Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that.

I write funny nonfiction adventure books about crazy, serious worlds.

Sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

Friends are the fruitcake of life - some nutty, some soaked in alcohol, some sweet.

Feeling no remorse must be a blessing when all you have are your memories

There's definitely evidence that capitalism at its most ruthless rewards psychopathic behavior. When you look at the worst corners of the American health insurance industry or the sub-prime banking market, it really feels like the more psychopathically someone behaves, the more it's rewarded.

It is an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane than it is to convince them you're crazy.