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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

The Many Worlds of Ann Druyan: Matriarch of the Cosmos (#055)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.71.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2020

⏱️ 75 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ann Druyan has brought the universe to millions around the world. The wife of the late Carl Sagan, Ann is a renowned science communicator and producer/writer and co-creator of the upcoming series Cosmos: Possible Worlds. She is the author of the companion book of the same name.  She is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning writer and producer. She co-created and wrote the 1980 TV series Cosmos with Carl Sagan, whom she later married. She also co-created, wrote, produced, and directed the follow up series, 2014’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and 2020’s Cosmos: Possible Worlds. She was also creative director for NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Project and her brain waves are part of the golden record that has traveled outside our solar system. Druyan discusses her fascinating voyage through the most mysterious phenomena in the cosmos. We discuss her family’s remarkable role as science ambassadors including not only her marriage to Carl Sagan, but her remarkable daughter Sasha Sagan who is continuing their role as the First Family of the Cosmos! Ann talked about her and Carl’s collaboration on the original Cosmos series, their multiple books, and Voyager’s famous golden record. She also shares lessons on love, parenthood, and the importance of science communication.  In addition to her award-winning writing and directing, she has an asteroid named after her, 4970 Druyan (which is in companion orbit with asteroid 2709 Sagan).  Her brain waves were recorded onto Voyager’s golden record that is traveling outside our solar system. In fact, she is the first guest on INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE who can say she already has a billion year time capsule in response to my standard question about monoliths! Five billion years, in fact, as that’s how long the golden record was designed to last.  00:07:37 Ann Druyan has brought science to millions. 00:15:42 Druyan and Sagan’s love is part of the Voyager recordings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

0:07.0

Everybody welcome. My name is Brian Keating. I am the co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human

0:16.6

Imagination at UC San Diego and I'm the host of today's into the Impossible

0:21.6

Podcast and it's such a treat to welcome a writer, a

0:26.0

thinker, an intellectual whose work I've admired for years and not just in the

0:30.4

written or the or the visual domain but also her work in creating just a

0:35.8

spectacular human being which she nucleated long ago and that's Sasha Sagan so this is the first time we've had a parent and a child

0:45.8

on the Into the Impossible Podcast and such a delight to have you following up on Sasha's

0:50.1

Mother's Day podcast. We're welcoming Andrea to the podcast today.

0:54.6

Anne, how are you doing?

0:56.2

I'm doing really well, and I'm so happy to be with you, Brian,

1:00.7

and I'm honored to share a podcast with my darling Sasha.

1:07.0

She really is and I made the point at some point or another that Sasha and I kind of talked a little bit about that your granddaughter, you know, spent some time in you. I have a feeling a philosophy that or at least maybe it's a not totally non-scientific hunch but I always feel like the

1:26.5

the maternal grandmother is somehow closer to the grandkids I mean don't tell this to your you know

1:31.7

in-laws or whatever but but the fact is that at

1:34.6

when Sasha was born she had within her the egg that would become Elena right and

1:39.7

that egg was inside of you and I just think it's wonderful that you had this beautiful

1:44.2

connection as we were talking just before we started about these possible worlds and the

1:50.1

worlds that we create and and I want to you know the occasion of this of this discussion is on the on the

1:57.0

occasion of your book Cosmos Possible Worlds which I've read and listened to on

2:01.7

audio book and first of all I want to always start as I do with all my authors

2:05.5

I always ignore the advice to not judge a book by its cover I judge all books by their covers at least at some level and I had this discussion

...

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