Ann Druyan: Cosmos, Carl Sagan, Voyager, and the Beauty of Science

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Anne Julian,

00:00:03.760 | writer, producer, director, and one of the most important

00:00:07.020 | and impactful communicators of science in our time.

00:00:10.340 | She co-wrote the 1980 science documentary series, "Cosmos,"

00:00:14.360 | hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981,

00:00:19.180 | and her love for whom, with the help of NASA,

00:00:22.500 | was recorded as brainwaves on a golden record,

00:00:25.780 | along with other things our civilization has to offer,

00:00:28.780 | and launched into space on the Voyager 1

00:00:31.460 | and Voyager 2 spacecraft that are now, 42 years later,

00:00:36.020 | still active, reaching out farther into deep space

00:00:39.660 | than any human-made object ever has.

00:00:41.940 | This was a profound and beautiful decision

00:00:46.060 | Anne made as a creative director

00:00:48.340 | of NASA's Voyager Interstellar Message Project.

00:00:51.960 | In 2014, she went on to create the second season of "Cosmos,"

00:00:55.700 | called "Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey."

00:00:58.380 | And in 2020, the new third season

00:01:01.780 | called "Cosmos, Possible Worlds,"

00:01:04.140 | which is being released this upcoming Monday, March 9th.

00:01:08.020 | It is hosted, once again, by the fun

00:01:11.220 | and the brilliant Neil deGrasse Tyson.

00:01:13.680 | Carl Sagan, Anne Julian, and "Cosmos"

00:01:18.480 | have inspired millions of scientists and curious minds

00:01:21.100 | across several generations by revealing the magic,

00:01:24.740 | the power, the beauty of science.

00:01:27.820 | I am one such curious mind.

00:01:30.300 | And if you listen to this podcast,

00:01:31.900 | you may know that Elon Musk is as well.

00:01:35.380 | He graciously agreed to read Carl Sagan's words

00:01:38.220 | about the pale blue dot in my second conversation with him.

00:01:42.180 | If you listened, there was an interesting

00:01:44.700 | and inspiring twist at the end.

00:01:46.920 | This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

00:01:50.980 | If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,

00:01:53.260 | give it five stars on Apple Podcasts,

00:01:55.180 | support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter

00:01:58.100 | at Lex Friedman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N.

00:02:02.260 | As usual, I'll do one or two minutes of ads now,

00:02:05.260 | and never any ads in the middle

00:02:06.740 | that can break the flow of the conversation.

00:02:09.020 | I hope that works for you

00:02:10.460 | and doesn't hurt the listening experience.

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00:03:19.140 | And now, here's my conversation with Ann Julianne.

00:03:23.300 | What is the role of science in our society?

00:03:27.460 | - Well, I think of what Einstein said

00:03:30.220 | when he opened the 1939 New York World's Fair.

00:03:34.660 | He said, "If science is ever to fulfill its mission

00:03:40.740 | "the way art has done, it must penetrate.

00:03:46.700 | "Its inner meaning must penetrate

00:03:49.760 | "the consciousness of everyone."

00:03:52.420 | And so for me, especially in a civilization

00:03:56.820 | dependent on high technology and science,

00:03:59.520 | one that aspires to be democratic,

00:04:03.580 | it's critical that the public,

00:04:08.920 | as informed decision-makers,

00:04:11.600 | understand the values and the methods

00:04:15.200 | and the rules of science.

00:04:18.100 | - So you think about what you just mentioned,

00:04:21.140 | the values and the methods and the rules

00:04:23.340 | and maybe the technology that science produces,

00:04:27.140 | but what about sort of the beauty, the mystery of science?

00:04:31.700 | - Well, you've touched on what I think is, for me,

00:04:34.580 | that's my way into science, is that for me,

00:04:38.540 | it's much more spiritually uplifting.

00:04:42.100 | The revelations of science,

00:04:43.740 | the collective revelations of, you know,

00:04:47.920 | really countless generations of searchers.

00:04:51.780 | And the little tiny bit we know about reality

00:04:54.900 | is the greatest joy for me,

00:04:56.580 | because I think that it relates to the idea of love.

00:05:01.580 | Like what is love that is based on illusion about the other?

00:05:06.820 | That's not love.

00:05:08.880 | Love is seeing unflinching the other.

00:05:13.780 | And accepting with all your heart.

00:05:16.060 | And to me, knowing the universe as it is,

00:05:18.540 | or the little bit that we're able to understand

00:05:21.500 | at this point, is the purest kind of love.

00:05:25.220 | And therefore, you know, how can our philosophy,

00:05:28.780 | our religion, if it's rootless in nature,

00:05:32.540 | how can it really be true?

00:05:35.540 | I just don't understand.

00:05:36.700 | So I think you need science to get a sense

00:05:41.500 | of the real romance of life,

00:05:45.380 | and the great experience of being awake in the cosmos.

00:05:50.380 | - So the fact that we know so little,

00:05:53.940 | the humbling nature of that,

00:05:55.860 | and you kind of connect love to that,

00:06:00.100 | but isn't it also, isn't it scary?

00:06:02.820 | Isn't it, why is it so inspiring, do you think?

00:06:06.780 | Why is it so beautiful that we know so little?

00:06:11.420 | - Well, first of all, as Socrates thought,

00:06:13.900 | knowing that you know little is knowing,

00:06:16.420 | really knowing something, knowing more than others.

00:06:19.420 | And it's that voice whispering in our heads,

00:06:24.420 | you might be wrong.

00:06:26.380 | Which I think is not only it's really healthy,

00:06:29.740 | because we're so imperfect, we're human, of course.

00:06:32.780 | But also, love to me is the feeling

00:06:36.180 | that you always want to go deeper, get closer.

00:06:38.900 | You can't get enough of it.

00:06:41.460 | You can't get close enough, deep enough.

00:06:44.780 | So, and that's what science is always saying.

00:06:47.220 | Science is never simply content

00:06:49.660 | with its understanding of any aspect of nature.

00:06:53.540 | It's always saying, it's always finding

00:06:56.100 | that even smaller cosmos beneath.

00:06:59.620 | So I think the two are very much parallel.

00:07:03.900 | - So you said that love is not an illusion.

00:07:08.540 | - No, it's not.

00:07:10.140 | Well, if it is-- - So what is love?

00:07:11.980 | - What is love is knowing, for me,

00:07:15.580 | love is knowing something deeply

00:07:18.180 | and still being completely gratified by it, you know,

00:07:25.020 | and wanting to know more.

00:07:28.260 | So what is loving someone, a person, let's say, deeply?

00:07:36.140 | Is not idealizing them,

00:07:38.700 | not putting some kind of subjective projection on them,

00:07:44.820 | but knowing them as they are.

00:07:48.740 | And so for me, the only aperture to that,

00:07:52.220 | knowing about nature, the universe, is science,

00:07:55.580 | because it has that error-correcting mechanism

00:07:58.740 | that most of the stuff that we do doesn't have.

00:08:01.540 | You know, you could say the Bill of Rights

00:08:03.180 | is kind of an error-correcting mechanism,

00:08:05.780 | which is one of the things I really appreciate

00:08:08.820 | about the society in which I live,

00:08:10.620 | to the extent that it's upheld and we keep faith with it.

00:08:16.020 | And the same with science.

00:08:17.180 | It's like, we will give you the highest rewards we have

00:08:21.740 | for proving us wrong about something.

00:08:24.740 | That's genius.

00:08:26.860 | That's why, in only 400 years

00:08:32.900 | since Galileo's first look through a telescope,

00:08:35.660 | we could get from this really dim, vague,

00:08:40.580 | this vague apprehension of another world

00:08:46.540 | to sending our eyes and our senses there,

00:08:50.620 | or even to going beyond.

00:08:52.260 | So it delivers the goods, like nothing else, you know?

00:08:57.260 | It really, it delivers the goods

00:09:00.420 | because it's always self-aware of its fallibility.

00:09:05.420 | - So on that topic, I'd like to ask just your opinion,

00:09:10.620 | and a feeling I have that I'm not sure what to do with,

00:09:13.260 | which is the skeptical aspect of science.

00:09:18.060 | So the modern skeptics community, and just in general,

00:09:22.180 | certain scientists, many scientists,

00:09:24.060 | maybe most scientists that apply this scientific method,

00:09:27.500 | are kind of rigorous in that application.

00:09:30.620 | And it feels like sometimes miss out some of the ideas

00:09:34.340 | outside the reach of,

00:09:35.420 | just slightly outside the reach of science.

00:09:37.420 | And they don't dare to sort of dream

00:09:40.000 | or think of revolutionary ideas

00:09:41.560 | that others will call crazy in this particular moment.

00:09:45.460 | So how do you think about the skeptical aspect of science

00:09:48.700 | that is really good at sort of keeping us in check,

00:09:51.740 | keeping us humble, but at the same time,

00:09:54.920 | sort of the kind of dreams that you and Carl Sagan

00:09:57.540 | have inspired in the world,

00:09:59.740 | it kind of shuts it down sometimes a little bit.

00:10:02.940 | - Yeah, I mean, I think it's up to the individual.

00:10:05.140 | But for me, I was so ridiculously fortunate

00:10:09.140 | in that my tutorial in science,

00:10:12.060 | because I'm not a scientist and I wasn't trained in science,

00:10:15.020 | was 20 years of days and nights with Carl Sagan.

00:10:20.020 | And the wonder, I think the reason Carl remains so beloved,

00:10:24.260 | well, I think there are many reasons,

00:10:26.280 | but at the root of it is the fact that his skepticism

00:10:31.040 | was never at the cost of his wonder

00:10:33.420 | and his wonder was never at the cost of his skepticism.

00:10:38.100 | So he couldn't fool himself

00:10:40.100 | into believing something he wanted to believe

00:10:42.240 | because it made him feel good.

00:10:43.780 | But on the other hand,

00:10:46.500 | he recognized that what science, what nature is,

00:10:51.460 | is really, it's good enough, you know?

00:10:54.260 | It's way better than our fantasies.

00:10:57.460 | And so if you're that kind of person

00:11:00.500 | who loves happiness, loves life,

00:11:03.980 | and your eyes are wide open

00:11:05.460 | and you read everything you can get your hands on,

00:11:08.220 | and you spend years studying what is known so far

00:11:12.300 | about the universe, then you have that capacity,

00:11:17.080 | that really infinite capacity to be alive,

00:11:22.080 | and also at the same time,

00:11:24.400 | to be very rigorous about what you're willing to believe.

00:11:29.400 | For Carl, I don't think he ever felt

00:11:31.760 | that his skepticism cost him anything

00:11:35.760 | because again, it comes back to love.

00:11:37.440 | He wanted to know what nature really was like,

00:11:40.960 | not to inflict his preconceived notions

00:11:44.960 | on what he wanted it to be.

00:11:46.480 | So you can't go wrong because it does, you know,

00:11:50.080 | I mean, you know, I think the pale blue dot

00:11:52.280 | is a perfect example of this massive achievement

00:11:57.280 | is to say, okay, or the Voyager record is another example,

00:12:04.160 | is here we have this mission,

00:12:05.600 | our first reconnaissance of the outer solar system.

00:12:09.440 | Well, how can we make it a mission

00:12:13.000 | in which we absolutely squeeze every drop of consciousness

00:12:18.000 | and understanding from it?

00:12:21.800 | We don't have to be scientists and then be human beings.

00:12:26.000 | I think that's the tragedy of Western civilization

00:12:28.880 | is that it's, you know, one of its greatest gifts

00:12:33.880 | has been science, and yet at the same time,

00:12:39.360 | it believing that we are the children

00:12:43.320 | of a disappointed father, a tyrant

00:12:46.760 | who puts us in a maximum security prison

00:12:50.400 | and calls it paradise, who looks at us,

00:12:53.040 | who watches us every moment

00:12:55.160 | and hates us for being our human selves, you know,

00:12:59.960 | and then most of all, what is our great sin?

00:13:02.920 | It's partaking of the tree of knowledge,

00:13:06.080 | which is our greatest gift as humans,

00:13:09.440 | this pattern recognition, this ability to see things

00:13:14.440 | and then synthesize them and jump to conclusions about them

00:13:19.000 | and test those conclusions.

00:13:21.200 | So I think the reason that in literature, in movies,

00:13:26.200 | the scientist is a figure of alienation,

00:13:31.560 | a figure, you know, oh, you see these biopics

00:13:34.920 | about scientists and yeah, he might've been great,

00:13:39.240 | but you know, he was a misthinking ship, you know,

00:13:42.040 | he was a lousy husband.

00:13:44.320 | He lacked, you know, the kind of spiritual understanding

00:13:49.320 | that maybe, you know, his wife had,

00:13:53.120 | and it's always in the end and they come around,

00:13:55.800 | but to me, that's a false dichotomy

00:13:59.080 | that we are, you know, to the extent that we are aware

00:14:03.240 | of our surroundings and understand them,

00:14:05.440 | which is what science makes it possible for us to do,

00:14:08.800 | we're even more alive.

00:14:10.040 | - So you mentioned a million awesome things there.

00:14:13.960 | Let's even just, can you tell me about the Voyager 1

00:14:16.960 | and 2 spacecraft and the interstellar message project

00:14:21.960 | and that whole just fascinating world leading up to that?

00:14:24.760 | - One of my favorite subjects.

00:14:26.160 | I love talking about it.

00:14:27.480 | I'll never get over it.

00:14:29.160 | I'll never be able to really wrap my head around

00:14:32.280 | the reality of it, the truth of it.

00:14:35.160 | - What is it, first of all?

00:14:36.000 | What's the Voyager spacecraft?

00:14:37.560 | - Okay, so Voyagers 1 and 2 were our first

00:14:41.720 | reconnaissance mission of what was then considered

00:14:44.700 | the outer solar system.

00:14:46.920 | And it was a gift of gravity,

00:14:49.400 | the idea that swinging around these worlds

00:14:54.400 | gives you a gravitational assist,

00:14:57.320 | which ultimately will send you out of the solar system

00:15:01.480 | to wander the Milky Way galaxy for one to 5 billion years.

00:15:06.480 | So Voyager gave us our first closeup look

00:15:11.640 | of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

00:15:17.080 | It discovered new moons.

00:15:21.680 | It discovered volcanoes on Io.

00:15:26.280 | Its achievements are astonishing.

00:15:31.240 | And remember, this is technology

00:15:33.720 | from the early to mid 1970s.

00:15:37.160 | - And it's still active.

00:15:38.480 | - And it's still active.

00:15:39.320 | We talked to Voyager a few days ago.

00:15:41.440 | We talked to it, in fact, a year ago I think it was.

00:15:46.280 | We needed to slightly change the attitude of the spacecraft.

00:15:50.680 | And so we fired up its thrusters

00:15:53.520 | for the first time since 1987.

00:15:56.440 | - Did they work?

00:15:57.280 | - Instantly.

00:15:58.800 | It was as if you had left your car in the garage in 1987.

00:16:02.800 | And you put the key in the ignition

00:16:05.680 | because you used keys then in the ignition.

00:16:08.280 | And it turned over the first time you stepped on the gas.

00:16:12.080 | And so that's the genius of the engineering of Voyager.

00:16:17.000 | And Carl was one of the key participants

00:16:21.200 | in imagining what its mission would be

00:16:25.920 | because it was a gift actually

00:16:28.960 | of the fact that every 175 years, plus or minus,

00:16:33.960 | there is an alignment of the worlds.

00:16:36.920 | And so you could send two spacecraft to these other worlds

00:16:41.920 | and photograph them and use your mass spectrometer

00:16:46.160 | and all the other devices on Voyager

00:16:49.760 | to really explore these worlds.

00:16:54.000 | - And it's the farthest spacecraft,

00:16:56.320 | it's the farthest human creation away from us today.

00:17:00.520 | - Yes, Voyager 1.

00:17:01.560 | - Voyager 1.

00:17:02.760 | - These two spacecraft not only gave us

00:17:04.880 | our first close-up look at hundreds of moons and planets,

00:17:09.840 | these four giant, these planets,

00:17:12.760 | but also it told us the shape of the solar system

00:17:17.640 | as it moves through the galaxy

00:17:19.760 | because there were two of them going in different directions

00:17:23.600 | and they finally, and they arrived at a place

00:17:26.120 | called the heliopause, which is where the wind from the sun,

00:17:29.960 | the solar wind dies down

00:17:31.960 | and the interstellar medium begins.

00:17:34.960 | And both Voyagers were the first spacecraft that we had

00:17:38.640 | that could tell us when that happened.

00:17:41.800 | So it's a consummate,

00:17:44.040 | I think it's the greatest scientific achievement

00:17:48.520 | of the 20th century.

00:17:50.000 | - And engineering in some sense.

00:17:51.840 | - Engineering, I mean really,

00:17:53.920 | Voyager is doing this on less energy

00:17:58.920 | than you have in your toaster, something like 11 watts.

00:18:04.000 | So, okay, but because of this gravitational assist,

00:18:07.640 | both Voyagers were destined, as I say, to,

00:18:11.720 | they were, first of all, they were supposed to function

00:18:13.760 | for a dozen years and now it's 42 years since launch

00:18:18.320 | and we're still talking to them.

