My musical influences growing up were limited to Korean folk songs and hymns as I went to a Christian boarding school where I was not allowed to listen to secular music.

I learned to sing as I was learning to talk.

I grew up learning martial arts in Korea; my dad actually brought in an Olympic instructor to teach me as a teenager.

In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.

I am obsessed with trying to understand why there is such rampant denialism of science in our country. I find this exuberant irrationalism extremely disturbing. And this is particularly troubling, because I am a professional scientist.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

Of course, not everybody's willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are willing to go out and do that, - if the experiments don't work, then it means it's not science.

No country in the post-colonial era has thrived without first building its capacity to conduct scientific research.