RS: What is your deranged millionaire going to do in the light of failed prophecy?

JH: Well, that’s really what this show is about. The characters were always just exaggerations of myself. And this one is truly like me dressing up in John Hodgman drag, in the sense that I am not doing any particular character, I’m allowing myself to talk about whatever I feel like talking about. And that includes more personal stuff than before, and more honest and authentic stuff, and that also means finding a reason to dress up like Ayn Rand in 1980, the year before she died.

RS: So the apocalyptic narrative, then, is part of a real anxiety that real John Hodgman has, and it’s also making fun of the cult of personality and the whole collective cultural anxiety that follows it.

JH: Yeah. Should I say those things now and you can say that I said it?

RS: Am I right?