If I want people to be empathetic to my struggle - they don't see hate crimes at the mosque, they don't see people screaming at their cousins, brothers, or sisters who wear a hijab to "go back to your country" - I have to do the same.

My biggest inspiration is black America and what they've done in the arts. I have always felt like an outsider in America, and what black Americans have done to add their chapter to this book called the American dream, and to be so unapologetic and true, and have added so much to art and culture in the world. Some of the greatest inspirations in my life have been black Americans. And I just wanted to say thank you. They've been a huge inspiration, to myself and this country.

At first, it was really weird after being a touring stand-up comedian that wears just jeans and a shirt. But now, it's almost like when you go from Clark Kent to Superman: "All right, I've got to go put on a suit and interview Justin Trudeau." It feels like it's part of the process. Oddly enough, I've been in enough places - they sometimes send you to places that are a bit scary - that I know how to run in a suit. Like, run fast.

A lot of times, especially when it comes to political debates, people get caught up in esoteric statistics. So the realest thing I can do that has nothing to do with numbers is tell you my personal experience.

If I were a medical doctor, I would probably be a dermatologist, because they have great work-life balance. Not because I'm passionate about people's skin. They have great hours. I have friends who are dermatologists, and they tell me it's great.

Be as honest with yourself as possible, and try to make friends with people who like you for you - not an iteration of who you are, or who you think you should be - but really like you for you. And when you're creating whatever you want to do in your life, just try to create and put out the truest version of yourself into the world.

I try to look at it like an angry optimist. In other words, I'm not happy with the state of affairs that we have. The rise of nationalism under the guise of patriotism is so effed up, and underneath this banner of "patriotism" is the worst of nationalist rhetoric: racism, xenophobia, sexism, pitting communities against each other, implicitly inciting race wars and stuff like that. So that's the angry part of it, but I'm incredibly optimistic about the potential to redefine what it means to be a "patriotic American" .