Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel. The
Speaker 1: Stint of Noel is winding down sadly. It's such an
Speaker 1: awkward thing having no here, no the stint of knol Right,
Speaker 1: Oh you mean the wording? Yeah, wording is fine? All right?
Speaker 1: How you doing? I'm fine, just like that wording. I'm sleepy?
Speaker 1: Why about I've just been staying up late, writing until
Speaker 1: one and two in the morning like a dope like
Speaker 1: a seventeen Oh yeah, yeah, a manifesto. No, no, just
Speaker 1: staying up too late, that's neat. Do you drink wine
Speaker 1: while you type? Last night? It was bullet bourbon? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you're just like, I'm not typing words correctly anymore.
Speaker 1: And then time for bed. You get on a roll
Speaker 1: and then you look up and it's to two am.
Speaker 1: Nice man, I'm glad to hear that six thirty yearlls
Speaker 1: around and here we are. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: So you're creative juices are flowing. They're flowing, baby. You
Speaker 1: know who else is juices were flowing and still flow
Speaker 1: through this universe. Carl Sagan, he was. He was a
Speaker 1: creative science type. Yeah, and it made him kind of controversial. Man.
Speaker 1: It also made him beloved, beloved, and uh, I think
Speaker 1: one of like the precursors to what we do, you know.
Speaker 1: In fact, he there's a quote on him being an explainer,
Speaker 1: which I thought was very cool, which is the geekiest
Speaker 1: term ever, but it's a pretty it's a good term science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said. I think I'm able to explain things because
Speaker 1: understanding wasn't entirely easy for me. Some things that the
Speaker 1: most brilliant students were able to see instantly, I had
Speaker 1: to work to understand. I can remember what I had
Speaker 1: to do to figure it out. The very brilliant ones
Speaker 1: figure it out so fast that sounds familiar. They never
Speaker 1: see the mechanics of understanding out. I really identified with that,
Speaker 1: and like, man, that's kind of what we do. You know.
Speaker 1: We worked really hard to understanding this because we're not experts,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't an expert on one thing. He covered
Speaker 1: a lot of That's what made him unique, A lot
Speaker 1: of different facets of science. Yeah, which you don't see much.
Speaker 1: No you don't. I mean it does pop up here
Speaker 1: and there. But if you if you think about the
Speaker 1: people who are like that, like Jared Diamond is a
Speaker 1: really good current example Neil Type. No, that's Dustin Diamond.
Speaker 1: Jared Diamond. Uh man. I don't even remember what he's
Speaker 1: trained in. He's just such a generalist. But he wrote
Speaker 1: like guns, germs and steel. Um, he's got a little
Speaker 1: a little Robert bork Beard, good guy. Um, he's one.
Speaker 1: Neil deGrasse Tyson has definitely become one, although he's still
Speaker 1: very much an astrophysician, right, yeah, but he's he's sort
Speaker 1: of talked about a lot of times in terms of
Speaker 1: being like Sagan, and not just because as he rebooted Cosmos,
Speaker 1: which was Sagan's show, but um, oh yeah, he's just
Speaker 1: the face of science, Like he's the go to guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, like he was the obvious choice for Cosmos
Speaker 1: because he was already so much like Sagan, following in
Speaker 1: those footsteps for sure. Those other guys, just like Brian
Speaker 1: Green as a science explainer, Bill Nye as a science explainer. Um,
Speaker 1: they're definitely out there for sure. But you can you
Speaker 1: make a good point that Sagan was one of the originals,
Speaker 1: if not the original but the idea that he was
Speaker 1: somebody who was willing to draw parallels from different disciplines
Speaker 1: in science or bring him together to create, um, something
Speaker 1: approachable for people, to kind of invigorate people's love of science.
Speaker 1: I think it's amazing. Yeah. It made him beloved. It
Speaker 1: also just made him not reviled. This is not the
Speaker 1: right word, but he was definitely criticized in the scientific establishment.
Speaker 1: Uh in parts. For sure. Some people in the scientific
Speaker 1: establishment loved him, and some were like, uh, you're not
Speaker 1: doing much real research. You know, you're just sort of
Speaker 1: a face guy. And um, I poo poo that entirely
Speaker 1: and say that he did a lot for science and
Speaker 1: people like him are are necessary, and uh, I value
Speaker 1: their work. Okay, you're taking a stand. Huh. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan is amazing. He's one of my heroes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like. I watched Cosmos when I was ten years old.
