For a long time, I would write without music, because I thought it was distracting until I appreciated that it actually unlocks a certain unconscious productivity vault in my mind.

Tonally, there was no discussion; I just don’t know any other way to do it. I don’t want to make people feel bad, and I don’t want to make their problems into a joke. I do love telling people when they’re right and wrong, but for the most part, it was always going to be about real fights where people have a real difference of opinion and a real dispute. I want to make jokes, but I also want to make a decision that is fair.

You know, I began my life as a creative person writing true things for magazines and telling some very honest, straightforward personal essaying for This American Life, but until someone forces you, with a deadline, to really observe your life - unless you're motivated to do it yourself - there's so many stories that you miss.

My biggest superhero of writing is Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine fabulist. He's an amazingly perceptive writer, but also willing to make a joke.

I would be good for maybe not the center square but an upper square on 'Hollywood Squares.'

I had some very, very fond memories of the people I worked with and the authors I worked with - and I won't mention any names - but as I have been traveling through rural Maine over the past few weeks, one of my favorite things to do is to go into bookstores on the side of rural routes and paw through the old copies of Tom Clancy and Trevanian books they have in there for weird old 1970s thrillers that I haven't read yet.

I suspect that when the truth ceases to be heartbreakingly funny, we will be in a better place and a happier society over all.