Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - Sasha Sagan: Cosmic Rituals (#046)

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

   Sasha Sagan’s stirring debut book, “For Small Creatures Such As We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World,” is the topic of this week’s episode of INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE. Sagan is the daughter of late astronomer/author Carl Sagan and writer/producer Ann Druyan. Show notes and resources are available here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php Highlights: 00:10:02 The power of secular rituals versus relying on habits and willpower. 00:23:48 Rituals span the distinction between belief through evidence, faith, and philosophy. 00:27:01 Poetry for Physicists: Brian Keating reads poems by Walt Whitman and Richard Feynman 00:34:42 Academic rituals and how to share wonder through education. 00:44:34 Generational learning and how we’re influenced by family. 00:56:45 Would Carl Sagan have given up the search for extraterrestrial life by now? 01:01:46 Questions INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE asks of all authors. On this Mother’s Day episode, Sagan discusses her own upbringing and how becoming a mother inspired her to research rituals from around the world and throughout history. Her interview with Dr. Brian Keating also touches on her secular upbringing and the intersection of science and religion. Sasha Sagan studied literature at NYU and has worked as a producer, filmmaker, and editor. Her essays, many about the lessons she learned from her parents, have been published in literary magazines. Buy Sasha Sagan’s book here Read Sagan’s essays, including one that inspired her book here Listen to Sagan’s interview on The Powerful Ladies podcast here Learn more about Moxie the robot here Find Sasha Sagan on the web: https://www.sashasagan.com and Twitter: https://twitter.com/SashaSagan Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes for a chance to win a copy of Sagan’s book. Find Brian Kea Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Any sufficient in bombs to imagine is into stewardship of magic. Welcome, everybody, to the Into the Impossible podcast. I'm Brian Keating, your lately very fearful host. Usually not quite this fearful, but during pandemic times, we've created a pandemic podcast series, bringing together the world's most brilliant authors, thinkers, scholars, scientists, poets, and all sorts of people that I'm interested in, just as to be perfectly candid.

and I hope that you out there and the internet are, and by the amazing reaction we're having, it's going quite well. Today is a real treat. Just reached out to you, Sasha Sagan, a couple weeks ago, would you please do me the honor of coming on the Into the Impossible podcast? And you said yes. Here I am.

Here I am. It's great to connect with you. I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. I want to talk a little bit about your wonderful book, but more spend time talking about your philosophy and your story, which I think is so unique and so meaningful. Of course, your book is called for creatures such as we, small creatures such as we.

And if you needed any inspiration from authority figures to read this book, you should go no further than looking at the cover, a quote from Bill Nye, our favorite science guy. He said, read her work. You'll have a deeper appreciation for your every step, every bite, and every breath. and the famous self-declared militant atheist, and we're going to talk about that

because I think of you as a militant centrist. Thank you. I like that. Yeah, you're incredibly parsimonious. Sorry, not parsimonious, but you're incredibly conciliatory, conciliants, you strike conciliants, is what I'm trying to say. And I love that.

But the militant atheist, the so-called the author of The God Delusion and other things, he wrote, she's Carl Sagan's daughter, and it shows a charming book, ringing with the joy of existence. And the only thing I'd add to the great Richards quote there is that you're also Anderrian's daughter. And I think you somehow managed to kind of channel both of them. And the book really resonated to me as a father of daughters and of sons and also just as a human being is that sort of a peon to your parents. Carl and Anne and and also you as a mother and your daughter and your husband and I

found it's a refreshing it truly is charming and you know I think on the Simpsons once there was a quote about a book that it's unput-downable that Homer called the book Unput-downable so I think if Homer gets to the next blurb he would probably say that so first of all I want to say to get a blur from Homer I mean if fingers crossed yeah and March too we can't leave more so I want to first take this opportunity to wish you at early happy Mother's Day. We're recording this a couple days before Mother's Day, 2020. And I bet it's going to be a Mother's Day, unlike any other, for all of us, for all the mothers and wives and grandmothers out there in the world. And I wanted to talk about

the way that the book struck me after we get into a description of the cover. I, unlike the advice that's normally offered, I judge all books by their covers. Yes, it's forbidden. And yet it's so hard not to do. So walk us through the cover. We're going to have graphics for the YouTube watchers for small creatures such as we, rituals for finding meaning in our unlikely world. So you'll have to check out the YouTube videos to see what the cover

actually looks like. But Sasha, can you walk us through the cover design and where the title and subtitle came from? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me, Brian. I'm delighted to be with you in this strange new world where it's all virtual. The title of the book comes from a line in contact, which was the only work of fiction that my dad ever published. He and my mom together wrote dozens of books and essays and the original Cosmos television show together, which he hosted.

But they had this idea for work of fiction, a first contact story. And originally they wanted it to be a movie, but movies took a long time for that particular movie to get made. And in the meantime, they wrote it as a novel. And the line that the title of my book comes from, my mother actually wrote. They collaborated on everything. And this was something that she had brought to the story. And the rest of the line is for small creatures such as we, the vastest, is bearable only through love.

And for those of us who are secular and those of us who have to go through this kind of existential crisis of we're tiny in this gigantic universe and we don't know if there's anything else out there or if there's anything after we die or all these deep philosophical questions where we sort of have to hold space for ambiguity, the other side of that crisis to me

is, well, what do we have? We have one another right here, right now. And I think especially during this very strange time we're in, it feels so clear, you know, the longing to be together with those that you miss, the longing to have those feelings of togetherness and the closeness you feel if you're lucky enough to be quarantined with some people you love, the gratitude that you have to be with them.

