The Official Adventures in Odyssey Podcast

Bob: Hello Odyssey, I'm Bob.

Jesse: And I'm Jesse. Welcome to the official Adventures in Odyssey podcast.

Bob: Coming up on the podcast, we've got totally random questions for a totally radical guest: Jess Harnell.

Jesse: But first, here's the latest news. A brand new Imagination Station book, *Hope in the Ashes*, comes out September 1st.

Bob: This time, Patrick and Beth arrive in Chicago in the midst of a raging fire sweeping across the city. They learn how tough times challenge us to be the people God made us to be.

Jesse: You can find *Hope in the Ashes* and all the books in the Imagination Station series on the Focus on the Family e-store.

Bob: All right, now let's get to today's main event: TRQs with Jess Harnell.

Jesse: Bob, it seems that TRQs have kind of taken on a life of their own. Weren't you the one who invented the term?

Bob: I guess so. It really started out years ago when we were getting these kinds of questions in the comment section of the club anyway. "What's your favorite kind of cheese?"

We thought why not solicit more and that way people could really build a bank of them, and then we'd be able to ask them at random to our guests without letting them know in advance what those questions were. So it's very much on the spot and it's always fun for listeners also to be able to listen to the podcast and maybe even hear their question and hear their username.

Jesse: For a long time, it was just one question per interview, but they were so much fun, we've done several podcasts with nothing but TRQs.

Bob: I love these because though the questions are random, you get to know the guests in a way that you never would with non-random answers.

Jesse: Well, let's get to know Jess Harnell a little bit better right now.

Bob: On the phone with us today is Jess Harnell and Jess is with us to talk about some totally random stuff. Jess, welcome to the podcast again.

Jess Harnell: Hi, totally random stuff.

Jesse: Speaking of random, we're going to kick it off right from the start. A question from Book and Puppy Lover wants to know: have you ever touched a dolphin?

Jess Harnell: Yes, I have touched a dolphin several times. I've been swimming with dolphins on numerous occasions, and if I could, I'd move one in with me but we really don't have the right space for it.

Bob: Maybe a jolly dolphin or a happy porpoise? That may have come from an episode.

Jesse: We also have a question about licorice, speaking of Wooton. "Do you actually like licorice?" This is from GH892157.

Jess Harnell: I would repeat that name, but there were far too many digits involved. I do like licorice, I like any kind of candy. You can find some fun licorices sometimes that are apple-flavored or cherry-flavored or root beer-flavored. I always get the biggest kick out of those because they're kind of weird, like Wooton. But my favorite candy in my own personal life are Hot Tamales, those little cinnamon candies. Love them. Those are my favorite ones.

Jesse: This is maybe more of a professional type totally random question. This comes from Not Like Eugene 100, wants to know: how many impressions can you do in a minute?

Jess Harnell: To actually rattle them off, I think I'd probably need a list to get through them, especially if we're doing a timed thing like that. But I do probably, if you include cartoon characters, I probably do 200, 300 impressions.

And if I was just saying names, like if I said Christopher Walken and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Albert Brooks and just went through voices and rattled off voices like that and just said names, I could probably do about 75 of them. But again, I'd probably want a cheat sheet because my short-term memory isn't that great.

Bob: Let's focus on a single sound. Super Fan Number Uno wants to know: what's the weirdest sound you've made?

Jess Harnell: I make them all the time. I just did a cartoon this morning, and I did some yells. I was playing this kind of imp character that was getting in people's heads and giving them all kinds of bad advice. It was pretty fun.

But at one point, they destroyed him with a blast or something like that, and I was just making these sounds like, "Waaaah-ba-ba-ba!" How do you spell that? I have the only job in the world where you actually see the words "blood-curdling scream" on a daily basis and where I make sounds like that on a daily basis and there's really no explanation for them. I don't know where they come from and I certainly don't know how to spell them.

Jesse: Let's test that short-term memory or that long-term memory, I should say, because this question is from Brownies Forever. "What's the weirdest noise you've ever had to make for Wooton?"

Jess Harnell: When you start a new project, you never know what it's going to hold, where it's going to go, how long you're going to do it for. I think we've been doing Wooton now for 25 years. And what's fascinating about it is how characters evolve over that amount of time.

