I’m not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really…because we’re just not that different. So if you think, ‘Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can’t possibly talk about that,’ and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, ‘that happened to me!’

The Smithsonian has always been able to rise above the political moment. I don’t see anything that stops that process.

Signal might be a good app for you and me and our local drug dealer, but it’s not for the Pentagon to plan wars on.

In a democracy, that’s the only realistic path to Net Zero. Consent, not imposition. Honesty, not obfuscation. Pragmatism, not ideology.

In the past, human progress had to come at the cost of the environment. If we wanted energy, we had to burn wood or we had to burn fossil fuels. If we wanted to grow more food, we had to expand farmland, often at the cost of forests. But technology and innovation means we're very quickly decoupling these impacts, such that this conflict is no longer true.

There is nothing that's off limits. If people think something is off limits, I make it my business to go make a joke about it; that's my job.

Is there anyone out there? Or am I all alone? It wouldn’t make a difference; still, I don’t wanna know.

If you don't know what you're living for, you haven't yet lived.

There’s an interesting trend that occurs in times of mounting pressure and high uncertainty, which is that it’s a natural human tendency to seek out people that agree with us, that are similar to us because it’s a source of comfort in a world that’s so rapidly changing.