Creating fake facts does require a measure of haphazard research, insofar as they need to not just be possible, but also interesting.

I don't care if I tell that story and John Roderick gets up afterward and yells, 'I hope you enjoyed the white privilege, mortality comedy of John Hodgman!' That's me!" I'm going to play a sad Handsome Family song at the end and I guarantee you everyone is going to love it because, sometimes, you need a grown man or woman to tell you what you like.

When you're a young person, you are biologically driven to believe you are immortal, and that's why you engage in all kinds of risky behavior you stop once you feel death's cruel breath on your neck. I think that as a straight white man in particular, I was tempted to believe that I was immortal and eternal because, after all, in this culture, straight white dudes are the heroes of every story that you see or read about with very rare exception. So how could the story go on without the hero, you know?

From a very selfish point of view, I'm enchanted by the idea that a politician can come along and speak simply and clearly and truthfully to an electorate as though they are grown-ups and to feel the electorate respond to that.

The reality is that if you want to be in a reality-based community, you've got to respect reality and that means calling it bad when you see the past ahead and it doesn't look good and acknowledging when it's going to work.

You know the old saying: "History is written by the winners. And also, the team of hand-picked historians that the winner keeps hidden away in an underground bunker".

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