I think it just has become so much crystal clear, at least to me, in this time. And so that's where the title of the book came from. And the subtitle, we went back and forth the publishers and the marketing people and my editor. And we went back and forth so many times because it sort of is a strange combination of genre. It's this book. I mean, there are elements that are memoir and there are elements that are sort of social history, although I'm not a historian. I just dream. being one. And there are elements that are sort of almost in the prescriptive, like,

I don't want to say like how to, but the idea of this is something you could do at home or this is something you could adapt in your own way. And so we really went through a lot of different incarnations to figure out a subtitle that worked and in different, so when in the UK and Australia and New Zealand where I have a different publisher, the title is the same, but the subtitle is different, which I thought was very interesting. But yeah, it's really sort of an exploration of how we keep time and how we celebrate and how we mourn and how we process change with or without a particular seism. Yeah, I just can't resist just a call back to one of our more recent episodes

with the author Sarah Skulls, who wrote the biography of Jill Tarter, who, of course, was a loose inspiration, as I understand it, for your father and mother in the book Contact. And actually, Sarah's current book is called, They Are Already Here About UFO Sightings, and her previous book was about SETI. So I asked her if her next book is about Yeties, Lachness Monster, what have you,

but she's tight-lipped on that. But in any of that, she did write Making Contact, where the callback is to, of course, the name of that book, which is the origin of the, at least a man in masthead title of this book. So it's nice to make that connection, and folks should check out those interviews with Jill Tarter's biographer, Sarah Skulls, on the Into the Impossible Back catalog. And so the book, you know, the essence of ritual really does kind of speak to me, as many of my listeners know, I'm a practicing Jew. I'm not an Orthodox Jew. I like to do that and say that for the benefit of Orthodox Jews so that they don't get into too much trouble.

But I do want to first start asking a little bit about some of the connections, the influence of Judaism on your life. Obviously, you're secular, but you're not, as I say, militantly so. And one of the things, or militantly atheist, for sure. And certainly you've developed so many rituals in your life, that are new novel ones from the welcoming of your daughter continuing a one-generation old tradition into the second generation and you know and and you really tie together these beautiful

connections between the biological the astrological the you know the physical nature of of cycles and I think rituals don't exist without cycles or without some notion of time's passage and I'll the only thing I'll say about the book's structure is that it's ordered by season and kind of seasons of life. But I want to ask you a question that came to me during the reading of the book. I read a lot of books on leadership and being a good leader. And one of those is like, you know, willpower is useless, like discipline trumps willpower every day. And I started to think, well, like, what is better in the hierarchy according to you, Sasha? Do you feel like willpower, ritual, habit, you know, because you couldn't have, you talk about all sorts of different habits,

rituals from your husband so lovingly providing you with morning coffee at least before the baby or maybe before the pandemic or maybe he still does all right my wife's not going to listen to this so talk us through like the hierarchy in your mind would you know do you the what do you think a person should sort of rely on a ritual a habit or their own willpower and discipline i think that i mean it just depends on what you need and what you're looking for as a person what i you know, what I've really found in ritual. And so in terms of my own belief or lack thereof, I consider myself secular, which is my position is I reserve belief without evidence. So I don't think it's for me to say there is definitely not this or there is definitely that.

But the things that are supported by evidence for me are so breathtakingly astonishing and beautiful that that has provided, you know, nature as revealed by science has provided enough for me, enough wonder, enough awe, enough sense of belonging in part of something greater than myself, that I don't feel a call to that which relies on faith to be believed. That said, my ancestor, I mean, when I take a DNA test, you know, Kit, and the results come back, It's like you are like 99.999% Ashkenauce. Well, no, no, no one's perfect, Sasha. Yeah, I know, right.

Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. I'm like, what? Yeah, what traveling salesmen in the middle ages came through? When I took the test, my dad said to me, congratulations, your genetic garbage. Yeah.

Oh. I'm your father. Your genetic garbage. No, but like, you know, and the thing about relying on. on science as your worldview is that it's missing, like, cuisine and expressions and holidays. And I'm very, like, I love a celebration. I love a party. I love to get dressed up.

I love to mark time. And I find it very soothing. And I think that that's something that ritual provides and it allows us to process change. Because, you know, that change, as my mother always says, there is no refuge from change. in the cosmos. It is constant. It's the only constant. And it's very hard for us, we little creatures on this pale blue dot to get our heads around it, you know, even just like when you, you know, see someone you haven't seen in a long time and they're older, you know, earth, death, coming of age, the changing of the seasons. These are the markers in our lives because these

are the signposts that say everything is not forever. ever. And some of the changes are cyclical, and some of them are permanent. And I think the reason that rituals, elaborate rituals, very private rituals, all manner of ritual have developed independently from one another in so many disparate cultures at such similar moments in our lives is because we have some deep need to really take a step back and say, wow, things are different todays. And they were yesterday or then they were last year or whatever it is. And so that's something that I really connect to in Judaism. And so we have, for example, a secular Passover Seder every year and we do Hanukkah, but we do it from a standpoint of this is what our ancestors did. You know,

beyond two or three generations, I don't know anybody's names. I don't know what village they came from, but I know that they were Jews. And so, like, when I light, like, a Yardtide candle on the anniversary of the death of someone that I loved, I know that somebody I came from, somebody whose qualities I have somewhere, somehow genetically, did this at some point in the last 6,000 years. And I find that really soothing and meaningful without it requiring a theistic connection. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder when I was listening to it. Look, I listened to it, I read it, and I recommend all, you know, every single listener buy and get all three different versions of this book.

Thank you. Yeah. I get, I get, you know, a nickel every purchase. But I thought about it and, you know, it reminded me of, and there's so much in what you just said from, you know, belief in science and evidence. And, and, of course, in ritual, just the last thing I'll say about, you know, kind of habits versus willpower. So when my, you know, wife and I are walking through some, you know, the county fair and, you know, so one of the kids wants, you know, something deep fried butterstick or something, you know, the easiest thing for us to do is, oh, it's not kosher, sorry, you know, it's like that trumps everything. And then, you know, lower down is like their own willpower.

And then lower down is like perhaps, you know, you know, that's not the way that we do things or something, you know, along the scale of things, it seems like ritual has always had sort of religious connotation, or has a certainly religious connotation. We're going to talk soon about a ritual in academia that I'm going to run off to in an hour. But when people think about rituals, especially with marking time, there is this connotation of, as Aristotle said, you are what you repeatedly do. And the time that's imprinted so deeply in the throughout your book and throughout what gives you meaning. I wonder, you know, like, you know, just to be candid, do you think your daughter or your granddaughter or your grandson, you know, are they going to preserve these things as you did?

