Back in March last year I was contacted by a very interesting person named Dana Berry. The funny thing is that I almost deleted the email before reading it because it was from an AOL email address (AOL?!). Fortunately I got over my email prejudices (have you accepted Gmail into your heart yet?) and opened the message, which read:
Hello Dr. Johnson,
I am producing a show for the National Geographic Channel about the hunt for the next planet Earth as it involves the Kepler and Corot missions, and the plans to characterize these new found worlds with missions like JWST, the upcoming TMT telescope, etc. We are already in post production, but had sought to get a "pick up" interview with Geoff Marcy. Alas, he is unavailable. This was a disappointment since Marcy is so extraordinarily good on camera.
But, Marcy highly recommends you as a potential replacement. Would you be interested in doing an interview about the follow up to Kepler, and to JWST? If so, are you available so…