December 8, 2015 • 38 mins
Carl Sagan was the world's first mainstream media super scientist, capapble of breaking down complex ideas for the common folk. But what made him tick? Billions and billions of great ideas.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel. The
Stint of Noel is winding down sadly. It's such an
awkward thing having no here, no the stint of knol Right,
(00:25):
Oh you mean the wording? Yeah, wording is fine? All right?
How you doing? I'm fine, just like that wording. I'm sleepy?
Why about I've just been staying up late, writing until
one and two in the morning like a dope like
a seventeen Oh yeah, yeah, a manifesto. No, no, just
(00:47):
staying up too late, that's neat. Do you drink wine
while you type? Last night? It was bullet bourbon? Yeah,
and then you're just like, I'm not typing words correctly anymore.
And then time for bed. You get on a roll
and then you look up and it's to two am.
Nice man, I'm glad to hear that six thirty yearlls
around and here we are. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great.
So you're creative juices are flowing. They're flowing, baby. You
(01:09):
know who else is juices were flowing and still flow
through this universe. Carl Sagan, he was. He was a
creative science type. Yeah, and it made him kind of controversial. Man.
It also made him beloved, beloved, and uh, I think
one of like the precursors to what we do, you know.
(01:31):
In fact, he there's a quote on him being an explainer,
which I thought was very cool, which is the geekiest
term ever, but it's a pretty it's a good term science. Yeah,
he said. I think I'm able to explain things because
understanding wasn't entirely easy for me. Some things that the
most brilliant students were able to see instantly, I had
to work to understand. I can remember what I had
(01:53):
to do to figure it out. The very brilliant ones
figure it out so fast that sounds familiar. They never
see the mechanics of understanding out. I really identified with that,
and like, man, that's kind of what we do. You know.
We worked really hard to understanding this because we're not experts,
and he wasn't an expert on one thing. He covered
a lot of That's what made him unique, A lot
of different facets of science. Yeah, which you don't see much.
(02:17):
No you don't. I mean it does pop up here
and there. But if you if you think about the
people who are like that, like Jared Diamond is a
really good current example Neil Type. No, that's Dustin Diamond.
Jared Diamond. Uh man. I don't even remember what he's
trained in. He's just such a generalist. But he wrote
(02:39):
like guns, germs and steel. Um, he's got a little
a little Robert bork Beard, good guy. Um, he's one.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has definitely become one, although he's still
very much an astrophysician, right, yeah, but he's he's sort
of talked about a lot of times in terms of
being like Sagan, and not just because as he rebooted Cosmos,
(03:02):
which was Sagan's show, but um, oh yeah, he's just
the face of science, Like he's the go to guy.
I mean, like he was the obvious choice for Cosmos
because he was already so much like Sagan, following in
those footsteps for sure. Those other guys, just like Brian
Green as a science explainer, Bill Nye as a science explainer. Um,
they're definitely out there for sure. But you can you
(03:23):
make a good point that Sagan was one of the originals,
if not the original but the idea that he was
somebody who was willing to draw parallels from different disciplines
in science or bring him together to create, um, something
approachable for people, to kind of invigorate people's love of science.
(03:43):
I think it's amazing. Yeah. It made him beloved. It
also just made him not reviled. This is not the
right word, but he was definitely criticized in the scientific establishment.
Uh in parts. For sure. Some people in the scientific
establishment loved him, and some were like, uh, you're not
doing much real research. You know, you're just sort of
(04:06):
a face guy. And um, I poo poo that entirely
and say that he did a lot for science and
people like him are are necessary, and uh, I value
their work. Okay, you're taking a stand. Huh. Yeah, man,
Carl Sagan is amazing. He's one of my heroes. Yeah,
he's like. I watched Cosmos when I was ten years old.
I have never seen it. Man, it was great. I
(04:29):
mean it was a PBS show that had tens of
millions of viewers. Millions and millions, So that's you're saken. Yeah,
And you know what he he told Johnny Carson. He
never said billions and billions Uh, he said billions of
pond billions, right, I never heard it. There's a super
(04:49):
cut on YouTube of all of his billions, millions and
trillions from Cosmos cut to uh with it like hip
hop music, bed and um is a glorious down. I
don't remember the name of it. There's one. There's a
video a song that somebody created with him, a super
cut of him. It's called Glorious Toll. It's pretty great. Well,
(05:12):
I never heard billions and billions in there. There's a
lot of billions and millions and trillions. He loved those words,
but he said I never specifically said billions and billions,
and I couldn't. I didn't hear it either, So he's
a misunderstood genius. Yeah, they became I think Carson did
at first, or maybe it was Saturday Night Live, and
then that just became the thing, billions and billions, because
(05:35):
he is a weird little dude for sure, in a
lot of ways, easily parody, but he also seemed to
have a fairly good sense of humor about himself at
least and in general. He smoked grass. He thought grass
was far out man. We just vaulted back in time
with that one he smoked the marijuana grass making a
(05:55):
contemporary He was on the pot, Yeah, he did. He
liked to smoke weed and um. In fact, I have
a quote here from he wrote an essay and best
Pavement album by the way. He wrote an essay. I
don't know about that. Yeah, what's your favorite? Um? I
(06:15):
planned it in Enchanna the first one it's hard. Although
Crooked Rain, crookt Rain was pretty good. No, I've never
seen him more interested in what we're talking about. It's funny.
In college we used to have a saying, it's not
a matter of which album are we gonna listen to next?
It's which Pavement album are we gonna listen to? Next?
T shirt? Yeah? So anyway, Sagan wrote an essay and uh,
(06:38):
marijuana reconsidered um, and here is one of his quotes.
He said, the cannabis experienced has greatly improved my appreciation
for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before.
The understanding of the intent of the artists, which I
can achieve when high, sometimes carries over to when I'm down.
This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has
(07:00):
helped me traverse. Was that the frog doing Carl Sagan.
That was sort of kermity, but he uh yeah, I
mean that's not it doesn't define him or anything, but yeah,
he liked to smoke the pot and he liked to
get out of his little tape recorder and talk about stuff,
put on a turnal neck, yeah, with nothing else. It
was the sixties and seventies, of course he was, and
(07:21):
I think the eighties and maybe even into the nineties.
That's true. So um, let's let's I guess let's go
back to the beginning. We've done some pretty good teasing here, right,
And when you're talking about a human being, there's no
place better to start at the beginning than with their
birth Brooklyn, New York. His mother was Rachel, was a
(07:45):
garment industry manager and apparently the biggest Oh yeah, yeah,
but his mom was overbearing. Yes, mom was overbearing. Sorry,
dad was a Ukrainian immigrant, Samuel, who worked as a
garment industry manager. Because in four they probably and hire
women to do jobs like that, which is really stinky.
So uh and we it's not like we've met the
(08:05):
lady or anything and can report that she's overbearing. The
idea that she's overbearing comes from this longstanding image of her.
She had very high hopes and high expectations and aspirations
for Carl very well may have made the man. Yeah,
you know, I moved to New Jersey after a little
while and was voted the class brain at Rahway High School.
(08:29):
And I thought this was interesting in this what articles
this New Yorker, which one while why Carl Sagan's truly
replaceable Smith Smithsonian Joel Ackenbach. Uh. It was a great article, though.
But they tracked down in nineteen fifty three a questionnaire
from high school that he had to fill out on
(08:49):
his own character traits, and Sagan said he gave himself
low marks for vigorousness like with sports, an average rating
for emotional stability, and the highest ratings for being dominant
and reflective. I'm gonna start using that vigorousness. Yeah, and
I worked out this morning. I'm so vigorous. Um. So
that's not just a piece of paper they dug up, Chuck,
(09:11):
that's from his archives, which were actually sold to the
Library of Congress by his widow. Um what is his
widow's name? Anne? And drew in one of his uh, well,
his his widow. But he was married three times um
and uh Ann sold the papers. Are supplied the papers
for an honorarium, I guess, to the Library of Congress,
(09:34):
And the Library of Congress got that money from Seth McFarland.
