This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science Salon, a series of conversations

with leading scientists, scholars, and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.

So I thought I'd start by just asking because as a book author myself I'm always curious

how do you work as a writer? I mean there are writers that you know work from 8 to 12

every morning or whatever in their super discipline and there's those like me that just

catches catch can you work on the airplane and the Starbucks or whatever and how did you

write this book how do you write? I actually do write whenever I can but I don't think that's necessarily less

disciplined I think I'm writing kind of all the time that it's available and you know

and when you add it up it's quite a bit so and I actually like I mean being in beautiful places where I can just sit in my

chair without feeling like I want to get up and walk around. I also like Amtrak for that reason.

It's like there's no place to go so you're in. around. I also like Amtrak for that reason.

There's no place to go, so you're in your seat.

But I mean, I do sit at my desk and write too, obviously,

or actually sit on my couch.

I just like to be comfortable when I'm writing.

So, but of course sometimes you're researching,

but just when I'm actually just editing,

I just like to be someplace where I'm not thinking about other things

where I can really just focus.

Because a lot of what I'm doing, I'm writing is you know obviously there's

ideas themselves but I usually have pretty broad canvas so a lot of it the editing is

involved with tying in the ideas in a way that's coherent and you know cutting things down so that you're not so that you can get through it all.

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