“Dr. Maskin was a history teacher, who had a very unconventional approach which stuck with me, and sometimes I still think about it, because he had a way of weaving pop culture into the lesson plan. I forget exactly what we were learning, but it was about the Roman Empire. He played Tears for Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World,’ and then was like, ‘write an essay about how this applies to the Romans,’ which I thought was great. I think that kind of approach to writing I still have, because I write about pop culture.”