I mean, you — I'm just like, a hush, huh -- It's like -- (Laughter) It's Beethoven, how can you say that?

Back then, 15 years ago, we didn't have the ability to look inside the living human brain and track development across the lifespan.

When the tomatoes were nice and ripe and red, overnight, some 200 hippos came out from the river and they ate everything. (Laughter) And we said to the Zambians, "My God, the hippos!"

This battle defined the first 150 years of the U.S. economy, and at every moment, different partisans saying, "Oh my God, the economy's about to collapse, " and the rest of us just going about, spending our bucks on whatever it is we wanted to buy.

And then we're off to the races, because I don't believe for a second that we have forgotten how to solve tough challenges or that we have become too apathetic or hard-hearted to even try.

So a note for a dating tip here, in some cultures, if you want to please your lover, you call them and hang up. (Laughter) So why do people leave missed calls?

We'd go out and try and recruit people and we'd say, look, when you come to us, we're not going to have two or three interviews and then you're going to be married to us for life.

“How could you carry that woman?” Tanzan smiled, “I left the traveler there. Are you still carrying her?” Like all kōans, this story has numerous interpretations.

And I had a lot of people come out of that piece saying, "Oh my God, I was so frustrated. I couldn't help the guy, " and take that back into their lives.

That night, I'm laying in bed, I'm staring at the ceiling and thinking, "Oh my god, what have I done?

They were kind of like, "Oh, if you work in war, doesn't that mean you work on refugee camps, and you work on documenting mass atrocities?" -- which is, by the way, very, very, very important.

And I kept asking myself this really simple question: if the ancestors to New World monkeys could somehow cross the Atlantic Ocean, why couldn't humans cross that tiny stretch of water?

I have a dream that we can stop thinking that the future will be a nightmare, and this is going to be a challenge, because, if you think of every major blockbusting film of recent times, nearly all of its visions for humanity are apocalyptic.