Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - The Many Worlds of Ann Druyan: Matriarch of the Cosmos (#055)

Episode Date: July 15, 2020

   Ann Druyan has brought the universe to millions around the world. The wife of the late Carl Sagan, Ann is a renowned science communicator and producer/writer and co-creator of the upcoming series Cosmos: Possible Worlds. She is the author of the companion book of the same name.  She is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning writer and producer. She co-created and wrote the 1980 TV series Cosmos with Carl Sagan, whom she later married. She also co-created, wrote, produced, and directed the follow up series, 2014’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and 2020’s Cosmos: Possible Worlds. She was also creative director for NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Project and her brain waves are part of the golden record that has traveled outside our solar system. Druyan discusses her fascinating voyage through the most mysterious phenomena in the cosmos. We discuss her family’s remarkable role as science ambassadors including not only her marriage to Carl Sagan, but her remarkable daughter Sasha Sagan who is continuing their role as the First Family of the Cosmos! Ann talked about her and Carl’s collaboration on the original Cosmos series, their multiple books, and Voyager’s famous golden record. She also shares lessons on love, parenthood, and the importance of science communication.  In addition to her award-winning writing and directing, she has an asteroid named after her, 4970 Druyan (which is in companion orbit with asteroid 2709 Sagan).  Her brain waves were recorded onto Voyager’s golden record that is traveling outside our solar system. In fact, she is the first guest on INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE who can say she already has a billion year time capsule in response to my standard question about monoliths! Five billion years, in fact, as that’s how long the golden record was designed to last.  00:07:37 Ann Druyan has brought science to millions. 00:15:42 Druyan and Sagan’s love is part of the Voyager recordings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Everybody, welcome. My name is Brian Keating. I'm the co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego. And I'm the host of today's Into the Impossible Podcast. And it's such a treat to welcome a writer, a thinker, an intellectual, whose work I've admired for years. And not just in the written or the visual domain, but also her work in creating

just a spectacular human being, which she nucleated long ago. And that's Sasha Sagan. So this is the first time we've had a parent and a child on The Into the Impossible podcast. And such a delight to have you following up on Sasha's Mother's Day podcast. We're welcoming Andrea to the podcast today. Anne, how are you doing? I'm doing really well. And I'm so happy to be with you, Brian.

And I'm honored to share a podcast. with my darling, Sasha. She really is. And I made the point at some point or another that Sasha and I kind of talked a little bit about that your granddaughter, you know, spent some time in you. I have a feeling of philosophy that, or at least maybe it's a totally non-scientific hunch, but I always feel like the maternal grandmother is somehow closer to the grandkids. I mean, don't tell this to your in-laws or whatever.

But the fact is that when Sasha was born, she had within her the egg that would become Helena, right? And that egg was inside of you. And I just think it's so wonderful that you had this beautiful connection as we were talking just before we started about these possible worlds and the worlds that we create. And I want to, you know, the occasion of this discussion is on the occasion of your book, Cosmos, Possible Worlds, which I've read and listened to on audio book. First of all, I want to always start, as I do with all my authors. I always ignore the advice to not judge a book by its cover. I judge all books by their covers, at least at some level. And I had this discussion with Sasha, and now I want to have it with you.

What is the genesis, if you will, permit me of the cover and the title and the subtitle? And of course, is part of a series, but can you walk us through how the series, what your vision for the series was, and how this particular cover and subtitle came to be? These are great questions. My vision for this series was to tell the stories of our ancestors who also had their backs to the wall, but also to acknowledge the current danger and yet to inspire with the hope of the future that we can still have if we only get our act together. If we begin to use our powers, our science and high technology with wisdom and foresight

and consideration for the generations of life to come on this world. And so that was, you know, I know that we all know there's this big shadow on our future. And our kids definitely know it. And I feel it in them. And so in order to be able to look them in the eye and to feel like I was doing something, I wanted not only to acknowledge that reality, but also to envision what the world could be like. So the title, Possible Worlds, came to me because I was thinking of the possible worlds, most obviously, of the exoplanets, the newly discovered, recently discovered planets that orbit other stars.

But then I was also thinking about the worlds that have existed on this world that are now lost to us, the lost civilizations of which we know so very little, as well as the lost worlds of our ancestors, the lost worlds of the searchers, the generations of searchers, whose courage whose innovation has really built the foundation of our society. And ultimately, my focus was the possible world that this world can become. And then in a more personal way, I was thinking of the world that is made possible by love, by the experience of love, by being loved as a child, as an adult,

and what that can do to you, how that can change you, and open you up to greater possibilities. So those were all the thoughts. Now, the cover is a ring nebula, and what I wanted to do with it was to give it a little William Blake. I don't know if you're familiar with his beautiful paintings. but, and his vision, his moral vision as well. And so I wanted it to have that same almost pulsating sense of mystery of possibility.

So that's how it came to be. Yeah, it's so wonderfully evocative. And it's not like, you know, our younger listeners won't know about what this is, but, you know, TV guide used to be this journal that you'd get maybe in the impulse purchase section of the supermarket. Exactly. Although, you know, maybe some of us subscribed. I'm not judging.

But this is no TV guy. This is a book of great artistic beauty, but also of great mystery as if a puzzle to be solved upon reading it. And I just found it so delightful to come upon these ideas, which, of course, I know a lot of the science, even some of the basics of fields outside of my, domain of expertise, which is astrophysics, I know enough to be dangerous or to think I know, but hearing the weaving through, as you just described, of kind of what it means to be a possible world, and it could be a possible world in time or in space or in a forest or in our own

hearts. And I think it's so lovely and lyrical to go on this journey and to realize that you, like Carl, I always think of you, and, you know, this first time we've met, so to speak, But I've always thought of Carl as sort of born with this artistic soul. And I do want to get into how you can become or model Carl because some of the conversation we'll have today will be sort of in a Father's Day episode vignette that will mirror Sasha's Mother's Day episode. But in this case, you know, how can people become more like that? I think of Carl as almost having this perinational ability, but maybe he worked on it. But on you, I know that you weren't born a scientist.

