Speaker 1: Hi everyone. Here on December our Time Capsule episode a
Speaker 1: k A. Weekend Saturday Selects, We're going to take you
Speaker 1: back and talk about an American hero by the name
Speaker 1: of Carl Sagan. In the appropriately titled podcast episode Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan colin American Hero. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and Noel. The stint of Noel is winding down. Sadly.
Speaker 1: It's such an awkward thing having nol here know the
Speaker 1: stint of Knell? Right, yeah, oh, you mean the wording? Yeah, fine,
Speaker 1: all right, how you doing? I'm fine, just like that
Speaker 1: wording I'm sleepy. Why about I've just been staying up
Speaker 1: late writing until one and two in the morning, like
Speaker 1: a dope, like a seventeen Oh yeah, yeah, a manifesto. No, No,
Speaker 1: just staying up too late typing. That's neat. Do you
Speaker 1: drink wine 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 it's time for bed. You get on a
Speaker 1: roll and then you look up and it's to two am.
Speaker 1: Nice man, I'm glad to hear that six thirty rolls
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. Do
Speaker 1: you know who else is juices were flowing and still
Speaker 1: flow through this universe? Carl Sagan, he was. He was
Speaker 1: a creative science type. Yeah, and it made him kind
Speaker 1: of controversial, man. It also made him beloved, beloved, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think one of like the precursors to what we
Speaker 1: do you know? In fact, he there's a quote on
Speaker 1: him being an explainer, which I thought was very cool,
Speaker 1: which is the geekiest remember, but it's a pretty it's
Speaker 1: a good term. Yeah, he said. I think I'm able
Speaker 1: to explain things because understanding wasn't entirely easy for me.
Speaker 1: Some things that the most brilliant students were able to
Speaker 1: see instantly, I had to work to understand. I can
Speaker 1: remember what I had to do to figure it out.
Speaker 1: The very brilliant ones figure it out so fast that
Speaker 1: sounds familiar. They never see the mechanics of understanding. So
Speaker 1: I really identified with that, and like, man, that's kind
Speaker 1: of what we do, you know? We worked really hard
Speaker 1: to understanding this because we're not experts, and he wasn't
Speaker 1: an expert on one thing. He covered a lot of
Speaker 1: That's what made him unique, a lot of different facets
Speaker 1: of science. Yeah, which you don't see much. No you don't.
Speaker 1: I mean it does pop up here and there. But
Speaker 1: if you if you think about the people who are
Speaker 1: like that, like Jared Diamond is a really good current
Speaker 1: example Neil type. No, that's Dustin Diamond, Okay, Jared Diamond.
Speaker 1: Uh man. I don't even remember what he's trained in.
Speaker 1: He's just such a generalist. But he wrote like guns,
Speaker 1: germs and steel. Um, he's got a little a little
Speaker 1: Robert bork Beard, good guy. Um, he's one. Neil deGrasse
Speaker 1: Tyson has definitely become one, although he's still very much
Speaker 1: an astrophysician, right, yeah, but he's he's sort of talked
Speaker 1: about a lot of times in terms of being like Sagan,
Speaker 1: and not just because he rebooted Cosmos, which was Sagan's show,
Speaker 1: but um, oh yeah, he's just the face of science,
Speaker 1: like he's the go to guy. Sure. I mean, like
Speaker 1: he was the obvious choice for Cosmos because he was
Speaker 1: already so much like Sagan following in those footsteps for sure.
