It's not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions.

Sometimes religion gets in the way of God.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

What really turns me on about technology is not just the ability to get more songs on MP3 players. The revolution - this revolution - is much bigger than that. I hope, I believe. What turns me on about the digital age, what excites me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing.

God is so big. It's a gigantic concept in God. The idea that God might love us and be interested in us is kind of huge and gigantic, but we turn it, because we're small-minded, into this tiny, petty, often greedy version of God, that is religion.

What I like about pop music, and why I'm still attracted to it, is that in the end it becomes our folk music.

Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world's poorest people.