🎙️Episode 27 - John Corbett 🎬 (Northern Exposure ❄️, Sex and the City 🗽, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 🇬🇷)
Chopping It Up with Keith Saarloos · Released January 05, 2026 · Santa Ynez Valley, California
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About this conversation
This one felt surreal.
Before Chopping It Up was ever a show, before there was a microphone or a Saturday morning slot, there was Northern Exposure — and a guy on the radio in Cicely, Alaska who made silence okay.
John Corbett played Chris Stevens, and without knowing it at the time, he helped shape how I think about conversation.
Not arguing.
Not winning.
Just sitting with an idea long enough for it to matter.
So having John sit across from me wasn’t a press tour or a list of credits.
It was just two guys talking — about luck, patience, saying yes, almost quitting, starting over, and choosing the long arc instead of the shortcut.
We talk about:
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Almost walking away from acting before Northern Exposure changed everything
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A Jack in the Box commercial that altered the course of his life
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Becoming famous overnight in Seattle during the birth of grunge
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Turning down Sex and the City… until one conversation changed his mind
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Music, touring, loading gear, and driving every mile himself
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Why routines you actually enjoy might be the real definition of success
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And why the cure for the last five years might be embarrassingly simple:
stand in line, talk to people, say yes
John isn’t trying to sell anything.
Neither am I.
This is just a reminder that the best conversations still happen when we slow down and let them.
If you’ve ever loved Northern Exposure…
If you’ve ever felt the world speed up too fast…
If you miss when things felt more human…
This one’s for you.
🎧 Chopping It Up — John Corbett
Listen. Share. Say yes.
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John Corbett photograph by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0. Displayed in black and white with a crop; photographic adaptation under the same license. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Corbett_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg
