Ann Druyan: Cosmos, Carl Sagan, Voyager, and the Beauty of Science | Lex Fridman Podcast #78
the following is a conversation with an Julianne writer producer director and one of the most important and impactful communicators of science in our time she co-wrote the 1980 science documentary series cosmos hosted by Carl Sagan whom she married in 1981 and her love for whom with the help of NASA was recorded as brainwaves on a golden record along with other things our civilization has to offer and launched into space on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft that are now 42 years later still active reaching out farther into deep space than any human made object ever has this was a profound and beautiful decision and made as a creative director of NASA's Voyager interstellar message project in 2014 she went on to create the second season of cosmos called cosmos and spacetime Odyssey and in 2020 the new third season called cosmos possible worlds which is being released this upcoming Monday March 9th it is hosted once again by the fun and the brilliant Neil deGrasse Tyson Carl Sagan Annie Julian and cosmos have inspired millions of scientists and curious minds across several generations by revealing the magic the power the beauty of science I am one such curious mind and if you listen to this podcast you may know that Elon Musk is as well he graciously agreed to read Carl Sagan's words about the pale blue dot in my second conversation with him if you listened there was an interesting and inspiring twist at the end this is the artificial intelligence podcast if you enjoy it subscribe on YouTube give it five stars an apple podcast supported on patreon I'll connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman spelled Fri DM aen as usual I'll do one or two minutes of ads now and never any ads in the middle that can break the flow of the conversation I hope that works for you and doesn't hurt the listening experience this shows presented by cash app the number one finance app in the App Store when you get it use collects podcast cash app lets you send money to friends buy Bitcoin and invest in the stock market with as little as one dollar since cash app allows you to send and receive money digitally peer-to-peer and security in all digital transactions it's very important let me mention the PCI data security standard that cash app is compliant with I'm a big fan of standards for safety and security PCI DSS is a good example of that where a bunch of competitors got together and agreed that there needs to be a global standard around the security of transactions now we just need to do the same for autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence systems in general so again if you get cash app from the App Store Google Play and use the code let's podcast you get ten dollars and cash up will also donate ten dollars the first one of my favorite organizations that's helping to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world and now here's my conversation with Ann Julianne what is the role of Science in our society well I think of what Einstein said when he opened the 1939 New York World's Fair he said if science is ever to fulfill its mission the way art has done it must penetrate its inner meaning must penetrate the consciousness of everyone and so for me especially in a civilization dependent on high technology and science one that spires to be democratic it's critical that the public has informed decision makers understand the values and the methods and the rules of science so you think about the what you just mentioned the values and the methods and the rules and maybe the technology that science produces but what about sort of the beauty the mystery of science well that you've touched on what I think is for me that's how my way into science is that for me it's much more spiritually uplifting the revelations of science collective revelations of you know really countless generations of searchers and a little tiny bit we know about reality is the greatest joy from me because I think it relates to the idea of love like what is love that is based on illusion about the other that's not love love is seeing unflinching the other and accepting with all your heart and to me knowing the universe as it is or the little bit that we're able to understand at this point is like is the purest kind of love and therefore you know how can our philosophy our religion if it's real isn't nature how can it really be true I just don't understand so I think you need science to get a sense of the real romance of life and the great experience of being awake in the cosmos so that the fact that we know so little the the humbling nature of that so and you kind of connect the love to that but isn't it also isn't it scary isn't it why is it so inspiring do you think why is it so beautiful that we know so little well first of all as Socrates thought you know knowing that you know is knowing really knowing something knowing more than others and it's the it's that voice whispering in our our heads you know you might be wrong which i think is not only it's really healthy because we're so imperfect we're human of course but also you know love to me is the feeling that you always want to go deeper get closer you can't get enough of it you can't get close enough deep enough so and that's what science is always saying as science is never simply content with its understanding of any aspect of nature it's always saying it's always finding that even smaller cosmos beneath so I I think the two are very much parallel so you said that love is not an illusion no it's not well what is love what is love is is knowing for me love is is knowing something deeply and still being completely gratified by it you know and wanting to know more so what is love what is loving someone a person let's say deeply is not idealizing them not putting some kind of subjective projection on them but knowing them as they are and so for me for me the only aperture to that knowing about nature the universe it's science because it has that error correcting mechanism that most of the stuff that we do doesn't have you know you could say the Bill of Rights is kind of an error correcting mechanism which I it's one of