Sometimes people will ask a real "Why are you beating your wife?" question where there's some assumption built into it, and all you're trying to do is kind of re-contextualize it with some element of truth, and it comes across as incredibly defensive, or just really weird.

We've been a band longer than most of the people reading this have been alive.

We're affable guys in They Might Be Giants. We're not gonna do the periscope-down thing, but it's a little bit mind-bending. The biggest struggle is trying to figure out a way to back up far enough in your answer that it can be read without the context of the question. Every declarative statement you see that comes out of an interview with somebody is actually in response to a question. So it's sort of like this very real interpersonal dance where one of the people involved is invisible.

A lot of times I'll post things on Facebook, and the immediate response will be like, "Stick to the music!"

If you're looking at the array of performers, there's just a lot of people that it's about getting closer to them. That's not really our focus. It's funny, with the kids' stuff, we really sell ourselves as the MC, but it's much more like we're Ed Sullivan than we're like Sting. We're just the presenters. And that's an idea that we're very comfortable with.

Between me and my wife, there's this joke where I'll be doing some fun interview, and I'll get off the phone and be like, "That guy was an idiot." A lot of times, interviews are like being asked a list of questions. Invariably, there will be this part where they think you're a writer for Letterman: "Just off the top of your head, tell me the 10 most influential bands on you." And you're actually asked to come up with a spontaneous list. It's like, "Dude, I'm not living in High Fidelity."

Actually, on a slightly more serious but kind of parallel level, I remember being on Loveline before both hosts ascended into loftier places in the culture. But I remember being shocked by Dr. Drew. He went into this extended monologue about how anyone with a baby voice is probably the victim of child abuse or has some daddy issue. As an intellectually curious person, all I could think is that there isn't any clinical evidence about that. But to be the guy wearing the doctor's hat on the radio and teaching everybody about this? It just seemed like a parody of good advice.