In an interview John [Linnell] said, 'At a certain point you just get tired of the way the other person breathes,' and I took that pretty hard because I, personally, am infatuated with the way John breathes.

You have to define how much of a cultural politician you are as a performer. There are times where I just want to remain a civilian.

Every declarative statement that comes out of an interview with somebody is actually in response to a question. It's like this very real interpersonal dance where one of the people involved is invisible.

It's always interesting to me when one platform of media crosses into another. We've been on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air a couple of times, and I suddenly felt like we could actually represent ourselves as exactly who we are, in this sort of ultra-vivid way. But the weird thing to me is that the questions she asks are in some ways no different than the questions the guy from the high-school paper asks. She might even ask us where we got our name. But something about it, it's like the pH balance of the trajectory of the questions. Maybe it's just her voice.

I think the biggest wrestling match-up I have is how to respond to the word "quirky." Or the alternate, "nerdy." Both are essentially benign to the reader, but if you're a writer just sort of involved in your creative process, they seem like very small motivations.

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.

It's hard to tell a shallow person that they should care more about the feelings of the awkward and the alienated.