It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step.

Nobody wants a prediction that the future will be more or less like the present, even if that is, statistically speaking, an excellent prediction.

Most visions of extraterrestrial life are actually steeped in human hubris. The fictional extraterrestrials of 'Star Trek' or a hundred other space operas are less alien than many of my neighbors. And funny, the ones running the place are mostly WASPish men.

When we first did 'Modernist Cuisine,' I think most people in cookbook publishing would have said, 'This is insane.'

The reason societies with democratic governments are better places to live in than their alternatives isn't because of some goodness intrinsic to democracy, but because its hopeless inefficiency helps blunt the basic potential for evil.

Nuclear energy is a baseload - meaning it's power that you can run any time you want, day or night - and carbon-free.

Words can hurt you. In the larger world, it frames how people think about you, and it can hurt you in lots of little, subtle ways.