So basically, Seth McFarland bought Carl Sagan's papers and donated
them to the Library of Congress. Yes, that's why. It's
pretty cool. That's what it's called, the Seth McFarland Collection
of the Carl Sagan and drew In Archive. Had to
put his name on there. Well, I mean, sure, why not?
(09:54):
You know, No, it's fine. He's he's he's a huge
fan of his work, and he's the one who rebooted
Cosmos and genuinely, like, I mean, I gotta say, like,
whatever you have to say about Seth McFarland, there was
plenty to say about Seth McFarland. He is, he proved
himself a true fan of Carl Sagan and a rich guy.
I've always liked a family guy. So I don't have
(10:15):
any bad to say about him. Uh, what have you
seen American Dad? No, I never got into that. Actually, yeah,
it's not family guy. It's definitely just totally different. Uh.
Seven hundred and ninety eight boxes of stuff of archival material. Um.
The guy love to log every conversation he ever had
(10:37):
and every thought that ever entered his brain, mainly through
the cassette tape. But um, I guess that was transcribed
by other folks. Yeah, apparently that's um. Joel achenbach Um
says that his his writing style was so conversational because
he didn't write, He dictated into ad dictaphone and then
it was transcribed. Basically, basically, he was like the Hunter
(10:58):
s Thompson of science. Yeah. Remember Hunter t had like
the real real he'd wear around his neck when one
is high on marijuana. It is a buzz skill to type. Actually,
that's funny. We bring up Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson loved acid.
You know who else loved acid? Timothy Leary. You know
who hung out with Timothy Leary, Carl Sagan. Timothy Leary
was trying to get Sagan to advise him on how
(11:20):
to build a an interstellar arc because Leary just totally
lost his stuff by this time, right on him. Oh yeah,
I'm surprised we haven't. Um, let's do it, man, we should.
We should do one on like the Mary pranks there's
a whole thing just basically redo the the electric kool
Aid ascid test would be a good episode. But Leary
(11:42):
um at a mental institution because he'd been popped with
a bunch of acid. I think had a visitor in
Carl Sagan and Frank Drake of the famous Drake equation,
and they came by to say hi, and and Leary
was like, seriously, you guys have to help me design this.
And they were like, this the closest stars too far away,
your koke, This isn't gonna work. And Learry said he
(12:02):
since that they had some sort of neural blockage. That's
why they couldn't think like he could. Yeah. Man, So
that was Carl Sagan Timothy Larry story. But I think
they stayed in touch. Oh I'm sure they did. So. Uh.
Young Sagan is his life kind of changes when he
goes to the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine. He
(12:23):
was just five years old. You remember whose World's Fair
that was? Was it? No? Was it Chicago? Eddie Berns?
Oh yeah, that was the law wo the one that
changed everything, including Carl Sagan. Boy, that's a big one. Um.
So Sagan goes to the World's Fair, and it was
sort of a a great time, um, to be a
young kid interested in science, because in the late thirties
(12:46):
and forties and fifties, it was like everyone was captivated
by the future. Right, There's this idea that science could
do anything, anything and very soon would. It was really
exciting and um, it was just a great time to
be to be into it. It's the uh what's his
name Openheimer? No, Oppenheimer. Now I'm talking about the article
(13:09):
back like, yeah, Oppenheimer. Yeah, I'm the I'm become death.
That's what I thought you were talking about. Uh. In
the article, he makes a great point about, um, just
that that time period and um, how exploratory everything was
really from then, like through the nineteen seventies. That was
(13:30):
a great like forty year period in science where basically
that was funding and like anything is possible, we can
do anything we want until they started to you know,
I guess disproved things here and there, right, And actually
what's interesting is there's a corresponding boost in technology from
that era too, And a lot of people point out
that all of this stuff from about nineteen seventy five
(13:52):
on is actually built on the backs of the stuff
that was built in the forty years before that, from
about ninety five to nineteen seventy five, and ever since then,
we've the technological plateau. It's really interesting and you don't
think about You're like, well, no, I mean we have
iPhones now. It's like, yeah, iPhones are all they're a
combination of different stuff that was first discovered or invented
(14:12):
forty or more years ago. Um, And basically everything's like that.
We were in a slump right now. So it was
not only a time where they thought science could do anything.
Science was doing just about anything. And we've since hit
a plateau and um. He the author described him. I
thought it was a great description Sagan as a nuanced
referee because really cool thing about Sagan was he was
(14:37):
very grounded in science and proof and facts, but he
wasn't um. He wasn't just a square and a skeptic,
although he was a skeptic, yeah, but he was also
like he wanted to to find life on other planets.
And he didn't shut things down. He was all about
the discussion of everything as long as you still did
(14:59):
the research. We're grounded in fact as a matter of fact,
and he did not believe in UFOs. He did not
think that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft, but in nineteen sixty
nine he mounted a conference on UFOs in which everyone
apparently had their say all sides. Yeah, it wasn't like
we're mounting a conference on UFOs. You can come so
(15:20):
the rest of us can poo poo your ideas and beliefs.
It was, come and share your your position on it.
That's enormous, and that in and of itself is worth
remembering the person for. But this is nineteen sixty nine,
before you'd even become like a household name or anything
like it. Yeah, And I like to think we do that,
and we still get emails. So we got one today
(15:41):
for people that said it's it's dangerous to even mention
other schools of thought. That's dogmatic. Yeah, And I just
I don't agree that dogmatic and close minded and don't
even bring don't even email us with that crap. Yeah,
I just don't don't even bother because we're gonna we're
gonna make fun of you on the air. Yeah, because
that's not what our shows about. Even if we don't
(16:02):
believe something, we like to throw all sides out there.
Because I think, uh, discussion is healthy no matter what.
That's just me. Even when we were mocking crop circles,
we still like talked about crop circles, did we not.
It's not like we just pretended like there wasn't such
a thing as crop circles. That's right, And we have
Carl Sagan, thank for laying that golden path in front
of us. So you want to take a break, I
(16:25):
don't want to, but we have Okay, all right, we'll
be right back. All right, So we've been beating around
(16:49):
the bush here. Um, let's talk well not really, we've
been getting into it, but let's let's talk about some
of the things that Sagan. Uh. He wasn't just some
Johnny come lately. He had uh degree upon degree. I
think he had had billions and billions. We had undergrad degree,
he had his masters, he had his PhD. He was
(17:10):
he was well versed in a lot of realms of science,
but his big thing was astronomy. Right. He had two
degrees in undergraded masters in physics and then a doctorate
in astronomy. Um and he did a little stint at Harvard.
I didn't get tenure. So he's like, I'm out of here,
and Cornell is like, you come to us and we
will treat you like a god. And they did, and
(17:31):
he settled in at Cornell and set up am his
own lab right, the Laboratory for Planetary for Planetary Studies. Uh,
and he just that was when he really started to
get going. He was doing cide work for NASA at
the time as well doing consulting. He did that throughout
his whole career, formulas, that kind of stuff. Sure, when
NASA is picking your brain about like the Apollo mission,
(17:54):
you're you're doing pretty well for yourself as a scientist.
