Chris Hadfield

To me, that is a life well lived.

Well, I've always loved reading.

I love being able to probe deeply into the thoughts of a person that I've never met.

It's like a form of shared telepathy.

Someone has taken the time to, as eloquently as they can, to lay their thoughts and emotions down into script so that then I can pick them up whenever it's convenient for me and try and tap into that other human being.

And I love the power and the insight that I get from reading.

I also love to be entertained.

I like reading, not just like I'm reading Justinian's Flea now, which is a fascinating history of the end of the Roman Empire and one of the big plagues that came through Europe.

which is factual, but I'm really looking forward to the new Reacher, you know, Lee Child book, because they're so much fun to read.

I love being totally engrossed in a thought like that, or someone else's book.

And so when I set out to write, I initially wrote three nonfiction books, and they've all done great.

They're all, you know, bestsellers.

But I

I thought it would be a really fun challenge to try and share the wild difference of spaceflight experience and the life of an astronaut, because it's still one of the very rarest of all professions, how to share those ideas as richly and fulsomely and

and engagingly as I can.

I'm a musician.

I've written and performed songs about it.

I've done a BBC series, a National Geographic series.

I did a master class.

I teach at university.