Speaker 1: Those other guys like Brian Green as a science explainer,
Speaker 1: Bill Nye as a science explainer, Um, they're definitely out
Speaker 1: there for sure. But you can you make a good
Speaker 1: point that Sagan was one of the originals, if not
Speaker 1: the original, but the idea that he was somebody who
Speaker 1: was willing to draw parallels from different disciplines in science
Speaker 1: or bring him together to create, um, something approachable for people,
Speaker 1: to kind of invigorate people's love of science. I think
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Yeah, it made him beloved. It also just
Speaker 1: made him not reviled. This is not the right word,
Speaker 1: but he was definitely criticized in the scientific establishment. Uh
Speaker 1: in parts for sure. Some people in the scientific establishment
Speaker 1: loved him, and some were like, uh, you're not doing
Speaker 1: much real research, you know, you're just sort of a
Speaker 1: face guy. And um, I poo poo that entirely and
Speaker 1: say that he did a lot for science and people
Speaker 1: like him are are necessary, and uh, I value their work. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're taking a stand. Huh. Yeah, man, Carl Sagan is amazing.
Speaker 1: He's one of my heroes. Yeah, he's like I watched
Speaker 1: Cosmos when I was ten years old. I've never seen it. Man,
Speaker 1: it was great. I mean it was a PBS show
Speaker 1: that had tens of millions of viewers. I know, millions
Speaker 1: and millions. Yeah, so that's your saken. Yeah. And you
Speaker 1: know what he he told Johnny Carson, he never said
Speaker 1: billions and billions. Uh, he said billions upon billions, right,
Speaker 1: I never heard it. There's a super cut on YouTube
Speaker 1: of all of his billions, millions and trillions from Dots
Speaker 1: Moats cut to uh with it like hip hop music
Speaker 1: bed and um, is that a glorious down? I don't
Speaker 1: remember the name of it. There's one. There's a video
Speaker 1: a song that somebody created with him, a super cut
Speaker 1: of him. It's called Glorious Toll. That'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 um, he said, I never specifically said to billions
Speaker 1: and billions, and I couldn't. I didn't hear it either,
Speaker 1: So he's a misunderstood genius. Yeah. Became I think Carson
Speaker 1: did at first, or maybe it was Saturday out Live,
Speaker 1: and then that just became the thing. Billions and billions
Speaker 1: because he is a weird little dude for sure, and
Speaker 1: a lot of what's easily parody, but he also seemed
Speaker 1: to have a really good sense of humor about himself
Speaker 1: at least and in general. He smoked grass. He thought
Speaker 1: grass was far out. Man. We just vaulted back in
Speaker 1: time with that one. Yeah, he smoked the marijuana grass
Speaker 1: making a contemporary. He was on the pot, Yeah, he did.
Speaker 1: He liked to smoke weed and um. In fact, I
Speaker 1: have a quote here from he wrote an essay. The
Speaker 1: quote reads, and woe. Best Pavement album by the way.
Speaker 1: He wrote an essay. I don't know about that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite? Um, I've played it in enchanted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one. It's hard, although Crooked Ray and Crooked
Speaker 1: Rain was pretty good. No, I've never seen him more
Speaker 1: interested in what we're talking about. It's funny. In college,
Speaker 1: we used to have a saying, it's not a matter
Speaker 1: of which album are we gonna listen to next? It's
Speaker 1: which Pavement album are we gonna listen to next? Just
Speaker 1: put down T shirt? Yeah. So anyway, Sagan wrote an
Speaker 1: essay and Marijuana reconsidered, um, and here is one of
Speaker 1: his quotes. He said, the cannabis experienced has greatly improved
Speaker 1: my appreciation for art, subject which I had never much
Speaker 1: appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist,
Speaker 1: which I can achieve when high, sometimes carries over to
Speaker 1: when I'm down. This is one of many human frontiers
Speaker 1: which cannabis has helped me traverse. Was that Kermit the
Speaker 1: Frog doing Carl Sagan Let's sort of kermity but he
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean that's not it doesn't define him
Speaker 1: or anything, but yeah, he liked to smoke the pot