Or, you know, like, for example, Jews have been observing Passover for thousands of years or women, you know, have been lighting yardside candles the same kind of length of time or in Christianity. You detail the history of Christmas in your book. So, you know, does it trouble you that, you know, in a generation? this ritual that was important to you won't be important to your daughter because she might not have the exact life trajectory and of course we want our kids to be their own unique individual people. Yeah, I mean, my first instinct, I mean, we'll see, she's not yet three,

but my first instinct is like, well, that's none of my business. You know what I mean? Like what she chooses and what she believes and what she does, I can only present her with my particulars and my husband can do the same and our other friends and family can do the same. But I think the thing that's so, for me, reassuring in a strange way,

is that no matter how devout you are, no matter how seriously you take tradition, they change over the eons. And, you know, they have to mutate in order to survive. And no matter how deeply held your belief is or your ritual is, whatever you're doing, over the course of human history, it's but a blink of an eye,

the most traditional, the most old school, the most orthodox, you know, in the small O or a large O, you know, it's new. And whatever happens in the next couple of generations or the next, you know, hopefully if we don't, we manage not to destroy ourselves

in hundreds of generations, for anything to survive, it has to change. And I can only give her what I have, which is very different than what my great-grandparents, who were Orthodox, did. And I can only say this is a connection to the people who came before you, myself included, and people who we don't know,

whose names we don't know. But she has, I think the weight of ritual, of the obligation, of the feeling that you have to do something because you're carrying on a tradition, if it doesn't ring true for you or it doesn't serve the purpose of helping you process change or celebrate or find joy or go through the process of grieving

or whatever it is that it serves for the individual, I don't think that it's, I don't think that the weight of obligation should force one's hand to do something. if it's not what's right for them. And, you know, I probably am more enthusiastic about rituals than my parents were. I mean, we had Seder and we had Hanukkah and stuff like that. But, like, they didn't, you know, there wasn't like they were, it was nice and they liked it. It's cultural.

Yeah, exactly. But like for me, this is like, like, I like to throw a party. Like, I get into it. And I think that, you know, the pendulum swings. You know, it could go either way. she may totally, you know, leave off any semblance of these traditions. My husband's not Jewish, so she also has the traditions from, you know, Western European Christian ancestry to choose from or something new or something totally different.

And I think that that has to be up to her because I think both belief and lack of belief, they can't be forced, you know. It cannot come from a place of, like you said, militants. It has to be what rings true for the individual. And it really brings me, I have to say, to the conversation between my grandfather and my great-grandfather, who was Orthodox, and I write about this in the book. And my grandfather, you know, his parents, he was born in New York, but his parents came from Eastern Europe and they believed very, very deeply.

And he went off to college and, you know, got all cosmopolitan and secular, as one does. And he came home. And, you know, that, like, as the story retold to me, obviously many decades later, you know, that, like, pit, not in the pit of his stomach, waiting, you know, to talk to his dad and he comes home and he finds his dad dobbening. And he waits for him to finish. And, you know, very sheepish. This look, I've got to talk to you about something, Dad. I'm not going to go to school anymore. I'm not going to keep kosher anymore.

I'm, you know, I don't believe. And his father looked up at him and said, the only sin would be to pretend. And I just, that, you know, by the time it was told to me, it was like a family mantra legend. And I really, I really think that. that that that to me is is the deepest thing is that you you know in terms of this stuff and especially in terms of ritual you know if if it doesn't ring true for you you know and it doesn't have

any value I don't think that you know even as as however fabulous my Sators may be when my daughter is an adult if she doesn't want to throw them you know that's on that's up to her but I don't want is her to do it something that's very labor-intensive out of obligation, you know? Right. Yeah, I guess one thing that, as you're saying that, I hadn't really thought made the connection, but, you know, there's a statement, I think Dawkins made this, you know, that it's basically a crime, you know, when a kid is born to say, oh, you are Christian, like, nobody's Christian from birth, like your husband could take a genetic test, but it's not going to say what religion, you know, he comes from with the accuracy and specificity that we can take it

as Ashkenazi Jews predominantly. And he basically, I mean, I don't want to put words in his mouth, and you know I'm better than I do. But it almost says like, oh, it's like child abuse, you know, to expose a child to the religion of his or her birth. And I do feel like it's kind of disingenuous. And I said this, you know, on several different interviews that I've given in connection to, you know,

my thoughts in Judaism and on observance in general as a practicing scientist and as a person of faith, who is really more sort of practicing agnostic in that I don't know for certain that God exists. But I see, you know, like if God does exist, is he going or she going, you know, I'm going to say he traditionally. And don't worry. Yeah. Is he going to say, oh, you kept kosher?

Like, how dare you, you know, basically? And that there is sort of a hierarchy in terms of religions, not that, you know, one is better than the other, but there's something about monotheism versus non-monotheism. Most of your book is concerned with monotheistic religions. And I just wonder, you know, when you think about these rituals that are observed, is there not, you know, a class distinction between a monotheistic faith and kind of polytheistic or pantheistic or even pagan, and not to mean like, you know, heathens, but paganistic in terms of nature worship. We see a lot of movement nowadays towards, you know, I don't say worship of the earth, but really that mother nature.

is sort of, you know, there's Gaia and so forth, whether or not people actually, I mean, they do have rituals, right? They, you know, there are rituals where we celebrate the earth and there's good aspects of that as well. But what is your take in just the main distinction that I think Judaism came and did away with, which is monotheism versus polytheism, let's say? I mean, I don't really make a distinction between belief, between specific beliefs. To me, in my mind, there's two camps. There's beliefs that comes from evidence and that can stand up to scrutiny that doesn't rely on faith. And there's belief that relies on faith and your own experience.

And I don't think, you know, whether you have one God or a lot of gods or it's sort of abstract, you know, I think that there are certain gray areas in terms of, you know, what is. is a philosophy versus a religion in that, like Shintoism and Japan has sort of elements of a philosophical connection to the earth and to nature, and it has religious elements too, but it's sort of, it's, at least from a Western perspective, it seems to bridge two different areas, you know, the two different areas of a religion and a philosophy,

I think you see that from time to time. But I think that, you know, and if you go back far enough, you know, this idea of science versus religion, that this, that didn't exist until there were questions that could be answered by science that the answer became in direct conflict with the religious doctrine. And I mean, you know, heliocentrism, which comes to mind. And I think that for most of human history, the more deeply we understood nature, really understood it really understood the patterns, the phases of the moon, the changing of the seasons, the equinoxes, and the solstices, the closer we were to our god or gods, whether they were literal or metaphorical, singular, or plural. and I think that this idea that those concepts are in conflict is relatively new. But no, I don't, I mean, I'm really, a lot of the book is concerned with monotheism, as you mentioned, but a lot of it actually is about, you know, ancient Greek culture and which is, of course, polytheistic. And, you know, other, you know, as I mentioned, like Shinto is a really,

fascinates me because it has this connection to nature that's so respectful and celebratory. And I think that that is something that sometimes we lose, especially with monotheism, not always, but sometimes. So now I want to turn maybe a little bit to the portion of the book that speaks to me as a former teacher, along with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Armin Trout. We taught a class called poetry for physicists, so not the normal class that you're used to hearing. And here's how we began the course. And I want to know your preference between these two prose poems. First is by Walt Whitman. And it's called, because I think your book has a rhyme to it, has a poetic meter, and it's quite lovely. And I think you'll appreciate this. So Walt Whitman wrote this called When I Heard, the Learned Astronomer.

