I wanted to be a snowplow driver when I was a kid. Growing up in the Rocky Mountains, that's the most glorious job you can imagine. But then my mother took me to a lecture about the solar system when I was 8, and I got hooked.

We're born with a curiosity about the universe. Those people who don't have a curiosity don't have it because it's gotten beaten out of them in some way.

When I ask myself what are the great things we got from the Renaissance, it's the great art, the great music, the science insights of Leonardo da Vinci. Two hundred years from now, when you ask what are the great things that came from this era, I think it's going to be an understanding of the universe around us.

I think that the future of the human race is to spread through the universe, and now is the time that we should be laying the foundations for that.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history. There's no question that various victors throughout history have flat out lied about certain events or written themselves into things, and then you come along and you find out that this disproves that.

I believe we can prevent or delay most disease until the 9th or 10th decade. The goal is to prevent anything that can affect your quality of life prior to those years! By the time many of us get to the 9th or 10th decade, who knows where the new medical and science will take us? I am an optimist!

I had been interested in science from when I was very young, but after a disastrous summer lab experience in which every experiment I tried failed, I decided on graduating from college that I was not cut out to be a scientist.

I'd love to present a popular science programme because it's something I feel very passionate about.