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.

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."

That really sums up the strange bluntness that a really prime German interview can have. They're really interested in your cultural velocity in this way that I don't think people in the United States even necessarily think about alternative-rock bands. So it's not like we're against regular rock. We're not like a battling army shaking our weapons against The Rolling Stones.

This happened years and years ago, right as our videos were first being played on MTV. The interviewer said, "You guys are getting famous now. Are you going to be riding around in limousines, doing drugs, and sleeping with beautiful women?" And I was a precocious young man, and my snappy comeback to that cheerful question was, "We're willing to sleep with beautiful women." But no part of the question was in the article.

To a lot of people, angels are a matter of faith.

I think that the most effective social protest that any artist can do would be things that come naturally and feel obvious. I think the Resist movement will continue among people who believe in science, who believe in rights for women, who believe in civil rights.

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