Wooton, first of all, he's become sort of vocally schizophrenic because he does Captain Absolutely sometimes and he turns into a big superhero. Out of being Wooton and talking like this, all of a sudden he's doing this kind of thing. So he's changing all the time.

But things evolved with him in funny ways, like when he drops something on his toe, he screams almost like a girl, he goes, "Baaaaah!" And of course, when he laughs, he snorts. He does this snort laugh, which it wasn't like it was in the script and we said, "Let's have him snort." I just started laughing and went, "Ooh, this is fun!" So these little weird sounds that become sort of like a fingerprint or a footprint of a character, they just come about organically. So my favorite weird sound for Wooton, though, is the snort laugh just because I've had so many little kids come up to me and do it and most of them do it better than me.

Bob: Lydia wants to know, of course you are a man of many talents, but she wants to know: what's the most useless talent you secretly wished you had?

Jess Harnell: I'll tell you what would be a great talent, and if they could sell this, I think people would make a lot of money. All you guys out there who can put your head on the pillow at night and fall right to sleep and stay asleep, that's a talent. It's not useless, but boy, would I pay for that.

Jesse: But you are a multi-talented person. You talk about singing and of course your voice work. Leah wants to know if you play any instruments.

Jess Harnell: I play the instrument that I have, which is me. I chose being a lead singer not only because I like to sing, but because I had to carry the least amount of equipment. All I've got to carry is a microphone and a microphone stand and I can show up and everybody else has all these speaker cabinets and drum sets and things like that and I'm pretty much self-contained.

Bob: This interview is starting to sound a little bit too normal. We've got to get more random. What do you say, Jess?

Jess Harnell: Sure, get really random here.

Bob: GY70543 wants to know this, Jess, and this is about the most random question I think I've ever asked on this program. "What is your favorite extension cord color?"

Jess Harnell: My favorite color in general would have to be ocean turquoise, but I don't think they make extension cords in that. If they did, I'd buy them. So that would be my answer: ocean turquoise. But I don't know if it would work underwater, so it might be anticlimactic.

Jesse: I've got gross and random here from a person who I relate to because their handle is World's Okayest Volleyball Player. They want to know: if you found an old jelly bean on the floor of your vehicle, would you eat it?

Jess Harnell: It depends. If it was old as in I was snacking on them 30 seconds previously, there's a chance. If it showed up and it was like, "Oh, I remember those jelly beans from a drive-in movie 15 years ago," chances are I would not. I tend to live by the five-second rule, but sometimes I adapt it to fifteen if I'm in a good mood.

Bob: Joyride Wayfinder Fan 14 wants to know: what is the weirdest thing you own?

Jess Harnell: Everything I own is weird. I was doing a Comic-Con once and I met some folks from the Henson Company, the people who do the Muppets. They said, "We like your look," so they offered to make a Muppet of me and they sent me a Muppet from the Henson Company of me that looks just like me. And is dressed like me and is wearing my stuff. So that was pretty cool. I think that's the weirdest thing I own.

Bob: Do you have a picture of that? Of course, can we include that maybe on the website? I think the fans would love to see that.

Jess Harnell: Of course they can. I highly recommend if you have a chance to get a Muppet of yourself, you should do it because it's awesome.

Jesse: This gets a little personal, but it also relates to your answer that you just gave us. This is from The Best Character is Jared. Asks: why do you have long hair?

Jess Harnell: I've had long hair since I was eight years old, and I think that's probably a reason that I still have it because I've never really cut it. A lot of my buddies that I grew up with when I was in bands in the eighties and stuff like that, they had long hair too and they all cut it and it never grew back. So I think I dodged a bullet.

But I'll add to it that I basically always said I don't want to do what everybody else is doing. And it's cool because I've had kids come up to me sometimes and they say things like, "Why do you wear your hair so long? Why do you wear crazy clothes? Why do you wear so much jewelry? You wear more jewelry than my grandma." And I'm like, "Yes, I understand that."