When I heard the learned astronomer, when the proofs, the figures were ranged in columns before me, when I was shown the charts and diagrams to add, divide, and measure them, when I sitting heard the astronomer when he lectured with much applause in the lecture room, how soon unaccountable I became tired and sick. Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself. In the mystical moist night air, and from time time looked up in perfect silence. at the stars. That's poem number one.

I'm familiar with it. It's a good one. Poem number two is not really thought of as a poem, but I think it is by Richard Feynman. It actually doesn't have a title to it, but he says, poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars.

Mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars in the desert night and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heaven stretches my imagination, stuck on this carousel. My little eye catches one.

million-year-old light, a vast pattern, of which I am a part. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little bit about it, for far more marvelous is the truth than any of the artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? So I think I know what which one you might prefer, but I'd like to hear from you. I don't know. Have you ever heard the Feynman?

Yes. And I had to say, I love Walt and I'm with Feynman on this one for sure. I figured you might be. Yeah. So can you talk about it? Yeah. I mean, so this is my position is. And sometimes it's, you know, it's not always the, it's the delivery.

So often when we communicate the grandeur of the universe and our deep understanding, of the beauty of nature, we don't have the passion that you see sometimes. I mean, the first version of this that comes to mind is like a great preacher. Like that enthusiasm, that thrill, that joy gets lost sometimes. I think that this is the connection between those two, between that spine-chilling thrill

and the true nature as revealed by some, science, you know, as well as we can get our little minds around it at this point in our species history, you know, connecting those two things, I think it's one of the things that both my parents, or you know, my father was and my mom is so gifted at. And I think that when we think that we lose something in clarity, in specificity, when we, when we, um, think of it as less magical, less beautiful when we understand something deeply. I think that we rob ourselves of even greater understanding and even deeper sense of connectedness and, you know, awe. But it's really difficult to present sometimes, you know, I often say facts get maligned as cold and hard.

You know, we have this idea that, you know, when you just look at, I mean, the cold, hard facts, right? We have this idea that information is unromantic, that it's not beautiful, that it's not stirring. And I think that that's really shortchanges us. And, you know, mysteries are wonderful, but we like mysteries as, you know, when we get to find out the ending, when we get to find out what happens, you know. And I think that that curiosity, I think, you know, there's so much that we've come to understand even over the last few centuries that is so much more astonishing, in my opinion, than we could have ever imagined. But when we take a step back from it and actually look at it, it's very different than the things that we sort of become accustomed to understanding. I mean, you know, I write about this. Like the idea that food grows out of the ground because of water and sunshine and you put it in your mouth and you absorb the nutrients and you live on.

I mean, even something as simple as that, I think because we learn it when we're very small children and we learn it, you know, often from people who are sort of blasé about it. We lose that sort of astonishment about it. But if you are coming, you know, I don't know, from another planet or something. and everything was completely new. Every little element of human life, reproduction, genetics, not to mention astronomy and evolution, are so beautiful and stirring and poetic if we just talk about it in that way

and sort of emphasize the parts that are so magnificent. Yeah, you know, you really hit on a bunch of themes there. I want to unpack. One of them is related to, a guest that we had just this week in honor of his book, Mario Livio, he wrote a book called Galileo on the Science Deniers that's out now. But his previous book was called Why, what makes us curious. And in that book, he and I spoke about this, you know, if you sit down with your daughter and she asks you about gravity and you start, you know, at the inverse square

law and the geometric metrics. And, you know, she's going to lose interest pretty quickly. But in his mind, he says, no, teach the, teach about the dinosaurs. You know, what kid is not interested in dinosaurs? And you mentioned that go through this in the book, going to the Natural Hiss Museum with your dad as a child. But what so say to them, well, say to her or any child in your life, you know, well, this dinosaur is not here because of something called gravity and something called an asteroid.

And the asteroid was attracted to the earth by gravitational forces and then you tie it into what they're naturally thirsty for. There's a quote in the Talmud that you should teach a child according to their ways. You know, and what aspect of a child? is not more kind of delicious and wonderful than their curiosity. Totally agree with that, yeah. And you bring this up in your book.

So, you know, so delightfully you talk about the theme of the book that runs through. Again, I'm not going to give it away. I want everyone to buy six copies. Now it's inflation. Now we're up for six days. But I want people to buy. But the book goes through the seasons. And you talk about, you know, the reason for the season is because of the axial tilt

of the earth. And how fascinating that is that we have Passover. you know, if you're religious or Easter in the spring, because of this 23 and a half degree tilt that the Earth has and relative tilt with respect to its orbital plane. And then, you know, I was thinking, well, that would be an amazing thing to start teaching, you know, teaching little kids. They understand why the seasons are. You know, they understand that seasons are, oh, except here in La Jolla, Sandy. A. Yes. We have pretty easy, you know, seasons here. It goes from, you know, 68 to 72. And that we call a hot day. Yeah. But yeah, the notion of teaching came across in the book as a form of ritual. And I wonder, you know, I was told that by a Russian colleague that the word scientist in the Russian language means one who was taught. And I think about teaching as a ritual. And as I said, later today I'm going to engage in a ritual. One of my graduate students who's now a professor Darcy Barron in New Mexico, she made this plaque that details our academic family tree. And it goes back. it goes back 19 generations now. And actually she has her own graduate student at the university. So I've got 20 generations,

goes back to the 1500s. And yet I feel like, you know, in the way that we have, and I have one of my, I think my 14th students going to defend his PhD in about 90 minutes. So I want to talk about academic rituals and the teacher-learner mentor process and what it means to you. You were lucky to have wonderful, you know,

parents and teachers living in the house with you. And last night I sent this shocking video. I don't know if you've seen this, but it's weird because it's meant to be like comforting. It's this robot called Moxie. Have you seen it? No. It's a robot called Moxie.

