Background: Mayer was born on October 16, 1977, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Richard (a high-school principal) and Margaret Mayer (a middle-school English teacher). He grew up in nearby Fairfield, the middle child between older brother Carl and younger brother Ben. His father is Jewish, and Mayer has said that he relates to Judaism. As a middle school student, Mayer became close friends with future tennis star James Blake, and they often played Nintendo together after school.
Context: In 2004, Mayer hosted a one-shot, half-hour comedy special on VH1 titled John Mayer Has a TV Show, with antics including wearing a bear suit while anonymously teasing concertgoers in the parking lot outside one of his concerts. Steve Jobs invited Mayer to perform during Apple's annual keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo in January 2004 as Jobs introduced the music production software GarageBand. Mayer became a fixture of the event, including at the 2007 iPhone announcement. Volkswagen concluded a deal with instrument manufacturer First Act to include a GarageMaster electric guitar that was playable through the stereo system of six of their 2007 models; Mayer (along with Slash and Christopher Guest) were selected to endorse the campaign and was featured playing the guitar in ads. Mayer used and endorsed the BlackBerry Curve. Mayer made many appearances on talk shows and other television programs, most notably, on a Chappelle's Show comedy skit, the Late Show with David Letterman and on the final episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Mayer made an appearance with Rob Dyrdek in the MTV show Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory. Mayer wrote the theme song to the OWN network show Rollin' with Zach, which features Zach Anner. CBS invited him to guest host The Late Late Show in early 2015 on three dates, February 4-6, after the retirement of Craig Ferguson. Mayer makes a cameo as a truck driver in the 2014 comedy horror film Zombeavers. In the 2015 film Get Hard, he played a version of himself who is disgusted with the "monetization of the creative process."
Question: any others
Answer: Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Background: Jay Vivian Chambers (April 1, 1901 - July 9, 1961), known as Whittaker Chambers, was an American editor who denounced his Communist spying and became respected by the American Conservative movement during the 1950s. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932-1938), he defected from communism (underground and open party) and worked at Time magazine (1939-1948). Under subpoena in 1948, he testified in what became Alger Hiss's perjury (espionage) trials (1949-1950) and he became an outspoken anti-communist (all described in his 1952 memoir Witness). Afterwards, he worked briefly as a senior editor at National Review (1957-1959).
Context: The August 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact drove Chambers to take action against the Soviet Union. In September 1939, at the urging of anti-Communist, Russian-born journalist Isaac Don Levine, Chambers and Levine met with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle. Levine had introduced Chambers to Walter Krivitsky, who was already informing American and British authorities about Soviet agents who held posts in both governments. Krivitsky told Chambers it was their duty to inform. Chambers agreed to reveal what he knew on the condition of immunity from prosecution. During the meeting, which took place at Berle's home, Woodley Mansion in Washington, Chambers named 18 current and former government employees as spies or Communist sympathizers. Many names mentioned held relatively minor posts or were already under suspicion. Some names, however, were more significant and surprising: Alger Hiss, his brother Donald Hiss, and Laurence Duggan--who were all respected, mid-level officials in the State Department--and Lauchlin Currie, a special assistant to Franklin Roosevelt. Another person named had worked on a top secret bombsight project at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Berle found Chambers' information tentative, unclear, and uncorroborated. He took the information to the White House, but the President dismissed it, to which Berle made little if any objection. Berle kept his notes, however (later, evidence during Hiss' perjury trials). Berle notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of Chambers's information in March 1940. In February 1941, Krivitsky was found dead in his hotel room. While police ruled the death a suicide, it was widely speculated that Krivitsky had been killed by Soviet intelligence. Worried that the Soviets might try to kill Chambers too, Berle again told the FBI about his interview with Chambers. Nevertheless, the FBI took no immediate action, in line with the political orientation of the United States, which viewed the potential threat from the USSR as minor, when compared to that of Nazi Germany. (The FBI did interview Chambers in May 1942 and June 1945, without further action. Only in November 1945, when Elizabeth Bentley defected and corroborated much of Chambers's story, did the FBI begin to take Chambers seriously).
Question: Did the State Department pursue the matter further?
Answer: Berle notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of Chambers's information in March 1940.

Background: Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American physician, author and retired politician who served as the 79th Governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2005 to 2009. Dean was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election. His implementation of the fifty-state strategy as head of the DNC is credited with the Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Afterward, he became a political commentator and consultant to McKenna Long & Aldridge, a law and lobbying firm.
Context: Dean graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1971. As a freshman, he requested specifically to room with an African-American. The university housing office complied and Dean roomed with two Southern black students and one white student from Pennsylvania. One of Dean's roommates was Ralph Dawson, the son of a sheet metal worker in Charleston, South Carolina and today a New York City labor lawyer. Dawson said of Dean: Unless you operated from a stereotypic understanding of the Yale white boy as rich, you wouldn't know that about Howard.... When it came to race- and I don't know whether this was a function of intent or just came naturally- Howard was not patronizing in any way. He was willing to confront in discussion what a lot of white students weren't. He would hold his ground. He would respect that I knew forty-two million times more about being black than he did. But that didn't mean he couldn't hold a view on something relating to civil rights that would be as valid as mine. There were lots of well-meaning people at Yale who wanted you to understand that they understood your plight; you'd get into a conversation and they would yield too soon, so we didn't get the full benefit of the exchange. Howard very much thought he was capable of working an issue through. He was inquisitive. And when he came to a conclusion he would be as strong as anybody else. I don't think he's stubborn. He's a guy who's always been comfortable in his own skin. That's something you still see in him today, and it gets him into some degree of controversy. Though eventually eligible to be drafted into the military, he received a deferment for an unfused vertebra. He explained to Tim Russert on Meet the Press, "I was really in no hurry to join the military." He briefly tried a career as a stockbroker before deciding on a career in medicine, completing pre-medicine classes at Columbia University. In 1974, Dean's younger brother Charlie, who had been traveling through southeast Asia at the time, was captured and killed by Laotian guerrillas, a tragedy widely reported to have an enormous influence in Dean's life; he wore his brother's belt every day of his presidential campaign.
Question: Did he enjoy that experience?
Answer:
He's a guy who's always been comfortable in his own skin. That's something you still see in him today, and it gets him into some degree of controversy.