Yes. I didn't want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that's a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I'm proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

I am most proud of the legacy of my students and postdocs. The real triumph, for me, is witnessing the transformation of the individuals who have passed through my lab. They arrive with potential and leave making substantial impacts. Seeing them flourish professionally and contribute meaningfully to our field is, without a doubt, my greatest accomplishment.

For a start, the sound of my voice has changed a little bit, which comes [with aging]. But whenever I listen to myself from those ages, I’m proud of myself because I was young, but there’s no music of mine that I listen to and I’m like, “Nah, I wish I didn’t do that.” Everything that I’ve listened to so far, I’m proud of what I did, even at that age.

I’m most proud of the fact that we produced broad-based prosperity, where the incomes of the bottom 20% rose more percentage-wise than the incomes of the top 20%, about the same as the incomes of the top 5%. That was across all racial groups, all regional groups, and all income groups, and that we did it while eliminating 600 billion dollars in national debt. And I put America on a path to be debt free so that we’d be able to embrace the challenges of the 21st century, and I think that at a time of yawning inequality, having inclusive prosperity is very important to building support for inclusive societies.

Greta Thunberg, a brightly coloured little bird in a coalmine, desperately sounding the alarm for others while laying her childhood to waste.

Climate change. That is the single most important calamity in the making that I obsess over.

Like a cosy cloud of softness coupled with an orthopaedic mattress underneath.

A ballerina. I remain rather disappointed that I became a rock star instead.

Dying of the same awful disease that took my mother – a particularly aggressive form of dementia called Pick’s disease.

Myself. I have never been harder on anyone else.