My mother teaches high school English, and she's an artist and a poet and a sculptor, she's published twelve poetry books. I grew up in a household in Venezuela with living, breathing art installations that were the way that she used to express herself, a highly creative environment where ideas were celebrated, where artistic expression was celebrated. Seeing her as somebody who was always able to have a creative output - if she felt sad, she wrote a poem, if she felt happy, she made a sculpture - I think for me, there was an early interest in finding outlets for my passions.

It's kind of depressing when you hear the anti-science rhetoric in America, but I think that people are just afraid of change, and I think they're afraid of disruption, and I think they're afraid of the feeling that the rug is being pulled from underneath their feet. People are used to things changing maybe over many generations, but they're not used to seeing things change within their own lifetime. The problem is people are going to college and graduating, and realizing that their major is obsolete.

To be inspired is the ultimate antidote to existential despair.

The phone is gonna disappear. Maybe it will be a bracelet. After the bracelet it will be a blood cell sized device that maybe gets installed. We already have people with Parkinson's that have chips installed in their brain to control their tremors. We already see people have pacemakers to help their heartbeats. I mean we're already putting these technologies into our bodies. It is only going to deepen.

I do NOT accept the ephemeral nature of this moment. I'm going to extend it FOREVER! Or at least I'm going to try.

Death is not necessarily what gives meaning to life LIFE gives meaning to life, and what we do with life, which is to create knowledge like music, art, science To this end, I believe intelligent life might be evolution's secret weapon: the ultimate hack that might help us transcend entropy.

We fit the universe through our brains and it comes out in the form of nothing less than poetry. We have a responsibility to awe.