But so he had this this this potent child to
to really go as sciency as he wanted to with
the stuff, and he did in some ways in a
lot of ways with his consulting with NASA, but he
also kind of pushed NASA into humanities um direction as well. Yeah,
(18:16):
like the the Voyager discs, that's a that's a really
great example of it. Like he talked NASA and including
discs on Voyager one and two, the Golden Record, Yeah,
that are they're basically like, here's some stuff that represents
humanity and Earth. Yeah, pretty much like if we ever
do find life on Earth. We need to have something
to offer them to represent us. Yeah, what I say,
(18:40):
life on Earth. Yeah, there's life on Earth. That's pretty
much documented. His fact, life out there, extraterrestrial life. He said,
we need to present ourselves and what Earth is like
and what humans are like. So he included a hundred
and fifteen images representing the diversity of life and then
uh sounds basically like his wife. Literally, this is pretty
(19:01):
out there. I don't know if marijuana had anything to
do with it, I think so. Yeah, his wife Anne,
she created her own sounds for the project. Basically, she
meditated and then thought, I told the story of the
universe by thinking it with her brain, and then those
brain waves were translated into music. And she said, my
(19:22):
mind also wandered to my love of my husband, so
that was translated. So they blasted. That was her message
that they blasted out in space, which is pretty far
out right, but but awesome messages of love. Sure, man,
it's pretty neat. He wasn't afraid to show his tender side. No, no, no,
he definitely wasn't. He was vulnerable in a lot of ways. Um.
(19:44):
And also on those discs, there's a believe etchings of
a man and a woman. I think it's etched on
the disc and they're like laser disc size. They're super
retro and made of gold, which is pretty cool. Um.
And then there's a basically a depiction of where Earth
is in the Milky Way, I believe, so it's basically
saying we're here if you ever find this. And then
(20:05):
of course Voyager one I believe I got lost and
awakened and became sentient and then became a god on
to some beings. Remember, and I think Star Trek one
the first, the first movie. I never saw that. Vijor.
Do you never saw any of the Star Trek movies, Dude,
I've never seen one episode of the TV show. I've
(20:27):
never seen one episode of the Next Generation. The only
Star Trek thing I've ever ingested was our Apologies to
Will Wheaton. By the way, was that first movie that J. J.
Abrams did. I saw that. I saw the second one
of that. I also saw, I think Star Trek maybe one, two,
and three, And in one of those, there's this god
(20:49):
vjer who's like this artificial intelligence, and they finally meet
Vijor and realized that the Oi UH is blotted out
and it's really VOI of jar One the Space Probe. Wow, yeah,
that's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty neat too.
I'm not a tricky by any means, but yeah, they
were still entertaining. I just never got into it. I
(21:10):
was always a Star Wars guy, not that they're mutually exclusive,
but I don't know. It just didn't grab me. You know,
who would have predicted that we go off on a
star trek Tangent and the Carl. Although I think I've
told the story of working on a commercial with William Chatterer,
you have, didn't he like bend you over a car
and pretend to arrestue That was punch? Hey Shatner was
(21:32):
t J Hooker. It could have happened. Yeah, he was
great though. He was awesome. He'd love being William Chatterer.
Oh yeah, man, you can tell like I wears it
like a suit. Yeah he was. He was awesome, very
nice guy. So, um, we're getting off track again here
with science. There was actual science to stuff. As a
matter of fact, the idea of the greenhouse effect is
(21:52):
rooted partially in his work. Yeah, I mean that that
had been around since the late nineteenth century. But um,
he looked at like a planet like Venus and said,
you know what, Venus is really hot, and I think
wise because this greenhouse effect. And um, then because of
that work, people started thinking, well maybe Earth has a
(22:15):
greenhouse effect. Going on to really opened the door for
that line of thought. It did, and he's correct. Earth
definitely does have a greenhouse effect, and it's problematic. Correct.
Another one that he's widely cited for is the Fate
Young Young Son paradox um. I don't know if the
if he was the one who first pointed this out
(22:38):
or if he just kind of built upon it and
it's still not fully solved. I think so he and
George Mullen figure this out. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So
the idea is that Earth early on in its history
was a ball of ice, but problematically, there was also
some liquid water on Earth too, It wasn't all ice.
This doesn't make much sense because the Sun as it
(23:00):
stands now is just about enough to keep Earth from
from being a frozen ball of ice. But back then,
when Earth was mostly a frozen ball of ice, the
Sun was only at like it's luminosity or lumosity luminosity
one of those luminosity, right, yeah, sure, Um that it
is today and so it doesn't make sense that there
(23:22):
should be any liquid water on Earth. And it's called
the faint Young Sun paradox. And um, I believe they
figured out or they Sagan and Mullin said, well, it's
the greenhouse effect. Yeah, and I don't think they ever
fully settled on that. Still, it's it's outstanding. They think
it might be a combination of that and some other stuff.
That's right. Uh, what else did you do? He looked
at um Titan Saturn's moon at one point and said,
(23:45):
you know what, I think there's organic molecules up there
and that's why it looks red. And he was right, yeah,
he went to uh yeah, so, I mean he he
wasn't afraid to throw a wacky hypothesis out there, and
that did not do him any favors in the scientific
community either. No, because there is a definite um arrogance
(24:06):
associated with throwing out the hypothesis and not doing the work,
leaving it to other people to do the work. And
then you still get the credit for throwing the hypothesis
out there. Um, it's it's one of the it's one
of the main reasons why Sagan was highly criticized by
some people in the scientific community. Yeah, there's um in
(24:27):
the Smithsonian article. Um, they say there's sort of an
unwritten rule among scientists. Uh, Thou'll shouting not speculate, They'll
shout not talk about things outside your immediate area of expertise.
It's a big one that he transgressed. Yeah, he was
all over the place. Uh, and thou shouting that horse
around on late night TV talk shows. Yeah, Carson. Yeah,
he was on Carson two dozen times over a couple
(24:48):
of decades and was, like I said, sort of the
Neil de grasse Tyson. He was the go to when
anyone in the press needed anything for television. He was
the guy. And anything that had in any thing even
remotely to do with science, even if I had to
do with theology, and somebody wanted a science's opinion of theology,
go to Carl Sagan. And so from Sagan's at his
(25:12):
point of view, he's just furthering science. What's the problem
from this other scientists point of view, it's like it
makes it look like Carl Sagan is trained in everything
from astrophysics, which he was, to theology and biology and
anthropology and every ology in between, and he wasn't true.
(25:32):
There's some professional jealousy too, you know. I think, um,
you know how it is like he's getting all the
press and uh, other folks are stuck in a lab
doing what they think is the real work. So I
kind of get it in a way. But I just
think that people like Bill Nye and Tyson and then
Sagan are hugely necessary. You know, you gotta have a
(25:53):
face out there furthering it. You definitely need, you know,
and you've got to have a media outlet like Parade
Magazine to put that ace on. That was his go
to for sure. There a lot Oh yeah, it was.
That's the Sunday insert right yeah. Uh And and that
was like kind of the big joke because that he
stopped publishing in academic journals and started publishing in Parade Magazine.
(26:16):
And if you remember in our Nuclear Winter episode, yeah
he was did he completely in uh think of that, No,
he just furthered it. He was part of a group
that that was organized that basically said like, if you
guys start setting off nuclear bombs, it's not going to
be this thing that just ends Like there's going to
be this thing called Nuclear Winner, and they hadn't done
(26:38):
all the science yet before he went and wrote an
article in Parade magazine and told the world about Nuclear Winner,
and in the opinion of the science that's he was
working with, like really undermine their case because it's sensationalized it. Yeah,
but what it also did was it got your your
average Joe thinking about nuclear war in the Cold War
and maybe we shouldn't be zoomie toward our own demise
(27:02):
at a hundred miles. That's the big back and forth
about Sagan's legacy, Yeah, or the actual work he did too. Yeah,
and you mentioned that theology he was famously um spiritual agnostic.
He was a spiritual agnostic, is how he defined himself. Yeah,
he didn't classify himself as as atheist. No, And the
reason why, true to Sagan's own um own way, was
(27:25):
that he could not scientifically prove that there was not God.
So he said, how can I call myself an atheist?
Which is um, it's pretty cool. And actually he's the
guy supposedly that coined the term extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
That's what I here? Does that go back to him?
