We ask Hugh Herr 10 questions and he talks about beating up the Six Million Dollar Man.

Check out Hugh’s 10 Questions video in the player above and on his Secret Life homepage.

Hugh Herr lost his biological legs – below the knees – when he was a teenager. And now he makes bionic limbs. That should be enough reason to love him, but here are five more reasons:

1 After his amputations, his doctors were afraid to send him home because they knew he’d go rock-climbing.
2 When the doctors did let him go home, he went rock-climbing… of course.
3 Almost immediately - with no prior training - he began work on creating better prosthetics for himself.
4 His work now gives amputees back their legs and eases much of the other pain that came with their injuries.
5 Oh come on, isn’t it obvious? Check out his zebra pants in the picture below!

Young Hugh in zebra pants… making a better leg for himself then and for other people now.

And now, folks, our Hugh Herr haiku:

Young rock-climbing god
Winter’s freeze steals both his legs
Changed, he makes new ones.

Watch Hugh’s videos, follow his links and prepare to be astonished.

Hugh Herr, known as the Bionic Being in his superhero incarnation, is ready to take your questions. Use the comments, people.

We give Hugh Herr 30 seconds to describe his science, and he shows that bionic legs can help you think and speak very quickly.

So for our last shoot of the season, my daughter Grace - also known as the girl behind the paper dolls - Grace at work on our set invited herself to come along to join the fun.

Proud Dad that I am, I was delighted.

But we did put her to work.

Here’s Grace’s drawing of our friend, Mireya Mayor.

I admit that I’m biased, but I think it’s pretty good!

The finished product… the wonderful Mireya

We ask Mireya Mayor 10 questions and she says the words “loin cloth” - a Secret Life first!

Check out Mireya’s 10 Questions video in the player above and on her Secret Life homepage.

Mireya Mayor is our featured scientist for the next couple weeks. And here’s why we love her deeply:

1 She has been chased by a gorilla (and lived to tell about it).
2 She has pink boots… and a machete.
3 She knows how to fluff a mean pom pom (they come unfluffed - who knew?).
4 She is tireless in the work she does on behalf of all the living creatures of Madagascar.
5 The look on her face when she holds one of her precious mouse lemurs.

She’s got the mouse lemur in her hands, the mouse, mouse lemur in her hands….

And now our haiku homage:

Jungle scientist
Exploring the darkness sees
Mouse lemur light up.

We hope you enjoy Mireya’s videos and follow her links to learn more about all the amazing work she does.

Her book is called “Pink Boots and a Machete.” And her machete is sharp.

With this in mind, ask Mireya Mayor your questions in the comments section of this post.

We give Mireya Mayor 30 seconds to describe her science, and she ponders what to do with her leftover time.

Today I’m going to tell you why we love Paul Frommer, the linguist and creator of the Na’vi language in the film “Avatar.” Is it easy being blue? Maybe.

1 He is a brilliant, creative, gentle man.
2 He was in the Peace Corps.
3 He’s a one-man Tower of Babel.
4 He’s half-blue (see photo).
5 He INVENTED A LANGUAGE!!

And next week, we’re going to post a new video of Paul reading a haiku poem in Na’vi (look for it!). For now, we honor him with one of our own in English:

Na’vi talk and live
In harmony with nature
Paul gave them their words.

So watch Paul’s videos, follow his links and we promise that you’ll love him as we do. And if you like to haiku, write one about Paul and post it in the comments. We’ll highlight the best ones in a separate post (and put them up on our refrigerator!).

Paul Frommer invented the Na’vi language for James Cameron’s “Avatar.” But if you ask your question in Na’vi, please include an English translation!

I remember the first time we spoke with Tanzeem Choudhury on the phone. Her science was amazing – she develops cell-phone apps that monitor our emotional well-being and help us live healthy lifestyles. And we knew that our audience would find it amazing as well (watch her videos and you’ll see). But Tanzeem didn’t have an obvious “secret life” – you know, something like juggling or professional wrestling or collecting cosmic neckties. And we pretty much need that sort of thing since it’s in the name of the series. Tanzeem and her college buds thinking about computers

Then she mentioned that the first time she ever touched a computer – clearly a key tool in the digital behaviorist world she now inhabits – was when she was 18 years old!

Whoa.

Now part of this was generational. These days, hospitals practically include wi-fi passwords on newborns’ little hospital bracelets. And in fact, Tanzeem explained that her son started playing with the iPad when he was about six months old. Then again, Tanzeem is a relatively young woman – nowhere near as old as me (as a point of reference, most of my college exams took the form of cave paintings and rock formations). Also, Tanzeem did grow up in Bangladesh where computers were not nearly as plentiful then as they were for most of her new college classmates at the University of Rochester in upstate New York.