I know that your degree in background isn't in science. But I almost feel like as Carl became kind of a card-carrying artist that you graduated to this level. I don't know if I'll give you a PhD, an honorary PhD yet. How do you feel about that side of you? Do you feel like you've been around scientists and you've learned so much science and you've innovated scientific ideas without equations, but that you now do you consider yourself a scientist now. No, I'm not a scientist. I don't have the credentials. I have vast nebulae of ignorance. My scientific knowledge is just not commensurate with a scientist.

But that, I feel, has in a way been an asset because I'm a writer. I'm a hunter-gatherer of stories and a writer. And so just imagine what it would be like to spend every day and night for 19 and a half years with Carl Sagan. And to be able to ask him any question that occurred to you fearlessly because you knew that he felt so strongly, he believed so strongly in questions. And it was part of his ethos. never, ever, to use his knowledge to wound another person or to make them feel small.

And so there was no question. I could fearlessly ask him any question without being afraid that he would think I was stupid. And he treated each one with such respect. So I guess you could say I had this astonishing tutorial with, I think, one of the greatest teachers who ever lived. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's about the size of my, and I'm a reader. So, and I do, you know, I do try to keep myself abreast of what's happening in science. And it's no secret that Cosmos, the original first season or first series, you know, influence at the time, you know, a good fraction of the entire population of the world.

Yes. Some say upwards of a billion people were exposed to the messages of true. scientists and you were you you played a role in that and a huge role and you continue to do so and i see you as yes as as as not just the hunter gatherer but but you're you're kind of this you know rosetta stone which you show in the book but where you interpret between these different disciplines as i always joke you know how do you know a scientist is outgoing you know he looks at your shoes when he talks to you instead of his own but carl was nothing like that and and you're the vivacious opposite of of that stereotype. So how does it feel to have that impact on humanity? Is it a terrible burden also,

Anne, because I worry everything that you say is carried with such weight because it has the imprimatur of your career and Carl as well. Yeah, no, I think it's an enormous privilege, which I take seriously, but I don't feel it's ever a burden. It's an honor. and it's a source of tremendous gratification because, you know, I hear from people in every country. The new cosmos, as well as the previous ones, is being shown in 172 countries. And so, you know, I think for all of us who have been yelling at the TV news

for so many years, for me, it's a tremendous outlet. not to yell back, but to be able to present something that I hope is more compelling. So, yeah, no, I caution, but also a sense of what a privilege this is. You know, as I was listening to the book, and as we'll get into, and we talk about the meaning and value of books. And I always, you know, before I met Sasha, would harken to Carl's great quote about the magic of authorship and of writing a book and that she's hear the author's voice. And he was writing in a time before there were audiobooks on the level that we have today, at least. And literally, we hear

your voice. And today I was listening and your co-reader of the book. But, you know, when I was listening to it, and there's a passage of you say, like, what happens if some long dormant virus becomes active and causes a global pandemic? And I was like, well, you know, if I had read that, heard that six months ago, you know, that's maybe less likely than an asteroid hitting the Earth. But, you know, but again, having this prescience, sometimes I do feel like because scientists are so revered, if you look up, you know, the other day I saw something, and this show is completely non-political. I always say I love astronomy because there's no, there's no Republican constellations and democratic asteroids. You know, it should be a politics free zone, not academic freedom

free zone. It should be, you know, vigorous debate, but I like to have a little vestige of relief from politics to give my listeners that that expansiveness opportunity to just get out of their shelves. But now we're just inundated by, you know, we can't ignore science. I was joking the other day that, you know, flattening the curve and, you know, these exponential curves have taught more people about calculus than all of AP calculus. And, and, but as a scientist, I see things like, you know, 77 Nobel laureates come out to say X, Y, and Z about, you know, which treatment should be taken or which approach to opening up the economy, et cetera. As a scientist, you know, do you feel like Carl felt it could be a burden?

Because I know that it is a great privilege. I'm sure it is a great privilege to do what you do. But the fact that scientists are looked up to so highly, it is a great privilege, it comes with some responsibility. And I would just think, I would be curious to know how, you know, he reacted and how you react, knowing that your words have this tremendous power and that people are looking to you and looking to scientists for answers. And sometimes maybe we can't provide them. I have never met a more conscientious citizen who took his or her duty to his or her fellow citizens.

than Carl. And that was the fundamental. That was the basis that moved him because he really believed that the knowledge that he'd been fortunate enough

to acquire belongs to all of us. And he also believed that the failure of education, the that segregation of scientists apart from the rest of us with their own special jargon

that is unintelligible to us was a threat to democracy, especially in our society, which is utterly dependent on science and high technology. And there was a final layer to that. And as he used to say, when you're in love, you want to tell the world. That's how he felt.

about the revelations of science. That's how he felt about the universe that science reveals. He wanted everyone to at least have a chance to experience that soaring feeling. And that's what motivated him. Picture this. Me, Reese Witherspoon, in London. Ordering fish and chips so often, they might start wrapping me in paper. I'm traveling with my Wells Fargo autographed journey card, so I earn rewards

wherever I book travel. Five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Imagine getting rewarded for eating a toad in the hole. Wait, what is a toad in a hole? Visit wellsfargo.com slash autograph journey. Terms apply. Wow. And just last kind of touching upon the intersection of love and Carl and your life, we're talking today's June 5th, we're recording this. And in the book, you talk about the special date, June 3rd, 1977, right? Could you say something about that and the science of love, if you will? Well, June 3rd was very special.

