As Jeopardy devotees know, if you're trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all. On any given night, nearly all the contestants know nearly all the answers, so it's just a matter of who masters buzzer rhythm the best.
With its billions of interconnected neurons, whose interactions change from millisecond to millisecond, the human brain is an archetypal complex system.
Part of accepting a role is being interested in the character and part of it is being interested in the movie or what it means and the exploration of it. But it's more about not knowing the answers to certain questions but wanting to go on the journey of discovery to find the answers.
Somehow we have to be able to indicate to our audience that we know how frustrating it is when the answers they are hearing are necessarily the answers that the person speaking them believes.
Intelligent people, as some say, in their openness, are indeed slow to criticize, but conversely, in their openness to the concerns of others, the genuine are slow to fret about being criticized.
We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions.
I was indeed very slow as a youngster.
I mean, if you're being directed very precisely by somebody who has admiration and who's really smart, it's great. If you're being told what to do by a nincompoop - and luckily that hasn't happened very often - it can be very frustrating.
India is a culture in which religious life and spirituality is very much on the surface of things. That doesn't mean it doesn't have depth, but it is very visible. There are lots of temples, lots of Islamic centers, lots of gurdwaras, and lots of teachers.
Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.
There are few more frustrating things in life than being told something that you already know but cannot admit to knowing.
Knowing the precies answers is not as crucial as the certainty that the answers do, in fact, exist.
Insatiable curiosity is infectious to everyone around you. We live in an era today where we can get the answers for everything. In my generation, going to school meant learning the answers. Today, education should be more about knowing what the right questions are. The answers come for free.
The answers we seek aren't always the answers we want, are they? But knowing the truth is what helps us sleep at night.
Since being diagnosed with Asperger's, I'd been working with an acting coach who has now become a good friend. We'd been trying lots of improvisational techniques to help me with some of the problems I experience. But it's a very slow process.
The buzzer timing is so important and when you get into a rhythm like that - to go back to baseball you'll hear hitters on a hot streak say that the ball looks like a beach ball -and when you have the timing on the buzzer and you're just getting in whenever you want, that seems to sort of snowball.