[Q] And what did you want to know, really?

The answer is a mechanism of development. How is it that this one cell becomes a mass of cells and what different ways can it happen among…? Of course, that wasn't Cap's interest, not Weston's interest. And there just seemed to be infinite possibilities. But I'll tell you a story about this, which comes from when I was a graduate student and I was working on them, and had already done that early film I did which was better than anything else I did. And I was asked as a graduate student to go to Yale to give a seminar so I assumed it would be a small group of cryptogamic botanists and I arrived there and I was absolutely terrified because it was in a big lecture room, with the whole botany department, and the whole zoology department. And so I gave my seminar and I was fascinated afterwards because people really didn't show any interest in my brilliant experiments - they were only interested in hearing about the life cycle of the organism and it was really quite amazing. And after it was all over, I was going up to get a cup of tea and suddenly there was this voice behind me saying, 'Bonner, if I had to start all over again, I'd work with those slime molds'. And this was Ross Harrison who was probably the greatest, I think, embryologist there ever was, and a very modest, kindly sort of person. And anyhow, that was a big moment.