00:18:20.840 | So that's amazing.

00:18:22.720 | But prior to launch, almost a year,

00:18:27.480 | eight, nine months prior to launch,

00:18:29.280 | it was decided that since Frank Drake and Carl Sagan

00:18:34.040 | and Linda Salzman Sagan had created something called

00:18:36.960 | the Pioneer 10 plaque for the Pioneer spacecraft

00:18:41.360 | that preceded Voyager, which was kind of like a license plate

00:18:46.200 | for the planet Earth, you know, man and a woman, hands up,

00:18:50.520 | you know, very basic, but very effective.

00:18:55.520 | And it captured the imagination of people all over the world.

00:18:59.440 | And so NASA turned to Frank and to Carl and said,

00:19:04.440 | "We'd like you to do a message for Voyager

00:19:08.840 | because if it's going to be circumnavigating

00:19:13.240 | the Milky Way galaxy for one to five billion years,

00:19:16.840 | you know, it's like 20 trips around the galaxy.

00:19:20.320 | And there's a very small chance

00:19:23.560 | that a spacefaring civilization would be able to flag

00:19:27.840 | one of them down.

00:19:29.520 | And so on board, you see this exquisite golden disc

00:19:33.440 | with scientific hieroglyphics explaining our address.

00:19:39.040 | And various basic scientific concepts that we believe

00:19:44.040 | that would be common to any spacefaring civilization.

00:19:50.720 | And then beneath this exquisite golden disc

00:19:54.360 | is the Voyager record, the golden record.

00:19:58.960 | And it contains something like 118 photographs, images

00:20:08.360 | of life on earth, as well as 27 pieces of music

00:20:13.360 | from all around the world.

00:20:17.800 | Many people describe it as the invention of world music.

00:20:22.320 | World music was not a concept that existed

00:20:25.200 | before the Voyager record.

00:20:27.120 | And we were determined to take our music,

00:20:29.880 | not just from the dominant technical cultures,

00:20:32.920 | but from all of the rich cultural heritage of the earth.

00:20:38.920 | And there's a sound essay, which is a kind of using,

00:20:43.920 | using a microphone as a camera to tell the story

00:20:49.040 | of the earth, beginning with its geological sounds

00:20:53.680 | and moving into biology and then into technology.

00:20:58.680 | And Lex, I think what you were getting at is that

00:21:03.080 | at the end of this sound essay,

00:21:07.160 | I had asked Carl if it were in the making of the record,

00:21:12.160 | it was my honor to be the creative director of the project,

00:21:16.480 | if it was possible to, if I had meditated for an hour

00:21:21.480 | while I was hooked up so that, you know,

00:21:25.360 | every single signal that was coming from my brain,

00:21:29.320 | my body was recorded and then converted into a sound.

00:21:34.320 | And then converted into sound for the record.

00:21:38.960 | Was it possible that these putative extraterrestrials

00:21:42.480 | of the distant future of perhaps a billion years from now

00:21:46.520 | would be able to reconstitute this message

00:21:49.560 | and to understand it?

00:21:51.520 | And he just, big smile, you know, and just said,

00:21:54.360 | "Well, hey, a billion years is a long time."

00:21:56.640 | - It was a long time. - "Here we go, do it."

00:21:58.840 | And so I did this.

00:22:01.120 | - And what were you thinking about in the meditation?

00:22:03.440 | Like what, I mean, it's such an interesting idea

00:22:06.040 | of recording as you think about things.

00:22:09.040 | What were you thinking about?

00:22:10.680 | - So I was blindfolded and couldn't hear anything.

00:22:15.680 | And I had made a mental itinerary

00:22:21.200 | of exactly where I wanted to go.

00:22:23.480 | I was truly humbled by the idea

00:22:28.600 | that these thoughts could conceivably touch

00:22:33.320 | the distant future. - Yeah, that's incredible.

00:22:35.360 | - So it's 1977, there are some 60,000 nuclear weapons

00:22:40.360 | on the planet.

00:22:41.520 | The Soviet Union and the United States

00:22:44.240 | are engaged in a, you know, to the death competition.

00:22:49.240 | And so I began by trying to tell the history of the planet

00:22:56.600 | in, you know, to my limited ability,

00:23:00.080 | what I understood about the story

00:23:02.960 | of the early existence of the planet,

00:23:06.440 | about the origin of life, about the evolution of life,

00:23:10.760 | about the history of humans,

00:23:15.240 | about our current at that time predicament,

00:23:19.760 | about the fact that one in five of us was starving

00:23:24.820 | or unable to get potable water.

00:23:28.140 | And so I sort of gave a kind of, you know,

00:23:33.220 | as general a picture as I possibly could of our predicament.

00:23:38.220 | And I also was very newly within days

00:23:44.140 | of the moment when Carl and I fell in love with each other.

00:23:51.300 | Maybe we fell in love with each other long before

00:23:53.420 | 'cause we'd known each other for years,

00:23:55.500 | but it was the first time that we had expressed

00:23:58.380 | our feelings for each other.

00:23:59.700 | - Acknowledged it, the existence of this love.

00:24:01.580 | - Yes, because we were both involved with other people

00:24:04.180 | and it was a completely outside his morality and mine

00:24:09.180 | to even broach the subject.

00:24:12.780 | But it was only days after that it happened.

00:24:17.380 | And for me, it was a eureka moment.

00:24:20.700 | It was in the context of finding that piece of Chinese music

00:24:25.700 | that was worthy to represent

00:24:28.860 | one of the oldest musical traditions on earth.

00:24:32.300 | When those of us who worked on the Voyager record

00:24:35.500 | were completely ignorant about Chinese music.

00:24:38.060 | And so that had been a constant challenge for me,

00:24:42.180 | talking to professors of Chinese music,

00:24:46.380 | as known musicologists everywhere

00:24:48.740 | and all through the project,

00:24:50.980 | desperately trying to find this one piece.

00:24:53.900 | Found the piece, lived on the Upper West Side,

00:24:58.140 | found the piece, a professor at Columbia University

00:25:02.420 | gave it to me.

00:25:03.380 | And he's, of all the people I talked to,

00:25:07.380 | everyone had said, "That's hopeless.

00:25:08.900 | "You can't do that.

00:25:09.740 | "There can't be one piece of Chinese music."

00:25:12.620 | But he was completely, "No problem, I've got it."

00:25:17.500 | And so he told me the story of the piece,

00:25:21.740 | which only made it an even greater candidate for the record.

00:25:26.740 | And I listened to it, called Carl Sagan,

00:25:30.380 | who was in Tucson, Arizona,

00:25:33.300 | addressing the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

00:25:38.300 | And I left him a message, Hotel Message Center.

00:25:45.500 | And he called me back an hour later

00:25:49.500 | and heard this beautiful voice say,

00:25:55.300 | "I get back to my hotel room

00:25:57.100 | "and I find this message that Annie called."

00:26:00.020 | And I asked myself,

00:26:00.860 | "Why didn't you leave me this message 10 years ago?"

00:26:03.780 | My heart was beating out of my chest.

00:26:09.000 | It was, for me, a kind of eureka moment.

00:26:14.940 | A kind of scientific breakthrough.

00:26:18.020 | A truth, a great truth had suddenly been revealed.

00:26:22.980 | And of course, I was awkward

00:26:25.540 | and didn't really know what to say.

00:26:27.660 | And so I blurted something out like,

00:26:29.940 | "Oh, I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Carl,"

00:26:32.020 | which wasn't really true.

00:26:32.940 | I never would have talked to him about it.

00:26:34.420 | We had been alone countless times.

00:26:36.340 | - We humans are so awkward in these beautiful moments.

00:26:39.740 | - In these amazing moments.

00:26:41.660 | And I just said, "For keeps?"

00:26:45.180 | And he thought for a very brief, like a second,

00:26:48.860 | and said, "You mean get married?"

00:26:50.740 | And I said, "Yeah."

00:26:53.100 | And he said, "Yeah."

00:26:55.020 | And we put down the phone

00:26:58.980 | and I literally was jumping around my apartment

00:27:05.140 | like a lunatic because it was so obvious.

00:27:10.300 | It was something like, "Of course."

00:27:12.500 | And then the phone rang again.

00:27:14.180 | And I thought, "Damn, no, he's gonna say,

00:27:17.940 | "I don't know what I was saying.

00:27:19.300 | "I am married, I have a kid, I'm not gonna do this."

00:27:23.420 | But he was like, "I just wanna make sure

00:27:26.060 | "that that really happened."

