That was my dad's sense of, you know, laughing at himself, laughing at existence, the universe, all of it and not being too serious about what we do with because at the end of the day if you're here it's a blessing. It's you know life is hard. Life is hard for everybody at some point, but it's those who are able to laugh at it and laugh with it and roll with it that ultimately I think live the fulfilling lives that we're all trying to do. You know, and big step there is to not take yourself too seriously from the start.

I remember talking to my dad about legalization in a book we did together called "The Big Empty." He was saying like, "Oh, no, no, as soon as it's legalized it will be ruined." "The corporations will get their hands on it. You'll have, you know, pot with vitamin C and, you know, 'Viagratized High Toke.'" You know different things like that. That it won't be, you know, they'll put chemicals into it. It won't be that pure plant that it is now. He may have a good point there.

There were so many different factions and that's I think what my father was taking issue with was the idea of, look, you can't go from male dominance to female dominance and expect anything to be better. We're all shits, ultimately, and we've got to do the best we can together.

I think that ultimately when life is not tragedy it should be a party and if you've faced the real stuff, if you've faced the ones closest to you being at death's door, passing on, you know, not to let the small stuff really harsh your mellow, as you put it.

I think that Anderson Cooper does a great job of staying with stories and pushing them. New Orleans he really... He was there and he pushed it past the point where his producers were saying, "Listen, you've got to stop because people are tuning out now. You know, we're on to another disaster." You know, what do you worry about, Haiti, Chile, Turkey? What? You know where do you put your attention and your focus? So for one person to really be able to cover all that ground would be tough.

I would say the only one person I know of who kind of combines the elements that my father brought to the table in terms of affecting the public discourse would be Oliver Stone. His combination of academic brilliance and real life experience and just understanding people I think is what makes him such a great storyteller, but also he cares. He is interested. He meets somebody and he listens to them. He has some questions. He wants to know what they're about. And as a result I think his worldview is much more complex and whole and most of the other.

We've been duped into believing we don't have 25 minutes to have something change our life. We don't have 2. You know, we're tweeting. We're running around. We're 15 words or less.