And I hope they won't stop advertising with the Into the Impossible podcast. It's a robot and it's like you're supposed to put it in the room with your kid and leave. And the robot is basically, you know, can pass the Turing test that a, you know, a four-year-old can muster. And then it holds your kid's hand. and it asks some problems, you know, who's bothering them at school. And I said it to my wife, she's like, that's so creepy. It's awful. Like, why would you want to do that?

And I was wondering, but there must be a need. Like, teaching is so difficult. This is Teacher Appreciation Week here in America, at least. A lot of homeschooling going on. A lot of people realizing how hard it is to be a teacher. So talk us through the ritual of education of being a parent, being a child, being a student, being a teacher. Well, I think that it's so funny because,

something like defending your thesis or graduation, it falls so clearly into the very traditional structure of a ritual, right? You are apart from something. This is defined in this book called Rites of Passage, which sort of was the early exploration of these things, where you start apart and it's a preliminal phase and then liminal meaning threshold is the ritual, and then then you go through the threshold and you're together, you know. And so, like, for example, a wedding is very traditional in this format. You're a part. You have the ritual of the ceremony and then you're together as a married couple.

But with graduation, right, you're a part from your degree, from your maybe new title, from your, you know, future career and you go through the ritual and you say the magic words where you're given the magical paper and you were deemed, you know, to have passed through this threshold and now you are someone else, you are something else, you are part of something else. And so I think that there's so much, and you see it, I mean, just anything, anytime that there are like gowns and hats involved, you know, and things that we otherwise don't do, you can think of it as a ritual. But in terms of the everyday elements of it, and I think you can see this from really early. In childhood, you know, children are so naturally curious, and you're right, it's

one of their most fabulous qualities about a little person. And it's, I think, so often adults feel some element of insecurity if they don't have all the answers. And I was really lucky because I had two amazingly brilliant parents, but also because they were so willing to say when they didn't know the answer. And that was actually something that was really celebrated. Like, when I was small and I could ask a question. to which they didn't know the answer. It was like I had done something really wonderful because I was curious enough to get beyond the knowledge of two very,

you know, very smart adults. And it was like my brain was working. And so, you know, in those days, we would go over to the encyclopedia and pull off the right volume and try to search for the answer. And this kind of almost little intellectual adventure was this family activity and we would try to find a clue towards what we were getting towards. And now, because we all have the encyclopedia and so much more in our pockets, it's so much easier. And, you know, if you're like in the car and your kid has a question, you know, it used to be, well, when we get home, we can look it up.

And now, you know, pull over safely. But, you know, now it's like all these answers are with you. And, of course, we have to discern sources and we have to take into account where we're getting our information and all sorts of ulterior motives and things like that. but the idea that we have access to this, you know, and sometimes it's very basic question, you know, what year did something happen or who was this person? I've heard their name and I don't know what they did or why I know who they are, you know. And like to go down those rabbit holes and what about this? And well, when was that?

Together as a family is so special. And it really is a ritual because you start separated from the information you're looking for. You get there, you read it, you research it, you find what you're looking for. And then you're united in this deeper understanding. And when you do it as a family, it's so special. And, you know, I think just getting comfortable in general, but especially with small children, with the idea of saying, I don't know the answer to that.

It's a really good question is so, it's such a, I think it's such a gift to a child because then they don't feel like they have to pretend that they know everything. And they understand that it's okay to not have all the information, but that it's more important to follow the curiosity towards real information rather than forcing an answer in because we have such discomfort with ambiguity with not knowing. And I also just think you end up learning so much more. And like my daughter, as I said, you know, as I said she's not three yet. She's, again, talking about like our relationship with nature.

And I mean, when she sees the moon, she like freaks out like every time. I'm like, it's brand new and amazing. And, like, what, through her eyes, I'm, it's, it is amazing. And, and again, talking about gravity. And, like, there it is. And it controls the tides and it changes over the course of the month. And because of her fascination with it, now my husband and I are, like, really well-hearsed in the phases of the moon and, like, waning and waxing gibbuses and all this stuff that, like,

you know, she now can on-site recognize. And it's like, it's like you were saying, this was something. that she was curious about and we just went all in with it and now it's this family source of enthusiasm you know most nights the family of lunatics well i won't make a connection in the literal sense right well maybe also the figurative sense one of our one of our listeners gave me a question to ask you and it really connects to this curiosity and to the moon and to being a woman and his you know question is what do you sort of make of the fact that in his mind uh the first the strong might have been women.

I mean, actually knowing about the connection between the monthly cycles that they enjoy or not, but I don't know, I haven't experienced it myself. But the point is that he claims that people, women would have been the most keen observers of the moon and the most influenced by it and noted, obviously, with their vastly superior intelligence, that there's some connection,

and there is this at monthly ritual. And you talk about it in the book a little bit, but I wonder if you could walk us through that. because it does connect to exactly what you said. Your curiosity, linked to your biology, linked to the astronomical. Right. And so it's fascinating because I always thought

that there was scientific evidence that supported why the menstrual cycle was on the same-ish, depending on the person's schedule as the cycles of the moon. And when I went to research it for the book, I was astonished that there's no hard evidence of a connection, which isn't to say that there isn't a connection. We just haven't proven it yet,

so we have to sort of sit in the ambiguity about it. But the thing that is so astonishing to me and connects to this is how many disparate cultures made their moon deities goddesses, female, and that connection and that sense of, you know, this personification of these inanimate objects, which is, you know, and, you know, in some cases in nature, or animate objects too, but this personification and this idea that there's a story to tell that connects to us and also is a reflection. It's so often a mirror of our needs and wants and fears

and experiences. And you see that in so many different cultures around the world and is so interesting. But I think, you know, I think in any society, pre, you know, certainly pre-electricity, but pre-demication of fire, the moon has got to be a social. central figure for anybody who has to like get up in the night to pee or like do anything when you know do you think about how much more of an influence the difference between a full moon and a new moon was when there was no other light at night i find that's really haunting and it makes it so clear how important that this rock you know that orbits us was to to our our point of view for until very recently Yeah, one other thing that I was talking about with my wife, this is sort of my speculation, but take it for what it's worth. I believe that children, you ever notice that grandchildren that said have a special connection with their grandparents, and it's because they have a common enemy. But I actually think even the maternal grandmother is sort of privileged in a sense.

