We've created an unnatural form of running. It's not just the shoes, but we run on artificial surfaces - straight ahead, hard and steady - instead of speeding up and slowing down, reacting to the terrain with changes of pace and rhythm.

Extreme heroism springs from something that no scientific theory can fully explain; it's an illogical impulse that flies in the face of biology, psychology, actuarial statistics, and basic common sense.

Even Charles Darwin, that human decoder ring of bizarre behavior, found the idea of saving a stranger's life to be a total head-scratcher.

We're constantly told that running will ruin our knees and outrage our hearts, but for nearly all of human existence, it was associated with freedom, vitality, and eternal youth.

How the original 'Cosmos' affected me personally was long-term. I wasn't born early enough to see the original series, but after getting a hold of it in my teen years, it was one of the driving forces behind my passion for science.

If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this Earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics. We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason.

It's kind of cool that I know of all this great science fiction being written in China, and most of it is not really well-known in the West.

Life for me in Los Angeles required medication. I spent nine years being sad and down in the dumps. L.A. doesn't work with my chemistry.