the things I really appreciate about this society in which I live to the extent that it's upheld and we keep faith with it and the same with science it's like we will give you the highest rewards we have for proving us wrong about something that's genius that's that's why that's why in only 400 years since Galileo's first look through a telescope we could get from this really dim fake this big apprehension of another world to sending our eyes and our senses there or even going beyond so it is it is it delivers the goods like nothing else you know it really it delivers the goods because it's always it's always self-aware of its ability I'm not topic I'd like to ask your opinion and a feeling I have that I'm not sure what to do with which is the the sceptical aspect of science so the modern skeptics community and just in general certain scientists many scientists maybe most scientists that apply the scientific method are kind of rigorous in that application and they it feels like sometimes miss out some of the ideas outside the reach of just slightly outside of the reach of science and they don't dare to sort of dream or think of revolutionary ideas that others will call crazy in this particular moment how do you think about the skeptical aspect of science that is really good at sort of keeping us in check keeping us humble but but at the same time sort of the kind of dreams that you and Carl Sagan have inspired in the world it kind of shuts it down sometimes a little bit yeah I mean I think it's up to the individual but for me no I was so ridiculously fortunate and that I my tutorial in science because I'm not a scientist and I wasn't trained in science was 20 years of days and nights with Carl Sagan and the Wonder I think the reason Carl remains so beloved well I think there are many reasons but at the root of it is the fact that his skepticism was never at the cost of his Wonder and his Wonder was never at the cost of his skepticism so he couldn't fool himself into believing something he wanted to believe because it made him feel good at the other but on the other hand he recognized that what science what nature is it's really it's good enough you know it's way better than our fantasies yeah and so if you if you're that kind of person who loves happiness loves life and your eyes are wide open and you read everything you can get your hands on and you spend years studying what is known so far about the universe then you have that capacity a really infinite capacity to be alive but all and also at the same time to be very rigorous about what you're willing to believe for Carl I don't think he ever felt that his skepticism cost him anything because again it comes back to luck he wanted to know when HM really was like not to inflict his you know preconceived notions on what he wanted it to be so you can't go wrong because it doesn't you know I mean you know I think the pale blue dot is that is a perfect example of this of his massive achievement is to say ok or the Voyager record is another example is here we have this mission our first reconnaissance of the outer solar system well how can we make it a mission in which we absolutely squeeze every drop of consciousness and understanding from it we don't have to be scientists and then be human beings I think that's the tragedy of Western civilization is that it's you know when it's one of its greatest gifts it has been science and yet at the same time it believing that we are the children of a disappointed father a tyrant who puts us in a maximum-security prison and calls it paradise who looks at us who watches us every moment and hates us for being our human selves you know and then most of all what is our great sin its partaking of the tree of knowledge which is our greatest gift as humans this pattern recognition this ability to to see things and then synthesize them and jump to conclusions about them and test those conclusions so I think the reason that in literature in movies the scientist is a figure of alienation a figure you know oh you see these biopics about scientists and yeah he might have been great but you know he was missing and ship you know he was a lousy husband he lacked you know the kind of spiritual understanding that maybe you know his wife had and it's always in the end they come around but to me that's that's a false dichotomy that we are you know to the extent that we are aware of our surroundings and understand them which is what science makes it possible for us to do we're even more alive so you mentioned a million awesome things there let's even just can you tell me about the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft and the and the interstellar message project and that whole just fascinating world leading up to one of my favorite subjects I love talking about it I'll never get over it yeah I'll never be able to really wrap my head around the the reality of it the truth of it what is it for so what's the Voyager spacecraft okay so voyagers 1 & 2 where our first reconnaissance mission of what was then considered the outer solar system and it was a gift of gravity the idea that swinging around these worlds gives you a gravitational assist yes which ultimately will send you out of the solar system to wander the Milky Way galaxy for one to five billion years so Voyager gave us our first close-up look of Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune it's discovered new moons it discovered volcanoes on Io it it its achievements are astonishing and remember this is technology from the early to mid-1970s and it's still active and it's still active we talked to Voyager a few days ago we talked to it in fact a year ago I think it was we needed to slightly change the attitude of the spacecraft and so we fired up its thrusters for the first time since 1987 do they work instantly they it was as if you had left your car in the garage in 1987 yeah and you could key in the ignition because you use keys then in the ignition and it turned over the first time you stepped on the gas and so that's the genius of the engineering yeah a Voyager and Carl was one of the key participants in in in imagining what its mission would be because it was a a gift actually of the fact that every hundred and 75 years