I remember our conversations [with Zachary Quinto] always being frustrated that we weren't doing what we wanted to do, but also filled with the determination that we were going to overcome that.
I remember Zachary Quinto were just about to go and do So Notorious on VH1, and I was super unemployed, and I think we spent a lot of time talking about how we weren't particularly happy.
My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time. He was always so frustrated having to work to support the family that I was like, I'm never going to do that. I don't want to just be working a menial job to support my family and dreaming of being an artist. We learn from our fathers in that way.
It's funny that you [Zachary Quinto] did a monologue from Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead. I did the same thing for my university when I went to USC.
My partner, Jeff Ullrich, and I always thought Earwolf was going to be big. There were a couple of studies before we launched saying podcasts were going to really grow. But I remember so many conversations at the beginning where people would say, 'How are you going to make money with this?'
There is always this interesting relationship we have with technology. When we invented writing Socrates used to say it was going to rot our brains because we were going to write everything down and not have to remember anything, and so it would atrophy our brains. So there has always been this human drive on the one hand to create tools, to create technologies to overcome our boundaries, but then there is always this reservation, and this fear that say these technologies are somehow unnatural and it is against nature to partake in them.
We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.
My dad was always such a frustrated artist. He always worked very hard to support his family, doing a bunch of ridiculous jobs. He wanted to be a painter, but then he also wrote science-fiction novels in his spare time.
I always remember my mom saying she wanted a son, so I basically filled that position, like, being outside and always having dirt underneath my nails. I was never afraid of getting dirty and grimy.
When I'm feeling frustrated with a story, I have faith that it's going to come. Also, when I first started writing, I wanted to write the stories that were not in my childhood, to represent people who hadn't historically been represented in literature.
It just struck me as really odd that there were all of these conversations going on about what young women were up to. Were young women having too much sex? Were young women politically apathetic? Are young women socially engaged or not? And whenever these conversations were happening, they were mostly happening by older women and by older feminists. And maybe there would be a younger woman quoted every once in a while, but we weren't really a central part of that conversation. We weren't really being allowed to speak on our own behalf.
We should, all of us, be filled with gratitude and humility for our present progress and prosperity. We should be filled with awe and joy at what lies over the horizon. And we should be filled with absolute determination to make the most of it.
I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that the books that filled the house were not as interesting as the conversations outside.
My dad was in these pretty big films that were relevant to my age group. I remember him doing 'Richie Rich' when I was eight-years-old, and then 'Jumanji.' I remember going to these sets, and I loved being on film sets. I just found it fascinating watching how stories were made.
I remember serving in Vietnam in that war, and many of us at the major Lieutenant Colonel, colonel level were frustrated that no one in the U.S. wanted to debate it that way.
I was always fascinated by the Torah, the Bible, in terms of story telling: heroes and villains, morality and flaws. There's no better epic. Also, being part Latin and Jewish means I have a sense of the theatrical. There were always a lot of people in my house. My home was always filled with a lot of storytellers.
I wanted to be different and original but still have it be something my fans could get into. There also are some big, beautiful ballads. I told my producers that I wanted tracks that are going to blow up in the clubs, but I also wanted songs that were very melodic and with a lot of instrumentation.