If you’d asked me, “What’s next to this guy, just out of the frame?” and gave me a thousand guesses, there is no way I’m saying, “a lumpy bulldog lou… - John Oliver

[Between] the attempted assassination of a central European leader, and the rise of a far-right party in Germany, Europe really seems to be playing the 20th century hits right now, even if some of their former history teachers refuse to see the similarity.

The deeper you look into these stories, the more flawed you realize things are, systemically. But the more you encounter people work incredibly hard to change things. Like clockwork, at some point during a story, I go into Tim [Carvell]'s office, who I... run the show with, and we'll say "Burn it down. Just burn everything to the ground." 'Cause it feels like things are so bad in a story, only flames are going to purify the hell that we've built for ourselves. But you do then work through that, much like this shitty hot sauce, to realizing that, in lieu of-— even as you're waiting for major change that you think might not come, incremental change is possible, and valuable.

It has to be possible to feel the pain in one community without denying it in another. It has to be! That is perhaps the most necessary precondition for peace because real peace here will clearly be difficult! It's gonna be struggled toward as part of a larger pursuit of justice which will, in turn, require an honest and uncomfortable reckoning with all the decisions that brought us to this point.