plus or minus there is an alignment of the worlds and so you can't send two spacecraft to these are the worlds and photograph them and use your mass spectrometer and all the other devices unvoyage ER to to really to explore these worlds and it's the farthest spacecraft is the farthest human creation away from us today where is your one where's your one these two spacecraft not only gave us a our first close-up look hundreds of moons and planets these four giant these planets but also it told us the shape of the solar system as it moves through the galaxy because there were two of them going in different directions and they finally and they arrived in a place called the heliopause which is where the wind from the Sun the solar wind dies down and the interstellar medium begins and both voyagers were the first spacecraft that we had they could tell us when that happened so it's a consummate I think it's the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century and engineering in some sense engineering I mean really you know voyagers and Voyager is doing this on less energy than you have in your toaster something like 11 watts so ok but because of this gravitational assist both voyagers were destined as I say to they were just they were personal they were supposed to function for a dozen years and now it's 42 years since launch and we're still talking to them so that's amazing but prior to launch almost a year hmm eight nine months prior to launch it was decided that since Frank Drake and Carl Sagan and Linda sauceman Sagan had created something called the Pioneer 10 plaque for the Pioneer spacecraft that preceded Voyager which was kind of like a license plate for the planet Earth you know a man and a woman hands up you know very very basic but very effective and it captured the imagination of people all over the world and so NASA turn to Frank and to Carl and said we'd like you to do a message for Voyager because if it's going to be circumnavigating the Milky Way galaxy for one to five billion years you know it's like 20 trips around the galaxy and there's a very small chance that a spacefaring civilization would be able to flag one of them down and so on board you see this exquisite golden disc with scientific hieroglyphics explaining our address and various basic scientific concepts that we believe that would be common to any spacefaring civilization and then beneath this exquisite golden disc is the Voyager record the golden record and it contains something like 118 photographs images of life on Earth as well as 27 pieces of music from all around the world many people describe it as the invention of world music world music was not a concept that existed before the Voyager record and we were determined to take our music not just from the dominant technical cultures but from all of the rich cultural heritage of the earth and there's a sound essay which is kind of using using a microphone as a camera to tell the story of the earth beginning with its geological sounds and moving into biology and then into technology and likes I think what you were getting at is that at the end of this sound essay I had asked Carl if it were in the making of the record it was my honor to be the creative director of the project if it was possible to if I had meditated for an hour while I was hooked up so that you know every single signal it was coming from my brain my body was recorded and then converted into into sound for the record was it possible that these putative extraterrestrials of the distant future of perhaps the billion years from now would be able to reconstitute this message and to understand it and he just big smile and so I did this and what were you thinking about in the meditation like what I mean it's such an interesting idea of recording as you think about things what were you thinking about so I was blindfolded and couldn't hear anything and I had made an a mental itinerary of exactly where I wanted to go I was truly humbled by the idea that these thoughts could conceivably touch the distant future that's incredible so it's 1977 there are some 60,000 nuclear weapons on the planet the Soviet Union and the United States are engaged in a you know to the death competition and so I began by trying to tell the history of the planet in you know to my limited ability what I understood about the story of the early existence of the war of the planet about the origin of life about the evolution of life about our the history of humans about our current at that time predicament about the fact that one in five of us was starving uh or unable to get potable water and so I sort of gave a kind of you know it's general a picture as I possibly could of our predicament and I also I was Perry newly within days of the moment when Carl and I fell in love with each other maybe we fell in love with each other long before because we'd known each other for years but it was the first time we had expressed our feelings for each other acknowledged did the existence of this yes because we're both involved with other people and it was a completely outside his morality in mine to even broach the subject but it was only days after that it happened and for me it was a Eureka moment it was in the context of finding that piece of Chinese music that was worthy to represent one of the oldest musical traditions on earth when those of us who worked on the Voyager record were completely ignorant about Chinese music and so that had been a constant challenge for me talking to professor's of Chinese music ethnomusicologist everywhere and all through the project desperately trying to find this one piece found the piece lived on the Upper West Side found the piece a professor at Columbia University gave it to me and he's of all the people I talked to everyone didn't said that's hopeless you can't do that that there can't be one piece of Chinese music but he was completely no problem I've got it and so he he told me the story of the piece which only made it an even greater candidate for the record which and I listened to it called Carl Sagan who was in Tucson Arizona addressing the American Society of newspaper editors and and I left him a message Hotel message center and he called me back an hour later and heard