So he's like skeptics love the dude. Oh yeah, he's
(27:47):
the father of the skeptic. But I think he I
don't know. I think he gives skeptics the good name. Sure,
but if you want to prove your bones to how
hardcore is skeptical, you are criticize Carl Sagan in the
skeptic community, you can really show that you're a super skeptic. Yeah.
(28:08):
Sagan was a milktoast as far as skeptics go, because
he would indulge other lines of thought, um, but still
require proof. But he wouldn't just shut it down right
out of the gate. So we will get back to
Carl Sagan right after these messages. Alright, chuckers, we're back. So. UM,
(28:45):
there was one thing that Carl Sagan, he would poke
fund it himself. He never abandoned. It was this idea
that possibly, maybe, just maybe, um, there was intelligent life
out there, and um, I wanted there to be for sure,
you know. Uh. He helped disprove or just the conditions
against life being out there for sure. Like for example, um,
(29:09):
he suggested that on Mars, the shifting features of Mars
were result of dust storms, and it turned out he
was right. But those dust storms also basically said there's
probably not life on Mars just from that reason alone,
those horrible death storms. Right yeah, and he um, actually,
you want to pull a surprise for some of his work.
I think he wrote more than a dozen books. But
(29:31):
one of the things he wrote was Contact, the novel
not uh, you know, he was totally into sci fi
and wrote you know the movie uh Contact that McConaughey
and Jodie Foster that was based on his novel. And
of course that movie was about sending signals into outer
space trying to find life. So you can tell the
guy it was something he loved to talk about and
(29:53):
write about. Oh yeah, but he also loved it like
actually that that kind of research which is totally up
his alley, like st um, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
is is evidence based in science based search for extraterrestrials? Right? Yes,
that was that's Carl sagand through and through. That's just
(30:14):
totally him. He was, Um, he wanted to believe in
extraterrestrial life, but he needed proof to believe in it. Really. Yeah,
he just couldn't make that jump to just saying yes,
they exist without any proof. Yeah exactly. So he's writing books.
He's NASA's picking his brain. He's all over the place.
And he eventually we talked about his TV show debuted
(30:37):
on UM. Well, actually the debuted nineteen eighty one. Yeah,
I thought eight, Yeah, yeah, I think it was UM
so I must have been nine years old. I was four.
I thought it was ten. What month was it, I
don't know. I don't even um. But he originally was
the TV series is gonna be called Man and the Cosmos.
(31:00):
But he thought that was sexist, and he was a feminist,
so he said, um. He proposed a couple of more titles.
One was called There Terrible t H E R E
U with some subtitle, and then the other was Cosmos
along with a subtitle. UM. And he spent like three
years around the world filming this thing, right, yeah, and
(31:21):
it just it was a what it's not like it
ran for seasons and seasons. It was like a a
single run of shows on PBS. That television event. Yeah,
it was a TV event exactly. One of the other
things he did which I never knew, was he wrote
along with his son. Now because his son uh has
a byline, I guess Jimmy Sagan, Todd Sagan his five
(31:46):
kids I think total. But one of his sons became
a sci fi writer, another one became more of a
science writer. So basically he split into two. Yeah. Actually
I never thought about that way, um, but explained as
two of his kids existence. He wrote the entry for
life for Encyclopedia Britannica, like this is what life is. Yeah.
(32:09):
He was fairly energetic dude, for sure. The least. I
mean he did Cosmos in his mid forties, just out
of nowhere accomplished he really did. Yeah, he's like the
Cypress Hill of of science. I don't know, hey, man,
they put out like three albums in like four or
five years. It's a lot of work. And then retired.
(32:30):
Second did not retire, No, he did not, sir. He
worked up until his death in n Yeah. He dies
after battling UM, a bone marrow disease for about a
year or so to two years I think is closer. Um,
he's diagnosed with it and he needed a transplant, and
his sister uh stepped up and volunteered to give him
(32:52):
a donation and did and uh apparently it wasn't quite enough,
because he died of an infection after about a year
and half after, Um, the transplant just sixty four years old. Yeah,
to wait, way too young, it really is. And in fact, yesterday,
the day we're recording this is November ten, I believe
(33:12):
yesterday was this would have been his eighty first birthday.
Oh yeah, you didn't plan that, nope. Wow, that's a
pretty impressive speaking to me from billions of light years away. Yeah,
that's funny that you say that. Because somebody wrote to him. Um,
they said, how do you know that there's not a heaven?
And um, he had this really great response. He remember
(33:33):
in his archives, he was a pack rat, so he
kept a lot of correspondence, and from it they found, Um,
in this achembach Um article, there's a a citation of
a letter that he wrote to somebody, and um, he says,
thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of
heaven has been found out to about ten billion light years,
and then in parentheses he puts one light year is
(33:54):
almost six trillion miles. Best wishes. And the point is
like he took the time to write the letter back
to this guy, like he would engage rather than just
ignore the letter entirely. So he entertained and indulged people's
ideas enough that he would engage with somebody who didn't
even know about whether there's heaven or not. And this
(34:15):
this was sent um the year he died. Actually, so
he's writing this from his sick bed. Wow, that's awesome. Uh.
As far as whether or not it bothered him, whether
or not he was how he was thought of in
the scientific community, UM, it kind of all came to
a head in uh. He was on a list to
(34:36):
be included um as a nominee for the National Academy
of Sciences. Uh. In the end, he was not included,
and it bothered him. Um. He kind of brushed it
off to the people in public saying that you know,
I didn't think I would get in any way. But
his widow said, uh, quote it was painful. It seemed
like a unsolicited, slight end quote. And they ended up
(35:02):
giving him an honorary medal, which was nice, but that
was definitely a big sting for him. Yeah. The National
Academy of Scientists said, Nope, you're not a member. You're
not one of us. They basically said that the the
actual research that you did wasn't strong enough, which, uh,
it sounds like a definite calculated slight. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
(35:24):
he's included in my book. Yeah for sure. Man. Uh
so my hat is off to you, sir forever. Do
you got anything else? No, man, I just uh, someone
needs to make a great documentary or movie about the guy. Yeah,
you know, starring Ashton Kutuer Carl Sagan. That guy can
play anybody. Yeah. Uh. If you want to know more
(35:44):
about Carl Sagan, you can start with this delight a
little article on how stuff works by typing Carl Sagan
in the search bar. And since I said search parts,
time for listener mail. Hey guys, my name is Connie.
I've been a listener for a couple of months after
my brother turned me on to the show. Since then,
I've been completely obsessed and haven't been able to stop listening.
(36:04):
UM on track to become a nurse, so I can
can't get enough of anything science or biology related. I
want to thank you for a couple of things. I'm
in a base level anatomy class right now, and the
rigor Mortist podcast saved my behind and my grade on
my cadaver dissection and muscles test. A lot of the
things you covered, like the nature of the muscle's relationship
with a t P and the integral proteins really helped
(36:27):
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cadaver lab. You also even taught my anatomy professor something
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early jump from high school to college, and being able
to count on YouTube weekly has really helped a little
(36:49):
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me something new and exciting to discuss and learn about
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ear if you can give a shout out to my
brother Matt, the physics teacher. That is very nice. Yeah,
he's the reason I started listening to you and sharing.
(37:10):
The love of knowledge is really something that has kept
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It sparked so many interesting and inspired conversations between us.
So thank you for what you're doing and helping many
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(37:30):
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(37:52):
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Is it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel. The
Stint of Noel is winding down sadly. It's such an
awkward thing having no here, no the stint of knol Right,
(00:25):
Oh you mean the wording? Yeah, wording is fine? All right?
How you doing? I'm fine, just like that wording. I'm sleepy?