June 1st is to me personally my most holy day of the year, because that was the day that Carl and I, after knowing each other and working together for years, discovered that we were in love with each other. And it was only after that Eureka moment. that I went to New York University to have my brain waves, all of the signals that could be recorded from my body, recorded to be placed on board Voyagers 1 and 2.

And I meditated for an hour while being censorily deprived. I had a mental itinerary. And I try to be unselfish for most of it And to tell The punitive beings of other worlds and times The history of our planet It's geological history It's biological history

Our own human history And at the end I saved myself The joy of meditating about the meaning of love and what it felt for a 27-year-old woman to be truly madly in love. And the love we feel for our families and each other.

I mean, it was, I tried to make it as expansive as possible, but I couldn't help the fact that I realized that my own life had finally taken this, sudden and magnificent course. And of course, they're now on board the voyagers, the most distant objects ever touched by human hands. And they have a projected shelf life of five billion with a bee, five billion years. I still can't wrap my head around 40 years later. I still can't wrap my head around it. You know that meditation has become very, very popular in recent. years, there's all sorts of apps, there's all sorts of, what tickles me is that there are people

like Sam Harris, who is very much in the Carl Sagan tradition, and he's got an app, and he's got a course and a podcast and so forth. And they talk about this attribute of meditation called meta, which means literally loving kindness. And it sounds like you presage that by about 40 years. So what's funny is, I know that meditation has gotten really popular. I actually had on Dr. Judd Brewer, who is a meditation, I mean an addiction specialist, MD PhD at Brown University, had him on, and he has an app, and he has a program for quitting smoking and cravings and addictions. And he talks about this, yeah, this meta trait of meditation. And just a side note, I realized that this was maybe getting out of hand when the rapper

P. Diddy, you know, Puff Daddy came out with a meditation course. But I'm not going to get into that. Every person's entitled to their meditation app. That's right. But in thinking about it and kind of synthesizing that when I heard you and read about this experience of sending and transmitting your brainwaves, I started to think, well, is there an addictive quality to love? And is it possible that, you know, food is necessary, but, you know, some of us struggle with addictions to it maybe, perhaps, or bad, bad food, smoking, obviously, other substances. Is love perhaps the only non-destructive craving a type of addiction that one can continue to use without ill effect? What do you feel about the addictive qualities of love?

Because it comes through so resonantly in your writing. Well, addictive is a very freighted word. True. And it immediately suggests dysfunction, impairment. And love is the opposite to me. Love is a way of growing and of finding, you know, it's like the universe. You can explore it for your whole life and never come to a wall if you're lucky, you know. And so to me, love, it doesn't belong with the addiction metaphor.

Because love, that's what we need. We all need it. So few of us. get the love we need. And I think that accounts for a lot of our problems. And the most important level of all is the love you experience in childhood as infant and beyond. I mean, I feel like the love that my parents gave me, it wasn't perfect. You know, I have major issues with my mom.

But, you know, to be honest, but her, I knew she loved me. And I never in my whole life had any reason to doubt for a moment of my father's 99 years that he loved me. And he was a genius at love. So I felt that that love, to quote a brilliant philosopher named Jacques Lucera, I felt that that love was the protective garment that I put on in childhood. And that has protected me my whole life, even from, it's even helped me through the worst times of my life. And so, yeah, I'm all for it. Yeah.

I think it also comes with risks like anything else. And, you know, I was thinking, well, just to touch upon, you know, since you are the first mother-daughter, duo and history on The Into the Impossible podcast. I think I might have said to Sasha, although I'm not sure. There's a joke about why do grandparents and grandkids get along so well? And the answer is they have a common enemy. And I think it's true. No parent is perfect. We all fail, those of us that are blessed to have children. We all fail. But to me, they represent, you know, an ultimate form of time travel in the following sense. Speaking of Sam Harris, as I did a few minutes ago, he has kind of a thought exercise taken from another research

scientist in this book waking up. And it's about, you know, the consideration of the following situation. If you could transport, teleport yourself to another world, a possible world that we call Mars, and you would be perfectly reassembled, but all your atoms would be teleported there. And you'd get there perfectly healthy. And everyone who's been on this trip has said it's perfectly safe and healthy, and you'll be what, you'll love it, you'll love Mars. You have to push this button and then the last memory you have when you arrive on Mars is that you just push this green button on Earth and now you've got this whole new button but there's a catch which is that all your atoms on Earth have to be obliterated as soon as you push the button to avoid you know having an

extra copy of you floating around and the scientist that Sam is quoting asked the question you know how many people would push it and isn't this basically like suicide you know in one sense even though you're confident in the science behind it and the process you know accepting we don't know if we can actually do this. And I started thinking, you know, would I push that button? And I started to feel like maybe I don't need to because, you know, I do have children. And children are kind of, you know, we're only going to live a certain amount of time. I think very few of us can name our great, great, great grandparents, right, what their first name was.

And very few of us will meet our great, great grandchildren. But the hope is that you instill within them this kind of memes or, you know, some kind of code that they will live on, carry on some of your ideas. Of course, you want them to be independent. So do you consider children to be another type of possible world as well that can transport some of your essence into the future? That's exactly what they are. And I agree with you completely, Brian.

Because, you know, I was so lucky, as I said, because I not only had my parents, but on my maternal grandmother and grandfather, I was very close to. And I was so lucky to know them because they were very different than culturally than I am. But they exemplified the values, the real values of their belief system, which they didn't want to impose on anyone else, which was really amazing. and, you know, they're long gone. And yet they're in my mind and my heart all the time, probably almost daily.

