Transcript:  I grew up in the Midwest and on the East Coast and I think it’s given me somewhat of the traditional stereotype Midwestern values meaning that I actually moved from the Midwest to New York City, and aside from the real quick shock of being in kind of a metropolitan area you trust people and I think that kind of comes from bringing--  You are deeper than I think the norm on maybe some of the coasts. I live in southern California and a Midwesterner and a southern Californian person are very different. One actually thinks at a deeper level, operates at a little bit longer view, so less trendy.

Recorded on: 9/27/08

It has always been obvious to me that love isn't real. Sure, it's measurable as a chemical reaction in our brains, but everyone close to me has ultimately betrayed me on a very fundamental level. I don't trust anyone. I wasn't raised with secure attachment, so I can't form lasting relationships as an adult.

From a young age it was obvious that I was queer, I'm fortunate to have grown up in the bay area, because in many other places in the world such as the middle east, I would still have to worry being killed for being who I am. I think everybody is a little bit gay, it makes sense since we share so much dna with binobos.

White people have always been very racist against me, in addition I have experienced a great deal of homophobia, in spite of living in the most liberal place in the united states. From a young age it has been obvious to me that white people have damaged the world beyond repair.

I was raised methodist, but christianity has always scared me. I remember when I was a child, my grandma who is catholic took me to a catholic church, I burst into tears immediately and she had to be removed- I knew intuitively that there were people there who wanted to hurt me. I have always seen christianity as a cult, and I have no respect for them. I also have no respect for muslims, I think they're creepy and living in the dark ages. I identify with Jews because they're real. If I had to put my religion into words, I guess I would call myself a Buddhist, although I am interested in other points of view, such as scientology.

I am a postmodern product of capitalism and the media. Money is one of the only things I care about, and I judge people by how much money they have. I think violence is cool, probably because I grew up watching it on tv every day. It sucks how dollar bills are no longer worth shit, and my generation is the one who is trillions of dollars in debt thanks to the generation before us. Generally speaking, I place no faith in politics, in fact I pretend like they don't exist because they're too depressing.

I'm a college student, and my dream is to start a biotech firm (specializing in tissue regeneration, and using genomic medicine to achieve immortality) but I really just want to become a famous scientist in order to get sent into outer space.

Transcript:  I’m from the Upper East Side of New York City, and it’s shaped me because I’m a neurotic, finicky, Upper East Side Jew.  I don’t know.  How has it shaped me?  I was . . . I grew up in the Upper East Side, and I spent a lot of time at Blue Hill Farm in the Berkshires, which was my grandmother’s farm, and now is my brother, and my sister, and my farm in Southern Berkshire County.  And it’s where I spent all the summers.  And I farmed, and I . . . Yeah, I took care of the agriculture end of things growing up.  So I had these two lives, and it’s informed . . . I don’t know.  I mean you know, that was a big . . . I think it was unconsciously like a big reason why I got into cooking and the kind of cooking that I do. My grandmother used to . . . I really loved the spot and . . . She was renting a house at the bottom of this hill.  We’re on top of the hill, and she was at the bottom.  She liked to go out and exercise, and she loved this spot right on the top of Blue Hill Road.  So she used to walk up there every day and ask the two brothers who owned the land if they would ever sell.  And they always thought she was a little kooky.  They said they’d been in three generations and dah, dah, dah.  And then finally after a year or two she got . . . she came up and one of the brothers came running over and said, “Mam, you wanna buy the place?  Buy it now.  We got into the worst fight.  We’re gonna kill each other.”  And she said, “Sure, I’m interested.” He said, “Buy it today or we’re selling it to the bank.”  And so she signed a . . . went down to the real estate person and they signed it that day.  She didn’t even know what she was buying, and it ended up being about 700 acres of this incredible open pastureland, of which we now have about 250, 300 acres. When my grandmother was alive we were pasturing beef cattle.  So you know part of the responsibility was helping to hay the land, and move the cows, and keep them fed.  And then my grandmother did a lot of gardening, so I was responsible for picking, and harvesting, and weeding, and all that stuff.  So that kind of informed my sensibilities today I would imagine.

Recorded on: 2/11/08

Question: Who are you?

My name is David Paul Kuhn.  I’m a Senior Political Writer with Politico.com.  And I’m also the author of “The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma”. Most of my youth was spent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I come from a long family of New Yorkers.  I’m the fifth generation in this city of my family, possibly the sixth generation on one side.  And my father especially was a New Yorker who wanted to get out of . . . raise his kids outside New York.  And when I was in high school I would come here all the time.  I spent many summers in New York City, and I always wanted to move here right away.  And so I was really intent on going to college here.  But because my mom taught at the medical college in Wisconsin as a geneticist, all Wisconsin state schools were free.  And at the time I wanted . . . I didn’t wanna stay in Wisconsin, but it shaped me immeasurably to have stayed in Wisconsin through college because in a deep respect, I understand this country in a way I never could have if I was raised in the city, as much as I love the city; and especially because I went to college there, because they’re such formidable years between 18 and 22.  So I think it really made me understand this country far better.  Also one of my majors was World Religions, so I actually lectured the 101 Religions course which everyone would take.  Because if you were a religious Christian, you’d have to take that to take New Testament courses.  And if you were like a philosophy major and interested in like Zen Buddhism, you had to take that to take any Zen Buddhism courses.  So you would get this amazing mix of students, at least half of which were truly Bible belt, bedrock Christians.  And it’s an entirely massive slice of America I never would have understood if I would have simply stayed here. 