Speaker 1: I have never seen it. Man, it was great. I
Speaker 1: mean it was a PBS show that had tens of
Speaker 1: millions of viewers. Millions and millions, So that's you're saken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know what he he told Johnny Carson. He
Speaker 1: never said billions and billions Uh, he said billions of
Speaker 1: pond billions, right, I never heard it. There's a super
Speaker 1: cut on YouTube of all of his billions, millions and
Speaker 1: trillions from Cosmos cut to uh with it like hip
Speaker 1: hop music, bed and um is a glorious down. I
Speaker 1: don't remember the name of it. There's one. There's a
Speaker 1: video a song that somebody created with him, a super
Speaker 1: cut of him. It's called Glorious Toll. It's pretty great. Well,
Speaker 1: I never heard billions and billions in there. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of billions and millions and trillions. He loved those words,
Speaker 1: but he said I never specifically said billions and billions,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't. I didn't hear it either, So he's
Speaker 1: a misunderstood genius. Yeah, they became I think Carson did
Speaker 1: at first, or maybe it was Saturday Night Live, and
Speaker 1: then that just became the thing, billions and billions, because
Speaker 1: he is a weird little dude for sure, in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, easily parody, but he also seemed to
Speaker 1: have a fairly good sense of humor about himself at
Speaker 1: least and in general. He smoked grass. He thought grass
Speaker 1: was far out man. We just vaulted back in time
Speaker 1: with that one he smoked the marijuana grass making a
Speaker 1: contemporary He was on the pot, Yeah, he did. He
Speaker 1: liked to smoke weed and um. In fact, I have
Speaker 1: a quote here from he wrote an essay and best
Speaker 1: Pavement album by the way. He wrote an essay. I
Speaker 1: don't know about that. Yeah, what's your favorite? Um? I
Speaker 1: planned it in Enchanna the first one it's hard. Although
Speaker 1: Crooked Rain, crookt Rain was pretty good. No, I've never
Speaker 1: seen him more interested in what we're talking about. It's funny.
Speaker 1: In college we used to have a saying, it's not
Speaker 1: a matter of which album are we gonna listen to next?
Speaker 1: It's which Pavement album are we gonna listen to? Next?
Speaker 1: T shirt? Yeah? So anyway, Sagan wrote an essay and uh,
Speaker 1: marijuana reconsidered um, and here is one of his quotes.
Speaker 1: He said, the cannabis experienced has greatly improved my appreciation
Speaker 1: for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before.
Speaker 1: The understanding of the intent of the artists, which I
Speaker 1: can achieve when high, sometimes carries over to when I'm down.
Speaker 1: This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has
Speaker 1: helped me traverse. Was that the frog doing Carl Sagan.
Speaker 1: That was sort of kermity, but he uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's not it doesn't define him or anything, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he liked to smoke the pot and he liked to
Speaker 1: get out of his little tape recorder and talk about stuff,
Speaker 1: put on a turnal neck, yeah, with nothing else. It
Speaker 1: was the sixties and seventies, of course he was, and
Speaker 1: I think the eighties and maybe even into the nineties.
Speaker 1: That's true. So um, let's let's I guess let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. We've done some pretty good teasing here, right,
Speaker 1: And when you're talking about a human being, there's no
Speaker 1: place better to start at the beginning than with their
Speaker 1: birth Brooklyn, New York. His mother was Rachel, was a
Speaker 1: garment industry manager and apparently the biggest Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but his mom was overbearing. Yes, mom was overbearing. Sorry,
Speaker 1: dad was a Ukrainian immigrant, Samuel, who worked as a
Speaker 1: garment industry manager. Because in four they probably and hire
Speaker 1: women to do jobs like that, which is really stinky.
Speaker 1: So uh and we it's not like we've met the
Speaker 1: lady or anything and can report that she's overbearing. The
Speaker 1: idea that she's overbearing comes from this longstanding image of her.
Speaker 1: She had very high hopes and high expectations and aspirations
Speaker 1: for Carl very well may have made the man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I moved to New Jersey after a little
Speaker 1: while and was voted the class brain at Rahway High School.
Speaker 1: And I thought this was interesting in this what articles
Speaker 1: this New Yorker, which one while why Carl Sagan's truly
Speaker 1: replaceable Smith Smithsonian Joel Ackenbach. Uh. It was a great article, though.
Speaker 1: But they tracked down in nineteen fifty three a questionnaire
Speaker 1: from high school that he had to fill out on
Speaker 1: his own character traits, and Sagan said he gave himself
Speaker 1: low marks for vigorousness like with sports, an average rating
Speaker 1: for emotional stability, and the highest ratings for being dominant
Speaker 1: and reflective. I'm gonna start using that vigorousness. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I worked out this morning. I'm so vigorous. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's not just a piece of paper they dug up, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that's from his archives, which were actually sold to the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress by his widow. Um what is his
Speaker 1: widow's name? Anne? And drew in one of his uh, well,
Speaker 1: his his widow. But he was married three times um
Speaker 1: and uh Ann sold the papers. Are supplied the papers
Speaker 1: for an honorarium, I guess, to the Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: And the Library of Congress got that money from Seth McFarland.