00:27:27.740 | And I said, "Yeah."

00:27:29.260 | He said, "We're getting married."

00:27:30.620 | And I said, "Yeah, we're getting married."

00:27:32.820 | Now this was June 1st, 1977.

00:27:36.620 | The records had not been affixed to the spacecraft yet.

00:27:41.620 | And there'd been a lot of controversy

00:27:44.380 | about what we were doing.

00:27:45.660 | I should say that among the 118 pictures

00:27:50.820 | was an image of a man and a woman,

00:27:56.180 | frontally, completely naked.

00:27:58.700 | Naked.

00:27:59.700 | And there was, I believe, a congressman on the floor

00:28:04.620 | that said, "NASA to send smut to the stars."

00:28:09.540 | And so NASA really, they got very upset.

00:28:12.900 | And they said, "You can't send a picture."

00:28:14.460 | And we had done it so that it was so brilliant.

00:28:16.300 | It was like this lovely couple, completely naked.

00:28:20.380 | And then the next image was a kind of overlay schematic

00:28:25.340 | to show the fetus inside this woman that was developing.

00:28:30.180 | And then that went off into additional imagery

00:28:33.860 | of human reproduction.

00:28:35.340 | And it really hit me that how much we hate ourselves,

00:28:40.660 | that we couldn't bear to be seen as we are.

00:28:45.500 | So-

00:28:47.820 | - In some sense that congressman also represents our society.

00:28:52.820 | Perhaps his opposition should have been included as well.

00:28:56.300 | - Yes, well, that was one of the most vigorous debates

00:28:59.700 | during the making of the record with the five, six people

00:29:03.780 | that we collaborated with was,

00:29:06.020 | do we only put our best foot forward?

00:29:09.500 | Or do we show Hiroshima, Auschwitz, the Congo,

00:29:14.500 | what we have done?

00:29:18.020 | - What do you think represents humanity?

00:29:20.740 | If you think about it, are darker moments,

00:29:25.380 | are they essential for humanity?

00:29:26.940 | All the wars we've been through,

00:29:28.220 | all the tortures and the suffering and the cruelty,

00:29:32.220 | is that essential for happiness, for beauty, for creation?

00:29:36.780 | Generally speaking.

00:29:37.620 | - Well, it's certainly not essential

00:29:38.460 | for happiness or beauty, that's for sure.

00:29:40.580 | I mean, it's part of who we are.

00:29:42.380 | If we're gonna be real about it, which is,

00:29:44.540 | I think we tell on ourselves,

00:29:47.620 | even if we don't wanna be real.

00:29:49.540 | I think that if you're a spacefaring civilization

00:29:54.500 | and you've gotten it together sufficiently,

00:29:58.100 | you can move from world to world,

00:30:00.780 | then I think they probably took one look

00:30:04.220 | at this derelict spacecraft,

00:30:06.540 | and they knew that these were people

00:30:08.540 | in their technological adolescence,

00:30:10.580 | and they were just setting forth,

00:30:13.940 | and they must have had these issues.

00:30:16.340 | And so, that's the great thing about lying,

00:30:22.580 | is that a lie only has a shelf life.

00:30:25.100 | If a great work of art that's a forgery,

00:30:30.660 | people can be fooled immediately,

00:30:32.260 | but 10 or 15 years, 20 years later,

00:30:34.620 | they start to look at it,

00:30:35.860 | they begin to realize the lens,

00:30:39.660 | our lens of our present is coloring everything that we see.

00:30:44.660 | So, I think it didn't matter

00:30:48.740 | that we didn't show our atrocities.

00:30:52.460 | - They would fill in the blanks.

00:30:54.140 | - They would fill in the blanks.

00:30:55.500 | - So let me sort of ask,

00:30:56.860 | you've mentioned how unlikely it is

00:30:58.460 | that you and Carl, that two souls like yours

00:31:03.020 | would meet in this vast world.

00:31:04.980 | What are your views on how and why

00:31:08.340 | incredibly unlikely things like these

00:31:10.860 | nevertheless do happen?

00:31:12.740 | - It's purely to me, chance.

00:31:15.100 | It's totally random.

00:31:17.620 | It's just, I mean, and the fact is,

00:31:20.900 | is that some people are,

00:31:23.220 | and it's happening every day right now,

00:31:25.860 | some people are the random casualties of chance.

00:31:30.340 | And I don't just mean the people

00:31:33.180 | who are being destroyed in childhood, in wartime,

00:31:38.180 | I'm also, or the people who starved to death

00:31:41.820 | because of famine,

00:31:43.460 | but also the people who,

00:31:46.060 | who are not living to the fullest.

00:31:52.020 | All of these things, I think there's a,

00:31:53.780 | my parents met on the subway in rush hour.

00:31:57.460 | And so I'm only here with you

00:31:59.100 | because of the most random possible situation.

00:32:03.420 | And so I've had this, a sense of this,

00:32:05.260 | even before I knew Carl,

00:32:06.820 | I always felt this way,

00:32:08.500 | that I only existed because of the generosity.

00:32:12.140 | - Of the rush hour.

00:32:13.180 | - Of the, no, of just all of the things,

00:32:17.260 | all of the skeins of causality.

00:32:20.500 | - Yeah.

00:32:21.340 | It's interesting 'cause, you know,

00:32:22.780 | the rush hour is a source of stress for a lot of people,

00:32:26.460 | but clearly in its moments,

00:32:29.300 | it can also be a source of something beautiful.

00:32:32.420 | - That's right.

00:32:33.260 | - Of strangers meeting and so on.

00:32:35.220 | So everything, everything is,

00:32:38.100 | has a possibility of doing something beautiful.

00:32:40.100 | - That's right.

00:32:41.340 | - So let me ask sort of a quick tangent on the Voyager.

00:32:47.420 | This beautiful romantic notion that Voyager 1

00:32:52.220 | is sort of our farthest human reach into space.

00:32:55.780 | If you think of what, I don't know if you've seen,

00:32:58.460 | but what Elon Musk did with putting the roadster,

00:33:02.900 | letting it fly out into space,

00:33:05.020 | there's a sort of humor to it.

00:33:07.260 | I think that's also kind of interesting,

00:33:10.020 | but maybe you can comment on that.

00:33:11.900 | But in general, if now that we are developing,

00:33:16.900 | we're venturing out into space again in a more serious way,

00:33:21.740 | what kind of stuff that represent since Voyager was launched

00:33:26.500 | should we send out as a follow-up?

00:33:28.900 | Is there things that you think that's developed

00:33:31.940 | in the next, in the 40 years after

00:33:34.580 | that we should update the spacefaring aliens?

00:33:38.860 | - Well, of course now we could send the worldwide,

00:33:41.780 | we could send everything that's on the world wide web.

00:33:45.340 | We could send, I mean, you know,

00:33:47.700 | that was a time when we're talking about photograph records

00:33:50.860 | and transistor radios.

00:33:52.580 | And, you know, so we tried to be,

00:33:57.580 | to take advantage of the existing technology

00:34:00.100 | to the fullest extent.

00:34:02.140 | You know, the computer that was hooked up to me

00:34:04.500 | from my brainwaves and my heart sounds

00:34:06.420 | while I was meditating was, you know,

00:34:08.660 | the size of a gigantic room.

00:34:10.940 | And I'm sure it's not, it didn't have the power of a phone,

00:34:15.500 | has, the phone has now.

00:34:17.260 | So, you know, now we could just,

00:34:19.540 | I think we could let it all hang out.

00:34:21.060 | We could just like send, you know, every,

00:34:23.420 | I mean, that's the wonder, like,

00:34:25.940 | I would send, you know, Wikipedia or something

00:34:29.220 | and not be a gatekeeper, but show who we are.

00:34:34.220 | - You were also, it's interesting 'cause one of the problems

00:34:38.700 | of the internet of having so much information

00:34:41.660 | is it's actually the curation,

00:34:44.660 | the human curation is still the powerful, beautiful thing.

00:34:48.820 | So what you did with the record is actually,

00:34:52.020 | is exactly the right process.

00:34:54.020 | It's kind of boiling down a massive amount of possibilities

00:34:57.500 | of what you could send into something that represents,

00:35:01.020 | you know, the better angels of our nature

00:35:02.940 | or represents our humanity.

00:35:05.060 | So if you think about, you know,

00:35:08.860 | what would you send from the internet,

00:35:10.860 | as opposed to sending all of Wikipedia, for example,

00:35:12.940 | all of human knowledge,

00:35:14.820 | is there something just new that we've developed, you think?

00:35:18.580 | Or fundamentally, we're still the same kind of human species?