Question: How did you know you wanted to be a journalist?

Transcript: I did at a pretty young age.  It’s very cliché.  I was one of the many people who saw “All the President’s Men” when I was . . . I had to take a summer school course because my parents were academics and I was a very . . . I misbehaved a lot as a boy.  I didn’t take school too seriously.  I took my friends more seriously and sports.  And my parents made me take summer school, so I was like, “Okay, I’ll take journalism.”  And I do think I saw “All the President’s Men”, and I got this concept that I could challenge authority for a living, you know?  And that was, you know, now some 15 years ago if not longer.  And of course, you know, one shifts.  I’m not trying to be Bob Woodward anymore.  But you know you do . . . I do think that I, like a lot of reporters, which is often I think also misunderstood by the general public, went into it with those sort of quixotic intentions.  So it’s . . . You know from a very early age I wanted to be a reporter.  Before that I wanted to be a top gun pilot; a Wall Street broker, I think.  Basically based on movies I would shift my career ambitions.

Recorded on: 2/5/08

Transcript:  There have been a lot of things we haven't been able to do but some of that was just due to, like, time and money, you know?  We'll have these big ideas and then we sometimes can't do it because it's too expensive, you know?  And we don't ever think about that when we're writing it, you know?  We'll just write stuff and think, like, oh, this will be great, you know?  And then we find out, oh, it's going to be $8 million.  What?  For a two-minute sketch?  No, it's not.  So sometimes that's really frustrating.  In terms of, like, the standards people at MTV and stuff like that, it's hard to complain about that, really.  They've actually, I mean, if you watch our show, you'll see that they let us pretty much do whatever we wanted to do.  I mean, they-- you know, even, like, swearing and stuff, we just bleep it and, you know, there are some specific things that you can't do, like, you know, just because kids watch that show, you can't, like, light someone on fire or shoot someone in the face, you know, with a gun so what you have to do is do it in pieces, you know?  You show a shot of the gun, you show someone getting hit with the gun but they have this weird rule that you can't show, you know, a gun bullet connecting because then kids think, oh, I'll go do that.  So the weird way around that is we just show, you know, we show it in pieces and stuff like that.  So violence is a weird thing.  They are pretty specific about what you can and can't do and we definitely found out exactly where that line is.  But, in terms of, like, you know, other stuff, like, we just kind of do it and sort it out later.  There hasn't been too much stuff that we haven't been able to do.  We've had celebrities that we haven't been able to get on the show, which we were, you know, really disappointed by.  We were doing a sketch that we wanted to cast Vin Diesel in and so I sent an email to Vin Diesel's agent and I was, like, you know, please forward this to Vin Diesel, dah, dah, dah, and so I wrote this really effusive email to Vin Diesel.  I was, like, hey, bro, you know, we are such fans, you know, we loved you in, you know, Chronicles of Riddick, we loved you in The Pacifier and we're just, you know, we would love it if you would do this sketch.  And so we sent him the script and then we heard back, seriously, like, three minutes later from his agent, he goes-- his agent wrote this, he goes, "Sorry, bro, this one's not for the Dies."  So I don't know about that.  I love that his agent calls him the Dies. And then we also went out to Tom Selleck for a sketch and we wanted Tom Selleck to do this bit on this show and it was kind of, like, making fun of Magnum and we found out that he doesn't like to make fun of Magnum at all.  In fact, he really doesn't like to talk about Magnum, supposedly.  And then we found out his email address is, like, magnum101@aol.com, you know?  Like, really, the guy that doesn't like to talk about Magnum has Magnum in his email address?  I think he likes it.

Recorded on: 4/1/08

Transcript: I can remember first day of junior kindergarten where I got a little certificate for knowing how to tie my shoe. I was one of the few kids who could tie his own shoe, that was pretty cool, and maybe that set me off on wanting to do well, but it was really in high school, in boarding school, where my wrestling coach, was, was just an inspiration and he made me want to be a teacher one day, cause I figured if any kid ever looked up to me, the way that I looked up to my wrestling coach, I would have done my share in this life. His name was Mr. Buxton and other wrestlers and I have revered him. He was a lion of a man, he was kind
guy, he did right by his wife, I think that set an example to all of us young guys, but he was kind of a quiet strength that really helped us. I was going to boarding school and so when you are away from your parents during much of the year, those role models really mean a lot.

Recorded on: 1/29/08

Transcript:

When I was about four, my grandpa would just kick the ball in the back yard with me. He grew up in Denmark and so there is definitely some European influence in that regard and so that was kind of how is started and then I just started joining youth teams and I haven’t stopped playing since then.

Recorded On: 3/24/08