No other youth group like the Scouts has trained so many future leaders while at the same time being a nature organization with its outdoor focus.

Our kids are actually doing what we told them to do when they sit in front of that TV all day or in front of that computer game all day. The society is telling kids unconsciously that nature's in the past. It really doesn't count anymore, that the future is in electronics, and besides, the bogeyman is in the woods.

These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.

When you're sitting in front of a screen, you're not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way.

A dark house is always an unhealthy house, always an ill-aired house, always a dirty house. Want of light stops growth and promotes scrofula, rickets, etc., among the children. People lose their health in a dark house, and if they get ill, they cannot get well again in it.

The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.

You can see a lot of politics on a lot of different channels. I'm not interested, really, in talking in some wonky conversation about politics, though. It's not my speed. I'm not interested in the ins and outs of health care.

I've been vegetarian for virtually all of my adult life, and I do adopt a very strict health regime.