I think people are curious at some level, and they want to alter their current state of being. I mean, that could be from curiosity, that could be from stress, that can be from some other sort of ailments or problem that they are experiencing or could just be from boredom, but humans have always attempted to alter their consciousness.

I had to go to England to really learn about American racism in a way that corroborated my reality. That was critical.

You have to be open-minded, and you have to be critical, and you have to let go of your predispositions about what you've been told that doesn't have foundations in evidence.

I went into the military because I didn't get a scholarship, a basketball scholarship I thought that I would get.

I enjoyed the theatrics and the physical demands of everything that went on in the ring. But I was, initially, a relatively shy kid. I think that's probably what attracted me to hunting is that it was such a polar opposite of the other, and it was that opportunity for peace and quiet and to decompress.

The USDA is tasked with managing and promoting agriculture - including the well-funded animal agriculture industry - so it's pulled into a tug-of-war every time the dietary guidelines are re-evaluated.

We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression; we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.

And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.