I don't think I ever played any sports recreationally for my own pleasure. I was bad at them from the start.

We live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.

One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind myself that people hear the show, that it has an audience, that it exists in the world. It's so easy to forget that.

I don't like that whole "art should challenge you" thing. Because I don't feel like art actually does challenge you. I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything.

Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.

We're Jews, my family, and Jews break down into two distinct subcultures: book Jews and money Jews. We were money Jews.

I dont go looking for stories with the idea of wrongness in my head, no. But the fact is, a lot of great stories hinge on people being wrong.