[My parents] were very interested in social justice issues, and there was a time, very early on, where my mother, I think, actually went to some demonstrations for integrating housing.

The first time I ran for office in 2002, running for governor in Massachusetts against Mitt Romney, we actually worked with a Democratic legislator to file that bill, so that there would be no risk of splitting the vote. The Democrats had about 85% of the Legislature at that time. They could have easily protected their access to the governorship. But they refused to do so. They wouldn't let the bill out of committee.

Remember we had two Democratic houses of Congress along with the [Barack] Obama administration that laid out those policies before they lost Congress because people were very disappointed in what the Obama administration did - bailing out Wall Street instead of bailing out Main Street. So as someone who follows the climate very closely, there's no question that "all of the above" has been an absolute disaster.

That was like the moment of revelation for me that in fact we are not the lunatic fringe.

Where does Donald Trump come from - and it's not just Donald Trump. It's a whole movement of right-wing extremism, not just in this country but also in Europe, which is a response to globalization, to the financialization of our economy, you know, to the trade agreements that throw working people under the bus.

I was really intrigued by how - sort of the common themes and sort of the blend among music, and that was sort of my real interest was, at one point, musically, was how you could weave those different kinds of songs and traditions together.

We have a First Amendment for good reasons. We need a free press because without an educated electorate we cannot have a functioning democracy.