This will make my mom, she's the mother of four boys. But actually the maternal grandmother, is even more connected because in a sense your daughter, her Hebrew name's higher, or her middle names higher. Yes, her middle name's higher. Helen. Helena. Okay.

From the Greek, the Greek scientific side, right? So that she was, when she was born, I believe that women are born with all the eggs that they're going to have speaking. So that means that at one point, all the eggs that are inside of Helena were inside of your mother, right? Yeah, yeah. They are connected indelibly. Well, but they weren't in there.

It was, I think it's when you're, you have to develop in the feet. you know, as a fetus before you're born where all the eggs are. But the genetic information, I guess. Right, right. Well, the day you were born, you allegedly, right? You would have the egg that became her, right? So that means that egg was inside of you, which is inside of her. Excema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis. A once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and 10 people taking ebb glist achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

Ebglis, Librikizumab, LBKZ. A 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults in children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Ebglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Epglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebbglis. Before starting Epgless, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about ebbglis and visit ebglis.com or call 1-800-LillyR-X or 1-800-545-9-9-9-9. Yeah, no, it's fascinating. And like that feeling also just like that connection of birth and also, you know, like, you know, as Mother's Day is coming up And you just think about the unbroken chain back to the earliest humans and beyond of this relationship.

And, you know, it's not always the person who raises you. It's not always the person who you feel that connection to. But somewhere you grew inside of someone. And that chain going back is, I find really moving. And again, one of those things that you learn when you're very small, you know, the babies come from inside somebody's womb and it's very easy to be sort of blasé about but when you step back it's one of the wildest things that is imaginable. The other thing I thought when I was reading it and when you talk about when she was born

and I think it's true and this might be one of my many dunchly things to say but I believe the belly button is the only thing on the human body that doesn't change size. as you get older. Because it's not determined by you. It's determined by the umbilical cord that went to your mother's placenta, right? Oh, interesting. I've never heard that before. Yeah, so I always joke, you know, your mom may have made you to my kids,

but, you know, I made your belly button. Yes, right. Because I'm the one who snipped it off, you know. Another ritual. Exactly, right? The idea of that is, it's a, that's one of those things. I think that's one thing I'm really fascinated with, too, is all the things that we don't really call rituals or see,

as rituals that are a part of these big experiences and a part of daily life that are really poetic in a way when you when you look at them but we sort of are just like oh yes of course the dad has to be there to cut the court or whatever that's right yeah they're the they're the ones that are just pacing back and forth most of the time trying not to faint that's right yeah although i think you know modern men my contemporaries and i are you know we're trying to step it up a little bit more especially now we're doing great yeah we're doing great yeah we're We're doing our best. We're standing on the shoulders of giants, namely our wives and mothers.

So I want to start wrapping up because I know you've got so many demands on your time. And I want to ask a little bit about, again, about your mom. Maybe we'll make this the Mother's Day edition of the Intenton Impossible podcast. But the kinds of wisdom, you know, I always say that science means knowledge in Latin. It doesn't mean wisdom. And I feel like, you know, you certainly got this curiosity. Some of it was genetic. Some of it was epigenetic or learned by you and developed by you.

But what kinds of lessons that they communicate with you? I mean, do you have these recordings? I know I say things like this all the time. And it's just parroting back with my mother or father, late father used to say to me. And I wonder, you know, are there kind of ethical or wisdom lessons that have come through from your parents that come through to you? and, you know, if that enabled you or guided you to take on, it's a huge production. I always say, people say, you know, writing a book is as close to having a baby as a man can and I'm like, you're an idiot.

Like, I'm sorry, like, you know, I was drinking like lattes most of the time when I was writing my book. But, you know, in the case of you coming from this, did you feel pressure? Did you feel an obligation? There's so many people that you meet. And you talk about it in the book when people meet you, oh, you're Carl Sagan's daughter, you know, and for you, it's the painful aspect. and they ask you how he is, or they ask you, you know, something about like, well, you must be over that by now.

What kind of pressure did you feel, if any, to, you know, keep up the Sagan name, obviously, and to keep these traditions of your mother and your father going in the artistic and artistic science adjacent? I think, you know, they really instilled in me. I think it goes hand in hand with curiosity, but also just this idea of, you know, trying to, as you're researching, just trying to get it right. If you make a mistake, admit it, do what you can to change it. I'm sure there are mistakes in the book. Anyone is more than welcome to find me and let me know.

I would love to learn. Okay, okay, you have to tell me what it is at some point. Email me. Or tell me right now, it's fine. Oh, the only thing is you talk about Yom Kippur, the things that you're supposed to do on Yon Kippur. And then you're not supposed to do. And you say in Leviticus, it says you're not supposed to drink. But it actually doesn't say that.

It says you shall afflict yourself. Actually, this is interesting. Let me ask you about this. The actual quote is, You shall afflict yourself. And then the Pharisees, the rabbinical, leaders of the early part of the Talmudic epoch, they decided affliction means that you don't eat or drink.

But it totally made up by then. Oh, okay. It doesn't say it anywhere in the Torah in the Old Testament. Oh, my goodness. That's fascinating. Thank you for telling me. And yet we all do it, right? We all fast or we try to.

right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or we don't. But anyway, so it's carried on through this ultra-Orthodox sect, you know, and without that we wouldn't do this ritual that even the most reform, you know, liberated or whatever you want to say it, a Jews practice. And I wonder why that is. I mean, that we take these traditions from religious sects that are so much more, you know,

conservative, you know, small C than we are. Do you have anything? Oh, that's so interesting. So you're saying that even the fasting. Yeah. Is not... Doesn't say fast. Wow.

