For decades, Barbara Walters has been described as a broadcast pioneer - and with good reason. In 1974, Walters became the first female host of the 'Today' show. In 1976, she became the first woman to serve as a network-news anchor. In 1984, she moderated the first presidential debate between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan.

Most people prepare for travels by reading about their destination; it always seemed an odd approach to me. I find it much easier and more pleasant to focus with the sights and smells of a place rattling around in my mind.

It is a remarkable fact that smallpox, a scourge for thousands of years, has now vanished from the earth, except for two tiny vials, one locked in a highly secure facility at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, and another stored in a similarly secure vault in Siberia.

The history of agriculture is the history of humans breeding seeds and animals to produce traits we want in our crops and livestock.

Food is everything. Food, friends, family: Those are the most important things in life.

I held my father's hand while he died of cancer, and it's really painful when you do something like that up close and personal. My mother was already gone, and I was very, very close to my father.

I am Dominican American. My father was born and raised in the U.S. and his heritage is German and Eastern European, and my mother hails from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

A family is really a union of two separate entities. When you get married, you are marrying one family into another.