this beautiful voice say I came back to my hotel room and I find this message that any card and I asked myself why didn't you leave me this message ten years ago my heart was beating out of my chest I it was for me a kind of Eureka moment okay a scientific breakthrough yeah a truth a great truth it suddenly been revealed and of course I was awkward and didn't really know what to say and so I blurted something out like oh I've been meaning to talk to you about that Karl which wasn't really true I never would have talked to him about it we had been alone countless times we humans are so awkward in his beautiful moments and I just said for keeps and he thought for a very brief like a second and said you mean get married and I said yeah and he said yeah and we put down the phone and I literally was jumping around my apartment like a lunatic because it was so obvious you know it was something like of course and then the phone rang again and I thought damn no he's gonna say I don't know but he was like I just want to make sure that that really happened and I said yeah he said we're getting married and I said yeah we're getting married now this was June 1st 1977 the record had not been affixed to the spacecraft yet and there had been a lot of controversy about what we were doing I should say that there you know among the hundred and eighteen pictures was an image of a man and frontally completely naked naked and there was I believe a congressman on the floor that said NASA to send smut to the stars you know and so NASA really they got very upset they said you can't send a picture and we had done it so that it was so brilliant it was like this lovely couple completely naked and then the next image was kind of overlay schematic to show the fetus inside this woman that was developing and then that went off into you know additional imagery of human reproduction and it really hit me that how much we hate ourselves that we couldn't bear to be seen as we are so in some sense that congressman also represents our society perhaps his opposition should have been included as well yes well that's was one of the most vigorous debates during the making of the record with a you know the five or six people that we collaborated with was do we show do we only put our best foot forward or do we show Hiroshima outwits the Congo what we have done what do you think represents humanity if you kind of if you think about it did our darker moments are they essential for Humanity all the wars we've been through all the tortures and the suffering and the cruelty is that essential for happiness for beauty for creation generally he's really not essential for a happiness or beauty as for sure I mean it's part of who we are if we're gonna be real about it which is you know I I think we tell on ourselves even if we don't want to be real we you know I think that if you're a spacefaring civilization and you've gotten it together sufficiently you can move from world to world then I think they probably took one look at this derelict spacecraft and they knew that these were people in their techno logical adolescence yeah and they were just setting forth and they must have had these issues but you know because and so really you know that's the great thing about lying is that a lie only has a shelf life like if you make a great work of art that's a forgery people can be fooled immediately but 10 or 15 years 20 years later they start to look at it yeah you know that begin to realize of the lens our lens of our present is coloring everything that we see so you know I think it didn't matter that we didn't show our atrocities they would fill in the blanks they would fill in the blanks so let me sort of ask you've mentioned how likely it is that you and Carla did two souls like yours would meet in this vast world what are you views on how and why incredibly unlikely things like these nevertheless do happen it's purely to me a chance it's totally random it's adjust I mean but and the fact is is there some people or and it's happening every day right now some people are the random casualties of chance and that and I don't just mean the people who are being you know destroyed in childhood in more time I'm also or people who starve to death because of famine but also the people who um you know who who are not living to the fullest all of these things I think there's a rent my parents met on the subway in rush hour and so I'm only here were you because of the most random possible situation and so I've had this a sense of this even before I knew car I always felt this way that I only existed because of the generosity of the rush hour I know just all of the things all of the skeins of causality yeah it's interesting because you know that our shower is the source of stress for a lot of people but clearly in its moments it can also be a source of something beautiful it's right of strangers meeting and so on so everything everything is has the possibility of doing some fancy right so let me ask sort of a quick tangent on the Voyager so that this this beautiful romantic notion that Voyager 1 is sort of our farthest human reach into space if you think of what I don't know if you've seen but what Elon Musk did with the putting the roadster letting it fly out into space there's a sort of humor to it I think that's also kind of interesting but maybe you can comment on that but in general if now that we are developing what we were venturing out into space again in a more serious way what kind of stuff that represent since Voyager was launched should we send out as a follow-up is there things that you think that's developed the next in in the 40 years after that we should update the the spacefaring aliens of course now we could send the worldwide we could send everything that's on the world wide web we could send I mean you know that was a time when we're talking about phonograph records and transistor radios and you know so we tried to be to take advantage of the existing technology to the fullest extent you know the computer that was hooked up to me from my brain waves in my heart sounds while I was meditating was the size of a gigantic room and I'm sure it's not that didn't have the power of a phone as that phone has now so you know we