Well, you know, that's fascinating, and I'm just going to have, like... No, I'm next to remember, a million franchise. No. But I think that that is really... Well, I think partly it's because, like myself, people don't look into what, you know,

the original language is. And I think because we... Fasting, I mean, that chapter talks a lot about fasting, and fasting is so, such a clear way of saying, I am giving something up. And it's such an overt ritual. You are experiencing this physically. It's not just going through the motions. You know, you're really having this physical experience that I think people crave something like that, you know, one day or, you know,

depending on different religions and different cultures. It's, you know, from sunrise, sundown for a month or, whatever it is, I think that there is this element of wanting that almost physical connection to the ritual, but, or just they're like, this is what my grandmother told me to do, so I'm going to do it. I mean, there's a lot of that. I think they got so much right. I mean, charity, as you say, fasting is good for people nowadays, meditation, prayer.

There's so many good things that are concomptant with the, you know, and I think if people got away from this feeling, as you seem to have gotten away from, you know. that you are, in a sense, you are choosing the things that appeal to you and choosing not to do the things that don't appeal to you. Obviously, that's not a standard, you know, an Orthodox Jew would practice or whatever. Or any religion, yeah. And it's kind of tailored to you, but you seem to have accepted that it may not continue with, you know, Helena or whoever else. But that's okay because you have determined a kind of, you know, gestalt for your own life and how you want,

and the values that you're communicating are the essence, the code that you want to transmit into the future. I think that's obviously very beautiful. Well, thank you. To answer your question, wait, I do want to answer your question, though, about, like, family, you know, I guess pressure. I think that I haven't really experienced this feeling. I mean, I think anyone wants to, like, positively reflect on their parents,

I would imagine. And I definitely feel that way. But I never felt a pressure that I had to, like, live up to something so much as like the book, I felt like it was more that like the pressure of like having something inside me that I wanted to write about. And the like actually getting it down on paper almost felt like a relief rather than a source of stress if that makes sense. And I think that, you know, when you like, you know, write something, it's because you like need to. And then it's helpful. Right. And it's if it's helpful. Right. And it's if it's helpful.

to somebody else that's wonderful, but it's like, it's almost really selfish because it's like, you have to get this out there. And like, I just, I don't know, I was really lucky to have the parents and have my mom that I have. And, you know, I think that the emphasis on questioning and the willingness to hear questions and the willingness to tolerate ambiguity, you know, is something this so hard to do as a parent or just as a human being and it's something that they really gave me as a gift. You know, to be able to say, I don't know, to be able to say some things are, you know, really mysterious still. We don't have all the answers and we may get some someday and other things we won't. But that life on this little planet is still profoundly beautiful even if this is all there is.

Yeah, precious and fleeting, right? Yeah, I didn't, as I as I read, I was thinking when I wrote my book, how did my father react to it? And, you know, he was a militant atheist, my late father. And he used to say things like, I don't believe in God, but I do believe in the devil because he made you believe in God, you know. Oh, wow. I mean, he was very seriously militant against it. And it's refreshing and quite lovely to see, you know, your father was known for, you know,

the books of kind of, and you must know this, that there's scornful kind of reviews of the detrimental effect that Carl Sagan's Cosmos had and during had on believers because it was seen by a billion people around the world. And I'm like, if your faith is so paper thin that you can't use it not only to not damage your faith, but to increase your faith, if you believe you should know the most about science, because it will provide you the clearest window, maybe not the only one, but the clearest window into this magical, you know, almost mysterious processes. by which God, if you believe, if you don't, that's fine. I don't really care. But created the world or what purpose the world might have. I don't know.

I'm looking for it. And I think every day is a mysterious, delicious puzzle. I want to just take the opportunity, because some of the listeners have asked questions on Twitter and elsewhere. One thing is, and I don't know if you can even answer this, but in contact, one listener is asking, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is coming from looking, originally comes from, you know, Jody Foster slash Jill Tarter, hearing this radio impulses on a large radio telescope, the very large array, which I am privileged to go and review every so often as part of my service to the astronomical community. It's a wonderful facility. But she hears it using radio signals. After, you know, we're now celebrating basically the 60th year. of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

with which your dad was deeply involved. And I wonder, what would he say about the state? We haven't found anything. And you're a big believer in evidence and belief, but we have no evidence that they exist, positive evidence. At what point would he give up do you think, or would you, let's just say personally, at what point do you turn the telescopes off?

Because we don't have infinite resources on this perilous planet. When do you give up a search and just reside with the feeling that you may never know. Well, we may never know whether we search or we don't, but I think that it's the answer to a deep and profound question to know if it's just us or not.

And, you know, I think my dad's curiosity about that was very profound and mine is too. And again, you know, this is one of those things where people would say, come up to him and say, well, what do you think? And he would say, I don't know. And they would say, yeah, but like, what is your gut tell you? And he would say, I try not to use my gut for this sort of thing.

I try to use my mind. And I think, you know, it is an important question and is a profound question. And as long as we can try to gain a little more evidence, I think whatever the answer is, it's nothing we could possibly guess. And so it is worth trying to find out. And it tells us either way, the answer tells us. us so much about ourselves. Very nice.

And I guess the last kind of comment or question that people are interested in hearing from you, if you can kind of profess that on behalf of your father. But I actually don't care. I'll change it just to you. But at some level, there is an element of belief, even to scientists. I see it in my field. I did a video online about the multiverse versus faith in God, and which sort of, you know, what differences and similarities do they have?

And all the comments that are negative are all about, you know, God, is this terrible? And no scientist believes in things. They always have evidence. And I think for something like the multiverse, which may, you know, according to the brightest minds in science, don't just listen to me, may be unprovable because it posits the existence of a perhaps infinite number of other universes, similar to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. There may be life that existed a billion years ago on a galaxy that's, you know, 30 million light years away. We'll never get in contact. We'll never receive evidence for it. So when you wrestle with that, how did your father or do you reconcile that notion of just of anything that you have lack of evidence for?

It doesn't mean evidence of lack, but it does mean it does as a human instill something nagging, I think. And God could be one of those things for someone who is a believer or maybe struggling with belief. I mean, you know, scientists are human beings like everybody else. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, of course, we all have experiences where we're invested in something. We want something to be true or we want something to not be true. And that colors our approach and our view and our language around it. But I think that, you know, there's a difference between positing a possibility saying that this is how this could work or here's some evidence that suggests that and being open to scrutiny and being open to following the evidence wherever it leads.

