If you want to assert a truth, first make sure it's not just an opinion that you desperately want to be true.

You could do math early, but there are no brilliant 16-year-old novelists. They don't know the human condition yet.

Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.

I don't require that the main guest [of StarTalk] have any science knowledge or background at all. It's just, I have a conversation with them, it's long and winding, and we find out what parts of what we learn about the person lend themselves to further scientific discussion with an expert who is brought into the studio. So that's how that comes together.

If you look at the history of unexplained phenomena that was first explained by spiritual, mystical forces, the track record is not very good for the mystical, magical explanations to survive against more quote "mundane" physical explanations.

This influential, yet controversial idea requires that the mixture of species on Earth at any moment acts as a collective organism that continuously (yet unwittingly) tunes Earth's atmospheric composition and climate to promote the presence of life... But I'd bet there are some dead Martians and Venusians who advanced the same theory about their own planets a billion years ago.

I'd rather enjoy the money, and then be buried, offering my body back to the flora and fauna of which I have dined my whole life.