Speaker 1: So basically, Seth McFarland bought Carl Sagan's papers and donated
Speaker 1: them to the Library of Congress. Yes, that's why. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That's what it's called, the Seth McFarland Collection
Speaker 1: of the Carl Sagan and drew In Archive. Had to
Speaker 1: put his name on there. Well, I mean, sure, why not?
Speaker 1: You know, No, it's fine. He's he's he's a huge
Speaker 1: fan of his work, and he's the one who rebooted
Speaker 1: Cosmos and genuinely, like, I mean, I gotta say, like,
Speaker 1: whatever you have to say about Seth McFarland, there was
Speaker 1: plenty to say about Seth McFarland. He is, he proved
Speaker 1: himself a true fan of Carl Sagan and a rich guy.
Speaker 1: I've always liked a family guy. So I don't have
Speaker 1: any bad to say about him. Uh, what have you
Speaker 1: seen American Dad? No, I never got into that. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not family guy. It's definitely just totally different. Uh.
Speaker 1: Seven hundred and ninety eight boxes of stuff of archival material. Um.
Speaker 1: The guy love to log every conversation he ever had
Speaker 1: and every thought that ever entered his brain, mainly through
Speaker 1: the cassette tape. But um, I guess that was transcribed
Speaker 1: by other folks. Yeah, apparently that's um. Joel achenbach Um
Speaker 1: says that his his writing style was so conversational because
Speaker 1: he didn't write, He dictated into ad dictaphone and then
Speaker 1: it was transcribed. Basically, basically, he was like the Hunter
Speaker 1: s Thompson of science. Yeah. Remember Hunter t had like
Speaker 1: the real real he'd wear around his neck when one
Speaker 1: is high on marijuana. It is a buzz skill to type. Actually,
Speaker 1: that's funny. We bring up Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson loved acid.
Speaker 1: You know who else loved acid? Timothy Leary. You know
Speaker 1: who hung out with Timothy Leary, Carl Sagan. Timothy Leary
Speaker 1: was trying to get Sagan to advise him on how
Speaker 1: to build a an interstellar arc because Leary just totally
Speaker 1: lost his stuff by this time, right on him. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised we haven't. Um, let's do it, man, we should.
Speaker 1: We should do one on like the Mary pranks there's
Speaker 1: a whole thing just basically redo the the electric kool
Speaker 1: Aid ascid test would be a good episode. But Leary
Speaker 1: um at a mental institution because he'd been popped with
Speaker 1: a bunch of acid. I think had a visitor in
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan and Frank Drake of the famous Drake equation,
Speaker 1: and they came by to say hi, and and Leary
Speaker 1: was like, seriously, you guys have to help me design this.
Speaker 1: And they were like, this the closest stars too far away,
Speaker 1: your koke, This isn't gonna work. And Learry said he
Speaker 1: since that they had some sort of neural blockage. That's
Speaker 1: why they couldn't think like he could. Yeah. Man, So
Speaker 1: that was Carl Sagan Timothy Larry story. But I think
Speaker 1: they stayed in touch. Oh I'm sure they did. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: Young Sagan is his life kind of changes when he
Speaker 1: goes to the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine. He
Speaker 1: was just five years old. You remember whose World's Fair
Speaker 1: that was? Was it? No? Was it Chicago? Eddie Berns?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was the law wo the one that
Speaker 1: changed everything, including Carl Sagan. Boy, that's a big one. Um.
Speaker 1: So Sagan goes to the World's Fair, and it was
Speaker 1: sort of a a great time, um, to be a
Speaker 1: young kid interested in science, because in the late thirties
Speaker 1: and forties and fifties, it was like everyone was captivated
Speaker 1: by the future. Right, There's this idea that science could
Speaker 1: do anything, anything and very soon would. It was really
Speaker 1: exciting and um, it was just a great time to
Speaker 1: be to be into it. It's the uh what's his
Speaker 1: name Openheimer? No, Oppenheimer. Now I'm talking about the article
Speaker 1: back like, yeah, Oppenheimer. Yeah, I'm the I'm become death.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought you were talking about. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the article, he makes a great point about, um, just
Speaker 1: that that time period and um, how exploratory everything was
Speaker 1: really from then, like through the nineteen seventies. That was
Speaker 1: a great like forty year period in science where basically
Speaker 1: that was funding and like anything is possible, we can
Speaker 1: do anything we want until they started to you know,
Speaker 1: I guess disproved things here and there, right, And actually
Speaker 1: what's interesting is there's a corresponding boost in technology from
Speaker 1: that era too, And a lot of people point out
Speaker 1: that all of this stuff from about nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: on is actually built on the backs of the stuff
Speaker 1: that was built in the forty years before that, from
Speaker 1: about ninety five to nineteen seventy five, and ever since then,
Speaker 1: we've the technological plateau. It's really interesting and you don't
Speaker 1: think about You're like, well, no, I mean we have
Speaker 1: iPhones now. It's like, yeah, iPhones are all they're a
Speaker 1: combination of different stuff that was first discovered or invented
Speaker 1: forty or more years ago. Um, And basically everything's like that.