I think that there's a difference between that and making, to paraphrase my dad, making an extraordinary claim without having extraordinary evidence to support it. So, you know, of course, you know, imagination is central to any kind of exploration or understanding. We have to have some wild ideas to get to, you know, I don't know, go to the moon, do anything that we've ever done, you know, create an airplane, sail across an ocean. You know, these require a very adventurous of imagination. Right. Right. Otherwise, it can't be done. But I think that those endeavors only work when we follow the evidence and see where it leads

and see what can stand up to scrutiny, what will actually float and what won't. Great. Okay. I want to finish up, since you mentioned imagination, we are the Arthur C. Clarke's Center for Human Imagination, and this is Into the Impossible podcast, the words, Into the Impossible derived from Sir Arthur C. Clark's second law, which is that the only way to find out what is possible is to venture a little bit beyond into the impossible. And I want you to take out a telescope in your mind

and look back at a 20-year-old Sasha and give her some advice. What things did you once feel were perhaps impossible that you managed to do and advise her that by venturing into the impossible you were able to accomplish? Oh, it's such a good question. I think, you know, the thing that I think surprises me most about,

that I would be most surprised by at 20 about myself at 37, is actually touching on what you were saying earlier about writing a book being like having a baby. I was a terrible procrastinator most of my life, certainly when I was 20 years old in college, waiting until the night before to start writing papers. and I started writing, like really writing my book right after my daughter was born. And I would have imagined that that would not have been possible.

But there was something about the urgency of knowing, like I had to go relieve the babysitter in three hours. I better not sit and look at Instagram, which of course 20-year-old me would have been like, what's that? You know, I got to actually put some words on this piece of paper. I think that that idea that sometimes the most difficult work you have to do can be done more easily under a higher pressure situation than it can be when you have all the time in the world. I think that's what would most surprise me about my own life at that age. Well, I want to continue on that theme of books. The two questions I have are related to books. And actually a quote, very famous quote, from the 11th episode of the 1980s series Cosmos called the Perse.

of memory. Your father, Carl Sagan, said, what an astonishing thing a book is. 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, an author is 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. Working magic. First of all, I want to thank you.

you for alerting me to the fact, which I didn't know that magic comes from the word magi, which I never knew, which you've discovered and talked about for me. So thank you for that. But let's talk about books for a second. You wrote this book. And I do feel like books are sort of human-created DNA in that it really impels us to communicate, not just our knowledge, because I think Wikipedia, like you were saying before, it's Encyclopedia Britannica. It's a lot more facts and knowledge than I'll ever have. But it doesn't have. any wisdom. And I wonder, you know, what books mean to you or do they have the same kind of resonance as with your father in that, in that it really does communicate from his mind to our

minds. And do you wish that he had written as his own autobiography? There is a biography of him, but not an autobiography. Those are all really good questions. Yeah, I mean, when I think about a book, I think about time travel. I really do. And I think about the idea that you can, as, as he, as he said, be inside the mind of someone. And, you know, whatever is written today that that can survive on longer than the lifespan of the writer is really profound and moving.

I think that there's something about that that's really stirring and something that probably would have seemed impossible to people who lived in a time before the written word. Sorry, in terms of him writing an autobiography. I mean, my mom and I have talked about this and there are a few biographies of him. You know, it's so hard. It's so hard to write your own life. It's so hard to have someone else write your life. You know, that is a form of time travel that we have not yet mastered,

whether it's your own words or someone else's, you know, to really understand fully what the life of someone else was in a time when you were not present in a full picture. sure is really hard. All we can really do is get little glimmers through individual stories and experiences and anecdotes. And I cherish the ones I have, you know, the ones that he shared publicly and the ones that I just got to hear at the dining room table of him, especially as a little boy in Bensonhurst and Brooklyn playing handball and just, you know, being like a kid. One of my most joyful things is imagining him as a little boy in the 1930s and 40s in New York. Definitely a time I'd like to travel too.

Okay. Last question just about books is who would you choose? If you could only give this to one person or a group of people, would it be to Orthodox Jews, devout Muslims, Christians, born again Christians, or would it be to militant atheist, skeptics, you know, as so-called secular humanists? If you could only have one group read this book, who would it be for?

I would like, if I had only one group, no, no, no, I have a, can I do a third option? You can, yeah, of course. Okay, it would be people who sort of identify as spiritual, but not religious. You know, I think that there is, you know, people are very devout or, you know, in either direction, if they're very devout religiously or very devout as atheists,

you know, they're all set. The people who I really would be so delighted to have read my book are people who want that connection to nature, to the earth, to the stars, and don't feel it from religion, and are sort of vulnerable to be getting swept up in things like astrology or crystals or things like that that are not supported by evidence and maybe feel a little bit unsatisfied by that. But it feels like some of that thrilling, for lack of a better word, magic, spiritual sense of being part of the cosmos and part of the planet. I think that there's a way forward that is evidence-based and still gives you that joy that we all crave in different ways. Great. Well, this book, as it's been described, is a memoir.

It's a guidebook for the perplexed and where they fit in in this great, vast, beautiful cosmos that she and her family are the first family of this cosmos. So, Sasha, I want to thank you so much. Can you just tell people really quickly where to find you? find your book, what other projects you might want them to be interested in the future? Sure. Thank you so much, Brian. You can find my book anywhere that you get books. Support your local bookstore if you can. And you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Sasha Sagan. And my website is slashesagin.com. And I look forward to hearing any questions and corrections. Anyone may have that. That's a sign of an intellectually honest author. I used to pay my kids to find typos in the book.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. And actually, one of them found a typo in a Percy Jackson book, but we're having trouble tracking down the dollar from the author of the Percy Jackson book. So anyway, as I said, I have a ritual to get off to a part of a thousand-year-old academic cultural tradition. I want to thank you for instilling meaning and participating in this. And I want to wish you, especially a happy Mother's Day, Sasha. I really hope you have a wonderful, meaningful day this week.

You deserve it. And I look forward to all your future projects. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure, Brian. Thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible, please subscribe, comment, share, and review. For a chance to win a free copy of our most recent guest's newest book,

send a screenshot of your review to Info, at imagine.ucsd.edu. We appreciate hearing from you and are always open to your suggestions for future episodes. Into the Impossible is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego in the Division of Physical Sciences. Directed by Eric Vary, Brian Keating, and Patrick Coleman, produced by Stuart Volgo.

For more information, go to imagine.ucsd. EDU. Find us on Twitter at Imagine UCSD. Any sufficiently advanced technology is in distinguishable from magic.