Why about I've just been staying up late, writing until
one and two in the morning like a dope like
a seventeen Oh yeah, yeah, a manifesto. No, no, just
(00:47):
staying up too late, that's neat. Do you drink wine
while you type? Last night? It was bullet bourbon? Yeah,
and then you're just like, I'm not typing words correctly anymore.
And then time for bed. You get on a roll
and then you look up and it's to two am.
Nice man, I'm glad to hear that six thirty yearlls
around and here we are. That's awesome. Yeah, that's great.
So you're creative juices are flowing. They're flowing, baby. You
(01:09):
know who else is juices were flowing and still flow
through this universe. Carl Sagan, he was. He was a
creative science type. Yeah, and it made him kind of controversial. Man.
It also made him beloved, beloved, and uh, I think
one of like the precursors to what we do, you know.
(01:31):
In fact, he there's a quote on him being an explainer,
which I thought was very cool, which is the geekiest
term ever, but it's a pretty it's a good term science. Yeah,
he said. I think I'm able to explain things because
understanding wasn't entirely easy for me. Some things that the
most brilliant students were able to see instantly, I had
to work to understand. I can remember what I had
(01:53):
to do to figure it out. The very brilliant ones
figure it out so fast that sounds familiar. They never
see the mechanics of understanding out. I really identified with that,
and like, man, that's kind of what we do. You know.
We worked really hard to understanding this because we're not experts,
and he wasn't an expert on one thing. He covered
a lot of That's what made him unique, A lot
of different facets of science. Yeah, which you don't see much.
(02:17):
No you don't. I mean it does pop up here
and there. But if you if you think about the
people who are like that, like Jared Diamond is a
really good current example Neil Type. No, that's Dustin Diamond.
Jared Diamond. Uh man. I don't even remember what he's
trained in. He's just such a generalist. But he wrote
(02:39):
like guns, germs and steel. Um, he's got a little
a little Robert bork Beard, good guy. Um, he's one.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has definitely become one, although he's still
very much an astrophysician, right, yeah, but he's he's sort
of talked about a lot of times in terms of
being like Sagan, and not just because as he rebooted Cosmos,
(03:02):
which was Sagan's show, but um, oh yeah, he's just
the face of science, Like he's the go to guy.
I mean, like he was the obvious choice for Cosmos
because he was already so much like Sagan, following in
those footsteps for sure. Those other guys, just like Brian
Green as a science explainer, Bill Nye as a science explainer. Um,
they're definitely out there for sure. But you can you
(03:23):
make a good point that Sagan was one of the originals,
if not the original but the idea that he was
somebody who was willing to draw parallels from different disciplines
in science or bring him together to create, um, something
approachable for people, to kind of invigorate people's love of science.
(03:43):
I think it's amazing. Yeah. It made him beloved. It
also just made him not reviled. This is not the
right word, but he was definitely criticized in the scientific establishment.
Uh in parts. For sure. Some people in the scientific
establishment loved him, and some were like, uh, you're not
doing much real research. You know, you're just sort of
(04:06):
a face guy. And um, I poo poo that entirely
and say that he did a lot for science and
people like him are are necessary, and uh, I value
their work. Okay, you're taking a stand. Huh. Yeah, man,
Carl Sagan is amazing. He's one of my heroes. Yeah,
he's like. I watched Cosmos when I was ten years old.
I have never seen it. Man, it was great. I
(04:29):
mean it was a PBS show that had tens of
millions of viewers. Millions and millions, So that's you're saken. Yeah,
And you know what he he told Johnny Carson. He
never said billions and billions Uh, he said billions of
pond billions, right, I never heard it. There's a super
(04:49):
cut on YouTube of all of his billions, millions and
trillions from Cosmos cut to uh with it like hip
hop music, bed and um is a glorious down. I
don't remember the name of it. There's one. There's a
video a song that somebody created with him, a super
cut of him. It's called Glorious Toll. It's pretty great. Well,
(05:12):
I never heard billions and billions in there. There's a
lot of billions and millions and trillions. He loved those words,
but he said I never specifically said billions and billions,
and I couldn't. I didn't hear it either, So he's
a misunderstood genius. Yeah, they became I think Carson did
at first, or maybe it was Saturday Night Live, and
then that just became the thing, billions and billions, because
(05:35):
he is a weird little dude for sure, in a
lot of ways, easily parody, but he also seemed to
have a fairly good sense of humor about himself at
least and in general. He smoked grass. He thought grass
was far out man. We just vaulted back in time
with that one he smoked the marijuana grass making a
(05:55):
contemporary He was on the pot, Yeah, he did. He
liked to smoke weed and um. In fact, I have
a quote here from he wrote an essay and best
Pavement album by the way. He wrote an essay. I
don't know about that. Yeah, what's your favorite? Um? I
(06:15):
planned it in Enchanna the first one it's hard. Although
Crooked Rain, crookt Rain was pretty good. No, I've never
seen him more interested in what we're talking about. It's funny.
In college we used to have a saying, it's not
a matter of which album are we gonna listen to next?
It's which Pavement album are we gonna listen to? Next?
T shirt? Yeah? So anyway, Sagan wrote an essay and uh,
(06:38):
marijuana reconsidered um, and here is one of his quotes.
He said, the cannabis experienced has greatly improved my appreciation
for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before.
The understanding of the intent of the artists, which I
can achieve when high, sometimes carries over to when I'm down.
This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has
(07:00):
helped me traverse. Was that the frog doing Carl Sagan.
That was sort of kermity, but he uh yeah, I
mean that's not it doesn't define him or anything, but yeah,
he liked to smoke the pot and he liked to
get out of his little tape recorder and talk about stuff,
put on a turnal neck, yeah, with nothing else. It
was the sixties and seventies, of course he was, and
(07:21):
I think the eighties and maybe even into the nineties.
That's true. So um, let's let's I guess let's go
back to the beginning. We've done some pretty good teasing here, right,
And when you're talking about a human being, there's no
place better to start at the beginning than with their
birth Brooklyn, New York. His mother was Rachel, was a
(07:45):
garment industry manager and apparently the biggest Oh yeah, yeah,
but his mom was overbearing. Yes, mom was overbearing. Sorry,
dad was a Ukrainian immigrant, Samuel, who worked as a
garment industry manager. Because in four they probably and hire
women to do jobs like that, which is really stinky.
So uh and we it's not like we've met the
(08:05):
lady or anything and can report that she's overbearing. The
idea that she's overbearing comes from this longstanding image of her.
She had very high hopes and high expectations and aspirations
for Carl very well may have made the man. Yeah,
you know, I moved to New Jersey after a little
while and was voted the class brain at Rahway High School.
(08:29):
And I thought this was interesting in this what articles
this New Yorker, which one while why Carl Sagan's truly
replaceable Smith Smithsonian Joel Ackenbach. Uh. It was a great article, though.
But they tracked down in nineteen fifty three a questionnaire
from high school that he had to fill out on
(08:49):
his own character traits, and Sagan said he gave himself
low marks for vigorousness like with sports, an average rating
for emotional stability, and the highest ratings for being dominant
and reflective. I'm gonna start using that vigorousness. Yeah, and
I worked out this morning. I'm so vigorous. Um. So
that's not just a piece of paper they dug up, Chuck,
(09:11):
that's from his archives, which were actually sold to the
Library of Congress by his widow. Um what is his
widow's name? Anne? And drew in one of his uh, well,
his his widow. But he was married three times um
and uh Ann sold the papers. Are supplied the papers
for an honorarium, I guess, to the Library of Congress,
(09:34):
And the Library of Congress got that money from Seth McFarland.
So basically, Seth McFarland bought Carl Sagan's papers and donated
them to the Library of Congress. Yes, that's why. It's
pretty cool. That's what it's called, the Seth McFarland Collection
of the Carl Sagan and drew In Archive. Had to
put his name on there. Well, I mean, sure, why not?