Speaker 1: We were in a slump right now. So it was
Speaker 1: not only a time where they thought science could do anything.
Speaker 1: Science was doing just about anything. And we've since hit
Speaker 1: a plateau and um. He the author described him. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a great description Sagan as a nuanced
Speaker 1: referee because really cool thing about Sagan was he was
Speaker 1: very grounded in science and proof and facts, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't um. He wasn't just a square and a skeptic,
Speaker 1: although he was a skeptic, yeah, but he was also
Speaker 1: like he wanted to to find life on other planets.
Speaker 1: And he didn't shut things down. He was all about
Speaker 1: the discussion of everything as long as you still did
Speaker 1: the research. We're grounded in fact as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: and he did not believe in UFOs. He did not
Speaker 1: think that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft, but in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine he mounted a conference on UFOs in which everyone
Speaker 1: apparently had their say all sides. Yeah, it wasn't like
Speaker 1: we're mounting a conference on UFOs. You can come so
Speaker 1: the rest of us can poo poo your ideas and beliefs.
Speaker 1: It was, come and share your your position on it.
Speaker 1: That's enormous, and that in and of itself is worth
Speaker 1: remembering the person for. But this is nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: before you'd even become like a household name or anything
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, And I like to think we do that,
Speaker 1: and we still get emails. So we got one today
Speaker 1: for people that said it's it's dangerous to even mention
Speaker 1: other schools of thought. That's dogmatic. Yeah, And I just
Speaker 1: I don't agree that dogmatic and close minded and don't
Speaker 1: even bring don't even email us with that crap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't don't even bother because we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna make fun of you on the air. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: that's not what our shows about. Even if we don't
Speaker 1: believe something, we like to throw all sides out there.
Speaker 1: Because I think, uh, discussion is healthy no matter what.
Speaker 1: That's just me. Even when we were mocking crop circles,
Speaker 1: we still like talked about crop circles, did we not.
Speaker 1: It's not like we just pretended like there wasn't such
Speaker 1: a thing as crop circles. That's right, And we have
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan, thank for laying that golden path in front
Speaker 1: of us. So you want to take a break, I
Speaker 1: don't want to, but we have Okay, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. All right, So we've been beating around
Speaker 1: the bush here. Um, let's talk well not really, we've
Speaker 1: been getting into it, but let's let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the things that Sagan. Uh. He wasn't just some
Speaker 1: Johnny come lately. He had uh degree upon degree. I
Speaker 1: think he had had billions and billions. We had undergrad degree,
Speaker 1: he had his masters, he had his PhD. He was
Speaker 1: he was well versed in a lot of realms of science,
Speaker 1: but his big thing was astronomy. Right. He had two
Speaker 1: degrees in undergraded masters in physics and then a doctorate
Speaker 1: in astronomy. Um and he did a little stint at Harvard.
Speaker 1: I didn't get tenure. So he's like, I'm out of here,
Speaker 1: and Cornell is like, you come to us and we
Speaker 1: will treat you like a god. And they did, and
Speaker 1: he settled in at Cornell and set up am his
Speaker 1: own lab right, the Laboratory for Planetary for Planetary Studies. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he just that was when he really started to
Speaker 1: get going. He was doing cide work for NASA at
Speaker 1: the time as well doing consulting. He did that throughout
Speaker 1: his whole career, formulas, that kind of stuff. Sure, when
Speaker 1: NASA is picking your brain about like the Apollo mission,
Speaker 1: you're you're doing pretty well for yourself as a scientist.
Speaker 1: But so he had this this this potent child to
Speaker 1: to really go as sciency as he wanted to with
Speaker 1: the stuff, and he did in some ways in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways with his consulting with NASA, but he
Speaker 1: also kind of pushed NASA into humanities um direction as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the the Voyager discs, that's a that's a really
Speaker 1: great example of it. Like he talked NASA and including
Speaker 1: discs on Voyager one and two, the Golden Record, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that are they're basically like, here's some stuff that represents
Speaker 1: humanity and Earth. Yeah, pretty much like if we ever
Speaker 1: do find life on Earth. We need to have something
Speaker 1: to offer them to represent us. Yeah, what I say,
Speaker 1: life on Earth. Yeah, there's life on Earth. That's pretty
Speaker 1: much documented. His fact, life out there, extraterrestrial life. He said,
Speaker 1: we need to present ourselves and what Earth is like
Speaker 1: and what humans are like. So he included a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen images representing the diversity of life and then
Speaker 1: uh sounds basically like his wife. Literally, this is pretty
Speaker 1: out there. I don't know if marijuana had anything to
Speaker 1: do with it, I think so. Yeah, his wife Anne,
Speaker 1: she created her own sounds for the project. Basically, she
Speaker 1: meditated and then thought, I told the story of the
Speaker 1: universe by thinking it with her brain, and then those
Speaker 1: brain waves were translated into music. And she said, my
Speaker 1: mind also wandered to my love of my husband, so
Speaker 1: that was translated. So they blasted. That was her message
Speaker 1: that they blasted out in space, which is pretty far
Speaker 1: out right, but but awesome messages of love. Sure, man,
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. He wasn't afraid to show his tender side. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: he definitely wasn't. He was vulnerable in a lot of ways. Um.
