The best way of managing fear is preparation; and amazingly, unlike other types of public appearance that involve major planning and rehearsals, people don't often prepare enough for talks.

The third and deepest reason this matters—why it's not just commercially meaningful but potentially world-changing—is the ability to bridge different levels of abstraction.

Consciousness is any kind of subjective experience whatsoever. It's what goes away when you fall into a dreamless sleep or go into general anesthesia, and what comes back when you wake-up or come around.

Our mate choices are the ultimate form of consumer choice. I can pretty much fit most of our purposeful behaviours under the umbrella of consumption.

We live in the age of the refugee, the age of the exile.

You shouldn't think of yourself as the person you are now – you are constantly changing – this is often called a growth mindset. When you think about human nature, you think of it as malleable, as something constantly growing and in-flux rather than something fixed.

Falling in love with your brain ignites a passion for discovering how best to nurture it. I'm particularly fond of one guiding question: 'Is this good for my brain or bad for it?' When you respond to this query armed with knowledge and driven by love, you naturally start making wiser choices.

As children we experience a domestication process the same way animals do, where rather than having who we are, our authenticity, our essence unlocked for us, instead we have put upon us layers and layers of rules. We take this very complicated, confusing, and demoralising code of behaviour into our adulthood with us.

Most people would have a nervous breakdown if they didn't have their phone for a day; I would have a total breakdown if there was no culture, no art. I couldn't live without art, it would be impossible.

The factory isn't something to hide away or outsource to the cheapest option. It's something to cherish, to be proud of. We can be trendy, we can be a brand, but it means nothing if the product that goes out the door isn't exceptional.

There was no single spark that got me into science. My parents were both scientists, so I was exposed to that world from an early age. I remember noticing that science was international – in our house in India, we would have visitors from many different countries and I found that fascinating.

While it may seem an altogether preposterous notion that people should have to pay for air, a very basic component of life- one must read this hypothetical tale in context of the fact that over 1.7billion people cannot afford food (also a very basic component of life)- and a similar amount have little access to clean drinking water (another very basic component of life).