00:35:23.580 | - I think fundamentally we're the same,

00:35:25.900 | but we have a kind of, we have advanced

00:35:29.940 | to an astonishing degree in our capacity for data retrieval

00:35:35.620 | and for transmission.

00:35:37.420 | And so, you know, I would send YouTube,

00:35:40.100 | I would send, you know, really, like think of all the,

00:35:43.060 | you know, I still feel so lucky

00:35:48.180 | that there's any great musical artist

00:35:52.340 | of the last hundred years who I revere.

00:35:55.900 | I can just find them and watch them and listen to them.

00:35:59.740 | And, you know, that's fantastic.

00:36:02.060 | I also love how democratic it is

00:36:04.820 | that we each become curators

00:36:07.980 | and that we each decide those things.

00:36:10.340 | Now, I may not agree with, you know,

00:36:14.220 | those, the choices that everyone makes, but of course not,

00:36:17.740 | because that's not the point.

00:36:19.060 | The point is, is that we are, you know,

00:36:22.380 | we have discovered largely through the internet

00:36:26.580 | that we are an intercommunicating organism,

00:36:29.480 | and that can only be good.

00:36:32.260 | - So you could also send now Cosmos.

00:36:37.260 | - Yes, I'd love to.

00:36:38.980 | I would be proud to.

00:36:39.980 | - I mean, you've spoken about a very specific voice

00:36:45.900 | that Cosmos had in, that it reveals the magic of science.

00:36:50.580 | I think you said shamanic journey of it,

00:36:53.300 | and not the details of the latest breakthroughs or so on.

00:36:57.380 | It's just revealing the magic.

00:36:59.060 | Can you try to describe what this voice of Cosmos is

00:37:03.700 | with the follow-up and the new Cosmos

00:37:07.380 | that you're working on now?

00:37:09.300 | - Yes, well, the dream of Cosmos is really,

00:37:14.460 | like Einstein's quote, you know,

00:37:17.100 | it's the idea of the awesome power of science

00:37:20.740 | to be in absolutely everyone's hands.

00:37:25.340 | You know, it belongs to all of us.

00:37:27.700 | It's not the preserve of a priesthood.

00:37:31.620 | It's just the community of science is becoming more diverse

00:37:35.620 | and being less exclusive than it was guilty of

00:37:39.000 | in the not so recent past.

00:37:41.540 | The discoveries of science,

00:37:43.580 | our understanding of the cosmos that we live in

00:37:48.380 | has really grown by leaps and bounds,

00:37:52.100 | and probably we've learned more

00:37:54.860 | in the last hundred years about it.

00:37:58.820 | You know, the tempo of discovery has picked up so rapidly.

00:38:03.820 | And so the idea of Cosmos from the 1970s,

00:38:09.140 | when Carl and I and Steven Soder, another astronomer,

00:38:12.820 | first imagined it was that interweaving,

00:38:17.820 | not only of these scientific concepts and revelations

00:38:23.140 | and using, you know, cinematic VFX

00:38:27.500 | to take the viewer on this transporting, uplifting journey,

00:38:32.500 | but also the stories of the searchers.

00:38:36.220 | Because the more I have learned about, you know,

00:38:41.220 | the process of science through my life with Carl and since,

00:38:46.620 | the more I am really persuaded

00:38:51.780 | that it's that adherence to the facts

00:38:55.100 | and to that adherence to that little approximation,

00:39:00.980 | that little bit of reality

00:39:02.380 | that we've been able to get our hands around.

00:39:05.920 | It's something that we desperately need.

00:39:08.880 | And it doesn't matter if you are a scientist.

00:39:11.360 | In fact, the people, it matters even more if you're not.

00:39:15.760 | And since, you know, the level of science teaching

00:39:19.240 | has been fairly or unfairly maligned.

00:39:22.280 | And the idea that once there was such a thing

00:39:28.200 | as a television network,

00:39:29.840 | which of course has now evolved into many other things,

00:39:33.600 | the idea that you could, in the most democratic way,

00:39:37.360 | make accessible to absolutely everyone,

00:39:39.880 | and most especially people who don't even realize

00:39:44.040 | that they have an interest in the subject

00:39:46.180 | or who feel so intimidated by the jargon of science

00:39:50.920 | and its kind of exclusive history.

00:39:54.760 | The idea that we could do this,

00:39:56.880 | and, you know, in season two of "Cosmos,"

00:39:59.680 | the "Space Time Odyssey,"

00:40:01.760 | we were in 181 countries in the space of two weeks.

00:40:06.440 | It was the largest rollout in television history,

00:40:09.920 | which is really amazing for a,

00:40:13.580 | there is no science-based programming.

00:40:15.600 | - By the way, just to clarify, the series was rolled out,

00:40:18.040 | so it was shown in that many countries.

00:40:21.280 | You said we were in--

00:40:23.280 | - Well, our show was in 180 countries.

00:40:25.680 | - Yeah, the show, which is incredible.

00:40:27.280 | I mean, the hundreds of millions,

00:40:29.640 | whatever that number is, the people that watched it,

00:40:31.640 | it's just, it's crazy.

00:40:33.360 | - It's so crazy that, for instance,

00:40:35.760 | my son had a cerebral hemorrhage a year ago,

00:40:41.000 | and the doctor who saved his life

00:40:45.120 | in a very dangerous situation,

00:40:49.280 | when he realized that, you know,

00:40:53.880 | that Sam and I were who we were,

00:40:57.880 | he said, "That's why I'm here."

00:41:00.360 | You know, he said, "If you come of age in a poor country,

00:41:03.680 | "like Colombia, and Carl Sagan calls you to science

00:41:07.360 | "when you're a child, then, you know, you go to medicine,

00:41:12.360 | "because that's the only avenue open to you,

00:41:15.500 | "but that's why I'm here."

00:41:17.720 | And I have heard that story, and I hear that story.

00:41:22.680 | I think every week.

00:41:25.040 | - How does that make you feel?

00:41:26.120 | I mean, the number of scientists,

00:41:29.460 | I mean, a lot of it is quiet, right?

00:41:31.400 | But the number of scientists Cosmos has created

00:41:34.920 | is just countless.

00:41:36.300 | I mean, it probably touched a lot of, I don't know,

00:41:38.380 | probably, it could be a crazy number,

00:41:40.720 | like 90% of scientists or something have been--

00:41:43.840 | - I would love to do that census,

00:41:45.480 | because that's the greatest gratification,

00:41:50.040 | because that's the dream of science.

00:41:52.080 | That's the whole idea, is that if it belongs to all of us,

00:41:56.040 | and not just a tiny few, then we have some chance

00:42:00.200 | of determining how it's used.

00:42:02.800 | And if it's only in the hands of people

00:42:06.040 | whose only interests are the balance sheet,

00:42:11.040 | or hegemony over other nations, or things like that,

00:42:17.720 | then it'll probably end up being a gun aimed at our heads.

00:42:22.560 | But if it's distributed in the widest possible way,

00:42:27.560 | a capability that we now have because of our technology,

00:42:32.360 | then the chance is that it'll be used with wisdom.

00:42:37.360 | That's the dream of it.

00:42:39.040 | So that's why we did the first Cosmos.

00:42:42.920 | We wanted to take not just, as I say,

00:42:46.040 | the scientific information,

00:42:47.960 | but also tell the stories of these searchers.

00:42:52.520 | Because for us, and for me,

00:42:55.600 | in carrying on this series in the second and third seasons,

00:42:59.600 | the primary interest was that we wouldn't tell a story

00:43:06.640 | unless it was kind of a threefer.

00:43:09.040 | You know, it was not just a way

00:43:10.720 | to understand a new scientific idea,

00:43:13.920 | but it was also a way to understand what,

00:43:18.920 | if it matters what's true,

00:43:21.000 | how the world can change for us,

00:43:24.440 | and how we can be protected.

00:43:26.200 | And if it doesn't matter what's true,

00:43:29.280 | then we're in grave danger,

00:43:32.100 | because we have the capability

00:43:34.680 | to not only destroy ourselves and our civilization,

00:43:38.800 | but to take so many species with us.

00:43:42.240 | - And I'd like to talk to you about that particular,

00:43:45.280 | the sort of the dangers of ourselves in a little bit,

00:43:48.840 | but sort of to linger on Cosmos.

00:43:51.280 | Maybe for the first, the 1980 and the 2014 follow-up,

00:43:56.280 | what's a, or one of the, or several memorable moments

00:44:01.480 | from the creation of either of those seasons?

