Governments are different, and philosophies are different, but when it comes down to it, a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher is a schoolteacher. A butcher is a butcher is a butcher. We are people. And we are far more common than we ever imagine.

I love comedy. I love the absurdity of it. I love the kind of intelligence that's required to be dumb in comedy.

I was 15 when Chernobyl happened, I've been vaguely thinking about it for most of my life. But somewhere around 2015, it occurred to me that I didn't know how it happened, which seemed like a pretty bizarre lapse in my understanding of the world and how it functions.

In the case of 'Chernobyl,' we're telling a story of a government that runs on lies the way cars run on fuel, and there are people who ultimately end up paying the price for those lies - and a certain culture of denial is in place, and the degradation of expertise is in place.

Consider radiology. Technology is going to reduce the use of those machines because doctors aren't going to need to send patients two or three times for radiology. They're going to have access to what the previous specialist took. There's also going to be devices that are coming out that are much less costly.

The dissemination of advanced implantable technology will likely be just as ruthlessly democratic as the ailments it is destined to treat. Meaning that, someday soon, we may have a new class of very smart, very fast people - yesterday's disabled and elderly.

When I moved to New York City to go college, my mother said, 'If you want to be recognized, you need to go out to a club.' Because we didn't have computers. We didn't have social media. We didn't even have cellphones. So you had to go out to be recognized.

While the federal government is required by law to document publicly its wiretapping of phone lines, it is not required to do so with Internet communications.