But the thing is, if everybody else is already doing the same thing, then that's covered and you don't need me to do it too. And I tell kids that a beautiful thing in life is finding out what makes you uniquely you and doing that. Because if you like the idea of this, I've always enjoyed standing out more than I enjoyed standing back. One of the reasons that I have long hair is because not everyone does.

Bob: And not everyone can. Bob has a puppet too, and we should put that next to it and it has less hair than yours.

Jess Harnell: Before and after, there you go.

Bob: Here's a question from Music Cat. "Where do you most want to travel to?"

Jess Harnell: Good question, Music Cat. Well, the funny thing is I have been almost everywhere over the course of my life and it's a blessing. My thing is now at this point in my life, I love being places, I don't like going places. It's like all this stuff that goes along with it, with the airplane delays and airport traffic and airport craziness and them losing your bags and the air conditioning being broken in the hotel.

I like being home because I know where everything is and everything works. So I really like that. But there are a few places that I haven't yet been that I think would be really cool to go. One of those places is Tokyo. I've never been to Japan, I think I might get over there sometime.

And I think my wife and I have always wanted to and we probably will get around to going to Fiji and getting one of those places where you have the cabin that you look right down into the water. So I haven't done that, but I've been pretty much everywhere else and there's a lot of nice places out there and I highly recommend seeing them. But after you've seen about 150 of them, you start going, "Okay, I'm good," and that's kind of where I'm at now.

Jesse: Home is nice, I can agree.

Jess Harnell: Home sweet home.

Jesse: Sour Patch Kid 2026 asks: have you ever broken your collarbone?

Jess Harnell: No, I haven't. Why, do you have any ideas? Do you recommend it? How oddly specific. I wonder maybe they saw a picture and I was tilting my head at a weird angle.

Even just thinking about that idea is painful because part of what I do when I do my job, I move around behind the mic and I also position my head in different ways to do different voices. So if my collarbone was messed up, I probably couldn't do any voices anymore and I'd lose all my powers. So I've got to be careful with that collarbone, Sour Patch.

Smells Show asks: what is your favorite carnival ride?

Jess Harnell: Best carnival ride I ever went on in my whole life, and I only saw it once and I should have bought it and put it in the yard. This was the best carnival ride ever of all time. Although you've got to be careful with carnival rides because who's really doing quality control at some of those? But I digress.

The best one I ever went on, and I'm not even making this up, it was so cool. You went in there and they had wooden boards like planks. You laid down on your tummy on the plank and they strapped you in. Your feet were dangling off from the knee down and you could extend your arms in the air. So the plank would come up to about right below your neck to right about your knee and you're laying there.

Then it starts going around in circles and you're on these poles and all of a sudden the poles start going up and down and higher and higher. It really felt legitimately like I was flying. So I went on that carnival ride like seven times in a row. I just kept going back and back.

Bob: How old were you when you did that? Do you remember when that was? It sounds like two weeks ago.

Jess Harnell: That was about 10 years ago now and I would do it again every day. If I could find that carnival ride, I'd give it all up and join the carnival just so I could ride that every day.

Bob: I'm glad you lived. It sounds very DIY.

Jess Harnell: It was DIY, but it was also FLY because I was up there, man. It was great.

Jesse: This relates. This comes from A Nerd By Definition Only. Asks: do you like roller coasters?

Jess Harnell: Love roller coasters, always have, always will. I live in California and it's got one of the greatest roller coaster parks in the entire world, which is Magic Mountain out in Valencia. And again, I think they're more awesome when they're owned by really, really rich corporations because the quality control is higher than at a carnival. But yeah, I love roller coasters, man. They're amazing.

Bob: I can't imagine that there's a holiday that you don't like. But do you have a favorite? This is a question from Eli Guy.

Jess Harnell: My absolute favorite holiday has to be Christmas. My wife had this great idea. She said that we're going to celebrate Christmas twice a year. So we have June Christmas because I love it so much and I can't stand having to wait until December. We wear Christmas pajamas in the middle of June, watch Christmas movies, have Christmas snacks, and listen to Christmas music the whole week.

