There's a marketing scheme that tells you that pregnancy and child rearing will make you into a moron, that your kids are only happy when you're buying them stuff. It's hard being a parent, but I laugh a lot and smile a lot and really enjoy it. The ratio of laughter to sadness is higher. There's part of me that wants to broadcast that. Parenting only affirmed what I already cared about, and that's good.

What happened on "As Cool As I Am" was, you know how in the `90s, "the personal is political, the political is personal"? That was a really big thing. Choices you made about how you recorded and what instruments you used and how much real versus how much synthetic. Those were choices that were seen as very political at the time.

What we need to do is pull the rug out so billionaires in our country wake up one morning and say, wow, 80 percent of the country has a solar panel, and we can't make our billions anymore because other people are making millions, but not billions, on alternative energy that doesn't require war. Suddenly, the war-making machinery is not necessary.

A song versus an album is not like a scene versus a play.

I try to be careful not to do single concerts where I fly out, do my show, turn around and go home.

I would encourage people to bridge broadly and creatively in their communities, not just because that creates the most fun and resiliency, but also because it creates the most points of access for people to be part of the community, which is what democracy is at its best.

I'm just trying to be part of the movement that decentralizes and hopefully creates peace. By supporting smaller, democratic structures, you can effect change.