Still, this is a woman who now teaches a class at Cornell called “Ubiquitous Computing.” How in the world did she get from there to here?

It turns out she just dove in.

The first time Tanzeem used a computer was not when she was goofing around with one in the school library or trying to play a game on a friend’s computer. It was when she took an undergraduate class in computer programming! What courage, right? “I’ve never even touched one of these things, but I’m going to make one work.” As a lifelong coward, I am still astonished at this. And after some initial battles with the “return” key, our digital late-bloomer, Tanzeem really bloomed. She does indeed teach “Ubiquitous Computing.” And her BeWell app is going to help lots of people stay healthy. And who knows what other great things she’ll do next?

What’s the moral of the story? First, we do love us some wrestling microbiologists, but sometimes the least obvious “secret lives” can be among the very coolest. And secondly, as we see with Tanzeem, it doesn’t matter when you find your passion… it’s what you do with it once you find it.

You really don’t have to be a “sad clownfish.” We’re all here for you!

Ask Tanzeem Choudhury your questions in the comments section.

My 15-year-old daughter Grace is quite an artist. Here is her paper doll tribute to our beloved Secret Lifer Rachel Collins/MsChif. Cool Secret Life paper dolls by Grace Miller.

Mathematician/computer scientist/college president/painter/stellar all-around human Maria Klawe is our 44th subject in the “Secret Life” series. And I love all of them and could never choose a favorite (and if you ask me to try, I’ll cover my ears, make loud noises and pretend you don’t exist). Portrait of the mathematician as a young woman. I do think, though, that Maria may have given us my favorite quote. And it goes like this:

“I get up every morning with two different thoughts in my head. On this side of my head, I get up every single day saying ‘I’m a total failure, I will always be a total failure, I’m going to feel like this forever.’ On the other side of my head, I get up and it says, ‘I can change the world. If I care enough about it and I work hard, I will change the world.’ So I’ve got both of those two pieces together, and they’re always going to be there with me.”

Partly, this is powerful to me because it’s the way I feel, too. I sometimes worry that the world’s going to catch on to the side of me that thinks I might be a fraud… and that that may be the side of me that’s right – I am a fraud. Extending beyond this admittedly Tom-centric perspective, though, what Maria said applies to all of the other 43 scientists and engineers we’ve profiled for this series. Over and over again, we’ve heard amazing people who are at the very top of their fields say things like “I’m wrong so much more than I’m right” and “I never know if I’m every going to get anything right.” And that road inexorably leads us to the big guy himself, a certain violin player by the name of Einstein:

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

And we’ll also suggest that if science and engineering (and any other worthwhile pursuits) were easy, why would we bother to celebrate the people who do them? Our subjects, including Maria, are absolutely not superheroes. They make lots of mistakes. They have deep doubts about themselves. Just like you and me. But what does make them special and worth celebrating is that they don’t let those mistakes and those doubts stop them, paralyze them. They keep going. That’s something we can all do, even those of us who aren’t Einstein… or Maria Klawe. And it is Maria who gets the last word today:

“If you are someone who feels like you might fail at something and you don’t want to do it because of that, just remember me. The vast majority of people that I know in the world, who are incredibly successful, they’ve got this piece in their brain that’s saying, ‘I’m a failure. I’ll always be a failure. I’m not good enough.’ But the reason they’re incredibly successful is they’ve got this piece in their brain that’s says, ‘don’t listen to that part, just go forward. Do stuff. Make a difference. Work hard. Dream.’”

Maria Klawe told us that as a mathematician, she “works on simple problems that have hard answers.”

But don’t feel boxed in. It’s also all right to ask her hard questions that may have simple answers.

I’ve always had a horrible time acknowledging when I don’t know something. I guess I don’t want the world to see the chinks in my armor (as if the world doesn’t already see the chinks in my armor… my rap name is “MC Chinky Armor”). Jessica practicing her “archery” at her studio. As part of my ongoing charade, I’ve perfected the wise “ah yes” nod and the classic “you and I have privileged knowledge that no one else in the world has, and I almost feel sorry for them” expression of delight and sympathy. That last one, I practice at the mirror after brushing my teeth.

It took Jessica Banks to set me straight or at least, to begin the process.

Jessica was always good at math and science, wanted to be an astronaut (and Christie Brinkley) and always thought of herself as pretty smart, which she was. And then she decided to go to MIT for graduate school to study Robotics….