Speaker 1: and he liked to get out his little tape recorder
Speaker 1: and talk about stuff. But on the turnal neck, yeah,
Speaker 1: with nothing else. It was the sixties and seventies, of
Speaker 1: course he was, and I think the eighties and maybe
Speaker 1: even into the nineties, that's true. So um, let's let's
Speaker 1: I guess, let's go back to the beginning. We've done
Speaker 1: some pretty good teasing here, right, And when you're talking
Speaker 1: about a human being, there's no place better to start
Speaker 1: at the beginning than with their earth Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 1: His mother was Rachel, was a garment industry manager and
Speaker 1: apparently oh yeah, yeah, but his mom was overbearing. Yes,
Speaker 1: mom was overbearing. Sorry, dad was a Ukrainian immigrant Samuel
Speaker 1: who worked as a garment industry manager. Because in ninety
Speaker 1: four they prebad and hire women to do chops like that,
Speaker 1: which is really stinky. So uh and we it's not
Speaker 1: like we've met the lady or anything and can report
Speaker 1: that she's overbearing. The idea that she's overbearing comes from
Speaker 1: this long standing image of her of she had very
Speaker 1: high hopes and high expectations and aspirations for Carl very
Speaker 1: well may have made the man. Yeah, you know, moved
Speaker 1: to New Jersey after a little while and was voted
Speaker 1: the class brain at Rahway High School. And I thought
Speaker 1: this is interesting in this what article is this the
Speaker 1: New Yorker, which one while why Carl Sagan's truly replaceable
Speaker 1: Smiths and Enjoel Achenbach. 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 andrew 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
Speaker 1: McFarlane had basically Seth McFarland bought Carl Sagan's papers and
Speaker 1: donated them to the Library of Congress. Yes, that's why
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. That's why it's called the Seth McFarland
Speaker 1: Collection of the Carl Sagan and and Drury and Archive.
Speaker 1: I had to put his name on there. Well, I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: why not? You know, no, it's fine. He's he's he's
Speaker 1: a huge fan of his work, and he's the one
Speaker 1: who rebooted Cosmos right and genuinely, like I mean, I
Speaker 1: gotta say, like whatever you have to say about Seth McFarland.
Speaker 1: And there's plenty to say about Seth McFarland. He is
Speaker 1: he proved himself a true fan of Carl Sagan and
Speaker 1: a rich guy to fan. I've always liked a family guy,
Speaker 1: so I don't have anything bad to say about him. Uh,
Speaker 1: what have you seen American dad? No, I never got
Speaker 1: into that. Actually, OK, yeah, it's not family guy. It's
Speaker 1: definitely just totally different. Gotch uh seven hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: eight boxes of stuff of archival material. Um. The guy
Speaker 1: love to log every conversation he ever had, and he
Speaker 1: thought that ever entered his brain mainly through the cassette tape.
Speaker 1: But um, I guess that was transcribed by other folks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently that's um. Joel achenbach Um says that his his
Speaker 1: writing style was so conversational because he didn't write, He
Speaker 1: dictated into a dictaphone and then it was transcribed. Basically, basically,
Speaker 1: it was like the Hunter S. Thompson of science. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember Hunter t had like the real real he'd wear
Speaker 1: around his neck when one is high on marijuana. It
Speaker 1: is a buzz kill to type. Actually, that's funny. We
Speaker 1: bring up Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson loved acid. You know
Speaker 1: who else loved acid? Timothy Leary. You know who hung
Speaker 1: out with Timothy Leary, Carl Sagan. Timothy Leary was trying
Speaker 1: to get Sagan to advise him on how to build
Speaker 1: a an interstellar arc because Leary just totally lost his
Speaker 1: stuff by this time. Right, we should do a show
Speaker 1: on him. Oh yeah, I'm surprised. We haven't to be crazy. Um,
Speaker 1: let's do it, man, Yeah, we should. We should do
Speaker 1: one on like the Mary pranks. There's a whole thing
Speaker 1: just basically redo the electric kool Aid asset test totally.
