for 1,000 hours? That is ungodly.”
Reynolds, a writer for TV shows like Arrested Development and You’re the Worst, came up with the idea for We’re Here to Help during the 2023 SAG and WGA strikes, when many in the entertainment industry were forced to pivot. He and Johnson had been friends for more than 15 years after meeting at the Los Angeles dive bar Ye Rustic Inn, and spent a lot of time sharing advice with each other about their careers. At the time, Johnson, best known for playing Nick Miller on New Girl, had recently transitioned into directing — his directorial feature debut, Self Reliance, arrived in early 2024 — and was also waiting out the strikes.
“I texted Jake and I was like, ‘If you ever wanted to, we could do this show together,’” Reynolds remembers. “I said, ‘It would fit our strengths in a way that a podcast favors.’”
The debut episode, “The Quest of Wilhelmina,” set the tone for what was to come. It featured fans calling in with problems, similar to many advice shows, but the approach was refreshingly off-kilter. Their first query: How could a caller give her Dungeons and Dragons character more “nerd clout”? Not only did Johnson and Reynolds take their roles seriously, talking to the caller for the entire 30-minute episode, but they gave her actionable advice: Improve her German accent to make the character more memorable. As the episodes continued, the pair’s producer only selected questions that were unserious — and hilarious.
“In earnest, we are trying to solve the problem”
Since the podcast launched, Johnson and Reynolds have talked to callers about everything from horrible wedgies, to getting caught masturbating on a security camera while cat sitting, to a coworker who won’t wear shoes. Reynold’s solution to the latter? Pour a jar of parmesan cheese on the floor under her colleague’s desk so it would get on her bare feet and, hopefully, encourage her to wear shoes.
“In earnest, we are trying to solve the problem,” Reynolds insists. “We might make fun of the other one’s ideas. We might even poke fun at why someone is passing on an idea, but our heart truly is in the right place.”
Johnson adds, “I don’t think either of us ever want to make fun of the caller because we have too much fun making fun of each other. The whole fun for me is seeing if we can solve the problem. I think that push pull between me and [Gareth] is fun. Sometimes he’ll pitch something as if he’s being serious, but I know he’s not.”
He pauses, reluctantly adding, “That’s how we get to parmesan-ing the floor.”
In the infamous parmesan episode, “Seeing Past the Piggies,” both hosts’ ideas became increasingly weird. Reynolds first suggested the caller claim to have seen spiders on the floor and maybe been bitten by one. That led Johnson to chime in, “What about releasing a rat?” (Not possible due to security cameras in the office.) Other thoughts from Reynolds: the caller could clip her toenails to “out weird” her coworker.
“Parmesan-ing the floor resonated with America because it was a good pitch,” Reynolds says, insistently. (He says that fans frequently show up to his stand-up shows with actual cans of parmesan cheese.) “But sometimes it’s good to give them the worst pitch so they know how good the other ones are. Sometimes we throw out a dog shit pitch and then the person will be like, ‘Yeah, you know, I am going put the ‘fuck you’ Post-It note on their door. Godspeed.”
Now with nearly 150 episodes released, We’re Here to Help has not only established a loyal following, but also an extended universe. There are jokes and characters that recur, sometimes months later, and certain callers, like the infamous Connor, who is always in a different bizarre living situation, pop back in every once in a while. Recently, a caller recorded a song, “The Ballad of Mrs. Gingerbread,” specifically for the podcast after having her problem solved. The hosts have played the song at the end of multiple recent episodes.
“That world building was a huge component of the fun,” Johnson says. “There’s a selfish part to that because we enjoy it. And if something becomes less fun, it fades away.”
Reynolds adds, “The world building was there right away. It was very good for the show to have returning callers and to keep hearing back from people.”
“It’s like a date”
We’re Here to Help receives around 40 emails per week asking for advice, which a producer then goes through to select people who will be asked to call in; Johnson and Reynolds don’t know the question ahead of recording. Although the hosts are on camera, the caller is not. The pair usually ask callers for their name, location, and age before getting into the issue. Recently, Johnson has enjoyed asking about the caller’s favorite jungle animal — an ice-breaker to make them more comfortable.
“I try to slow it down and get to know everybody,” says Johnson. “It’s like the beginning of a date. Because a lot of times you’re really trying to find out the ‘why’ behind a call.”
Occasionally, things have gone sideways — like the time Reynolds spent an episode hitting on Johnson’s mom, or when comedian Steve Berg interrupted a serious moment from a caller when his roast chicken caught fire in the oven. These derailments are partly why Season Two has re-focused on the dynamic between Johnson and Reynolds instead of relying too much on guests.
“The caller should be the main person, but if there’s a guest we’re honoring the guest,” Johnson says. “We understand you’re Sarah from Maine, but Jimmy Kimmel is here!”
“Sometimes it’s pretty straight down the middle and then other times it’s totally bananas,” Reynolds admits. “There have been ones where we are like, ‘Yep, that was out of control.’”
One of those episodes occurred when the hosts and their guest Morris, who played Winston on New Girl, were asked for help with a wedding speech. Morris recorded multiple takes of a video of a completely unhinged speech for the caller to play at the wedding, one of which they actually did. Among his sage pieces of wisdom: “Now I’ve been married, I wanna say 10 times, all successful marriages. And the one thing that I learned that you gotta do to keep that thing spicy in the bedroom is don’t brush your teeth. So if you don’t brush your teeth, you know what real love is.” It did not go over well.
“We are aware — and we weren’t at the beginning — that these are people’s real lives,” Johnson says.
Sometimes, listening to the podcast feels like being in on an inside joke. The audience becomes a part of recurring bits and guest hosts like Morris, Berg, and Eric Edelstein are friends with Johnson and Reynolds outside the show, leading to a familiar dynamic. The hosts’ actual friendship helps too.
“Part of it with Gareth and I is that we have known each other now for over 20 years and there are so many inside jokes between us via text,” Johnson continues. “And for Gareth and I, the game is like: How do we keep changing so that we’re making each other laugh? As long as we’re loving it and the audience is loving it, why wouldn’t you keep going? It seems like a perfect game.”
Going forward, the hosts are certain We’re Here to Help will continue to evolve. They’ve developed a solid base (Reynolds’ favorite joke is to call the show “America’s number one podcast, don’t look it up”), but there’s room to grow. Co-stars from Johnson’s undisclosed forthcoming movie might show up. But regardless, the duo feel good about how the podcast has developed.
“When people listen to our show, they mostly dig it,” Reynolds says, confidently. “Mostly.”
