My father came from Germany. My mom came from Venezuela. My father's culturally German, but his father was Japanese. I was raised in New York and spent two years in Rio. My parents met at the University of Southern Mississippi, and they had me there, and then we moved to New York. I'm not very familiar with Mississippi.

Panned or not, 'Dune' is a real part of science-fiction filmmaking.

Before 'SNL,' I would do stand-up, opening for Jeff Tweedy. It was worse than bombing in that people were dead silent.

Talking Heads were a big influence on my comedy. For David Byrne, every album had to be different. With 'Portlandia,' every season has to be different. You gotta reinvent the look, all of it.

When I used to see Rick Moranis do something, to me that was immediately funny. Or George Carlin or Martin Lawrence.

I see everything as a positive that can only help me.

People on the street comment on how handsome I am. You know, people stop and say how angular my face is.

Every day, I wanna work on being a better person, not just to others but to myself.

All of my memories are now on hard drives. I'll change phones or I'll change my laptop, and all my photos stay.

My mom is from Venezuela, and my dad is German and Japanese, and we lived in Brazil when I was a kid for a couple of years, and then I grew up on Long Island. I think all the traveling and all the nationalities put that stuff in my head. I was just around it a lot.

Fereydun, that's my dad's name. My grandmother, my dad's mom, when she was pregnant, she was dating a man from Persia, a Persian gentleman. It wasn't his child, but he was still very supportive and said, 'Hey, this is a great name,' and so it stuck. So that's what she named him.

For anyone who has ever asked why the U.S. needs to address the issue of reparations for its history of slavery, Donald Trump is why. He is the living embodiment of America's unresolved issues.

Bombing Syria will achieve nothing.

Internationally, I propose the radical step of not trying to solve complex political problems with 1,000lb bombs; domestically, I propose they start addressing inequality by paying reparations for slavery. I'm well aware that in a society where war and discrimination are now almost entirely normalised, both options sound like madness.

We live in a country where posting 'Let's riot or something bruv!' on Facebook will get you a couple of years in prison, while writing a column saying we should bomb Syria is practically an entrance exam for public intellectuals.

There are many indicators of advanced civilisations, but unthinking hero worship of the military isn't one of them.

To support policies that dehumanise others is to dehumanise yourself.

The SNP are far from radical, but they do have a knack for producing the odd simple, progressive policy that's hard to argue against.

Ed Miliband's anti-immigration stance is odd: it's hard to vote for a man who doesn't have the confidence to defend his own existence.

People hate jokes.

People internalise marketing.

People are medicated and TV is one of the things that they are medicated with.

Isis want to destroy the knowledge that Islam is a beautiful, scientific and intelligent culture, and we are way ahead of them.

The truth is that modern governments sit at the head of a well-funded security apparatus. They are told that foreign military adventures put domestic populations at risk and they give them the thumbs up anyway.