And the things that I learned from them and my parents, even more so with my parents, are with me with every heartbeat. And that's why the abuse of a child is a crime. a misfortune of such, such, it's a calamity. Because, you know, if you look at the other organisms, their life forms on Earth, we can see in them that their primary job is to reproduce, to survive, to reproduce,

so that their DNA gets passed on. You can see all kinds of behaviors on their part that is designed by evolution, by time, and the environment to produce certain behaviors. Well, it's this one no different. And when you are a good, strong link in the chain of generations, as my grandparents were, and as my parents were to me, then, you know, but that's your, that's your sacred, trust is to be the same for your children and your grandchildren. And so, you know, if you think of the generations of humanity,

if you think of, you know, if you could somehow really visualize them, that's been, that's always been before we were human, before we were mammals. That was our charge. And so I agree completely. I wouldn't push that button to go to Mars. because I am completely part of the fabric of this world. And I, you know, I don't think there's any other world, which I know, or I could be happier.

Yeah, you speak about it in the book. And even when you talk about the connection between a grain of pollen and this vast network that involves, you know, insect, floral partnerships, And you think about the genetic imperative of these things, which are not adamant. I don't think anyone say, you talk about super determinism in the book, but I don't think anyone say, you know, the grain of pollen is particularly conscious of its role in some Darwinian sense. And yet it's doing this and it's shielded, as you colorfully put it, you know, you can fire it out of the barrel of a gun. Yes. And it will do it.

And what parent wouldn't, you know, step in front of a gun to protect their offspring? It's just, it's so lovely. I do want to say, you know, in science, we have a tradition. Now, unfortunately, for most of it, it was very patriarchal. It was very male-centered. Absolutely. We're doing a tremendous amount here and elsewhere in our community, both to broaden the participation, diversity of science to include women and minorities of all kinds,

and they're contributing such vibrancy to our contributions as scientists. However, you know, because of the Internet, I am able to track my PhD genealogy back 17 generations, whereas I only know my great-grandfather's name. And so we can actually go really far back. So I know his name. He lived in the 1590s. He had died in the 1590s. Friedrich Leibniz was my first member of my PhD chain.

Wow, that's really an illustrious heritage. It is. And you know what's so delightful to me is that now I recently met my graduate student, Darcy Barron, is a professor at the University of New Mexico. And she has a graduate student, too, who's now in the 19th and 20th generations. Wow. And her graduate student, Kayla, hopefully, will someday be a professor. So we'll be able to go to 20.

Now, when I look at that, it reminded me when in chapter, in chapter six of cosmos, possible worlds, it's called the man of a trillion worlds. And kind of in this theme of mentorship as, you know, it could be matriarchal, it could be patriarchal, It could be dynastic in a sense that Carl was very deeply shaped by these two men, Gerald Kuiper and Harold Uri. And I just want to focus on Harold Uri for a second and then we'll get into Kuiper because I think he's the more interesting of the two mentors that Carl had in the sense. But Harold Uri, our chemistry building here in San Diego is named after him. And he had a deep influence, of course, with his Ph.D. student, Stanley Miller.

And they had the famous. Thomas. Yeah, Miller-Urie experiment, which you'd. to discuss in the book. But what touched me so much is the obituary that Carl wrote for Harold Yuri in the first journal that's really interdisciplinary called Icarus that Carl started and co-founded. And his obituary kind of reminded me of almost like what a son would say about his father on his death and it's appropriate for this Father's Day kind of component or season. He said a scientist about Harold Uri, one of the founders of UCSD's chemistry department,

said a scientist who transcended disciplinary boundaries and who helped carry us to the moon and to the planets. And about Dr. Kriper, these two scientists were rivals in a sense, which I never really realized. Of course, we all know. They hated each other. Yeah, and I want to talk about that, the adversarial nature of science. There's not, at least in a healthy parent-child relationship,

there shouldn't be an adversarial relationship. And adolescents there should be a little bit. Oh, really? Can you say why? Say why? Oh, why? Because it's just like, you know, if you watch, if you study birds and, you know, Cornell University has this ornithology center with a webcam in the nests of various birds.

And I have watched these birds. So I wish I could think of the species. I'm sorry. I'm blocking on it at the moment. But I have watched these birds, you know, hatch and then become chicks. And then start to venture out on a branch that's maybe 30 feet about the ground. And you see the birds look down and then they look up. And they think for a moment and then they run back to their nest.

They keep doing this, but every time they go back to the nest, they yell at their parents. And it's amazing. It's exactly like being a parent, I know, a 14-year-old or 15-year-old. And they come back and they yell at the parents and they flap their wings at the parents. And they mess up the nest and they raise this huge hue and cry. Then they calm down. And the next day, they inch out on the next day. the branch. They look down. No. No. Come back, start the same fight over and over again. And then one day,

they just go out on the branch and this time they fly away. Wow. And I saw that and I thought, you know, and it's true, when I think of what I did to my parents when I was a teenager and how I must have tested their patients, how I must have frightened them. with my behavior, with my, you know, selfishness, lack of consideration, lack of awareness of their feelings, arguments about ridiculous things, thunderstorms of rage. All of that is normal. And it's because that's how we separate from our parents. That's how we fight off that desire to crawl back into their own.

arms and stay there forever. And, you know, this seems to be cross-cultural. It seems to be something that every different kind of society has at one time ritualized. Come to grips with, you know, send them into the forest for two years, you know, many different variations. It's natural. And once you understand that it's not personal, it's natural. you know, it's like all of those bubbles coming to the surface of resentments, of fears, of hurts.

And so, you know, it's just, I mean, if you're a genius of love, like my dad was, you always show love no matter how provoked you are. And then what happens, which is so amazing, what happened to me was that even, though it was the 60s and wild and I was wild, I had such love from my father because he had loved me through everything that I, you know, the primary thought in my mind was I can't do anything that would hurt him. And so, you know, the really brilliant thing to do is to understand and to love. I love that phrase, genius of love. I think I might use it as the subtitle for this episode.