(09:54):
You know, No, it's fine. He's he's he's a huge
fan of his work, and he's the one who rebooted
Cosmos and genuinely, like, I mean, I gotta say, like,
whatever you have to say about Seth McFarland, there was
plenty to say about Seth McFarland. He is, he proved
himself a true fan of Carl Sagan and a rich guy.
I've always liked a family guy. So I don't have
(10:15):
any bad to say about him. Uh, what have you
seen American Dad? No, I never got into that. Actually, yeah,
it's not family guy. It's definitely just totally different. Uh.
Seven hundred and ninety eight boxes of stuff of archival material. Um.
The guy love to log every conversation he ever had
(10:37):
and every thought that ever entered his brain, mainly through
the cassette tape. But um, I guess that was transcribed
by other folks. Yeah, apparently that's um. Joel achenbach Um
says that his his writing style was so conversational because
he didn't write, He dictated into ad dictaphone and then
it was transcribed. Basically, basically, he was like the Hunter
(10:58):
s Thompson of science. Yeah. Remember Hunter t had like
the real real he'd wear around his neck when one
is high on marijuana. It is a buzz skill to type. Actually,
that's funny. We bring up Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson loved acid.
You know who else loved acid? Timothy Leary. You know
who hung out with Timothy Leary, Carl Sagan. Timothy Leary
was trying to get Sagan to advise him on how
(11:20):
to build a an interstellar arc because Leary just totally
lost his stuff by this time, right on him. Oh yeah,
I'm surprised we haven't. Um, let's do it, man, we should.
We should do one on like the Mary pranks there's
a whole thing just basically redo the the electric kool
Aid ascid test would be a good episode. But Leary
(11:42):
um at a mental institution because he'd been popped with
a bunch of acid. I think had a visitor in
Carl Sagan and Frank Drake of the famous Drake equation,
and they came by to say hi, and and Leary
was like, seriously, you guys have to help me design this.
And they were like, this the closest stars too far away,
your koke, This isn't gonna work. And Learry said he
(12:02):
since that they had some sort of neural blockage. That's
why they couldn't think like he could. Yeah. Man, So
that was Carl Sagan Timothy Larry story. But I think
they stayed in touch. Oh I'm sure they did. So. Uh.
Young Sagan is his life kind of changes when he
goes to the World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine. He
(12:23):
was just five years old. You remember whose World's Fair
that was? Was it? No? Was it Chicago? Eddie Berns?
Oh yeah, that was the law wo the one that
changed everything, including Carl Sagan. Boy, that's a big one. Um.
So Sagan goes to the World's Fair, and it was
sort of a a great time, um, to be a
young kid interested in science, because in the late thirties
(12:46):
and forties and fifties, it was like everyone was captivated
by the future. Right, There's this idea that science could
do anything, anything and very soon would. It was really
exciting and um, it was just a great time to
be to be into it. It's the uh what's his
name Openheimer? No, Oppenheimer. Now I'm talking about the article
(13:09):
back like, yeah, Oppenheimer. Yeah, I'm the I'm become death.
That's what I thought you were talking about. Uh. In
the article, he makes a great point about, um, just
that that time period and um, how exploratory everything was
really from then, like through the nineteen seventies. That was
(13:30):
a great like forty year period in science where basically
that was funding and like anything is possible, we can
do anything we want until they started to you know,
I guess disproved things here and there, right, And actually
what's interesting is there's a corresponding boost in technology from
that era too, And a lot of people point out
that all of this stuff from about nineteen seventy five
(13:52):
on is actually built on the backs of the stuff
that was built in the forty years before that, from
about ninety five to nineteen seventy five, and ever since then,
we've the technological plateau. It's really interesting and you don't
think about You're like, well, no, I mean we have
iPhones now. It's like, yeah, iPhones are all they're a
combination of different stuff that was first discovered or invented
(14:12):
forty or more years ago. Um, And basically everything's like that.
We were in a slump right now. So it was
not only a time where they thought science could do anything.
Science was doing just about anything. And we've since hit
a plateau and um. He the author described him. I
thought it was a great description Sagan as a nuanced
referee because really cool thing about Sagan was he was
(14:37):
very grounded in science and proof and facts, but he
wasn't um. He wasn't just a square and a skeptic,
although he was a skeptic, yeah, but he was also
like he wanted to to find life on other planets.
And he didn't shut things down. He was all about
the discussion of everything as long as you still did
(14:59):
the research. We're grounded in fact as a matter of fact,
and he did not believe in UFOs. He did not
think that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft, but in nineteen sixty
nine he mounted a conference on UFOs in which everyone
apparently had their say all sides. Yeah, it wasn't like
we're mounting a conference on UFOs. You can come so
(15:20):
the rest of us can poo poo your ideas and beliefs.
It was, come and share your your position on it.
That's enormous, and that in and of itself is worth
remembering the person for. But this is nineteen sixty nine,
before you'd even become like a household name or anything
like it. Yeah, And I like to think we do that,
and we still get emails. So we got one today
(15:41):
for people that said it's it's dangerous to even mention
other schools of thought. That's dogmatic. Yeah, And I just
I don't agree that dogmatic and close minded and don't
even bring don't even email us with that crap. Yeah,
I just don't don't even bother because we're gonna we're
gonna make fun of you on the air. Yeah, because
that's not what our shows about. Even if we don't
(16:02):
believe something, we like to throw all sides out there.
Because I think, uh, discussion is healthy no matter what.
That's just me. Even when we were mocking crop circles,
we still like talked about crop circles, did we not.
It's not like we just pretended like there wasn't such
a thing as crop circles. That's right, And we have
Carl Sagan, thank for laying that golden path in front
of us. So you want to take a break, I
(16:25):
don't want to, but we have Okay, all right, we'll
be right back. All right, So we've been beating around
(16:49):
the bush here. Um, let's talk well not really, we've
been getting into it, but let's let's talk about some
of the things that Sagan. Uh. He wasn't just some
Johnny come lately. He had uh degree upon degree. I
think he had had billions and billions. We had undergrad degree,
he had his masters, he had his PhD. He was
(17:10):
he was well versed in a lot of realms of science,
but his big thing was astronomy. Right. He had two
degrees in undergraded masters in physics and then a doctorate
in astronomy. Um and he did a little stint at Harvard.
I didn't get tenure. So he's like, I'm out of here,
and Cornell is like, you come to us and we
will treat you like a god. And they did, and
(17:31):
he settled in at Cornell and set up am his
own lab right, the Laboratory for Planetary for Planetary Studies. Uh,
and he just that was when he really started to
get going. He was doing cide work for NASA at
the time as well doing consulting. He did that throughout
his whole career, formulas, that kind of stuff. Sure, when
NASA is picking your brain about like the Apollo mission,
(17:54):
you're you're doing pretty well for yourself as a scientist.
But so he had this this this potent child to
to really go as sciency as he wanted to with
the stuff, and he did in some ways in a
lot of ways with his consulting with NASA, but he
also kind of pushed NASA into humanities um direction as well. Yeah,
(18:16):
like the the Voyager discs, that's a that's a really
great example of it. Like he talked NASA and including
discs on Voyager one and two, the Golden Record, Yeah,
that are they're basically like, here's some stuff that represents
humanity and Earth. Yeah, pretty much like if we ever
do find life on Earth. We need to have something
to offer them to represent us. Yeah, what I say,
(18:40):
life on Earth. Yeah, there's life on Earth. That's pretty
much documented. His fact, life out there, extraterrestrial life. He said,
we need to present ourselves and what Earth is like
and what humans are like. So he included a hundred
and fifteen images representing the diversity of life and then
uh sounds basically like his wife. Literally, this is pretty
(19:01):
out there. I don't know if marijuana had anything to
do with it, I think so. Yeah, his wife Anne,
she created her own sounds for the project. Basically, she
meditated and then thought, I told the story of the
universe by thinking it with her brain, and then those
brain waves were translated into music. And she said, my
(19:22):
mind also wandered to my love of my husband, so
that was translated. So they blasted. That was her message
that they blasted out in space, which is pretty far
out right, but but awesome messages of love. Sure, man,
it's pretty neat. He wasn't afraid to show his tender side. No, no, no,
he definitely wasn't. He was vulnerable in a lot of ways. Um.
