in a 2008 profile, "the new yorker's" malcolm gladwell described him as nerdy on an epic scale. he began college at 14 and had a ph.d. in physics by age 23. he then spent a year with stvenl hawking. after starting his own company he joined microsoft, as chief strategist. geology and extraterrestrials. are among his interestses. i am pleased to have nathan myhrvold back at the table. is it that makes a nathan myhrvold? >> i've only been me. >> charlie: the sample is small. >> this is not statistically significant, but i'm very curious about finding things out. and i love the process of trying to understand things. part of that means being confused and not knowing what's going on, then the transition of how you bring things into focus and figure it out and that's true across all the things you do. >> charlie: you start with a question. >> yeah. >> charlie: because you want to know something and you are confused because there is no easy access to the answer. >> exactly. so when i was a physicist, i was interested in the question of where did space and time come from. >> charlie: ri