Mirroring is a crazy skill, it's so insanely effective. If you explain mirroring to people, they're like nah, that shit'll never work – but it's huge. Just repeating the last 3 words of what someone said or picking out 1-3 words from the middle of the statement, can get you the outcome you need. Using mirroring, you feel like you can work Jedi mind tricks!

I believe it boils down to confidence and fearlessness—believing in yourself and your own perspective. When you fail to follow your vision and instead listen to the consensus, it dilutes your vision. Consensus tends to pull everything towards mediocrity.

Speaking about the demand side… we have skills and techniques in drug prevention and thousands of advisors have been trained by our programmes around the world to work in the community at school level, especially with children. Children are the most vulnerable group, and we must do our utmost to protect them.

I think what's hard for us to appreciate today is that, for thousands of years of human history—let alone pre-history—there was never this sense, so common to us now, of a future likely to be radically different from the present. But that's a very recent development in human thought that really only dates back, as I argue in the book, to the 18th century.

There are really no defeats in life, just opportunities to become better, stronger.

One way that we deal with the accelerating rate of change is by sort of riding on top of that tsunami of change rather than being crushed by it.

When these things happen in life, our soul calls on us to learn a lesson. Often we need pain to be able to see the light. Most of us begin our spiritual journey after a job loss or a career change.

I think it was recognising that revolution was, in a way, the original problem of political thought. But in fact, constitutionalism is a Greek answer to the problem of revolution. You want to avoid revolution? Then you need to design a constitution in a certain way—so that it's balanced and less likely to be overturned by revolution.

Most people don't know who they are. They're trying to be what other people want them to be- or they're trying to create something that fills a void that comes from within. The pressure to conform is huge right now, especially with people getting cancelled; saying what you really feel can make you unpopular… so people box themselves into a place where they're not celebrated or respected for being truthful. It's tragic.

In my lab, we can control ageing easily. We have mice where we can dial up the ageing process or reverse it. It's not that hard when you know how. Until recently, we didn't know there was a backup copy of the information which has been corrupted, and now we can reset it using an embryonic gene trick. Ultimately, I think we'll be able to pop a pill and reset our body's age.

I came away from space flight realising that I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. Life is so amazing. Even the simplest organisms have millions of cells that have to randomly align in a perfect way, and those processes are infinitesimally less complex than emotions and consciousness. When you look at the universe and the forces of nature – science has to explain how it all works, but to my mind, there just has to be a creator.

The difference between rap, jazz, blues, rock & roll, pop, r&b and all that is that the hip-hop artists held on to it…. MTV didn't play any people of colour until hip-hop came along. They had Michael Jackson then they had Run D.M.C. Run D.M.C's 'Rock Box' and these records were honest and real reflections of what came from these people's communities- from a poetry and music standpoint.