Speaker 1: And also on those discs, there's a believe etchings of
Speaker 1: a man and a woman. I think it's etched on
Speaker 1: the disc and they're like laser disc size. They're super
Speaker 1: retro and made of gold, which is pretty cool. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's a basically a depiction of where Earth
Speaker 1: is in the Milky Way, I believe, so it's basically
Speaker 1: saying we're here if you ever find this. And then
Speaker 1: of course Voyager one I believe I got lost and
Speaker 1: awakened and became sentient and then became a god on
Speaker 1: to some beings. Remember, and I think Star Trek one
Speaker 1: the first, the first movie. I never saw that. Vijor.
Speaker 1: Do you never saw any of the Star Trek movies, Dude,
Speaker 1: I've never seen one episode of the TV show. I've
Speaker 1: never seen one episode of the Next Generation. The only
Speaker 1: Star Trek thing I've ever ingested was our Apologies to
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton. By the way, was that first movie that J. J.
Speaker 1: Abrams did. I saw that. I saw the second one
Speaker 1: of that. I also saw, I think Star Trek maybe one, two,
Speaker 1: and three, And in one of those, there's this god
Speaker 1: vjer who's like this artificial intelligence, and they finally meet
Speaker 1: Vijor and realized that the Oi UH is blotted out
Speaker 1: and it's really VOI of jar One the Space Probe. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty neat too.
Speaker 1: I'm not a tricky by any means, but yeah, they
Speaker 1: were still entertaining. I just never got into it. I
Speaker 1: was always a Star Wars guy, not that they're mutually exclusive,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It just didn't grab me. You know,
Speaker 1: who would have predicted that we go off on a
Speaker 1: star trek Tangent and the Carl. Although I think I've
Speaker 1: told the story of working on a commercial with William Chatterer,
Speaker 1: you have, didn't he like bend you over a car
Speaker 1: and pretend to arrestue That was punch? Hey Shatner was
Speaker 1: t J Hooker. It could have happened. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: great though. He was awesome. He'd love being William Chatterer.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, you can tell like I wears it
Speaker 1: like a suit. Yeah he was. He was awesome, very
Speaker 1: nice guy. So, um, we're getting off track again here
Speaker 1: with science. There was actual science to stuff. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, the idea of the greenhouse effect is
Speaker 1: rooted partially in his work. Yeah, I mean that that
Speaker 1: had been around since the late nineteenth century. But um,
Speaker 1: he looked at like a planet like Venus and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, Venus is really hot, and I think
Speaker 1: wise because this greenhouse effect. And um, then because of
Speaker 1: that work, people started thinking, well maybe Earth has a
Speaker 1: greenhouse effect. Going on to really opened the door for
Speaker 1: that line of thought. It did, and he's correct. Earth
Speaker 1: definitely does have a greenhouse effect, and it's problematic. Correct.
Speaker 1: Another one that he's widely cited for is the Fate
Speaker 1: Young Young Son paradox um. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: if he was the one who first pointed this out
Speaker 1: or if he just kind of built upon it and
Speaker 1: it's still not fully solved. I think so he and
Speaker 1: George Mullen figure this out. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the idea is that Earth early on in its history
Speaker 1: was a ball of ice, but problematically, there was also
Speaker 1: some liquid water on Earth too, It wasn't all ice.