could just I think we could let it all hang out you just stood send you know ever we I mean that's the wonder like I would send you know Wikipedia or something and not being a gatekeeper but this thing because we are you were also it's interesting because it one of the problems of the Internet of having so much information is it's actually the curation the human curation is still the powerful beautiful thing yeah so what you did with the record is actually is exactly the right process is kind of boiling down a massive amount of possibilities of what you could send into something that represents you know the better angels of our nature or represents our humanity so if you think about you know what would you send from the Internet as opposed to sending all of Wikipedia for example all human knowledge is there something just new that we've developed you think or fundamentally we're still the same kind of human species I think fundamentally were the same but we have a kind of way we are we have advanced a to an astonishing degree in our capacity for data retrieval and for transmission and so you know I would send YouTube I would send no it really like think of all that you know I I still feel so lucky that there's any great musical artists of the last hundred years who I revere I can just find them and watch them and listen to them and you know that's fantastic I also love how democratic it is that we each become curators that we each decide those things now I may not agree with you know those the choices that everyone makes but of course not because that's not the point the point is is that we are you know we've discovered largely through the internet that we are an intercommunicating organism and that can only be good so you could also send now cosmos yes I love it I will be proud I mean you're spoken about a very specific voice that cosmos I had in that it reveals the magical science I think you said shamanic journey of it and not the details of the latest breakthrough so on he's just revealing the magic can you try to describe what this voice of cosmos is with the with the follow-up and the new cosmos that you're working on now yes well a dream of cosmos is really like Einsteins quote you know it's the idea of the awesome power of science to be in absolutely everyone's hands you know it belongs to all of us it's not the preserve of a priesthood it's just just the community of science is becoming more diverse and being less exclusive than it was guilty of in the not so recent past the discoveries of science our understanding of the cosmos that we live in has really grown by leaps and bounds and probably we've learned more in the last hundred years about it you know the the tempo of discovery has picked up so rapidly and so the idea of cosmos from the 1970s when Carl and I and Steven Soter another astronomer first imagined it was that interweaving not only of these scientific concepts and revelations and using you know cinematic VFX to take the viewer on this transporting uplifting journey but also the stories of the searchers because the more I have learned about you know the process of science through my life with Carl and since the more I am really persuaded that it's that adherence to the facts and to that adherence to that little proximation that little bit of reality that we've been able to get our hands around is something that we desperately need and it doesn't matter if you are a scientist in fact the people it matters even more if you're not and since you know the level of science teaching has been fairly or unfairly maligned and the idea that once there was such a thing as a television network which of course has now evolved into many other things the idea that you could in the most democratic way make accessible to absolutely everyone and most especially people who don't even realize that they have an interest in a subject or who feel so intimidated by the jargon of science and it's kind of exclusive history the idea that we could do this and you know in season 2 of cosmos spacetime Odyssey we were in a hundred and eighty-one countries in the space of two weeks it was the largest rollout in television history which is really amazing for it there is no science-based program by the way just to clarify this series was rolled out so it was shown in in that many countries you said we were in well our show the show the show which is incredible I mean the the the hundreds of million whatever that number is that people that watched it it's just it's crazy it's so crazy Pat for instance uh my son had a cerebral hemorrhage here ago and the doctor who saved his life in a very dangerous situation when he realized that you know that Sam and I were who we were he said that's why I'm here you know he said if you come of age in a poor country like Colombia and Carl Sagan calls you to science when you're a child then then you know you go to medicine because the only Avenue open to you but that's why I'm here and I have heard that story and I hear that story I think every week how does that make you feel I mean I the the number of scientists I mean a lot of it is quiet right but the number of scientists cosmos has created is just countless I mean it probably touched a lives I don't know probably it could be a crazy number of the 90% of scientists or something I'd have been I was going to do that census because I because that's the month the greatest gratification because that's the dream of science and that's the whole idea is that if it belongs to all of us and not just a tiny few then we have some chance of determining how it's used and if it's only in the hands of people whose only whose only interests are the balance sheet or hegemony over other nations or things like that then it'll probably end up being a gun aimed in our heads but if it's distributed in the widest possible way a capability that we now have because of our technology then this chance is that that it'll be used with wisdom that's that's the dream of it so that's that's why we did the first cosmos we wanted to take not just as I say the scientific information but also tell the stories of these searchers because for us and for me it carrying on this a series in the second and third seasons the the primary interest