Speaker 1: It would be a good episode. But Leary um at
Speaker 1: a mental institution because he'd been popped with a bunch
Speaker 1: of acid I think, had a visitor in Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: and Frank Drake of the famous Drake equation, and they
Speaker 1: came by to say hi, and and Leary was like, seriously,
Speaker 1: you guys have to help me design this. And they
Speaker 1: were like this, the closest star is too far away.
Speaker 1: You're kuk, 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. Man. So that
Speaker 1: was Carl Sagan Timothy Larry story but I think they
Speaker 1: 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 that? No? Was it Chicago? Eddie bernays, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the one. Wow, the one that changed everything,
Speaker 1: including Carl Sagan. Boy, that's a big one. Um. So
Speaker 1: Sagan goes to the World Fair and it was sort
Speaker 1: of a a great time, um, to be a young
Speaker 1: kid interested in science, because in the late thirties and
Speaker 1: forties and fifties, it was like everyone was captivated by
Speaker 1: the future. Right, there's this idea that science could do anything, Yeah,
Speaker 1: anything and very soon would. It was really exciting and um,
Speaker 1: it was just a great time to be to be
Speaker 1: into it. It's the uh what's his name Openheimer? No, Oppenheimer.
Speaker 1: Now I'm talking about the article back like, yeah Oppenheimer,
Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah, I'm the I'm become death. That's what
Speaker 1: I thought you were talking about. Uh. In the article,
Speaker 1: he makes a great point about, um, just that that
Speaker 1: time period and um, how exploratory everything was really from then,
Speaker 1: like through the nineteen seventies. That was a great, like
Speaker 1: forty year period in science where basically that was funding
Speaker 1: and like anything is possible, we can do anything we want,
Speaker 1: until they started to you know, I guess disprove things
Speaker 1: here and there, right. And actually what's interesting is there's
Speaker 1: a corresponding boost in technology from that era too, And
Speaker 1: a lot of people point out that all of this
Speaker 1: stuff from about nineteen seventy five on is actually built
Speaker 1: on the backs of the stuff that was built in
Speaker 1: the forty years before that, from about nineteen thirty five
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy five and ever since then, we've had
Speaker 1: a technological plateau. It's really interesting, and you don't think
Speaker 1: about You're like, well, no, I mean we have iPhones now.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, iPhones are all they're a combination of
Speaker 1: different stuff that was first discovered or invented forty or
Speaker 1: more years ago. Um, And basically everything's like that. We
Speaker 1: were in a slump right now. So it was not
Speaker 1: 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 and 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. And we're grounded in facts as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact. And he did not believe in UFOs. He
Speaker 1: did not think that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft. But in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine he mounted a conference on UFOs in
Speaker 1: which everyone apparently had their say all sides. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like we're mounting a conference on UFOs. You can
Speaker 1: come so the rest of us can poo poo your
Speaker 1: ideas and beliefs. It was come and share your your
Speaker 1: position on it. That's enormous, and that in and of
Speaker 1: itself is worth remembering the person for. But this is
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, before you'd even become like a household
Speaker 1: name or anything like it. Yeah, and I like to
Speaker 1: think we do that and we still get emails. So
Speaker 1: we got one today for people that said it's it's
Speaker 1: dangerous to even mention other schools of thought. That's dogmatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just I don't agree with dogmatic and close
Speaker 1: minded and don't even bring don't even email us with
Speaker 1: that crap. Yeah, I just don't don't even bother because
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna make fun of you on the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's not what our shows about. Even if we
Speaker 1: don't believe something, we like to throw all sides out
Speaker 1: there 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 we need to, Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back. Alright. So we've been
Speaker 1: beating around the bush here. Um, let's talk well not really,
Speaker 1: we've been getting into it, but let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the things that Sagan uh he wasn't just
Speaker 1: some Johnny come lately. He had uh, degree upon degree.
