There's no more exciting moment for me as a brand strategist than a turnaround.
I was deputy assistant to the president. My job was strategist in the office of the chief strategist, Stephen Bannon. Somebody once described me as the president's national security utility infielder.
My parents have always been incredibly supportive, driving me back and forth to Stratford and so on. They realised from an early age that I wouldn't go into medicine because I couldn't do biology and chemistry.
James Agate, a great critic of the day, advised me that the way to learn your job properly was to learn Shakespeare, so I went to Stratford. It really sorts out the men from the boys.
I was in 'The Outsiders,' which was a good launching pad for me, but 'The Karate Kid' sent me into a different stratosphere.
My life and the life of my family has to do with exploration, with adventure. My grandfather was the first man in the stratosphere, and my father was the first to touch the deepest point in the ocean... For me, adventure and exploration is something in the blood.
The Beatles were in a different stratosphere, a different planet to the rest of us. All I know is when I heard 'Love Me Do' on the radio, I remember walking down the street and knowing my life was going to be completely different now the Beatles were in it.
There is a reactionary conservative side of classical music, which is not the most exciting side of it. The side that draws me in, there's a real encouragement of risk-taking, going back to masters of that tradition like Beethoven and Bartok and Stravinsky.
I think once I made up my mind that I was allergic to alcohol, and that's what I learned, it made sense to me. And I think it was kind of pointed out that you know if you were allergic to strawberries, you wouldn't eat strawberries. And that made sense to me.
Understanding who you are is saying, 'You're great; you have tons of confidence, and don't ever forget that.' And that helped me, man. Because when things weren't going right, I thought, 'You've got to remember who you are. Don't stray from that. Don't let these things get you down.'
There's a strong melancholic streak in me.
I have an endless stream of suggestions coming in from readers who are in cubicles. That keeps me going.
I thought there was a glitch when they told me that in two or three weeks 'My Church' hit a million streams.
When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.
I was very proud to be at 'The Wall Street Journal'. I have nothing bad to say about it. I had a great run there. In what turned out to be the final years of my tenure there, 'AllThingsD' occupied me more and more and was much more fun.
I want to thank Vox Media, The Verge, Recode, the 'Wall Street Journal,' and CNBC for giving me a voice.
'Death Of A Salesman,' 'Streetcar Named Desire,' these are the things that, when I was growing up, made me want to be an artist.
When I came out to my parents, I knew that they knew. My father was like, 'Are you sure?' I literally said, 'You took me to see Barbra Streisand at Madison Square Garden.'
Just strengthening that theme that America is a place of opportunity and hoping to inspire people to fulfill those opportunities, and to want more, and to want better, and to see the places we can go. So many people identify with me because of the place that I come from.
I can be poor, I can lose a job, I can have a hospital bill that I don't know how to pay, for I can do all these things through Him who strengthens me.