“When I went to MIT, I essentially had a complete ego breakdown… like, a complete bashing. I got there and I thought, ‘I’m a smart girl. I did great in college. I’m a physics person.’ And I got to MIT, and I was like, ‘Wow, these cats are really smart.’ And then I was like, ‘Oh my god, they are so smart! These people think about things that I actually don’t think about yet.’ And for a while when people would say, ‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’ – I would nod and agree. And then later I would go home and try to look everything up. I’d try to record all of the things during the day that I didn’t know, all the references that I wasn’t sure of.”

It sounds exhausting, right? Turns out that it was. More from Jessica:

“I think I probably got really tired, you know? Like, from just always researching on my own and kind of feeling like I had this front that I was upholding. And so, I think I probably just got worn down. But you know – luckily, so. And one day I was like, ‘No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ And the person told me. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so awesome. I don’t have to go home and do any work. They’re just going to tell me now the answer.’ And then it was like learning how to ask, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ again. You know? It’s like, ‘Tell me what you’re talking about. Why is this this way? Why is that that way?’ And it really felt like I became a child again. I was re-learning a lesson about inquiring about the world And it was such a gift. To be vulnerable to new knowledge, it’s really the only way to grow. And that’s what we’re doing when we’re children. We’re just trying to grow. And the brain really equips us well with some initial ways to overcome all those fears of having to have a certain personality, or to project a certain kind of strength. And it’s so great that we’re so vulnerable as children. I really wish there were more ways in our lives we could really get back to that, own it.”

Let people in. Learn new things. Be willing to say “wow” and “I don’t know.” Wonder.

In fact, WONDER OUT LOUD.

OK, smarty-pants adults (and I’m the very first in line), let’s all go there.

Are you a robot? Does your furniture move? Wouldn’t your skull look nicer with beads?

OK, now it’s your turn. Ask Jessica Banks your questions in the comments for this post.

We asked Mayim Bialik to tell us a science joke, and here’s what happened.

Now it’s your turn to ask the wonderful Mayim any questions you might have.

Use the comments section of this post to do the asking.

Keep the questions on the short side.

Bear in mind - SHE’S AMY FARRAH FOWLER IN REAL LIFE!

UPDATE: Mayim will indeed answer your questions, but she’s also got to fit it in between being a Neuroscientist and starring on Big Bang Theory! Stay tuned and thanks for your patience.

America has loved Mayim Bialik for a very long time. First as the title character on Blossom, and then as the fantastically weird and lovable Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, Mayim has been a welcome guest in our living rooms for the better portion of her life. Mayim in her “secret life” on The Big Bang Theory And this past year Mayim received an Emmy nomination for her work on Big Bang (just like Secret Life, Mayim lost at the Emmys, but we think she probably got a nicer gift bag than we did – at least, we hope so). Yet even with this high level of celebrity, Mayim has absolutely none of the affectations of celebrity. In fact, she told Vanity Fair that on the morning the Emmy nominations were announced…

“…I was so certain I wasn’t being nominated that I had a phone interview about breastfeeding awareness scheduled at the time the announcements were being made. I was staying with my best friend in Atlanta. She has a newborn and a three-year-old, and I had my two boys with me. We were planning to take the kids to Legoland.”

Now how does this happen? We’re used to hearing about former child stars in the news when they rob convenience stores or enter rehab for the 512th time. How can the woman who was Blossom for all those years of her childhood be so completely grounded?

Well, we think it has a lot to do with how Mayim sees herself. And oh yeah, maybe it has something to do with science, too. Mayim explained to us:

“When I think about what my self-identity is, or what I identify as, I’m proud personally that I’m a mother. But in terms of societal standards of success or prestige, I’m super proud that I have a PhD in Neuroscience, especially because I come from an immigrant family. My grandparents went to night school when they immigrated from Eastern Europe. They never had a command of the English language. You know, to have a PhD in Neuroscience, especially from as fine a university as UCLA, I think that’s mostly what I’m proud of when I think of myself. I’m pretty shy about my acting world, I think, because I did it when I was a teenager, and I’m just kind of a shy person. So yeah, I think of my PhD as what I guess I put out there. And I feel like once you tell someone you’re a scientist, it tells them a lot about you in a positive way… meaning you may not want to talk to me about reality television, because I don’t watch any of it. However, if you want to talk about the universe, or if you’d like to know about your grandfather with Parkinson’s, we can talk about that. I get that a lot.”

So Mayim’s identity as a scientist continues to be a huge part of her life, even as she also lives the life of a Hollywood actress. But what does that identity really mean to her, not just in other people’s eyes, but in terms of how she experiences her own world everyday?

“To be a scientist is to be in love with the properties of the world. I can’t help but look at it like that. It’s like being in love with every aspect of the universe.”

It’s Valentine’s Day, folks. And we love Mayim.