I've never met anyone with a perfect upbringing. It seems to me that life on planet Earth just doesn't work that way. The basic challenges of getting our needs met and managing boundaries are inherent in growing up human.

There were a lot of video store owners and managers out of work, once pornography became more about streaming and downloads. But the other thing is that there are a lot of people who make money by finding a place to stand and add almost nothing. It's particularly ironic if your job title is pimp. On some level, in a healthier world where sex work could be rationalized and the risk reduced, your whole job title would be extraneous anyway. It's not exactly a point of great grievance if you're a pimp that suddenly your prostitutes don't require the same level of reliance.

To be told you've won a MacArthur fellowship is very flattering and gratifying personally.

A TV show can't hold people and institutions to account like good journalism can.

If I had to guess and put a name on it, I'd say that at some point, the drug war was as much a function of class and social control as it was of racism.

TV writers live life of well-paid, specialty prostitutes. We have a very special skill set and we occupy one of the higher floors in the bordello that is writing. We do a very particular job for a very select clientele.

The murder clearance rate now in my city Baltimore is almost non-existent. Nobody can solve a murder, nobody can do any actual police work, because they've learned how to do bad police work, chase drugs. Fighting vice, while being unable to respond to sin. Generations of cops have learned how not to police work by policing the drug war. Not only are they police brutal, they're ineffective. Baltimore is more violent than it has ever been in modern history.