Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have.

It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

The recording didn't contain the guest's eight music choices,

so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the BBC Gramophone

library.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

The program was originally broadcast in 1981, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. Our cast away this week describes himself as a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules.

Using only this modest equipment, he's become a foremost astronomer a very successful author and a

celebrated popularizer of science it's Carl Sagan now Carl does music mean a

lot to you yes I am deeply attracted to music and get a kind of dependency withdrawal

symptom when I'm away from it too long. Have you any skilled yourself as a musician? I would say not although I did play piano for ten years until I was able to escape from home and be on my own.

Do you sing? No, except in the shower. Oh, naturally.

Just eight discs to choose for the island.

Did you find it a hard task?

Yes, it's always difficult to select from an enormous range only a few items and I'm not sure that I wouldn't

get terribly bored with any selection of eight but it was interesting to try to choose.

What do we start with? I'm interested in starting with a piece by Vangelis Papathanasieu, which by accident we've also used in the Cosmos television series it's called

Heaven and Hell. You're going to be here. Heaven and Hell by Vangelis with the composer at the synthesizer.

Where about the United States you come from?

Well I was born in Brooklyn, New York. I teach at Cornell University, which is also in New York

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