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Carl Sagan - Blog Posts
The process of making an audio and visual compilation to explain Earth and humanity to an alien species is an incredible undertaking, and Carl Sagan undertook it in 1977. The resulting record from his little team was sent out with the Voyager 1 and 2 probes and is now in interstellar space, but there was also a more personal result of this project. Learn about Sagan and his third wife’s meet-cute and also hear what is actually out there in the stars, conveying the best humanity had to offer in the 70s.
Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. Vote on what you think I should research next by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me in real life. And please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, rate it and maybe review it, and tell friends if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode are space race history, the transit of Venus, Edmond Halley, or Dark Sky Preserves. Next episode will be up on December 4th.)
Glossary
electroencephalography (EEG) - a recording that displays brainwave activity by measuring the electrical impulses of neurons firing in the brain
heliosheath - the outer region of the heliosphere. It is just beyond termination shock, the point where solar wind abruptly slows down and becomes denser and hotter as it presses outward against the approaching wind in interstellar space.
heliosphere - a huge wind sock-shaped bubble that extends beyond Pluto’s orbit and contains our solar system, solar wind, and the entire solar magnetic field.
Transcript
Sources
Drunk History episode transcript
Golden record via NASA
Carl Sagan via Smithsonian Magazine, March 2014
Carl Sagan via Biography.com
Carl Sagan via National Geographic
The Voyager project love story via NASA
Ann Druyen: “We know that EEG patterns register some changes in thought. Would it be possible, I wondered, for a highly advanced technology of several million years from now to actually decipher human thoughts?"
Ann Druyen: "a mental itinerary of the ideas and individuals of history whose memory I hoped to perpetuate."
Ann Druyen: "My feelings as a 27-year-old woman, madly fallen in love, they're on that record. It's forever. It'll be true 100 million years from now. For me, Voyager is a kind of joy so powerful, it robs you of your fear of death."
Arthur C. Clarke: "Please leave me alone; let me go on to the stars."
How 8-track tapes work via 8 Track Heaven
How vinyl records work via The Guardian, June 2010
Golden record via Smithsonian Magazine, April 2012
Golden record via the JPL at NASA
Golden record retrospective by Timothy Ferris via The New Yorker, August 2017
Voyager Golden Record - Greetings In 55 Languages via YouTube
The 116 images NASA wants aliens to see via YouTube
The Voyagers documentary by Penny Lane via Brain Pickings
Ann Druyen: “Carl and I knew we were the beneficiaries of chance, that pure chance could be so kind that we could find one another in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. We knew that every moment should be cherished as the precious and unlikely coincidence that it was.”
Article on Sagan’s divorce from Linda Salzman Sagan via People, December 1980
Article on Sagan’s divorce from Linda Salzman Sagan via The Cornell Daily Sun, March 1981
Voyager record available on Soundcloud via Cosmos Magazine
Golden record now available for purchase via The Atlantic, August 2017
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground’ by Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945) off the album Dark Was The Night ‘Carl Sagan’ by Loch Lomond off their album Paper The Walls
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught
Deseamos perseguir la verdad, sea cual sea, para hallarla, necesitamos imaginación y escepticismo, no tememos especular, pero debemos tener cuidado de distinguir las especulaciones de los hechos.
Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?
Carl Sagan
If it is just us, seems like an awful waste of space.
Carl Sagan (from Contact)