Harry Drianne, the original. And his mother, Tilly. All right. Well, it would be lovely to get pictures of them to put in the video. So handsome. Yeah. So speaking of love and science now, I've heard it described, and I like this description that teaching is an act of love

in that you can't simultaneously be fearful of physical unsafety or danger and be learning and transmitting. You can't, I love you so much, you know, like anger and I'm so angry at you. Now learn the geodesic deviation equation of just can't happen. Obviously, the love should be platonic that goes about saying. But in terms of science, it's hard sometimes as a parent, so to speak, I'm not meaning to be paternalistic, But there is that kind of relationship where people go to the funerals of their advisors, just like they would go to their parents. Yes. You know, God forbid, you know, if someone younger than them passes away.

And I've had to deal with aspects of that, including mental health issues, including things like suicide of people very close to me. And it affected me. And in the science world, a mentor committed suicide. And it's still devastating 10 years later. And I look at it and I say, you know, science has this kind of heterodox structure. in that it has this loving aspect or should be loving, platonically so, between mentor, mentee, you know, protege, so to speak, but also between the scientists themselves fighting and squabbling adversarially. I mean, I do believe that you might agree with the statement

that, you know, science is adversarial. And you talk about Kuiper and Uri almost as like, you know, and Carl being kind of like the child of divorced parents. I wonder if you could take us through that relationship. Obviously, you know, Yuri went on to kind of, had a much vaster scientific reputation. Kuyper's ideas, I think, are more influential to this day. That's perfect. Yeah. So what do you make of this adversarial relationship that scientists have to have between them themselves, but also, you know, it's like, I love my student until she gets her PhD, and then I'm competing with her for funds in the same NSF, and she's writing papers, and, like, we should be critical. How do you, how would you advise, you know, balancing this relationship

that's on one hand acting as loving pursuers of truth, but another hand as acting like, you know, SOBs are really criticizing an adversarial fashion. Well, you know, everything you've said, Brian, is ring so true to me, you know, as I think of what Carl would say about the two men and what they meant to him. And, you know, Yuri was a very tough guy. He grew up in a really hard scrabble childhood. And, you know, he worked in a mining camp as a tutor until his employer said, you should go to college. Brilliant. And he did go to college and then he, you know, won the Nobel Prize. And I mean, he was, he was,

and so Carl understood where he was coming from. And he was very hard on Carl. If Carl, you know, who was working in his laboratory and thrilled to be there, you know, if Carl raised questions about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, for instance, even though Euret himself, as you mentioned, with Miller created really the first and only, I think,

experiment in the study of life, the origin of life elsewhere. And Carl, I guess because he was so hungry for the knowledge that Yuri could give him, he took

the harshness appropriately. He understood that that was this man's personality. Kuiper was very different, very, very different. Kuiper, when Keral would tell me of the rookie mistakes he made in Kuiper's laboratory and, you know, foolish mistakes that only someone who really had a lot to learn would make.

Kuiper was always so kind. about him. But Kuyper had his own quirks. You know, he, he didn't work well with others. He could work well with Carl and they could become true friends when Carl matured as a scientist. But he, you know, he had his own, he also came up the hard way from a poor family in Holland. but he had familial support. His father, who was impoverished, poor Taylor, managed to get the money together to buy him a telescope when he was still a child.

And so I think that in some way, I'm guessing, accounts for a part of the difference. And then there were other times when Carl became famous. I think Yuri did him some very profound injuries. And yet Carl loved him even then because he could understand. And why are scientists, you know, I love the idea that I couldn't find a single example of one scientist

killing another scientist over a scientific idea. which I think is something very special about. I have an idea for a fiction book where there's four people in the running for a Nobel Prize and one murders the other one so that there's only... Because you can't get it posthumously. Well, no, no, because only three people can win it. Oh, yes, yes. But also when someone's dad, no matter how great they are, you can't get them the prize.

Yeah, which somehow has still stopped them from giving it to Jocelyn Bell-Burnell. That's right. ...m very much alive and Margaret Burbage was as well. Anyway, I don't want to be political. Great market perfect. Yes. Was great in every way. For the moments that matter,

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dot com to learn more. Yes. Yes, another person whom Carl had tremendous love and admiration for. Anyway, so back to Kuiper and Yuri. I guess, you know, the fact is that all scientists are also primates and indulge, especially in a kind of, you know, because of the male, predominantly male, hierarchy of science for the first 300 years. It seems to me that there was a lot of dominance hierarchy stuff going on, the exclusion of

women, the exclusion of non-Europeans and non-Americans, all of those things. The way that an Indian mathematical genius could be treated or a great Indian scientist could be treated. I mean, this is all part of that same profound, toxic illness. And, but Miller and Yuri, you know, in the end, I just feel that Miller, I'm sorry, not Miller, Yerrie, Kuiper in Yurt. I believe that Kuiper was a visionary in the greatest sense. I mean, we owe him that first scientific realization that solar systems were not rare that the other stars you were seeing in the sky

had worlds of their own. He wrote this in 1949 and how right he was. He didn't live to see this enormous vindication. And both of them did play a role in us getting to the moon. But Yuri was really, I think, possibly more influential in the idea that the moon would be our goal than any other scientist. And I think about that, as you said, scientists are primates and so forth. I also think of scientists as very childlike.

We're curious. We're a little mischievous. We're a little anti-authoritarian. We're also very jealous. We're very selfish. We're very petty. We're very conniving. Just like our wonderful little blessings, our children.