was that we wouldn't tell a story unless it was a kind of a three-fer you know it was not just a way to understand a new sign a scientific idea but it was also a way to understand what if it matters what's true wow the world can change for us and how we can be protected and if it doesn't matter what's true then we're in grave danger because we have the capability to not only destroy ourselves and our civilization but to take so many species with us and I'd like to talk to you about that particular the sort of the dangers of ourselves in a little bit but sort of to linger on cosmos maybe for the first the 1980 in the 2014 follow-up what a what's a or one of the or several memorable moments from the creation of either of those seasons well you know the critical thing really was the fact that Seth MacFarlane became our champion because I had been with three colleagues I had been slapping around from network to network with a treatment for cosmos and every network said they wanted to do it but they wouldn't give me creative control and they wouldn't give me enough money to make it cinematic and to make it feel like you're really going on an adventure and so I think both of those things sorry in turn draw both these things are given what cosmos represents the the legacy of it and the legacy of Carl Sagan is essential control especially in the modern world I it's it's was wonderful the Assad control he did not really push it no I'm sure I know they would look at me like I was nuts you know and they probably must have entertained the idea that maybe I didn't really want to do it you know because that was afraid or something but I kept saying no and it wasn't until I met Seth MacFarlane and he took me to Fox and you Peter rice and said you know I'll pay for half the pilot if I have to you know and Peter rice was like put your money away and Seth said that yeah and and and and in every time since in the in the 10-year sense at every turn when we needed Seth to intervene on our behalf he stood up and he did it and so that was like in a way that is the you know the watershed for me of the everything that followed since and then I was so lucky because I know Steve and I Steve Souter and I written the original cosmos with Carl and were co-opted and collaborated on the treatment for a season 2 and then Brannon Braga came into our project at the perfect moment and has proven to be like just the really I have been so lucky my whole life I've collaborated I've been lucky with the people my collaborators have been extraordinary and so that was a critical thing but also to have you know for instance astonishing VFX supervisor who comes from the movies who heads the global Association of VFX people Jeff oaken and and then and you know I can rattle off ten more names I'd be happy to do that and it was that collaboration so the people were essential to the creation of absolutely I mean when it came down I have to say that when it came down to the vision of what the series would be that with me sitting in my home looking out the window and I'm you know really imagining like what I wanted to do can you pause on that for a second like what's that process because it you know cosmos is also it's grounded in science of course but it's also incredibly imaginative and the words used are carefully crafted thank you so what if you couldn't talk about the process of that the big picture imaginative thinking and so the rigorous crafting of words that like basically turns into something like poetry thank you so much for me these are rare occasions for human self-esteem the scientists that we bring to life in cosmos are people in my view who have everything we need to see us through this current crisis it's there very often they come they're poor they're a female they're outsiders who are not expected to have gifts that are so pretentious but they persevere and so you have someone like Michael Faraday who is comes from a family dysfunctional family of like 14 people and you know if never goes to university never learns the math but you know is the you know there's Einstein years later looking up at that picture of Faraday to inspire him there so it's you know if we had people we've had kind of humility and unselfishness who didn't want to patent everything me as you know Michael Faraday created the wealth of the 20th century with his various inventions and yet he never took out a single patent at a time when people were patenting everything because that was not what he was about and to me that's a kind of almost a saintliness vet says that you know that here's a man who finds in his life this tremendous gratification from searching and it's just so impressive to me and there are so many other people in cosmos especially the new season of cosmos which is called possible worlds possible beautiful title with possible worlds well I stole it from an author and a scientist with the 1940s but it it for me encapsulate not just you know the exoplanets that we'd begun to discover not just you know the the worlds that we might visit but also the world that this could be a hopeful vision of the future you asked me what is common to all three seasons of what is that voice it's the voice of hope it's a voice that says there is the future which we bring to life and I think fairly dazzling fashion that we can still have you know and in sitting down to imagine what this season would be the new season I'd be sitting where I live in Ithaca beautiful trees everywhere waterfalls yeah you're sitting there thinking well you can't how do you how do you awaken people I mean you can't yell at them and say we're all gonna die no it's not it doesn't help it doesn't help but I think if you give them a vision of the future that's not pie in the sky but something the ways in which science can be redemptive can actually remediate our future we have those capabilities right now as well as the capabilities to do things in the cosmos that we could be doing right now but we're not doing them not because we don't know how to how you know with the engineering or the material sciences or the physics we know all we need to know but we're a little bit paralyzed in some sense and you know we're like I always think we're like the toddler you know