The first arrival of earthly life on another celestial body ranks as an epochal event not only for our generation, but in the history of our planet. Neil Armstrong was at the cusp of the Apollo programme. This was a collective technological effort of...
The moment that changed me for ever was when I had my first seminar with my history professor at the University of Sussex. I realised that history would answer all the questions I had spent my life asking. It was an extraordinary moment.
In New York, I'm around a lot of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. I live right behind Matt Umanov Guitars. I live on the street that Suze Rotolo and Bob Dylan were walking down on the album cover. I recognize the history.
If you look through the history of wearables, I was named the father of wearable computing, or the world's first cyborg. But the definition of wearable computing can be kind of fuzzy itself. Thousands of years ago, in China, people would wear an abac...
East Asia has prospered since the end of the Vietnam War, and Northeast Asia has prospered since the end of the Korean War in a way that seems unimaginable when you think of the history of the first half of the century.
My time is always divided when I prepare for a wire walk. First I dream, technically and artistically, and then I go to work, and I am the master rigger, climbing trees and ladders and constructing. Only then I change my cap and become the performer.
When I was in first grade, everyone made fun of my name, of course. I think it's kind of a big name to hold up when you're nine years old. It seemed goofy. I used to tell people I wanted to change the world and they used to think, 'This kid's really ...
I think that when you're making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people f...
Even though it's hard to learn how to back your car out the driveway at first, once it becomes a habit, you can do it almost automatically and think about something else, like the meeting that you need to go to today or what's on the radio.
I'm not a bad driver. And I never will be because I took lessons when I was quite a boy. I never had to pass a test because there wasn't such a thing when I first started driving a motor car. So I didn't have to pass one.
My first-ever car, my parents bought me a red Fiat Uno. I was 17 and just so happy to have a car, so I was very fortunate that my parents were in a position to get me one - it was a secondhand car, but I was just so happy to have it.
A friend gave me a CD of the 'Pathetique' Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started 'ta ta ta taaa.' It was too long for me. I didn't understand it at first, but then I fell i...
I am the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner who was determined that his kids get out of the mines. My dad got his first job when he was six years old, in a little village in Wales called Nantyffyllon, cleaning bottles at the Colliers Arms.
I shaved my head when I was 14 - is that bad? I asked my dad's permission first. He said, 'You're gonna look like a boy.' And I said, 'OK'... then I did it anyway. All through high school, I had a shaved head and I'd dye it crazy colors - it was fun.
I didn't start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born - I started getting wicked BO. You know there's a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO...
My first memory of the Rolling Stones is listening to 'Satisfaction' at a sixth-grade slumber party at a friend's house in Ankara, Turkey, where my family was living at the time. In the middle of our sleepover, my friend's dad stopped the record when...
If I have a problem, stuff's going through my head, I feel like using, I usually go and talk to my dad... I decided to get sober a lot younger than he did. He first tried to get sober when he was like 32, I believe.
Dad always encouraged my singing, so when 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' was a hit in the States, I flew my parents to New York first-class to see me, put them up at the Waldorf Astoria, then they sailed home on the QE2.
My dad is such a good man. You know how when you are a child you think your dad is invincible? Well, I still think that - he is so wise and everything I do I ask my dad's advice about first.
If you think back to the first sporting event you went to, you don't remember the score, you don't remember a home run, you don't remember a dunk. You remember who you were with. Were you with your mom, your dad, your brother, on a date?
My senior year of high school, when I was getting recruited for college, my dad goes to me, 'You can become an Olympic champion.' And that's the first time that I'd heard someone else say that to me. I was like, 'Uh, are you talking to me?'