And I wonder if, you know, at some level, your perspective on, I believe it's a responsibility, not to be Carl Sagan. I don't think many people can be a Carl Sagan. There's some that come, you know, kind of aspire in that mode, including Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who Carl influenced directly. And Neil credits as his real mentor. in this field. But can a scientist be a communicator and an honest to goodness card-carrying scientist in a way that Carl, at least, you know, could be inspired by Carl, by what he did, but, you know, still maintaining a prodigious output like Carl did? I think that's very hard. So I guess the question I'm asking you is, is there an obligation for scientists, my colleagues, such as myself and

others to do communication, to work actually to spend a little bit of their time learning how to communicate, how to write, how to present, how to give public speeches, how to engage with Congress and the media. We don't spend any time with that. And yet, I feel like it's the most important meta-skill in our skill stack. And I teach it personally to my graduate students, but not all my colleagues agree with me. Where do you cleave in this discussion? Oh, I think it's vital to science. I think it's not just vital to society. I think the idea of a scientific priesthood is sick because it's, you know, first of all, because of the astonishing power that science has, how can you aspire to have a democratic society and decide that the scientists can be in one place, surrounded by a great wall, I really do. I know I declare my bias, but I really think that Carl, more than any single person,

Einstein was a great communicator, but that was a very, even longer ago. And before media, or, you know, really had its grip on everyone's imagination and everyone's day. And so I think that Carl, who got, was really took a lot of abuse and punishment for going on the Tonight Show and writing for Parade magazine and trying to get the message out in every way he could, even though as actually Michael Shermer did the paper, the really good paper, on the on Carl's 600 repereed, peer-reviewed,

scientific papers. Now think about 600 papers. Yeah. While he's editing Icarus, while he's, you know, NASA, Voyager. ...planetary society. While he's an investigator on every single spacecraft mission of the United States from the birth of NASA until his death,

as well as a participant in some of the Russian voyages of exploration. While he's winning the Pulitzer Prize for one of his dozen great books, while he is being, in my view, the greatest husband who ever could have been, and a truly great father and a truly great father, and a truly great son, you know, that's what really amazes me about Carl is that for me, he's the existence theorem. He's the proof that we can be 100% functioning

on every level, flourishing on every level, none at the expense of the other. And that's another reason why his life gives me so much hope. Did he have any kind of a workflow or tactics and tricks and habits and hacks, as they would say nowadays? Did you? And what are yours, actually? Well, mine, you know, I don't do as much as Carl did. But for instance, in writing and producing and directing Cosmos, these last two seasons, you know, that was, and writing the book at the same time.

And then having this calamity with Sam, my son, almost died during the course of the whole thing. You know, I don't know if I had a hack, but I had a passion. And the passion is what moves me. The times, the war on science, the contempt for science, the destruction of some of our are great scientific agencies. Those are the things that really have propelled me. And then, you know, the great good fortune of working with 986 other people on this most recent season of Cosmos.

So many of them from the previous season, because we love to work with each other. Just, I mean, just the, you know, to be a 70-year-old woman, who was born at a time and who grew up in a time and came of age in a time, when I didn't even get to finish a sentence, when, you know, the primary form of entertainment was the humor of how stupid women were. I mean, it was just like that was it. And so to come to a time in which I feel like I have been given much more,

than even I deserve in my opportunities to communicate, to be heard. It's another thing. It gives me so much hope. Not that we're there yet. And obviously, currently we know we have so many rivers to cross. But to feel that much progress since my childhood, that is, you know, one of the, that's another thing that gives me the energy to do this. I want to ask you in the last couple of minutes before we turn to our standard questions that we ask of all of our beloved guests on the show.

Not what Carl would think, but what do you think? What does Anne think about the so-called eerie silence? The fact that we have been undergoing the SETI search for extraterrestrial intelligence, including a search now here located at UC San Diego by my colleague, Shelley Wright, whose team of she's got dozens of people working on this, an optical SETI search. And she's carrying very much in the tradition of Carl Sagan. I hope that you guys can meet someday. But what do you make of this? We're in the 60th year, actually, now.

And we've had on a spate of guests on the podcast, Paul Davies, Greg James Benford, and others who have really kind of spoken almost as if they're resigned, that the silence is deafening and permanent. And I want to ask you, as a person, is this a point of depression, you? Is this something that, you know, the lack of communication or messaging from any other civilization or knowledge of a life form outside of what we have on Earth? Or is it hopeful, in a sense? I've heard people say it gives them hope that, you know, humanity will protect itself. So where do you, Andrea, not Carl, I don't know how...

I'd love to answer this question, but why does it give them hope? Well, because I think they feel that human beings will come to the realization that this is it, that we're living in the only time and space in the universe, history, or we're living in the only time and space, in the universe history, perhaps, although it's possible to know, and that we will take that with gratitude, as you just spoke so lovingly about the trait of gratitude, which I think is so rare and so beautiful. But you're grateful to have the opportunity. I'm like that humanity will see our isolation as a privilege and therefore take good, better care of the environment. I'm not saying I don't agree with that because actually I don't think the people who just spoil

environment and brutalize each other, they are thinking about whether or not life exists elsewhere in the universe, nor would they care. I mean, the point is life is here and they don't care.

So, you know, I don't think so. But I have, you know, the Fermi paradox, you know, where are they? That doesn't I don't think it's a paradox. And this is why. Maybe in my ignorance, maybe if I knew more. I wouldn't feel this way. But we've only had the ability to receive radio signals.

What, 125 years, something like that, something on that order. Yeah, unless. So if we had been bombarded by radio signals, anytime in the previous four and a half billion years, we wouldn't know anything about it. And so here we are, you know, we're celebrating Frank Drake's birthday, his 90th birthday. Yes, that's right. And, you know, so I consider him the father of SETI. And his, I believe, you know, he began doing that 60 years ago. 60 years.

That's nothing. Moreover, we think, because we discovered radio signals over, 100 years ago, that that's the way to do it. It's a failure of the imagination because it doesn't permit what could happen in the next 60 years, what we could discover, how we could, you know, there are conceivably other ways to communicate and very likely other ways to communicate that we haven't even tumbled to. And the search, SETI, yes, there are. people conducting the search.

