Somewhere over the South Atlantic back on the plane, en route home, I scribble notes to myself about all the myriad logistics we’ll have to master. As I fumble with passport and tickets and receipts, in climate-controlled, air-conditioned comfort, I realize I miss the rainforest, after even just a tourist’s first encounter. (American airline food also doesn’t quite match up!) That place was full of life, dripping with "life science", rich with examples, speaking directly though in a strange, new language.

This time the movie is Carl Sagan’s CONTACT (I’d worked with Carl as senior producer on the COSMOS TV series, and had brought one of his last books, “Demon-Haunted World” with me for airport-delay and late night reading) and once again I know that cosmic congruence is at work: PASSPORT TO THE RAINFOREST can be a way for millions here on Earth to make contact with an alien world most of us have never experienced... and I hope—after an amazing amount of work in an equally amazingly small amount of time—it’ll be a whole lot of fun, along with a forest-full of learning.