I believe in a tongue-first exploration of the world. Food is our most immediate daily relationship to our ecosystem, and there is something delectable and intriguing about it.

Wealth and vegetation go together, and that exacerbates environmental injustice. The poor bear the burden of degraded environments.

Information is not just something you download from the Web. The way trees grow and where birds choose to live are much better signs of water quality than all the data being collected by the EPA.

There's nothing wrong with being anthropomorphic. That's how we understand the world.

Consciousness, when it's unburdened by the body, is something that's ecstatic; we use the mind to watch the mind, and that's the meta-nature of our consciousness; we know that we know that we know, and that's such a delicious feeling, but when it's unburdened by biology and entropy, it becomes more than delicious: it becomes magical.

I'm a science guy. I'm a geek. I love geology and botany and marine science. I thought maybe I'd be a professional guide, or maybe even a park ranger, working for the Department of Fish and Game.

Those theologians who are beginning to take the doctrine of creation very seriously should pay some attention to science's story.

I had people in my life who didn't give up on me: my mother, my aunt, my science teacher. I had one-on-one speech therapy. I had a nanny who spent all day playing turn-taking games with me.