Speaker 1: This doesn't make much sense because the Sun as it
Speaker 1: stands now is just about enough to keep Earth from
Speaker 1: from being a frozen ball of ice. But back then,
Speaker 1: when Earth was mostly a frozen ball of ice, the
Speaker 1: Sun was only at like it's luminosity or lumosity luminosity
Speaker 1: one of those luminosity, right, yeah, sure, Um that it
Speaker 1: is today and so it doesn't make sense that there
Speaker 1: should be any liquid water on Earth. And it's called
Speaker 1: the faint Young Sun paradox. And um, I believe they
Speaker 1: figured out or they Sagan and Mullin said, well, it's
Speaker 1: the greenhouse effect. Yeah, and I don't think they ever
Speaker 1: fully settled on that. Still, it's it's outstanding. They think
Speaker 1: it might be a combination of that and some other stuff.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, what else did you do? He looked
Speaker 1: at um Titan Saturn's moon at one point and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I think there's organic molecules up there
Speaker 1: and that's why it looks red. And he was right, yeah,
Speaker 1: he went to uh yeah, so, I mean he he
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid to throw a wacky hypothesis out there, and
Speaker 1: that did not do him any favors in the scientific
Speaker 1: community either. No, because there is a definite um arrogance
Speaker 1: associated with throwing out the hypothesis and not doing the work,
Speaker 1: leaving it to other people to do the work. And
Speaker 1: then you still get the credit for throwing the hypothesis
Speaker 1: out there. Um, it's it's one of the it's one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons why Sagan was highly criticized by
Speaker 1: some people in the scientific community. Yeah, there's um in
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian article. Um, they say there's sort of an
Speaker 1: unwritten rule among scientists. Uh, Thou'll shouting not speculate, They'll
Speaker 1: shout not talk about things outside your immediate area of expertise.
Speaker 1: It's a big one that he transgressed. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: all over the place. Uh, and thou shouting that horse
Speaker 1: around on late night TV talk shows. Yeah, Carson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was on Carson two dozen times over a couple
Speaker 1: of decades and was, like I said, sort of the
Speaker 1: Neil de grasse Tyson. He was the go to when
Speaker 1: anyone in the press needed anything for television. He was
Speaker 1: the guy. And anything that had in any thing even
Speaker 1: remotely to do with science, even if I had to
Speaker 1: do with theology, and somebody wanted a science's opinion of theology,
Speaker 1: go to Carl Sagan. And so from Sagan's at his
Speaker 1: point of view, he's just furthering science. What's the problem
Speaker 1: from this other scientists point of view, it's like it
Speaker 1: makes it look like Carl Sagan is trained in everything
Speaker 1: from astrophysics, which he was, to theology and biology and
Speaker 1: anthropology and every ology in between, and he wasn't true.
Speaker 1: There's some professional jealousy too, you know. I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know how it is like he's getting all the
Speaker 1: press and uh, other folks are stuck in a lab
Speaker 1: doing what they think is the real work. So I
Speaker 1: kind of get it in a way. But I just
Speaker 1: think that people like Bill Nye and Tyson and then
Speaker 1: Sagan are hugely necessary. You know, you gotta have a
Speaker 1: face out there furthering it. You definitely need, you know,
Speaker 1: and you've got to have a media outlet like Parade
Speaker 1: Magazine to put that ace on. That was his go
Speaker 1: to for sure. There a lot Oh yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: That's the Sunday insert right yeah. Uh And and that
Speaker 1: was like kind of the big joke because that he
Speaker 1: stopped publishing in academic journals and started publishing in Parade Magazine.
Speaker 1: And if you remember in our Nuclear Winter episode, yeah
Speaker 1: he was did he completely in uh think of that, No,
Speaker 1: he just furthered it. He was part of a group
Speaker 1: that that was organized that basically said like, if you
Speaker 1: guys start setting off nuclear bombs, it's not going to
Speaker 1: be this thing that just ends Like there's going to
Speaker 1: be this thing called Nuclear Winner, and they hadn't done
Speaker 1: all the science yet before he went and wrote an
Speaker 1: article in Parade magazine and told the world about Nuclear Winner,
Speaker 1: and in the opinion of the science that's he was
Speaker 1: working with, like really undermine their case because it's sensationalized it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what it also did was it got your your
Speaker 1: average Joe thinking about nuclear war in the Cold War
Speaker 1: and maybe we shouldn't be zoomie toward our own demise
Speaker 1: at a hundred miles. That's the big back and forth
Speaker 1: about Sagan's legacy, Yeah, or the actual work he did too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned that theology he was famously um spiritual agnostic.
Speaker 1: He was a spiritual agnostic, is how he defined himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't classify himself as as atheist. No, And the
Speaker 1: reason why, true to Sagan's own um own way, was
Speaker 1: that he could not scientifically prove that there was not God.
Speaker 1: So he said, how can I call myself an atheist?
Speaker 1: Which is um, it's pretty cool. And actually he's the
Speaker 1: guy supposedly that coined the term extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Speaker 1: That's what I here? Does that go back to him?