like we we left our mothers legs you know and scurried out to the moon yeah and we had a moment of wow we can do this and then we realized and somehow we had a failure of nerve and we went scurrying back to our mother and you know did things that really weren't gonna get us out there like a Space Shuttle things like that because it was a kind of failure of nerve so cosmos is about overcoming those fears we're now as a civilization ready to be a teenager venturing out into college we're returning back exactly you're exactly and that and that's one of my theories about our current situation is that this is our adolescence and I was a total mess I wasn't I was reckless irresponsible totally I didn't I was inconsiderate yeah I the reality of other people's feelings and the future didn't exist for me so why should a technologically adolescent civilization be any different but you know the vast majority of people I know made it through that period and went on to be more wise and that's what my hope is for our civilization on a sort of darker and more difficult subject in terms of so you talked about the cosmos being an inspiration for science and for us growing out of our messy adolescence but nevertheless there is threats in this world so do you worry about existential threats like emission nuclear weapons you worry about nuclear war yes and if you could also maybe comment I don't know how much you've thought about it but I was there's folks like Elon Musk or worried about the existential threats of artificial intelligence sort of our robotic computer creations sort of yeah resulting in us humans losing control so can you speak to the things that were you in terms of existential concern you know like not to think and not to look at for instance are rapidly burgeoning capability in artificial intelligence not and to see how sick so much of the planet is not to be concerned and sick isn't evil potentially well hum-hum is cruelty and brutality is happening at this very moment and I would put climate change higher up on that list because I believe that there are on Sene discoveries that we are making right now for instance all that methane that's coming out of the ocean floor that was sequestered because of the permafrost which is now melting you know I think there are other effects besides our greed and short-term thinking you know that we are triggering now with all the greenhouse gases were putting into the atmosphere and that worries me day at night I think about it every single every moment really because I really think that's how we have to be we have to begin to really focus on how grave the challenges to our civilization and to the other species that are it's the mass it this is a mass extinction event that we're living through and we're seeing it we're seeing news of it every day so what do you think about another touchy subject but what do you think about the politicization of science on topics like global warming embryonic stem cell research and other topics like it what's your sense why what do you mean by the politicization of meaning that if you say I think what you just said which is global warming as a serious concerns human caused arrange some detrimental effects currently there's a large percent of the population of the United States that would as opposed to listening to that statement would immediately think oh that's just a liberal talking point that's not I mean it's not so true anymore I don't think our problem is a population events skeptical about climate change because I think that the extreme weather fire events that we are experiencing with such frequency it's really gotten to people I think there I think that there are people in leadership position who choose to ignore it and to pretend it's not there but ultimately I think they will be rejected the question is will it be fast enough but you know this I don't I think actually that most people have really finally taken the reality of global climate change to heart and they look at their children and grandchildren and they don't feel good because they come from a world which was in many ways in terms of climate fairly familiar and benign and they know that we're headed in another direction and it's not just that it's what we do to the oceans the rivers the air you know I mean you asked me like what is what is the message of cosmos is it's that is that we have to think in longer terms you know I think of the Soviet Union United States in the Cold War and they're ready to kill each other over these two different views of the distribution of resources but neither of them has a form of human social organization that thinks in terms of a hundred years let alone a thousand years which are the timescales that science speaks in and that's part of the problem is that we have to get a grip on reality and where we're headed and it's I I'm not fatalistic at all but I do feel like it you and in setting out to to do this series each season we were talking about climate change in the original cosmos in Episode four and warning about inadvertent climate modification in 1980 you know and of course Carl did his PhD thesis on the greenhouse effect on Venus and he was painfully cognizant of it when a runaway greenhouse effect would do to our planet and not only that but the climb history of the planet which we go into in great detail in the series so yeah I mean how are we gonna get a grip on this if not through some kind of understanding of science can I just say one more thing about science is that its powers of prophecy are astonishing you launch a spacecraft in 1977 and you know where each and every planet in the solar system is going to be in every moon and you rendezvous with that flawlessly and you exceed the design specifications of the greatest dreams that the engineers and then you go on to explore the Milky Way galaxy and you do it I mean you know the climate scientists some of the people that we use stories we tell in cosmos they their predictions were and they were working with very early computer modeling capabilities they have proven to be so robust nuclear winter all of these things this is a prophetic power and yet how crazy that you know it's like it's like the Romans with their lead cooking pots and their