This much we know: Journalism is not a precise science. It's on its best day is a crude art. We make mistakes I make mistakes. With more than 50 years as a journalist I have at least had the opportunity to blow more stories make more mistakes than maybe anybody in television.

The science linking the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather to the climate crisis has matured tremendously in the last couple of years.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science engineering and exploration.

If you start any large theory such as quantum mechanics plate tectonics evolution it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.

We are born at a given moment in a given place and like vintage years of wine we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.

The last few years have been my happiest. I'm happy in the years that most people are blue and sad and waiting to die. I don't feel that a bit. Smiling has a lot to do with it. You can just lift your spirits by smiling a little bit.

'Eyes Wide Open' took shape from two real life events straight from my own past. One was the sad suicide of my young nephew a troubled kid who was found at the bottom of a landmark cliff in central California. The second was a chance encounter forty years ago with none other than ahem Charles Manson!

Well I did Marlene 15 years ago and that's in the style. It's somehow similar and not similar because Marlene was much more aggressive funny and sad.

It would be sad if my best work had been 20 years ago and now I only had memories.