(19:44):
And also on those discs, there's a believe etchings of
a man and a woman. I think it's etched on
the disc and they're like laser disc size. They're super
retro and made of gold, which is pretty cool. Um.
And then there's a basically a depiction of where Earth
is in the Milky Way, I believe, so it's basically
saying we're here if you ever find this. And then
(20:05):
of course Voyager one I believe I got lost and
awakened and became sentient and then became a god on
to some beings. Remember, and I think Star Trek one
the first, the first movie. I never saw that. Vijor.
Do you never saw any of the Star Trek movies, Dude,
I've never seen one episode of the TV show. I've
(20:27):
never seen one episode of the Next Generation. The only
Star Trek thing I've ever ingested was our Apologies to
Will Wheaton. By the way, was that first movie that J. J.
Abrams did. I saw that. I saw the second one
of that. I also saw, I think Star Trek maybe one, two,
and three, And in one of those, there's this god
(20:49):
vjer who's like this artificial intelligence, and they finally meet
Vijor and realized that the Oi UH is blotted out
and it's really VOI of jar One the Space Probe. Wow, yeah,
that's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty neat too.
I'm not a tricky by any means, but yeah, they
were still entertaining. I just never got into it. I
(21:10):
was always a Star Wars guy, not that they're mutually exclusive,
but I don't know. It just didn't grab me. You know,
who would have predicted that we go off on a
star trek Tangent and the Carl. Although I think I've
told the story of working on a commercial with William Chatterer,
you have, didn't he like bend you over a car
and pretend to arrestue That was punch? Hey Shatner was
(21:32):
t J Hooker. It could have happened. Yeah, he was
great though. He was awesome. He'd love being William Chatterer.
Oh yeah, man, you can tell like I wears it
like a suit. Yeah he was. He was awesome, very
nice guy. So, um, we're getting off track again here
with science. There was actual science to stuff. As a
matter of fact, the idea of the greenhouse effect is
(21:52):
rooted partially in his work. Yeah, I mean that that
had been around since the late nineteenth century. But um,
he looked at like a planet like Venus and said,
you know what, Venus is really hot, and I think
wise because this greenhouse effect. And um, then because of
that work, people started thinking, well maybe Earth has a
(22:15):
greenhouse effect. Going on to really opened the door for
that line of thought. It did, and he's correct. Earth
definitely does have a greenhouse effect, and it's problematic. Correct.
Another one that he's widely cited for is the Fate
Young Young Son paradox um. I don't know if the
if he was the one who first pointed this out
(22:38):
or if he just kind of built upon it and
it's still not fully solved. I think so he and
George Mullen figure this out. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So
the idea is that Earth early on in its history
was a ball of ice, but problematically, there was also
some liquid water on Earth too, It wasn't all ice.
This doesn't make much sense because the Sun as it
(23:00):
stands now is just about enough to keep Earth from
from being a frozen ball of ice. But back then,
when Earth was mostly a frozen ball of ice, the
Sun was only at like it's luminosity or lumosity luminosity
one of those luminosity, right, yeah, sure, Um that it
is today and so it doesn't make sense that there
(23:22):
should be any liquid water on Earth. And it's called
the faint Young Sun paradox. And um, I believe they
figured out or they Sagan and Mullin said, well, it's
the greenhouse effect. Yeah, and I don't think they ever
fully settled on that. Still, it's it's outstanding. They think
it might be a combination of that and some other stuff.
That's right. Uh, what else did you do? He looked
at um Titan Saturn's moon at one point and said,
(23:45):
you know what, I think there's organic molecules up there
and that's why it looks red. And he was right, yeah,
he went to uh yeah, so, I mean he he
wasn't afraid to throw a wacky hypothesis out there, and
that did not do him any favors in the scientific
community either. No, because there is a definite um arrogance
(24:06):
associated with throwing out the hypothesis and not doing the work,
leaving it to other people to do the work. And
then you still get the credit for throwing the hypothesis
out there. Um, it's it's one of the it's one
of the main reasons why Sagan was highly criticized by
some people in the scientific community. Yeah, there's um in
(24:27):
the Smithsonian article. Um, they say there's sort of an
unwritten rule among scientists. Uh, Thou'll shouting not speculate, They'll
shout not talk about things outside your immediate area of expertise.
It's a big one that he transgressed. Yeah, he was
all over the place. Uh, and thou shouting that horse
around on late night TV talk shows. Yeah, Carson. Yeah,
he was on Carson two dozen times over a couple
(24:48):
of decades and was, like I said, sort of the
Neil de grasse Tyson. He was the go to when
anyone in the press needed anything for television. He was
the guy. And anything that had in any thing even
remotely to do with science, even if I had to
do with theology, and somebody wanted a science's opinion of theology,
go to Carl Sagan. And so from Sagan's at his
(25:12):
point of view, he's just furthering science. What's the problem
from this other scientists point of view, it's like it
makes it look like Carl Sagan is trained in everything
from astrophysics, which he was, to theology and biology and
anthropology and every ology in between, and he wasn't true.
(25:32):
There's some professional jealousy too, you know. I think, um,
you know how it is like he's getting all the
press and uh, other folks are stuck in a lab
doing what they think is the real work. So I
kind of get it in a way. But I just
think that people like Bill Nye and Tyson and then
Sagan are hugely necessary. You know, you gotta have a
(25:53):
face out there furthering it. You definitely need, you know,
and you've got to have a media outlet like Parade
Magazine to put that ace on. That was his go
to for sure. There a lot Oh yeah, it was.
That's the Sunday insert right yeah. Uh And and that
was like kind of the big joke because that he
stopped publishing in academic journals and started publishing in Parade Magazine.
(26:16):
And if you remember in our Nuclear Winter episode, yeah
he was did he completely in uh think of that, No,
he just furthered it. He was part of a group
that that was organized that basically said like, if you
guys start setting off nuclear bombs, it's not going to
be this thing that just ends Like there's going to
be this thing called Nuclear Winner, and they hadn't done
(26:38):
all the science yet before he went and wrote an
article in Parade magazine and told the world about Nuclear Winner,
and in the opinion of the science that's he was
working with, like really undermine their case because it's sensationalized it. Yeah,
but what it also did was it got your your
average Joe thinking about nuclear war in the Cold War
and maybe we shouldn't be zoomie toward our own demise
(27:02):
at a hundred miles. That's the big back and forth
about Sagan's legacy, Yeah, or the actual work he did too. Yeah,
and you mentioned that theology he was famously um spiritual agnostic.
He was a spiritual agnostic, is how he defined himself. Yeah,
he didn't classify himself as as atheist. No, And the
reason why, true to Sagan's own um own way, was
(27:25):
that he could not scientifically prove that there was not God.
So he said, how can I call myself an atheist?
Which is um, it's pretty cool. And actually he's the
guy supposedly that coined the term extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
That's what I here? Does that go back to him?
So he's like skeptics love the dude. Oh yeah, he's
(27:47):
the father of the skeptic. But I think he I
don't know. I think he gives skeptics the good name. Sure,
but if you want to prove your bones to how
hardcore is skeptical, you are criticize Carl Sagan in the
skeptic community, you can really show that you're a super skeptic. Yeah.
