Crime and legal stories broadly speaking are just where my interest happens to lie.

There are half a billion people that listen to music online and the vast majority are doing so illegally. But if we bring those people over to the legal side and Spotify what is going to happen is we are going to double the music industry and that will lead to more artists creating great new music.

The people and the mindset that killed 3 000 of our fellow citizens on September 11 2001 would have killed not 3 0 but 300 000 if they could have or 3 million or 30 million. We need to do everything we can within our value systems and legal structures to make sure that doesn't happen.

Things happened there that I don't think are the finest hours for anybody whether it was a journalist the legal system or in that case of the political system who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.

The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks.

I really believe that what happens one day affects the next and I think that came from that experience of learning that if I told the score inning by inning play by play it built up to its natural climax.

I wouldn't change anything. I think that it's important to let things happen and stay 'happened'. I think that's all part of the learning curve part of fate. I'm just glad that it happened.

But the basic Taoism that we are concerned with here is simply a particular way of appreciating learning from and working with whatever happens in everyday life.

But by taking the time away getting myself off the treadmill and just slowing down and learning I felt I had so much more to give back. And maybe that was something that needed to happen for all of us.

In this business if you take too long the landscape changes. So the opportunities that were there when I decided to take a break weren't there when I came back. It's like 'Wait a second - what happened here?' It was a real learning experience. I've paid my dues I will tell you that.

I view life as a learning experience. It is not so much all about music it is about what happens when you are doing the music.

My father is a chemist my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you and it never ends.

I am growing and learning. There's so much more that I want to accomplish and do. I'm gonna do it at whatever pace it happens. I'm not trying to rush anything or slow anything down.

Actually I don't ever think there will be a men-only team of leadership in the Labour party again. People would look at it and say 'What? Are there no women in the party to be part of the leadership? Do men want to do it all themselves?' It just won't happen again.

We have now under President Obama's leadership had 29 months in a row of private sector job growth. That stretch of positive private sector job growth hasn't happened since 2005. We still have a long way to go but we are moving in the right direction.

What happened with Hurricane Katrina was the American electorate was forced to look at what lay behind the veneer of chest-beating. We all saw the consequences of having terrible government leadership.

There would not be enough talent that's educated developed and ready to take on the next leadership challenge and it would cap our growth. Now we've put programs in place not to have that happen but that could be a weakness.

Sometimes leadership is planting trees under whose shade you'll never sit. It may not happen fully till after I'm gone. But I know that the steps we're taking are the right steps.

We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen.

It's extremely hard for athletes to accept what's happened to them sometimes. It's hard to be beaten by a small margin and I've spoken with athletes who for years afterward have been tormented by the knowledge that had they done something ever so slightly different they could have been one-ten-thousandth of a second quicker.

I think anyone about to leave one job not surprisingly would use their knowledge their experience their skills drawn from their previous positions to try and earn a living in the future. That's what happens in all interviews.

The whole Twitter phenomenon is really indicative of what's happening in this country. And I say this in condemnation of myself as much as anyone else - we are growing into a nation that has no time desire or capacity for truth. All we can handle is 140 characters of knowledge.

But in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

As a physician I understand how important it is to collect data on people so we can understand what's happening with them. I will be in the position to help enable that knowledge.