Speaker 1: So he's like skeptics love the dude. Oh yeah, he's
Speaker 1: the father of the skeptic. But I think he I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think he gives skeptics the good name. Sure,
Speaker 1: but if you want to prove your bones to how
Speaker 1: hardcore is skeptical, you are criticize Carl Sagan in the
Speaker 1: skeptic community, you can really show that you're a super skeptic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sagan was a milktoast as far as skeptics go, because
Speaker 1: he would indulge other lines of thought, um, but still
Speaker 1: require proof. But he wouldn't just shut it down right
Speaker 1: out of the gate. So we will get back to
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan right after these messages. Alright, chuckers, we're back. So. UM,
Speaker 1: there was one thing that Carl Sagan, he would poke
Speaker 1: fund it himself. He never abandoned. It was this idea
Speaker 1: that possibly, maybe, just maybe, um, there was intelligent life
Speaker 1: out there, and um, I wanted there to be for sure,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. He helped disprove or just the conditions
Speaker 1: against life being out there for sure. Like for example, um,
Speaker 1: he suggested that on Mars, the shifting features of Mars
Speaker 1: were result of dust storms, and it turned out he
Speaker 1: was right. But those dust storms also basically said there's
Speaker 1: probably not life on Mars just from that reason alone,
Speaker 1: those horrible death storms. Right yeah, and he um, actually,
Speaker 1: you want to pull a surprise for some of his work.
Speaker 1: I think he wrote more than a dozen books. But
Speaker 1: one of the things he wrote was Contact, the novel
Speaker 1: not uh, you know, he was totally into sci fi
Speaker 1: and wrote you know the movie uh Contact that McConaughey
Speaker 1: and Jodie Foster that was based on his novel. And
Speaker 1: of course that movie was about sending signals into outer
Speaker 1: space trying to find life. So you can tell the
Speaker 1: guy it was something he loved to talk about and
Speaker 1: write about. Oh yeah, but he also loved it like
Speaker 1: actually that that kind of research which is totally up
Speaker 1: his alley, like st um, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
Speaker 1: is is evidence based in science based search for extraterrestrials? Right? Yes,
Speaker 1: that was that's Carl sagand through and through. That's just
Speaker 1: totally him. He was, Um, he wanted to believe in
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial life, but he needed proof to believe in it. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just couldn't make that jump to just saying yes,
Speaker 1: they exist without any proof. Yeah exactly. So he's writing books.
Speaker 1: He's NASA's picking his brain. He's all over the place.
Speaker 1: And he eventually we talked about his TV show debuted
Speaker 1: on UM. Well, actually the debuted nineteen eighty one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought eight, Yeah, yeah, I think it was UM
Speaker 1: so I must have been nine years old. I was four.
Speaker 1: I thought it was ten. What month was it, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't even um. But he originally was
Speaker 1: the TV series is gonna be called Man and the Cosmos.
Speaker 1: But he thought that was sexist, and he was a feminist,
Speaker 1: so he said, um. He proposed a couple of more titles.
Speaker 1: One was called There Terrible t H E R E
Speaker 1: U with some subtitle, and then the other was Cosmos
Speaker 1: along with a subtitle. UM. And he spent like three
Speaker 1: years around the world filming this thing, right, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it just it was a what it's not like it
Speaker 1: ran for seasons and seasons. It was like a a
Speaker 1: single run of shows on PBS. That television event. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a TV event exactly. One of the other
Speaker 1: things he did which I never knew, was he wrote
Speaker 1: along with his son. Now because his son uh has
Speaker 1: a byline, I guess Jimmy Sagan, Todd Sagan his five
Speaker 1: kids I think total. But one of his sons became
Speaker 1: a sci fi writer, another one became more of a
Speaker 1: science writer. So basically he split into two. Yeah. Actually
Speaker 1: I never thought about that way, um, but explained as
Speaker 1: two of his kids existence. He wrote the entry for
Speaker 1: life for Encyclopedia Britannica, like this is what life is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was fairly energetic dude, for sure. The least. I
Speaker 1: mean he did Cosmos in his mid forties, just out
Speaker 1: of nowhere accomplished he really did. Yeah, he's like the
Speaker 1: Cypress Hill of of science. I don't know, hey, man,
Speaker 1: they put out like three albums in like four or
Speaker 1: five years. It's a lot of work. And then retired.
Speaker 1: Second did not retire, No, he did not, sir. He
Speaker 1: worked up until his death in n Yeah. He dies
Speaker 1: after battling UM, a bone marrow disease for about a
Speaker 1: year or so to two years I think is closer. Um,
Speaker 1: he's diagnosed with it and he needed a transplant, and
Speaker 1: his sister uh stepped up and volunteered to give him
Speaker 1: a donation and did and uh apparently it wasn't quite enough,
Speaker 1: because he died of an infection after about a year
Speaker 1: and half after, Um, the transplant just sixty four years old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to wait, way too young, it really is. And in fact, yesterday,
Speaker 1: the day we're recording this is November ten, I believe
Speaker 1: yesterday was this would have been his eighty first birthday.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you didn't plan that, nope. Wow, that's a
Speaker 1: pretty impressive speaking to me from billions of light years away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's funny that you say that. Because somebody wrote to him. Um,
Speaker 1: they said, how do you know that there's not a heaven?
