Another random thing I do is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI. And you may be familiar with the movie 'Contact,' which sort of popularized that. It turns out there are real people who go out and search for extraterrestrials in a very scientific way.

Many of the things the slow food people honor were innovations within historical times. Somebody had to be the first European to eat a tomato.

With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother's recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations?

My career at Microsoft really was getting in the way of my cooking.

I want to know what changed in fully modern humans, compared with Neanderthals, that made a difference. What made it possible for us to build up these enormous societies, and spread around the globe, and develop the technology that I think no one can doubt is unique to humans.

There's never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value.

I am in the process of trying to decide whether I can make a substantive and productive contribution to the policy-making process. I was always there because I wanted to work on the pressing issues of the day - I'm interested in energy, I'm interested in the climate bill and technology policy.

For us, it's about having the game react to the player as much as possible. There's ways you can do that with technology, graphics, AI - we're doing some VR stuff right now - and so it's what we think is great about not just our games, but what's great about video games - how are they better than any other form of entertainment?