Speaker 1: I think he 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 undergrad and masters in physics and then a
Speaker 1: doctorate in astronomy um. And he did a little stint
Speaker 1: at Harvard. I didn't get tenure. So he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: out of here. And Cornell is like, you come to
Speaker 1: us and we will treat you like a god. And
Speaker 1: they did. And he settled in at Cornell and set
Speaker 1: up his own lab, right, the Laboratory for Planetary for
Speaker 1: Planetary Studies. Uh, and he just that was when he
Speaker 1: really started to get going. He was doing side work
Speaker 1: for NASA at the time as well, doing consulting. He
Speaker 1: did that throughout his whole career, formulas, that kind of stuff. Sure,
Speaker 1: when 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 potential to to
Speaker 1: really go as sciency as he wanted to with this stuff,
Speaker 1: and he did in some ways in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways with his consulting with NASA, but he also kind
Speaker 1: of pushed NASA into humanities um direction as well, like
Speaker 1: the the Voyager discs, that's a that's a really great
Speaker 1: example of it. Like he talked NASA into including discs
Speaker 1: on Voyager one and two, the Golden Record, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: are They're basically like, here's some stuff that represents humanity
Speaker 1: and Earth. Yeah, pretty much like if we ever do
Speaker 1: mind life on Earth, we need to have something to
Speaker 1: offer them to represent us. Yeah, yeah, what I say,
Speaker 1: life on Earth? Yeah, yeah, there's life on Earth. It's
Speaker 1: pretty much documented as fact, life out there, extraterrestrial life.
Speaker 1: He said, we needed to present ourselves and what Earth
Speaker 1: is like and what humans are like. So he included
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifteen images representing the diversity of life
Speaker 1: and then uh sounds basically like his wife literally, this
Speaker 1: is pretty out there. I don't know if marijuana had
Speaker 1: anything to do with it. I think so. Yeah, his wife,
Speaker 1: and she created her own sounds for the project. Basically,
Speaker 1: she meditated and then thought 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 to space, which is pretty far
Speaker 1: out right, but but awesome messages of love. Yure, 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 woics. Um.
Speaker 1: And also on those discs, there's I 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, got lost and awakened
Speaker 1: and became sentient and then became a god on to
Speaker 1: some beings. Remember, and I think Star Trek one, the
Speaker 1: first the first movie. I never saw this veture. You
Speaker 1: never saw any of the Star Trek movies, dude, I've
Speaker 1: never seen one episode of the TV show. I've never
Speaker 1: seen one episode of the Next Generation. The only Star
Speaker 1: Trek thing I've ever ingested was Our Apologies to a Wheaten.
Speaker 1: 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 Voyager 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 shot, it
Speaker 1: was t J. Hooker. Could have happened. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: though he was awesome. He'd loved being William Shatner. Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you can tell like guy wears it like a suit.
Speaker 1: Yeah he was. He was awesome, very nice guy. So, um,
Speaker 1: we're getting off track again here, Sagan with science. There
Speaker 1: was actual science to stuff. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: the idea of the greenhouse effect is rooted partially in
Speaker 1: his work. Yeah, I mean that that had been around
Speaker 1: since the late nineteenth century. But um, he looked at
Speaker 1: like a planet like Venus and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: Venus is really hot, and I think wise because this
Speaker 1: greenhouse effect. And um, then because of that work, people
Speaker 1: started thinking, well, maybe Earth has a greenhouse effect. Going
Speaker 1: on to right really opened the door for that line
Speaker 1: of thought. It did, and he's correct. Earth definitely does
Speaker 1: have a greenhouse effect and it's problematic. Correct. Another one
Speaker 1: that he's widely cited for is the Fate Young Young
Speaker 1: Son paradox. Um. I don't know if the if he
Speaker 1: was the one who first pointed this out, or if
Speaker 1: he just kind of built upon it and it's still
Speaker 1: not fully solved. I think so he and George Mullen
Speaker 1: figured this out. I'm pretty sure Yeah. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that Earth early on its history was a ball
Speaker 1: of ice. But problematically, there was also some liquid water
Speaker 1: on Earth too, It wasn't all ice. This doesn't make
Speaker 1: much sense because the Sun as it stands now is
Speaker 1: just about enough to keep Earth from from being a
