In 2003, I almost died of an intestinal blockage when I was on a mountain in Chile, filming a segment for 'Scientific American Frontiers.'

Almost everybody that's well-known gets tagged with a nickname.

What I can't completely understand is most other people's fascination with what the famous among us do with their lips and the rest of their bodies. Why do ordinary people become the target of this curiosity simply by virtue of the fact that other people recognise their names and faces but know almost nothing else about them?

Americans do believe in progress and there is almost certainly a kernel of truth in the joke.

It was almost like you died and everybody went into your house and just ransacked it and got everything they wanted. You're favorite this. You're favorite that. You just see it all disappear.

Marie Curie is my hero. Few people have accomplished something so rare - changing science. And as hard as that is, she had to do it against the tide of the culture at the time - the prejudice against her as a foreigner, because she was born in Poland and worked in France. And the prejudice against her as a woman.