Hey, StarTalkians, Neil here.

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Welcome to StarTalk.

Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.

Today's topic is nuclear winter.

You might have remembered that from some decades ago, old-timers were. That came out and it changed

geopolitics. People realizing that not only are there no winners in a nuclear exchange, maybe all of

life on Earth would be rendered extinct. You've got with me, of course, my co-host, Chuck Nice,

Chuck. Hey, Neil. How are you? Yeah, good, nice, check. Hey, Neil, how are you?

Yeah, good, good, good.

Like, I was around and cognizant and watching news stories and science stories when this was a big deal because we were still in the Cold War.

So why are we going there?

Because there's a place called the Future of Life Institute that gives an annual award to people

who by their actions or their research or decisions or their influence have managed to preserve

civilization in ways we should all be thankful. And we have on today's program two of this year's recipients of that

award for their participation in the Nuclear Winter Project. We first have Professor Brian Toon,

who we're going to get to in our second segment. He is a former student of Carl Sagan's

and was one of the co-authors on the original nuclear winter paper.

We also have who will be accepting the award on behalf of Carl Sagan, Carl Sagan's widow and longtime collaborator, And Druyan.

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