Carl Sagan: American Hero

a seventeen Oh yeah, yeah, a manifesto. No, no, just 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 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. 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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? 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 don't want to, but we have Okay, all right, we'll be right back. All right, So we've been beating around

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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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

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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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,

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 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. 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 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 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. 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, 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

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