In 2003, my mom actually gave me a call, which is funny because she works at the European Union in Brussels, Belgium, and let me know that there's a cool competition with robots across the desert. And I thought this was definitely something I wanted to be a part of. This was the first DARPA Grand Challenge.

Google was the right place to pioneer robot cars.

I think, like all big things, you don't know they're going to be a big thing when you start. You just kind of, like, play because it's fun, and it's interesting, and then it turns out to be way more important than you expected.

When you are Uber, what we care about is the customer experience of getting somebody safely, cheaply, efficiently and reliably from where they are to where they want to go.

Working as a correspondent for 'Business Week,' I felt that I was simply informing people, not empowering them. I saw a parallel problem in the world of education. In too many educational settings, teachers simply 'inform' or 'instruct' learners, rather than providing learners with opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves.

Mostly, when I travel, I want to represent my own work well and let others know how I feel about poetry being an important part of life.

Background scores allow me an absolute flight of the imagination, and I travel in my mind's eye. I do not like the scores to have vocal notes, because they act as a limitation to these flights of fancy.

At the heart of the best documentaries, there is a journey of inquiry - someone who travels out into the world, comes back with a story, and who then finds meaning in it, and intrigue; someone who tells you about something you never quite knew before, or in a way you hadn't quite thought about.