(28:08):
Sagan was a milktoast as far as skeptics go, because
he would indulge other lines of thought, um, but still
require proof. But he wouldn't just shut it down right
out of the gate. So we will get back to
Carl Sagan right after these messages. Alright, chuckers, we're back. So. UM,
(28:45):
there was one thing that Carl Sagan, he would poke
fund it himself. He never abandoned. It was this idea
that possibly, maybe, just maybe, um, there was intelligent life
out there, and um, I wanted there to be for sure,
you know. Uh. He helped disprove or just the conditions
against life being out there for sure. Like for example, um,
(29:09):
he suggested that on Mars, the shifting features of Mars
were result of dust storms, and it turned out he
was right. But those dust storms also basically said there's
probably not life on Mars just from that reason alone,
those horrible death storms. Right yeah, and he um, actually,
you want to pull a surprise for some of his work.
I think he wrote more than a dozen books. But
(29:31):
one of the things he wrote was Contact, the novel
not uh, you know, he was totally into sci fi
and wrote you know the movie uh Contact that McConaughey
and Jodie Foster that was based on his novel. And
of course that movie was about sending signals into outer
space trying to find life. So you can tell the
guy it was something he loved to talk about and
(29:53):
write about. Oh yeah, but he also loved it like
actually that that kind of research which is totally up
his alley, like st um, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
is is evidence based in science based search for extraterrestrials? Right? Yes,
that was that's Carl sagand through and through. That's just
(30:14):
totally him. He was, Um, he wanted to believe in
extraterrestrial life, but he needed proof to believe in it. Really. Yeah,
he just couldn't make that jump to just saying yes,
they exist without any proof. Yeah exactly. So he's writing books.
He's NASA's picking his brain. He's all over the place.
And he eventually we talked about his TV show debuted
(30:37):
on UM. Well, actually the debuted nineteen eighty one. Yeah,
I thought eight, Yeah, yeah, I think it was UM
so I must have been nine years old. I was four.
I thought it was ten. What month was it, I
don't know. I don't even um. But he originally was
the TV series is gonna be called Man and the Cosmos.
(31:00):
But he thought that was sexist, and he was a feminist,
so he said, um. He proposed a couple of more titles.
One was called There Terrible t H E R E
U with some subtitle, and then the other was Cosmos
along with a subtitle. UM. And he spent like three
years around the world filming this thing, right, yeah, and
(31:21):
it just it was a what it's not like it
ran for seasons and seasons. It was like a a
single run of shows on PBS. That television event. Yeah,
it was a TV event exactly. One of the other
things he did which I never knew, was he wrote
along with his son. Now because his son uh has
a byline, I guess Jimmy Sagan, Todd Sagan his five
(31:46):
kids I think total. But one of his sons became
a sci fi writer, another one became more of a
science writer. So basically he split into two. Yeah. Actually
I never thought about that way, um, but explained as
two of his kids existence. He wrote the entry for
life for Encyclopedia Britannica, like this is what life is. Yeah.
(32:09):
He was fairly energetic dude, for sure. The least. I
mean he did Cosmos in his mid forties, just out
of nowhere accomplished he really did. Yeah, he's like the
Cypress Hill of of science. I don't know, hey, man,
they put out like three albums in like four or
five years. It's a lot of work. And then retired.
(32:30):
Second did not retire, No, he did not, sir. He
worked up until his death in n Yeah. He dies
after battling UM, a bone marrow disease for about a
year or so to two years I think is closer. Um,
he's diagnosed with it and he needed a transplant, and
his sister uh stepped up and volunteered to give him
(32:52):
a donation and did and uh apparently it wasn't quite enough,
because he died of an infection after about a year
and half after, Um, the transplant just sixty four years old. Yeah,
to wait, way too young, it really is. And in fact, yesterday,
the day we're recording this is November ten, I believe
(33:12):
yesterday was this would have been his eighty first birthday.
Oh yeah, you didn't plan that, nope. Wow, that's a
pretty impressive speaking to me from billions of light years away. Yeah,
that's funny that you say that. Because somebody wrote to him. Um,
they said, how do you know that there's not a heaven?
And um, he had this really great response. He remember
(33:33):
in his archives, he was a pack rat, so he
kept a lot of correspondence, and from it they found, Um,
in this achembach Um article, there's a a citation of
a letter that he wrote to somebody, and um, he says,
thanks for your letter. Nothing like the Christian notion of
heaven has been found out to about ten billion light years,
and then in parentheses he puts one light year is
(33:54):
almost six trillion miles. Best wishes. And the point is
like he took the time to write the letter back
to this guy, like he would engage rather than just
ignore the letter entirely. So he entertained and indulged people's
ideas enough that he would engage with somebody who didn't
even know about whether there's heaven or not. And this
(34:15):
this was sent um the year he died. Actually, so
he's writing this from his sick bed. Wow, that's awesome. Uh.
As far as whether or not it bothered him, whether
or not he was how he was thought of in
the scientific community, UM, it kind of all came to
a head in uh. He was on a list to
(34:36):
be included um as a nominee for the National Academy
of Sciences. Uh. In the end, he was not included,
and it bothered him. Um. He kind of brushed it
off to the people in public saying that you know,
I didn't think I would get in any way. But
his widow said, uh, quote it was painful. It seemed
like a unsolicited, slight end quote. And they ended up
(35:02):
giving him an honorary medal, which was nice, but that
was definitely a big sting for him. Yeah. The National
Academy of Scientists said, Nope, you're not a member. You're
not one of us. They basically said that the the
actual research that you did wasn't strong enough, which, uh,
it sounds like a definite calculated slight. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
(35:24):
he's included in my book. Yeah for sure. Man. Uh
so my hat is off to you, sir forever. Do
you got anything else? No, man, I just uh, someone
needs to make a great documentary or movie about the guy. Yeah,
you know, starring Ashton Kutuer Carl Sagan. That guy can
play anybody. Yeah. Uh. If you want to know more
(35:44):
about Carl Sagan, you can start with this delight a
little article on how stuff works by typing Carl Sagan
in the search bar. And since I said search parts,
time for listener mail. Hey guys, my name is Connie.
I've been a listener for a couple of months after
my brother turned me on to the show. Since then,
I've been completely obsessed and haven't been able to stop listening.
(36:04):
UM on track to become a nurse, so I can
can't get enough of anything science or biology related. I
want to thank you for a couple of things. I'm
in a base level anatomy class right now, and the
rigor Mortist podcast saved my behind and my grade on
my cadaver dissection and muscles test. A lot of the
things you covered, like the nature of the muscle's relationship
with a t P and the integral proteins really helped
(36:27):
me pass my exam and not pass out in the
cadaver lab. You also even taught my anatomy professor something
new about Keila cells. About that last year, I was
diagnosed with anxiety and depression due to the fact that
I can never really fit in the right way. I
lost almost all of my friends when I made an
early jump from high school to college, and being able
to count on YouTube weekly has really helped a little
(36:49):
bit with the loneliness and learning something new is always
a healthy distraction from anxiety. So you guys, really give
me something new and exciting to discuss and learn about
twice a week when you work forty hours, it really
goes a long way. Uh. It would absolutely make his
ear if you can give a shout out to my
brother Matt, the physics teacher. That is very nice. Yeah,
he's the reason I started listening to you and sharing.
(37:10):
The love of knowledge is really something that has kept
us close in spite of our eleven year age difference.
It sparked so many interesting and inspired conversations between us.
So thank you for what you're doing and helping many
of us make it through tough spots. That is much
love from Connie from Illinois. So thank you, Connie, and
hello to Matt your brother. Hey Matt the physics teacher. Yeah,
(37:30):
thanks guys. It's we love families that listen and bringing
people together. Man, it's makes us feel good. Yeah. The
family that listens to s y s K together stays together.
That's right. The dire warning. Uh. If you want to
let us know how great somebody in your life is
because they introduced you to the Stuff you Should Know.
We love hearing that stuff, you can tweek to us
(37:52):
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can send us an email to Stuff Podcast the house.
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