Speaker 1: frozen ball of ice. But back then, when Earth was
Speaker 1: mostly a frozen ball of ice, the Sun was only
Speaker 1: at like s of its luminosity or lumosity, luminosity one
Speaker 1: of those luminosity right, yeah, sure, um that it is today,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't make sense that there should be
Speaker 1: any liquid water on Earth. And it's called the faint
Speaker 1: Young Sun paradox. And um, I believe they figured out
Speaker 1: or they Sagan and Mullin said, well, it's the greenhouse effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't think they ever fully settled on that. Um. Still,
Speaker 1: it's it's outstanding. Yeah. They think it might be a
Speaker 1: combination of that and some other stuff. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: what else did you do? He looked at um Titan,
Speaker 1: Saturn's moon at one point and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think there's organic molecules up there and that's why
Speaker 1: it looks red. And he was right. Yeah. He went
Speaker 1: to h Yeah. So, I mean he he wasn't afraid
Speaker 1: to throw a wacky hypothesis out there, and that did
Speaker 1: not do him any favors in the scientific community either. No,
Speaker 1: because there is a definite um arrogance associated with throwing
Speaker 1: out the hypothesis and not doing the work, leaving it
Speaker 1: to other people to do the work, and then you
Speaker 1: still get the credit for throwing the hypothesis out there. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of the it's one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons why Sagan was highly criticized by some people in
Speaker 1: the scientific community. Yeah, there's um in the Smithsonian article. Um,
Speaker 1: they say there's sort of an unwritten rule among scientists. Uh,
Speaker 1: they'll shout that speculate, that'll shout talk about things outside
Speaker 1: your immediate area of expertise. It's a big one that
Speaker 1: he transgressed. Yeah. He was all over the place, uh
Speaker 1: and now shouting that horse around on late night TV
Speaker 1: talk shows. Yeah with Carson. Yeah, he was on Carson
Speaker 1: two dozen times over a couple of decades and was,
Speaker 1: like I said, sort of the Neil de grasse Tyson.
Speaker 1: He was the go to when anyone in the press
Speaker 1: needed anything for television. He was the guy and anything
Speaker 1: that had anything even remotely to do with science, even
Speaker 1: if I had to do with theology, and somebody wanted
Speaker 1: a sciences opinion of theology, go to Carl Sagan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so from Sagan's at his point of view, he's
Speaker 1: just furthering science. What's the problem From this other scientists
Speaker 1: point of view, It's like it makes it look like
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan is trained in everything from astrophysics, which he was,
Speaker 1: to theology and biology and anthropology and every ology in between,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't. True. There's some professional jealousy too, you know.
Speaker 1: I think, um, you know how it is like he's
Speaker 1: getting all the press, and uh, other folks are stuck
Speaker 1: in a lab doing what they think is the real work.
Speaker 1: So I kind of get it in a way. But
Speaker 1: I just think that people like Bill Nye and Tyson
Speaker 1: and and Sagan are hugely necessary. You know, you gotta
Speaker 1: have a face out there furthering it. You definitely need,
Speaker 1: you know, yea, and you gotta have a media outlet
Speaker 1: like Parade magazine to put that face one that was
Speaker 1: his go to for sure? Was he in there a lot?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was. That's the Sunday insert right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was like kind of the big joke because
Speaker 1: that he stopped publishing in academic journals and started publishing
Speaker 1: and Parade Magazine. And if you remember in our Nuclear
Speaker 1: Winter episode, yeah he was. Did he completely in uh
Speaker 1: think of that? No, he just furthered it. He was
Speaker 1: part of a group that that was organized that basically said, like,
Speaker 1: if you guys start setting off nuclear bombs, it's not
Speaker 1: going to be this thing that just it's like, there's
Speaker 1: going to be this thing called Nuclear Winner. And they
Speaker 1: hadn't done all the science yet before he went and
Speaker 1: wrote an article in Parade Magazine and told the world
Speaker 1: about Nuclear Winner, and in the opinion of the science
Speaker 1: that's he was working with, like really undermine their case
Speaker 1: because it's sensationalized it. Yeah, but what it also did
Speaker 1: was it got your your average Joe thinking about nuclear
Speaker 1: war in the Cold War and maybe we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: zooming toward our own demise right at a hundred miles.