00:44:07.140 | - Well, you know, the critical thing really

00:44:10.780 | was the fact that Seth MacFarlane became our champion,

00:44:15.780 | because I had been, with three colleagues,

00:44:19.080 | I had been schlepping around from network to network

00:44:22.440 | with a treatment for Cosmos,

00:44:25.280 | and every network said they wanted to do it,

00:44:27.920 | but they wouldn't give me creative control,

00:44:30.920 | and they wouldn't give me enough money

00:44:34.360 | to make it cinematic,

00:44:36.520 | and to make it feel like you're really going on an adventure.

00:44:40.480 | And so--

00:44:41.320 | - And I think both of those things,

00:44:42.720 | sorry to interrupt, both of those things there,

00:44:44.980 | given what Cosmos represents, the legacy of it,

00:44:48.640 | the legacy of Carl Sagan is essential,

00:44:50.460 | control, especially in the modern world.

00:44:53.980 | It's wonderful that you sought control,

00:44:56.460 | that you did not really push it.

00:44:57.300 | - And I keep saying no.

00:44:58.940 | And my partners, I'm sure, you know,

00:45:00.980 | I know they would look at me like I was nuts, you know?

00:45:03.820 | And they probably must have entertained the idea

00:45:06.480 | that maybe I didn't really want to do it, you know,

00:45:09.060 | because I was afraid or something,

00:45:11.260 | but I kept saying no,

00:45:12.280 | and it wasn't until I met Seth MacFarlane,

00:45:15.420 | and he took me to Fox, and to Peter Rice,

00:45:20.420 | and said, you know, "I'll pay for half the pilot

00:45:24.220 | "if I have to," you know, and Peter Rice was like,

00:45:26.020 | "Put your money away."

00:45:27.340 | And--

00:45:28.180 | - Seth said that.

00:45:29.000 | - Yeah.

00:45:29.840 | And in every time since, in the 10 years since,

00:45:35.260 | at every turn, when we needed Seth to intervene

00:45:39.220 | on our behalf, he stood up and he did it.

00:45:43.340 | And so that was like, in a way, that is the,

00:45:47.900 | you know, the watershed for me

00:45:50.340 | of everything that followed since.

00:45:52.300 | And then I was so lucky because, you know,

00:45:54.980 | Steve and I, Steve Soder and I,

00:45:57.100 | written the original "Cosmos" with Carl,

00:45:59.820 | and collaborated on the treatment for season two.

00:46:03.780 | And then Brandon Braga came into our project

00:46:08.780 | at the perfect moment, and has proven to be just the,

00:46:14.300 | really, I've been so lucky my whole life.

00:46:17.140 | I've collaborated, I've been lucky with the people,

00:46:19.860 | my collaborators have been extraordinary.

00:46:22.640 | And so that was a critical thing.

00:46:26.060 | But also to have, you know, for instance,

00:46:28.820 | our astonishing VFX supervisor,

00:46:32.500 | who comes from the movies,

00:46:34.100 | who heads the global association of VFX people, Jeff Oken.

00:46:39.100 | And then, and you know, I could rattle off 10 more names,

00:46:44.340 | I'd be happy to do that.

00:46:46.300 | And it was that collaboration.

00:46:49.620 | - So the people were essential to the creation of-

00:46:52.180 | - Absolutely.

00:46:53.380 | I mean, when it came down, I have to say that

00:46:56.060 | when it came down to the vision of what the series would be,

00:46:59.220 | that was me sitting in my home,

00:47:01.780 | looking out the window, and, you know,

00:47:03.900 | really imagining like what I wanted to do.

00:47:06.580 | - Can you pause on that for a second?

00:47:07.900 | Like, what's the process?

00:47:09.020 | 'Cause it, you know, "Cosmos" is also,

00:47:11.220 | it's grounded in science, of course,

00:47:12.680 | but it's also incredibly imaginative,

00:47:15.380 | and the words used are carefully crafted.

00:47:19.260 | - Thank you.

00:47:20.100 | - So what's, if you can talk about the process of that,

00:47:24.860 | the big picture, imaginative thinking,

00:47:28.100 | and sort of the rigorous crafting of words

00:47:31.340 | that like basically turns into something like poetry.

00:47:35.180 | - Thank you so much.

00:47:36.180 | For me, these are rare occasions for human self-esteem.

00:47:42.420 | The scientists that we bring to life in "Cosmos"

00:47:49.020 | are people, in my view, who have everything we need

00:47:55.900 | to see us through this current crisis.

00:48:00.220 | It's their, very often they come,

00:48:03.860 | they're poor, they're female, they're outsiders

00:48:08.700 | who are not expected to have gifts that are so prodigious,

00:48:13.700 | but they persevere.

00:48:18.660 | And so you have someone like Michael Faraday,

00:48:21.900 | who is, comes from a family,

00:48:25.060 | dysfunctional family of like 14 people,

00:48:27.660 | and it never goes to, university never learns the math,

00:48:32.660 | but there's Einstein years later

00:48:39.020 | looking up at the picture of Faraday to inspire him.

00:48:44.020 | So it's, if we had people with that kind of humility

00:48:49.220 | and unselfishness who didn't wanna patent everything

00:48:56.180 | as, Michael Faraday created the wealth of the 20th century

00:49:01.180 | with his various inventions.

00:49:04.980 | And yet he never took out a single patent

00:49:07.260 | at a time when people were patenting everything

00:49:10.580 | because that was not what he was about.

00:49:13.020 | And to me, that's a kind of almost a saintliness

00:49:17.020 | that says that, here's a man who finds in his life

00:49:23.260 | this tremendous gratification from searching.

00:49:27.700 | And it's just so impressive to me.

00:49:30.660 | And there are so many other people in cosmos,

00:49:32.820 | especially the new season of cosmos,

00:49:34.820 | which is called "Possible Worlds."

00:49:36.580 | - Possible, beautiful title.

00:49:37.860 | - "Possible Worlds," well, I stole it from an author

00:49:42.460 | and a scientist from the 1940s,

00:49:44.260 | but it, for me, encapsulates not just, you know,

00:49:49.260 | the exoplanets that we've begun to discover,

00:49:53.140 | not just, you know, the worlds that we might visit,

00:49:57.780 | but also the world that this could be,

00:50:01.460 | a hopeful vision of the future.

00:50:03.300 | You ask me, what is common to all three seasons of cosmos?

00:50:06.620 | Or what is that voice?

00:50:08.340 | It's a voice of hope.

00:50:10.580 | It's a voice that says there is a future

00:50:13.380 | which we bring to life in, I think,

00:50:16.900 | a fairly dazzling fashion that we can still have, you know?

00:50:21.620 | And in sitting down to imagine what this season would be,

00:50:24.820 | the new season would be,

00:50:26.460 | I'm sitting where I live in Ithaca, beautiful,

00:50:29.140 | just gorgeous place, trees everywhere, waterfalls.

00:50:35.100 | I'm sitting there thinking, well, you know, you can't,

00:50:38.420 | how do you, how do you awaken people?

00:50:41.620 | I mean, you can't yell at them and say,

00:50:43.540 | we're all gonna die, you know?

00:50:45.140 | It's not, it doesn't help.

00:50:47.300 | It doesn't help.

00:50:48.900 | But I think if you give them a vision of the future

00:50:53.900 | that's not pie in the sky, but something,

00:50:59.260 | ways in which science can be redemptive,

00:51:02.940 | can actually remediate our future.

00:51:06.780 | We have those capabilities right now,

00:51:09.860 | as well as the capabilities to do things in the cosmos

00:51:14.860 | that we could be doing right now, but we're not doing them.

00:51:18.860 | Not because we don't know how to,

00:51:22.140 | how, you know, with the engineering or the material sciences

00:51:25.580 | or the physics, we know all we need to know,

00:51:28.700 | but we're a little bit paralyzed in some sense.

00:51:32.700 | And, you know, we're like,

00:51:34.900 | I always think we're like the toddler, you know?

00:51:37.140 | Like we left our mother's legs, you know,

00:51:40.900 | and scurried out to the moon.

00:51:43.260 | And we had a moment of, wow, we can do this.

00:51:46.300 | And then we realized,

00:51:48.260 | and somehow we had a failure of nerve

00:51:50.700 | and we went scurrying back to our mother

00:51:53.540 | and, you know, did things that really weren't

00:51:55.540 | going to get us out there, like the space shuttle,

00:51:58.020 | things like that, because it was a kind of failure of nerve.

00:52:02.260 | So cosmos is about overcoming those fears.

00:52:06.780 | - We're now as a civilization ready to be a teenager

00:52:10.300 | venturing out into college.

00:52:12.220 | We're returning back.

00:52:13.300 | - Exactly.

00:52:14.860 | Exactly.