lead pipes or the Aztecs ripping out their own people's hearts this is us we know better and yet we are acting as if it's business as usual yeah the beautiful complexity of human nature there's a speaking of which let me ask a tough question I guess because there's so many possible answers but what aspect of life here on earth do you find most fascinating from the origin of life the evolutionary process itself the origin of the human mind so intelligence the some of the technological developments going on now or us venturing out into space or space exploration what just inspires you inspire me but I just say that to me at the archana as I've gotten older to me the origin of life has become less interesting interesting well because I feel well not because it's more I think I understand I have a better grasp of how it might have happened do you think it was a huge leap so I may think it was that we are a byproduct of geophysics and I think it's not I my suspicion of course which is taking it with a grain of salt but my suspicion is that it happens more often and more places than we like to think because you know after all the history of our thinking about ourselves there's been a constant series of demotions in which we've had you realize no no so to me that's not at the center of the origin of consciousness is to me also not so amazing if you think of it as you know going back to these one celled organisms of a billion years ago who had had to know well if I go higher up I'll get too much Sun and if I go lower down not I'll be protected from you know UV rays things like that they have to know that or you I eat me I don't I mean even that I can see if you know that then knowing what we know now it's just it's not so hard to fathom it seems like you know there's I never believed there was a duality between our minds and our bodies and I think that even consciousness all those seem to me except my Oh physics chemistry yes geochemistry geophysics absolutely of you know it makes perfect sense to me and it doesn't make it any less wondrous it it doesn't wrap it at all of the wonder of it and so yeah I think that's amazing I think you know we tell the story of someone you have never heard of I guarantee and I think you're very knowledgeable of a subject who was more responsible for our ability to venture out to other worlds when anyone else and who was completely forgotten and so those are the kinds of stories I like best for cosmos you tell me who buy my book you know but I'm just saying like this person would be forgotten but you know I you just the way that we do cosmos is that like I ask a question to myself we really want to get to the bottom to the answer and keep going deeper deeper until we find what the story is a story that I know because I'm not a scientist if it moves me if it if it moves me then I want to tell it and other people be moved do you ponder mortality yes human mortality and maybe even your own mortality oh all the time I just turned 70 so yeah I think about it a lot I mean it's you know how could you not think about it but uh what do you make of this short life of ours a I mean let me ask uh sort of another way you've lost Carl and speaking of mortality if you could be if you could choose immortality you know it's possible that science allows us to live much much longer is that something you would choose for yourself for Carl Carl definitely I would you know in a nanosecond I would take that deal but not for me I mean if car were alive yes I would want to live forever but no would it be fun forever that's I don't know it's just that the universe is so full of so many wonderful things just discover that it feels like it wouldn't be fine but no I don't want to live forever I I have had a magical life I just might you know Mike craziest dreams have come true and I feel you know I forgive me but this crazy quirk of fate it put my most joyful deepest feelings feelings that decades later of 42 years later I know how real how true those feelings were everything that happened after that was an affirmation of how true those feelings were and so I don't feel that way I feel like I have gotten so much more than my share um not just my extraordinary life with Carl my family my parents my children my friends the places that I've been able to explore the but the books I've read the music ever heard so I feel like you know if it'd be much better if instead of working on the immortality of the lucky few of the most privileged people in the society I would really like to see a concerted effort for us to get us our act together you know that to me is topic a more pressing you know this possible world is the challenge and we're at a kind of moment where if we can we can make that choice so immortality doesn't really interest me I I really I love nature and I have to say that I I because I'm a product of nature I recognize that it's it's great gifts and it's great cruelty well I don't think there's a better way to end it anything thank you so much for talking to us at all it's wonderful really appreciate it I really enjoyed it I thought your questions but great thank you thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Ian and thank you to our presenting sponsor cash app downloaded use code let's podcast you get ten dollars and ten dollars we'll go to first an organization that inspires and educates young minds to become science and technology innovators of tomorrow if you enjoy this podcast subscribe on YouTube give it five stars in a podcast supported on patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter Alex Friedman and now let me leave you some words of wisdom from Carl Sagan what an astonishing thing a book is it's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles but one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person maybe somebody dead for thousands of years across the millennia and authors speaking clearly and silently inside your head directly to you writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions binding together people who never knew each other citizens of distant epochs books break the shackles of time a book is proof that humans are capable of working magic thank you for listening and hope to see you next time you