We twist ourselves into knots convincing people that Islam is peaceful and varied before we realize that, wait a second, you can be a Muslim while also recognizing that Islam doesn't even explain half of your behaviors!

We twist ourselves into knots convincing people that Islam is peaceful and varied before we realize that, wait a second, you can be a Muslim while also recognizing that Islam doesn't even explain half of your behaviors!

The biggest challenge in making movies, boring but true answer is money - you never have enough, so everything gets bootstrapped to death! I learned not only how to be better filmmakers because of it but better janitors, better drivers and better negotiators with cops who wanted to shut me down. You have to get creative.

Thanks to the Internet, I think, a lot of hate has moved to more anonymous venues. A lot of people get their aggression out that way. Or they do some drive-by hating—you know, where they’re in a car and they yell something stupid out the window at a stoplight and then take off. It’s just not as involved and laborious to be a hater as it used to be. There’s not as much face-to-face interaction. Facebook’s made ’em lazy.

I one hundred percent recognize that comedy is a more narcissistic profession and that I cannot directly improve people's lives the way I could if I had stayed in the policy world. But the trade-off is that I'm happier doing jokes.

In general, I think there are some things that require time before you can talk about them. Some stuff that happened over the summer, for instance - the Philando Castile shooting, Alton Sterling, the police officers in Dallas - there was no room for jokes. But there are, of course, the policies that have given us those events. Now, there's a lot of room for jokes there. When you're looking at something difficult to talk about, there's always a sideways way in that feels a little less personal to people. That's where the joke lives.

The fundamental truth guiding social justice comedy is that people are not shitty. That sounds cheesy, but that's how I have to approach it. Everybody has the capacity for change.