00:52:16.100 | And that's one of my theories about our current situation

00:52:21.100 | is that this is our adolescence.

00:52:25.460 | And I was a total mess as an adolescent.

00:52:28.460 | I was reckless, irresponsible, totally.

00:52:31.540 | I didn't, I was inconsiderate.

00:52:33.660 | The reality of other people's feelings

00:52:37.660 | and the future didn't exist for me.

00:52:41.420 | So why should a technologically adolescent civilization

00:52:44.900 | be any different?

00:52:46.540 | But, you know, the vast majority of people I know

00:52:51.540 | made it through that period and went on to be more wise.

00:52:58.620 | And that's what my hope is for our civilization.

00:53:02.700 | - On a sort of a darker and more difficult subject

00:53:07.580 | in terms of, so you just talked about the cosmos

00:53:10.780 | being an inspiration for science

00:53:13.540 | and for us growing out of our messy adolescence,

00:53:18.540 | but nevertheless, there is threats in this world.

00:53:22.060 | So do you worry about existential threats

00:53:25.180 | like you mentioned nuclear weapons?

00:53:27.500 | Do you worry about nuclear war?

00:53:29.900 | - Yes.

00:53:30.740 | - And if you could also maybe comment,

00:53:32.820 | I don't know how much you've thought about it,

00:53:34.460 | but there's folks like Elon Musk

00:53:37.580 | who are worried about the existential threats

00:53:39.620 | of artificial intelligence,

00:53:41.380 | sort of our robotic computer creations

00:53:45.300 | sort of resulting in us humans losing control.

00:53:49.300 | So can you speak to the things that worry you

00:53:52.140 | in terms of existential concerns?

00:53:53.900 | - Oh, all of the above.

00:53:55.620 | You don't have to be silly, you know,

00:53:57.220 | like not to think and not to look at, for instance,

00:54:00.540 | our rapidly burgeoning capability

00:54:05.540 | in artificial intelligence,

00:54:08.660 | not, and to see how sick so much of the planet is,

00:54:13.660 | not to be concerned.

00:54:15.820 | - Sick isn't evil, potentially.

00:54:19.140 | - Well, how much cruelty and brutality

00:54:22.140 | is happening at this very moment?

00:54:25.380 | And I would put climate change higher up on that list

00:54:30.380 | because I believe that there are unforeseen discoveries

00:54:34.820 | that we are making right now.

00:54:38.080 | For instance, all that methane

00:54:39.740 | that's coming out of the ocean floor

00:54:42.700 | that was sequestered because of the permafrost,

00:54:47.420 | which is now melting.

00:54:48.720 | I think there are other effects

00:54:51.420 | besides our greed and short-term thinking

00:54:54.820 | that we are triggering now

00:54:58.780 | with all the greenhouse gases

00:55:01.020 | we're putting into the atmosphere.

00:55:02.460 | And that worries me day and night.

00:55:04.200 | I think about it every single, every moment, really,

00:55:08.840 | because I really think that's how we have to be.

00:55:11.240 | We have to begin to really focus

00:55:16.240 | on how grave the challenge is to our civilization

00:55:21.920 | and to the other species that are,

00:55:25.540 | it's a mass, this is a mass extinction event

00:55:29.480 | that we're living through.

00:55:30.960 | And we're seeing it, we're seeing news of it every day.

00:55:35.060 | - So what do you think about, another touchy subject,

00:55:38.580 | but what do you think about the politicization of science

00:55:41.820 | on topics like global warming,

00:55:44.020 | embryonic stem cell research, and other topics like it?

00:55:47.420 | What's your sense?

00:55:48.380 | Why?

00:55:49.220 | - What do you mean by the politicization of global warming?

00:55:52.700 | - Meaning that if you say, I think what you just said,

00:55:58.460 | which is global warming is a serious concern,

00:56:01.160 | it's human caused, there might be some detrimental effects.

00:56:04.600 | Currently, there's a large percent of the population

00:56:08.240 | in the United States that would,

00:56:10.400 | as opposed to listening to that statement,

00:56:14.380 | would immediately think,

00:56:16.120 | or that's just a liberal talking point.

00:56:20.000 | That's what I mean by politicization.

00:56:20.840 | - I think that's not so true anymore.

00:56:22.280 | I don't think our problem is a population

00:56:26.280 | that's skeptical about climate change,

00:56:29.920 | because I think that the extreme weather fire events

00:56:34.140 | that we are experiencing with such frequency

00:56:38.880 | is really gotten to people.

00:56:40.760 | I think that there are people in leadership positions

00:56:45.760 | who choose to ignore it and to pretend it's not there,

00:56:52.000 | but ultimately I think they will be rejected.

00:56:55.640 | The question is, will it be fast enough?

00:56:57.680 | But I think actually that most people

00:57:03.680 | have really finally taken the reality

00:57:07.800 | of global climate change to heart.

00:57:11.280 | And they look at their children and grandchildren,

00:57:14.560 | and they don't feel good because they come from a world

00:57:19.560 | which was in many ways, in terms of climate,

00:57:23.160 | fairly familiar and benign.

00:57:26.360 | And they know that we're headed in another direction.

00:57:28.640 | And it's not just that, it's what we do to the oceans,

00:57:32.180 | the rivers, the air.

00:57:34.120 | You asked me, what is the message of "Cosmos"?

00:57:39.640 | It's that we have to think in longer terms.

00:57:44.640 | I think of the Soviet Union and the United States

00:57:49.040 | in the Cold War, and they're ready to kill each other

00:57:51.720 | over these two different views

00:57:53.880 | of the distribution of resources.

00:57:56.660 | But neither of them has a form of human social organization

00:58:02.480 | that thinks in terms of a hundred years,

00:58:05.680 | let alone a thousand years,

00:58:07.480 | which are the timescales that science speaks in.

00:58:11.880 | And that's part of the problem,

00:58:13.740 | is that we have to get a grip on reality

00:58:18.480 | and where we're headed.

00:58:20.360 | And I'm not fatalistic at all,

00:58:24.760 | but I do feel like, and in setting out to do this series,

00:58:30.680 | each season, we were talking about climate change

00:58:35.360 | in the original "Cosmos" in episode four.

00:58:38.600 | And warning about inadvertent climate modification in 1980.

00:58:44.640 | And of course, Carl did his PhD thesis

00:58:48.840 | on the greenhouse effect on Venus,

00:58:50.760 | and he was painfully cognizant

00:58:53.560 | of what a runaway greenhouse effect would do to our planet.

00:58:57.880 | And not only that, but the climatic history of the planet,

00:59:00.780 | which we go into in great detail in the series.

00:59:04.520 | So yeah, I mean, how are we gonna get a grip on this

00:59:08.320 | if not through some kind of understanding of science?

00:59:13.020 | Can I just say one more thing about science?

00:59:16.760 | Is that its powers of prophecy are astonishing.

00:59:21.760 | You launch a spacecraft in 1977,

00:59:27.160 | and you know where each and every planet

00:59:31.440 | in the solar system is gonna be in every moon.

00:59:34.780 | And you rendezvous with that flawlessly,

00:59:38.400 | and you exceed the design specifications

00:59:41.240 | of the greatest dreams of the engineers.

00:59:44.720 | And then you go on to explore the Milky Way galaxy,

00:59:49.120 | and you do it.

00:59:50.040 | I mean, the climate scientists,

00:59:53.360 | some of the people whose stories we tell in "Cosmos,"

00:59:57.240 | their predictions were,

01:00:01.600 | and they were working with very early

01:00:04.840 | computer modeling capabilities.

01:00:07.400 | They have proven to be so robust, nuclear winter,

01:00:11.640 | all of these things.

01:00:12.720 | This is a prophetic power.

01:00:14.540 | And yet how crazy that, you know,

01:00:17.280 | it's like the Romans with their lead cooking pots

01:00:21.960 | and their lead pipes,

01:00:23.140 | or the Aztecs ripping out their own people's hearts.

01:00:27.560 | This is us.

01:00:28.620 | We know better, and yet we are acting

01:00:32.240 | as if it's business as usual.

01:00:34.460 | - Yeah, the beautiful complexity of human nature.

01:00:39.280 | Speaking of which, let me ask.

01:00:42.040 | (laughs)

01:00:44.480 | A tough question, I guess,

01:00:45.900 | because there's so many possible answers,

01:00:47.800 | but what aspect of life here on Earth

01:00:49.840 | do you find most fascinating?

01:00:51.640 | From the origin of life, the evolutionary process itself,

01:00:55.480 | the origin of the human mind, so intelligence,

01:00:58.140 | some of the technological developments going on now,

01:01:02.880 | or us venturing out into space or space exploration.