But they have only examined a tiny fraction of the sky. Put them all together. It's not even a really significant part of the sky. So, you know, just because it hasn't happened

yet, or because a couple of generations of scientists have been looking, that really doesn't mean anything to me. I just look at the sheer number of worlds in the universe, even just in our galaxy. And I think that, you know, we just don't know.

I also think that there are tantalizing intimations of past life on Mars. Will they turn out to be scrimatolites or just something else geological? possibly. But, you know, it seems to me that let's go to Enceladus and plunge through the frozen poles to get to this subterranean ocean. Let's go, let's do a lot more exploration and searching before we come to any conclusions on the subject.

Yes, as Jill Tarter, who's a friend of the Center for Human Imagination, has been on the show, as well as her biographer, Sarah Skulls, has been on the show recently. Well, the book is called Making Contact, and of course it makes reference to your wonderful book and film of the same name, Contact. I want to just indulge it because it's maybe the one chance I ever get if I could ask a personal question, which is, you know, all people, as you know, I'm a practicing Jew. I wouldn't say I'm an Orthodox Jew that I don't want to saddle the Orthodox with any burdens in that way. But I do practice. I do observe the Sabbath. I don't work. I don't send emails.

I don't do things like that. But every day, I doubt the existence of God. I don't, I view myself as a devout atheist. Sorry, devout agnostic that I'm a practicing. Righty and slip there. Yeah, exactly, right. And that, you know, if you're an atheist, you don't go to the same synagogue that Richard Dawkins doesn't go to. You may be an agnostic and what you tell people, but you're actually not going to, you're not practicing.

You're not doing anything that Richard Dawkins doesn't do. But as I said, everyone I know, even my rabbi will say, you know, that he has doubts. And great thinkers have always said this. And that's why we have this term faith. Do you ever doubt the secular explanations for, you know, the origin of the universe or perhaps, Do you ever doubt the non-existence of a supernatural being? You know, earlier in our wonderful conversation, I'm so enjoying it, you mentioned the fact that the scientists you knew were anti-authoritarian in politics.

Well, how could they not be if they're scientists? Because, you know, those five simple rules of the methodology of science say question authority, no arguments from authority. And so my feeling is this. I'm a great admirer of Spinoza, Berks Spinoza, whose story we tell in the new season of Cosmos, which will be on Fox, September 22nd. Yes.

And I think Spinoza's insight about miracles is something that I have taken to heart personally. And that is do not look for God in miracles because God is really the sum total of the physical laws of the universe. God is nature. And miracles are violations of the laws of nature. And God is best apprehended in the laws of nature. Now Spinoza was writing this before Newton. Think of it. I mean, there had already been Kepler and Galileo.

And the idea that Spinoza wrote this before some of the most revolutionary laws of nature were even discovered is to me, something I can never get over. And so do I question my secular beliefs? I absolutely question everything. But most of all, I try to protect myself from false pattern recognition. which I think is one of our greatest strengths pattern recognition the underside of one of our greatest strengths false pattern recognition confirmation bias right confirmation bias is counting the heads so I hope that I am open-minded and open-hearted enough so that if something were to happen like for instance quantum physics which is in many ways is a step beyond classical physics,

and I would be open to it. But I don't question the importance and the magnificence of nature. And for me, you know, I spoke briefly about my grandparents at the beginning. they were the most profoundly observant people I have ever known. And yet I saw what it was like to be profoundly observant. They were Orthodox. To even suffer because of their orthodoxy. And yet to embody what I believe in my secular way

is the essence of the goodness that our sacred books were trying to evoke in us. That's, you know, so I respect and would never, never tell anybody what to believe. But I, my own belief is simply that since we live in a, we are lucky enough to live in a diverse society, it's very hard once you have witnessed something of the beauty and creativity and genius of other cultures to pick one culture pick one system of beliefs and say that's where I build my church you know I can't do that because you know there's another voice in my head which comes from science which is saying, remember, you might be wrong.

And that's the glory of science, is saying, we'll give our highest awards to the one who can prove that our most cherished beliefs are incorrect. That's its power. I think, you know, I always say it's the hardest, the hardest path to strike is the run down the middle. And the reason that society is so polarized is because it's actually easier to be a zealot,

a religious zealot, a political zealot. It's always easy to be on one side of the other, but to strike that middle ground, a scientist must do in order to be dispassionate and follow the evidence wherever it leads, as you and Carl often say. It's so difficult because you're at this inflection point, this unstated point of equilibrium

that you could pommel either way at the slightest push. But I think walking, cleaving to that middle ground, it's both challenging, but it's rewarding. well. Well, it's being realistic about your true circumstances in the universe. You're not at the center. It doesn't revolve around you. You know, you're just part of it. You're part in it. You're not at the center, no matter what you do. Although I have to, you know, take that up with some of my colleagues who still think they are. I'm not going to get political with my colleagues right now. I do want to finish, I know you're so busy and I just want to, you know, take the opportunity because how often do I get this chance to speak to a luminary such as yourself?

to ask you the questions I ask all my guests into the impossible, and one of them will be laughingly easy for you to answer, I expect, although, who knows? The first one may not be, but it kind of goes along with a little bit of what Sasha talks about in her book, which is the power of rituals and the transmission orally and written, and it involves something in Hebrew called an ethical will or a Zava-a, and this is a document that communicates not material wealth, but spiritual, if you will, but I don't want to know if you like that word.

I don't particularly care. I like it. Okay, so what values, what wisdom and traditions for the future generations would you like to put in your ethical will? In my ethical will, I would like to, I guess the first paragraph would be due justly, walk humbly, love mercy from Micah. Micah, right? Yes, Micah.

That would be my first thing. And then I would say. But not with your God, right? You would say with science. Just walk humbly. Okay. Right. Period.

