I support giving President Obama the ability to negotiate and complete new trade agreements with some of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

I am not a professional politician.

We have to start grounding our policies in facts and recognize that a strong economy is critical for funding progressive priorities.

Oil is largely our energy past, and Keystone does little to respond to the actual challenges and opportunities before us.

The biggest development in reproductive biology is the birth-control pill. Nobody ever talks about it, but look at the consequences: demographics; aging populations; the sinking population of Europe, Japan; immigration. It's incredible.

Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He's always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.

I love the Victorian era, and I always have, but I had a leg up on the writing because I was familiar with a lot of the science from the Victorian era. And that led to a massive interest in the science of this time of history.

My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically - and destructively - demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.