Speaker 1: And um, he had this really great response. He remember
Speaker 1: in his archives, he was a pack rat, so he
Speaker 1: kept a lot of correspondence, and from it they found, Um,
Speaker 1: in this achembach Um article, there's a a citation of
Speaker 1: a letter that he wrote to somebody, and um, he says,
Speaker 1: thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of
Speaker 1: heaven has been found out to about ten billion light years,
Speaker 1: and then in parentheses he puts one light year is
Speaker 1: almost six trillion miles. Best wishes. And the point is
Speaker 1: like he took the time to write the letter back
Speaker 1: to this guy, like he would engage rather than just
Speaker 1: ignore the letter entirely. So he entertained and indulged people's
Speaker 1: ideas enough that he would engage with somebody who didn't
Speaker 1: even know about whether there's heaven or not. And this
Speaker 1: this was sent um the year he died. Actually, so
Speaker 1: he's writing this from his sick bed. Wow, that's awesome. Uh.
Speaker 1: As far as whether or not it bothered him, whether
Speaker 1: or not he was how he was thought of in
Speaker 1: the scientific community, UM, it kind of all came to
Speaker 1: a head in uh. He was on a list to
Speaker 1: be included um as a nominee for the National Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences. Uh. In the end, he was not included,
Speaker 1: and it bothered him. Um. He kind of brushed it
Speaker 1: off to the people in public saying that you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't think I would get in any way. But
Speaker 1: his widow said, uh, quote it was painful. It seemed
Speaker 1: like a unsolicited, slight end quote. And they ended up
Speaker 1: giving him an honorary medal, which was nice, but that
Speaker 1: was definitely a big sting for him. Yeah. The National
Speaker 1: Academy of Scientists said, Nope, you're not a member. You're
Speaker 1: not one of us. They basically said that the the
Speaker 1: actual research that you did wasn't strong enough, which, uh,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a definite calculated slight. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's included in my book. Yeah for sure. Man. Uh
Speaker 1: so my hat is off to you, sir forever. Do
Speaker 1: you got anything else? No, man, I just uh, someone
Speaker 1: needs to make a great documentary or movie about the guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, starring Ashton Kutuer Carl Sagan. That guy can
Speaker 1: play anybody. Yeah. Uh. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about Carl Sagan, you can start with this delight a
Speaker 1: little article on how stuff works by typing Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: in the search bar. And since I said search parts,
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. Hey guys, my name is Connie.
Speaker 1: I've been a listener for a couple of months after
Speaker 1: my brother turned me on to the show. Since then,
Speaker 1: I've been completely obsessed and haven't been able to stop listening.
Speaker 1: UM on track to become a nurse, so I can
Speaker 1: can't get enough of anything science or biology related. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for a couple of things. I'm
Speaker 1: in a base level anatomy class right now, and the
Speaker 1: rigor Mortist podcast saved my behind and my grade on
Speaker 1: my cadaver dissection and muscles test. A lot of the
Speaker 1: things you covered, like the nature of the muscle's relationship
Speaker 1: with a t P and the integral proteins really helped
Speaker 1: me pass my exam and not pass out in the
Speaker 1: cadaver lab. You also even taught my anatomy professor something
Speaker 1: new about Keila cells. About that last year, I was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with anxiety and depression due to the fact that
Speaker 1: I can never really fit in the right way. I
Speaker 1: lost almost all of my friends when I made an
Speaker 1: early jump from high school to college, and being able
Speaker 1: to count on YouTube weekly has really helped a little
Speaker 1: bit with the loneliness and learning something new is always
Speaker 1: a healthy distraction from anxiety. So you guys, really give
Speaker 1: me something new and exciting to discuss and learn about
Speaker 1: twice a week when you work forty hours, it really
Speaker 1: goes a long way. Uh. It would absolutely make his
Speaker 1: ear if you can give a shout out to my
Speaker 1: brother Matt, the physics teacher. That is very nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the reason I started listening to you and sharing.
Speaker 1: The love of knowledge is really something that has kept
Speaker 1: us close in spite of our eleven year age difference.
Speaker 1: It sparked so many interesting and inspired conversations between us.
Speaker 1: So thank you for what you're doing and helping many
Speaker 1: of us make it through tough spots. That is much
Speaker 1: love from Connie from Illinois. So thank you, Connie, and
Speaker 1: hello to Matt your brother. Hey Matt the physics teacher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks guys. It's we love families that listen and bringing
Speaker 1: people together. Man, it's makes us feel good. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: family that listens to s y s K together stays together.
Speaker 1: That's right. The dire warning. Uh. If you want to
Speaker 1: let us know how great somebody in your life is
Speaker 1: because they introduced you to the Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: We love hearing that stuff, you can tweek to us
Speaker 1: at s y s K Podcast. You can join us
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast the house.
Speaker 1: Stuff first dot com and has always joined us at
Speaker 1: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
Speaker 1: com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how Stuff Works dot com