Speaker 1: And that's the big back and forth about Sagan's legacy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or the the actual work he did too. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: 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 until as atheist. No, and the reason why,
Speaker 1: true to Sagan's own um own way, was that he
Speaker 1: could not scientifically prove that there was not God. So
Speaker 1: he said, how can I call myself an atheist? Which
Speaker 1: is um, it's pretty cool. And actually he's the guy
Speaker 1: 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 skeptic you are, criticize Carl Sagan in the skeptic community,
Speaker 1: you can really show that you're a super skeptic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sagan was a milk toast as far as skeptics go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he would indulge other lines of thought, um, but
Speaker 1: still require proof. But he wouldn't just shut it down
Speaker 1: right out of the gate. So we will get back
Speaker 1: to Carl Sagan right after these messages. All right, chuckers,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, um, there was one thing that Carl
Speaker 1: saying he would poke funded himself. He never abandoned. It
Speaker 1: was this idea that possibly, maybe, just maybe, um, there
Speaker 1: was intelligent life out there, and um, he wanted there
Speaker 1: to be for sure, you know. Uh, he helped disprove
Speaker 1: or set the conditions against life being out there for sure.
Speaker 1: Like for example, um, he suggested that on Mars, the
Speaker 1: shifting features of Mars were a result of dust storms,
Speaker 1: and it turned out he was right, But those dust
Speaker 1: storms also basically said there's probably not life on Mars
Speaker 1: just from that reason alone, those horrible dust storms, right yeah,
Speaker 1: and he um, actually he want to pull a surprise
Speaker 1: for some of his work. I think he wrote more
Speaker 1: than dozen books. But one of the things he wrote
Speaker 1: was Contact, the novel not uh you know, he was
Speaker 1: totally into sci fi and wrote you know, the movie
Speaker 1: uh Contact McConaughey and Jodie Foster that was based on
Speaker 1: his novel. And of course that movie was about sending
Speaker 1: signals into outer space trying to find life. So you
Speaker 1: could tell the guy it was something he loved to
Speaker 1: talk about and write about. Oh yeah, but he also
Speaker 1: loved it like actually that that kind of research, which
Speaker 1: is totally up his Alley like st um, the search
Speaker 1: for extraterrestrial intelligence is is evidence based in science based
Speaker 1: search for extraterrestrials? Right, Yes, that was that's Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: through and through. That's just totally him. He was, um,
Speaker 1: he wanted to believe in extraterrestrial life, but he needed
Speaker 1: proof to believe in it. Really. Yeah, he just couldn't
Speaker 1: make that jump to just saying yes, they they exist
Speaker 1: without any proof. Yeah, exactly. So he's writing books, he
Speaker 1: NASA is picking his brain, he's all over the place
Speaker 1: and he eventually We've 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 it
Speaker 1: was the TV series is going to be called Man
Speaker 1: and the Cosmos. But he thought that was sexist and
Speaker 1: he was a feminist, so he said, um, he proposed
Speaker 1: a couple of more titles. One was called There Terrible
Speaker 1: t H E R E uh with some subtitle, and
Speaker 1: then the other was Cosmos along with a subtitle. Um,
Speaker 1: and he spent like three years around the world filming
Speaker 1: this thing, right, Yeah, and it just it was a
Speaker 1: what it's not like it ran for seasons and seasons.
