Jobs' incredible skill was as a storyteller, a salesman. He could captivate our imaginations and reel us in. He was more P.T. Barnum than Thomas Edison.

What made so many people so upset when Steve Jobs died was that he was a kind of combination of daddy - in this relationship between the machine and ourselves - and also he was our guide. He was the one who led us to look into the mirror. He created these devices that became extensions of ourselves. Suddenly, he wasn't going to hold our hand as we went from product to product, which became increasingly about who we were.

I come from a filmmaking tradition and a storytelling background. So somehow I've emerged like a mutant who can straddle both worlds.

The Barack Obama Administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. That's a staggering record. And it comes from a president who said that he's going to have one of the most transparent administrations ever.

You see the natural progression of what happens when the executive gets power and then a new executive comes in. The new executive doesn't say, "Oh, man. The president has just got too much power. We're going to dial that back." No, they expand the power. It's like, "He didn't use it well, so I'm going to take more power and use it better because I'm a better guy and my values are better." Then you suddenly realize that the very people who were attacking Guantánamo prior to getting into office are now the people expanding an assassination program overseas.

Suicides aren't heroic in my opinion. And I don't think anybody ever really knows why somebody commits suicide.

In many ways, I'm a big admirer still of Julian Assange. He had balls to do what he did and his motivations in terms of holding the powerful to account are tremendously inspiring to me.