Walk humbly. Then the next one would be work for a world and for a time when our species values the things we need most to live. Our air, our water, our climate, each other. Value those above money. Value those above money before it's too late. We do have a window here, but the window is closing. And we have to, you know, I look at all of the isms on this planet, all the different modes of human social organization

and the modes of distribution of wealth. And not one of them thinks, in the time scale of 10 years, let alone a century or a thousand years. But the timescales that science speaks in are up to 13.8 billion years. And our legacy, our birthright on this planet, is 4 billion years old. And so learn to be a great strong link in the chain of life that you, all of you, me, we all go all the way back to that and beyond to the hearts of distant stars. So remember that and keep it holy. Lovely. Another question that I ask based on the fact

that we are here at the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego pertains to Sir Arthur C. Clark's book 2001. And in that book featured in the film, by Stanley Kubrick, and this is particularly pertinent to you, who is an author, a producer, a writer, a director. So like Arthur C. Clark, I want to ask you this question, you recall, of course, the famous monoliths that are placed in particular locations around the solar system, including the Serengeti plane and the moon, the Earth's moon. They're meant to be sort of devices, maybe warnings, maybe encapsulations or time capsules that reflect or make a statement or perhaps a warning, you know, don't come here, we've irradiated the planet maybe, I don't know,

or don't develop this particular type of virus in whatever. But what would you put on your monolith? And like I said, you're the only guest I've ever had and probably will ever have, who's actually sent a billion, five billion year-long time capsule into the universe, which generated so much human interest and actually I think nucleated the entire field of things like world music and kind of soundscapes

for the very first time in history. So anyway, what would you put on a monolith an equation? Some people have told me they'd put certain equations on. What would you put on your monolith to last for all eternity? If you got a mulligan, you could do it again. Okay, well, I think, you know,

Because I think I want to say Frank Drake's scientific hieroglyphics on the Voyager record. Because it tells where we are and what we figured out. And it speaks in a way about human achievement. And it's elegant and beautiful. No, not that one. That's the I receive a message. Oh, it's the Frank Drake Saracibo message. Okay.

Yes. I'm talking about the cover of the Voyager record. Oh, the actual cover of it. Okay. Yeah, the golden disc. Yes. Just because I, you know, I probably really need more time to think of something which is more responsive to your question.

But because that's really one of my favorite things, you know, just because it conveys so much information. without depending on one or another of our cultural languages. And I just think it's so elegant. It tells you where we are intellectually, as well as our location in terms of our son's relationship. Yeah. A dozen or 14 nearest pulsars.

It's brilliant. And in that sense, I feel like that was a voyage to the inside of what it means to be a human being. that record, the Golden Disc, the Voyager record, is almost a message to ourselves more than any other species that might encounter it. The last question that I'm going to ask is going the opposite direction backwards in time. So this is the Into the Impossible podcast, and it's named after Arthur C. Clark's third law, which says, first law says any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Yes, I love that. His second law is, me too. Its second law is for

every expert, there's an equal and opposite expert. And his third law was the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. And I want to ask you what mysterious aspect of your life as a 20-year-old, as a 30-year-old, perhaps, as a young person, I have a very big young listenership. What thing perplexed you until you did it and made it possible? Well, that's a really profound question. question and I want to really I don't know if I can come up with as good an answer as that question is and so many things occur to me for one thing you know for me as a much younger woman it was frightening for me to speak in public it was because my heart would be pounding

and I think it was the desire so desperate to be heard and feeling unheard. But, you know, that was something that was a frontier for me. And it's changed very much over the decades that I've been permitted to speak. Another thing was, of course, science itself, because I had a profoundly alienating, experience in junior high school, which we memorialized in the novel contact and a trauma. And, you know, that's another reason why it was so amazing because that trauma sent me away from mathematics and science,

even though up to that time I'd been a very good student and I'd be very interested in both. It really wasn't until I discovered the pre-Socratic philosophers when I was a student, the inventors of science, who were the first people to say, we can't use this shorthand for our ignorance that the gods did it. Everything has cause, which can be discovered.

And so that was the beginning from me. And then, of course, being with Carl made it possible for me to begin to understand those aspects of scientific discovery that I had been so alienated from. So that was a huge thing. And I guess, you know, most personally, you know, my parents were married for 66 years. until my mother's death. And, but it was 66 years of, you know, arguing and a lot of conflict. But they were, you know, the fact that they stayed together was meaningful to us, but it was really, and I thought that love sustained, enduring love,

A love that could always reach higher, always go deeper, always find new heights was maybe something that was just a piece of literary fiction. And learning how to be in that love. And then going every single moment of it, be. incognizant of how lucky I was. For me personally, that was a great emotional, psychological trip into the impossible. It was really possible. I mean, what's the impossible? Either those violations of the laws of nature or else they're failures of human imagination.

And so you have to try to go there. That's a lovely way to conclude our wide-ranging and fascinating conversation with Andrew. And writer, producer of Cosmos, author of Cosmos, Possible Worlds, a phenomenal book, another great contribution. And, of course, this delightful treat for me to have a mother-daughter duo. And I'm looking forward to in a few years having Helena on so that we'll have the mother-daughter-granddaughter edition of Into the Impossible. Yes, we have a lot more, Drianne Sagan's and others who would love to join you. I cannot wait.

Thank you so much for sharing your time, and it's been a delight chatting with you. It's been a joy. Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you, Anne. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishing from magic. If you enjoyed this episode of Into the Impossible, please subscribe, comment, share, rate, 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 that are always open to your suggestions for future episodes. For more information, go to imagination.ucsd.edu. Find us on Twitter at Imagine UCSD. Watch us on YouTube, listen on iTunes. Into the Impossible is a production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Eric Vary, director, Brian Keating, co-director, Patrick Coleman, associate director, produced by Stuart Volko.