A lot of people do like to do that. They'll celebrate their own half-birthday, and you're celebrating Jesus' half-birthday. Exactly. Christmas has all this other great stuff going for it because you've got presents and lights and music and Rudolph and all these other things. And then you've got the fact that we're celebrating the greatest gift of all time on top of all the rest of it. So Christmas wins.

I'll tell you something else that's funny. When I was a kid, I watched all the Christmas shows you could imagine. I know them all by heart. About 20 years ago, they were recasting some classic voices from *Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer* for some ancillary products like video games, talking toys, and talking books. So I got to be the guy that was, "I'm going to be a dentist!" I got to be Hermey and sing, "I am not just a misfit." Between you and me, I would have done that for free, but I'm glad they paid me. It was the coolest thing.

Jesse: This one might relate to your Fiji answer. This is from Dude Perfect Fan Forever. "What three things would you bring with you to a deserted island?"

Jess Harnell: First of all, I'd bring my wife because she's my best buddy and I don't really go anywhere without her. I would bring some books, but if I could only bring one book, I'd bring the Bible. There are many other books that I love too, but if I could only bring one, that's the one that I'd bring.

And then I would absolutely bring my computer because my computer has so much work that I've done in it that would keep me busy forever. Plus it's got my iTunes in there and I think last time I checked, I had like 85,000 songs. I can't be without music and I can't be without reading and I can't be without my wife. And obviously, I can't be without God, but God goes with me wherever I go, so I'm cool there.

Bob: We're going to wrap it up with one that is kind of like a Wooton question. "If you, like Wooton, wrote a comic book," asks G Kids and H6, "what would it be about?"

Jess Harnell: The first thing I'd do if I was going to write a comic book is I'd consult with Wooton, which isn't hard because he lives in my head. I would probably write about a guy who had no really discernible job skills whatsoever, but who still managed to live the dreams that he had when he was a little kid because he knew what they were and he never gave up on them. And it would be autobiographical.

Jesse: Love that answer. Jess, thank you. I mean, these answers have been fantastic. Very random and very fun.

Bob: We all do and I know all the fans love hearing from you. They love Wooton and they love you, so thank you for your time today.

Jess Harnell: It's an honor and thank you very much for having me. I want you to know the greatest gift of the voice-over side of my job, as opposed to the singing side, which is a different set of circumstances, is when people come up and they say you were a part of my childhood.

Because of the grace of God and the fact that I have managed to continue to work as much as I have managed to work for decades now—which amazes me more than anybody, believe me—means that I've gotten to be a childhood for lots of different generations. The parents know my stuff and the kids know my stuff and sometimes the grandparents know my stuff, which boggles my mind.

But Adventures in Odyssey, as opposed to almost any cartoon or movie or video game that I've done, families have grown up with Adventures in Odyssey. Their kids have gone from being little kids to being parents with children of their own, and they listen to Adventures in Odyssey together. And that is such a unique set of circumstances for of us all to be unbelievably proud and honored to be a part of. So the Adventures in Odyssey folks love Wooton and Wooton loves them right back and we are so happy that the Adventures in Odyssey family is as big and as beautiful and as loving as it is.

Jesse: Jess Harnell and Wooton Bassett, such multi-layered characters, sort of like a delicious cake. I love hearing about both of them.

Bob: And you can hear more from Wooton in our next club adventure. Tell us about that one, Chris.

Chris: Now on the Adventures in Odyssey Club, Connie has a new initiative as manager of Whit's End.

Connie: I've decided that I'd like to hear from the people, the customers.

Penny: So you're putting out a suggestion box?

Chris: But Penny notices something about the suggestions they find inside.

Penny: So this person is...

Wooton: Exactly like me! Do you know what this means?

Penny: What?

Wooton: I have to find this person!

Chris: Follow Penny's search for herself now on the Adventures in Odyssey Club.

Bob: You can hear "Suggestion Box" in the Adventures in Odyssey Club starting September 3rd.

Jesse: That's all for this edition of the official Adventures in Odyssey podcast, a presentation of Focus on the Family.

Bob: Visit us online at adventuresinodyssey.com or call us at 1-800-A-FAMILY. I'm Bob.

Jesse: And I'm Jesse. Reminding you that with God in your life, every day is an adventure.