Speaker 1: It was like a a single run of shows on
Speaker 1: PBS that televis an event. Yeah, it was a TV
Speaker 1: event exactly. One of the other things that he did,
Speaker 1: which I never knew, was he wrote along with his son.
Speaker 1: Now because his son uh has a byeline, I guess
Speaker 1: Jimmy Sagan Todd Sagan his five kids I think total,
Speaker 1: but one of his sons became a sci fi writer,
Speaker 1: another one became more of a science writer. So basically
Speaker 1: he split into two. Yeah. Actually I never thought about
Speaker 1: that way. Um, I just explained two of his kids existence.
Speaker 1: He wrote the entry for Life for Encyclopedia Britannica, like
Speaker 1: this is what life is. Yeah. He was fairly energetic dude,
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, to say the least. I mean he
Speaker 1: did Cosmos in his mid forties, just out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: a lot accomplished for a pot head, he really did,
Speaker 1: you know, He's like the Cypress Hill of of science.
Speaker 1: I don't know, hey, man, they put out like three
Speaker 1: albums in like four or five years. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of work and then retired. Yeah, secand did not retire, No,
Speaker 1: he did not, sir. He worked up until his death
Speaker 1: in n Yeah. He dies after battling UM, a bone
Speaker 1: marrow disease for about a year or so to two years,
Speaker 1: I think is closer. Um, he's diagnosed with it and
Speaker 1: he needed a transplant, and his sister uh stepped up
Speaker 1: and volunteered to give him a donation and did and
Speaker 1: uh apparently it wasn't quite enough because he died of
Speaker 1: an infection after about a year and a half after
Speaker 1: um the transplant. Just sixty four years old. Yeah, too, way,
Speaker 1: 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 would have been his eighty first birthday. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you didn't plan that, nope. Wow, that's a pretty impressive
Speaker 1: 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 he 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 two 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 Sciences said, nope, you're not a member. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not one of us. They basically said that the
Speaker 1: the actual research that you did wasn't strong enough, which, uh,
Speaker 1: it stinks. 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 that
Speaker 1: someone needs to make a great documentary or movie about
Speaker 1: the guy. Yeah, you know, starring Ashton Kutcher is Carl Sagan.
Speaker 1: That guy can play anybody. Yeah. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to know more about Carl Sagan, you can start with
Speaker 1: this delightful little article on how stuff works by typing
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan in the search bar. And since I said
Speaker 1: search bar, its time for listener mail. Hey guys, my
Speaker 1: name is Connie. I've been a listener for a couple
Speaker 1: of months after my brother turned me onto the show.
Speaker 1: Since then, I've been completely obsessed and haven't been able
Speaker 1: to stop listening. UM on track to become a nurse,
Speaker 1: so I can can't get enough of anything science or
Speaker 1: biology related. I want to thank you for a couple
Speaker 1: of things. UM in a base level anatomy class right
Speaker 1: now and the rigor Mortist podcast saved my behind and
Speaker 1: my grade on my cadaver dissection and muscle's desk. A
Speaker 1: lot of the things you covered, like the nature of
Speaker 1: the muscle's relationship with a TP and the integral proteins
Speaker 1: really helped me pass my exam and not pass out
Speaker 1: in the cadaver lab. You also even taught my anatomy
Speaker 1: professor something new about keila cells. How about that last
Speaker 1: year I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression due to
Speaker 1: the fact that I could never really fit in the
Speaker 1: right way. I lost almost all of my friends when
Speaker 1: I made an early jump from high school to college,
Speaker 1: and being able to count on YouTube weekly has really
Speaker 1: helped a little bit with the loneliness and learning something
Speaker 1: new is always a healthy distraction from anxiety. So you guys,
Speaker 1: really give me something new and exciting to discuss and
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Speaker 1: it really goes a long way. Uh. It would absolutely
Speaker 1: make his ear if you could give a shout out
Speaker 1: to my 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,
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