01:01:05.860 | What just inspires you?

01:01:07.720 | - Oh, they all inspire me.

01:01:09.120 | Every one of those inspire me,

01:01:10.420 | but I'll have to say that to me,

01:01:13.260 | at the origin, as I've gotten older,

01:01:15.100 | to me the origin of life has become less interesting.

01:01:20.100 | - Interesting, wow.

01:01:21.560 | - Because I feel, well, not because it's more,

01:01:24.880 | I think I understand, I have a better grasp

01:01:29.720 | of how it might have happened.

01:01:31.600 | - Do you think it was a huge leap?

01:01:33.160 | So a moment--

01:01:34.000 | - I think it was a, we are a byproduct of geophysics,

01:01:37.880 | and I think it's not, my suspicion, of course,

01:01:42.480 | which is, take it with a grain of salt,

01:01:45.800 | but my suspicion is that it happens more often

01:01:50.560 | in more places than we like to think,

01:01:53.800 | because after all, the history of our thinking

01:01:56.600 | about ourselves has been a constant series of demotions

01:02:00.920 | in which we've had to realize, no, no.

01:02:03.960 | So to me that's--

01:02:04.800 | - We're not at the center of the solar system.

01:02:06.240 | - And the origin of consciousness is to me also

01:02:09.000 | not so amazing.

01:02:10.840 | If you think of it as going back to these

01:02:14.200 | once-held organisms of a billion years ago,

01:02:18.080 | who had to know, well, if I go higher up,

01:02:23.080 | I'll get too much sun, and if I go lower down,

01:02:26.800 | I'll be protected from UV rays, things like that.

01:02:31.400 | They had to know that, or you I eat, me I don't.

01:02:34.400 | I mean, even that, I can see, if you know that,

01:02:38.360 | then knowing what we know now,

01:02:40.720 | it's just, it's not so hard to fathom.

01:02:43.640 | It seems like, you know, there's,

01:02:45.800 | I never believed there was a duality

01:02:48.580 | between our minds and our bodies,

01:02:51.160 | and I think that--

01:02:52.520 | - Even consciousness, all those--

01:02:54.200 | - All those things seem to me, except--

01:02:57.080 | - Byproduct of geophysics.

01:03:00.760 | - Yeah, all of chemistry, yes.

01:03:03.240 | Geochemistry, geophysics, absolutely.

01:03:06.640 | You know, it makes perfect sense to me,

01:03:09.000 | and it doesn't make it any less wondrous.

01:03:12.360 | It doesn't rob it at all of the wonder of it,

01:03:17.360 | and so, yeah, I think that's amazing.

01:03:21.600 | I think, you know, we tell the story

01:03:23.960 | of someone you have never heard of, I guarantee,

01:03:26.600 | and I think you're very knowledgeable on the subject,

01:03:29.360 | who was more responsible for our ability

01:03:33.960 | to venture out to other worlds than anyone else,

01:03:37.400 | and who was completely forgotten,

01:03:40.400 | and so, those are the kinds of stories

01:03:42.840 | I like best for "Cosmos," because--

01:03:45.360 | - Can you tell me who?

01:03:46.200 | - No, I'm gonna make you watch this series.

01:03:49.120 | I'm gonna make you buy my book, and, you know,

01:03:52.800 | but just saying, like, this person would be forgotten,

01:03:57.360 | but, you know, you just, the way that we do "Cosmos"

01:04:01.520 | is that, like, I ask a question to myself.

01:04:05.200 | We really wanna get to the bottom, to the answer,

01:04:07.840 | and keep going deeper, deeper,

01:04:09.480 | until we find what the story is,

01:04:12.120 | a story that I know, because I'm not a scientist.

01:04:15.000 | If it moves me, if it moves me, then I wanna tell it,

01:04:20.000 | and other people will be moved.

01:04:22.360 | - Do you ponder mortality?

01:04:25.440 | - Yes. - Human mortality,

01:04:26.600 | and maybe even your own mortality?

01:04:29.080 | - Oh, all the time.

01:04:30.320 | I just turned 70, so, yeah, I think about it a lot.

01:04:34.080 | I mean, it's, you know, how can you not think about it?

01:04:37.720 | But--

01:04:38.640 | - What do you make of this short life of ours?

01:04:41.760 | I mean, let me ask it sort of another way.

01:04:46.680 | You've lost Carl, and speaking of mortality,

01:04:52.880 | if you could be, if you could choose immortality,

01:04:58.400 | you know, it's possible that science allows us

01:05:00.320 | to live much, much longer.

01:05:02.400 | Is that something you would choose for yourself, for Carl?

01:05:05.360 | For you to-- - Well, for Carl, definitely.

01:05:07.160 | I would've, you know, in a nanosecond,

01:05:09.960 | I would take that deal, but not for me.

01:05:13.480 | I mean, if Carl were alive, yes,

01:05:14.720 | I would wanna live forever,

01:05:15.920 | because I know it would be fun, but no.

01:05:19.640 | - Would it be fun forever?

01:05:21.560 | That's the essential nature of the--

01:05:22.400 | - I don't know, it's just that the universe

01:05:24.080 | is so full of so many wonderful things to discover

01:05:28.240 | that it feels like it would be fun,

01:05:31.360 | but no, I don't wanna live forever.

01:05:33.120 | I have had a magical life.

01:05:37.160 | I just, my, you know, my craziest dreams have come true.

01:05:41.800 | And I feel, you know, forgive me,

01:05:44.280 | but this crazy quirk of fate

01:05:49.280 | that put my most joyful, deepest feelings,

01:05:54.800 | feelings that decades later, 42 years later,

01:05:58.680 | I know how real, how true those feelings were.

01:06:02.440 | Everything that happened after that

01:06:04.920 | was an affirmation of how true those feelings were.

01:06:09.720 | And so I don't feel that way.

01:06:12.080 | I feel like I have gotten so much more than my share,

01:06:15.100 | not just my extraordinary life with Carl,

01:06:21.400 | my family, my parents, my children, my friends,

01:06:26.400 | the places that I've been able to explore,

01:06:31.520 | the books I've read, the music I've heard.

01:06:36.760 | So I feel like, you know, if it'd be much better,

01:06:41.660 | if instead of working on the immortality of the lucky few,

01:06:45.960 | of the most privileged people in this society,

01:06:49.460 | I would really like to see a concerted effort

01:06:52.960 | for us to get our act together.

01:06:55.240 | You know, that to me is topic A, more pressing.

01:07:00.080 | You know, this possible world, that is the challenge.

01:07:04.320 | And we're at a kind of moment where if we can,

01:07:09.120 | we can make that choice.

01:07:10.840 | So immortality doesn't really interest me.

01:07:14.080 | I really, I love nature.

01:07:16.480 | And I have to say that I, because I'm a product of nature,

01:07:21.360 | I recognize that it's great gifts and it's great cruelty.

01:07:26.360 | - Well, I don't think there's a better way to end it.

01:07:33.040 | Thank you so much for talking to me.

01:07:33.880 | It was an honor. - Oh, it's wonderful.

01:07:35.480 | - I really appreciate it. - I really enjoyed it.

01:07:36.800 | I thought your questions were great.

01:07:38.440 | - Thank you.

01:07:39.940 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ann Druyan.

01:07:42.680 | And thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App.

01:07:45.880 | Download it, use code LEXPODCAST, you'll get $10,

01:07:50.280 | and $10 will go to FIRST, an organization that inspires

01:07:53.640 | and educates young minds to become science

01:07:56.040 | and technology innovators of tomorrow.

01:07:58.680 | If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube,

01:08:01.600 | give it five stars on Apple Podcast, support on Patreon,

01:08:05.000 | or simply connect with me on Twitter @LexFriedman.

01:08:08.480 | And now, let me leave you with some words of wisdom

01:08:11.920 | from Carl Sagan.

01:08:13.920 | "What an astonishing thing a book is.

01:08:16.960 | "It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts

01:08:21.240 | "on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

01:08:24.900 | "But one glance at it, and you're inside the mind

01:08:27.480 | "of another person, maybe somebody dead

01:08:29.820 | "for thousands of years.

01:08:31.660 | "Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly

01:08:34.800 | "and silently inside your head, directly to you.

01:08:39.280 | "Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

01:08:43.180 | "Binding together people who never knew each other,

01:08:46.540 | "citizens of distant epics.

01:08:50.120 | "Books break the shackles of time.

01:08:53.060 | "A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

01:08:58.060 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

01:09:02.920 | (upbeat music)

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Ann Druyan: Cosmos, Carl Sagan, Voyager, and the Beauty of Science | Lex Fridman Podcast #78

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