Have a good night. Booktv continues now on cspan2, Television First serious readers. Hello. Im ann druyan and im speaking to you from my home in ithaca, new york, and i am the author of cosmos possible worlds. Deeply, truly honored to be participating in an event for the library of congress. In the very first cosmos exactly 40 years ago, carl sagan and Steven Sotloff and i celebrated the Great Library of alexandria. And the library of congress mean so very much to me. Because of the democratic idea of world knowledge belonging to all of us. And so it is my great honor to be here. Im here to talk about possible worlds which is a book ive written but also a Television Series that i have the pleasure of producing, writing and directing with my collaborator. So why possible worlds . Why a third cosmos after 40 years . The first cosmos was an effort to get the broadest possible public a Global Public coordinates in space and in time. It was carl sagans dream, one that i completely share, that how we found our way in the cosmos, the great story covering 40,000 generations of human beings who, in one way or another, added to our current understanding about nature, that we could tell these wonderful, Inspiring Stories to a global audience so that as many of us as possible could have a cosmic perspective on both space and time. In that original series there was a cosmic calendar in which we compressed what was then thought to be Something Like 18 billion years of cosmic evolution, compressed into a single year at a glance calendar. Well, over the last 40 years our sense of the age of cosmos has changed. That is the great strength of science. Its power. Because it seeks constantly to air correct, to use the methodology of science by a very simple rule, to ferret out those things which are not true. And that is why size will never be completed, and its not for any one generation to see the whole picture of spacetime. But instead science is a generation finding enterprise connecting all of us back to our earliest ancestors. And more recently, to the intergreek inventor of science, and inventors of libraries in memory, and even a sense of the future. So the first cosmos was about finding a place in space time, and the second cosmos in 2014, cosmos, spacetime odyssey, took some of the unparalleled explanatory power of some motive like the cosmic calendar and the ship of imagination, a vehicle that can take all of us anywhere in spacetime. Powered by twin engines of skepticism and imagination. Thats the key not want at the expense of the other, rigorous skepticism, faithfulness to reality and to what the data tells us but at the same time a soaring imagination based on what we know could be possible. So the third cosmos, possible world, is my searching for a realistic evidencebased sense of how we can be helpful about the future. We all know the long shadow that falls on our future. Who of us come looking at our children and our grandchildren, and not feel a certain pain of remorse and concern about whether or not we are handing them a planet that will be inhabitable for them as it has been for us and our ancestors. I knew that there was no need to tell the audience how serious the challenges we face are. But instead, to find hope, to find peace that would be rational and truthful. And so i took my inspiration for the show in the book from stories of some of the scientists who, across the generations, faced formidable and dangerous enemies who want their information to be shared with the public. I took a great deal of courage from the stories of maybe two dozen people who showed me in the pages of the book it in the episode of the show who, against all odds, stood up in defense of reality, in defense of the evidence, in defense of the methodology insights from finding out where we are. Nature will not be deceived. We can tell ourselves as many lies as we want to. But in the end that will get us nowhere. In fact, it is worse than that. Skepticism, this sacred searching of science, this is a selective advantage. In fact, it may be the most powerful selective advantage we have. After all, as organisms, we are not the fastest or the biggest or, you know, we dont have other advantages. What we have is ability, and tacit ability of pattern recognition, of great cleverness that can get us out beyond that place where the wind from the sun dies as our voyager spacecraft has been. 15 years from now with absolute, flawless precision. We have these enormous capabilities, and yet here we are sleepwalking, as this in a stupor, as if in the dream unable to awaken aim to create the future that we need to create by making the changes in the way we live, and the way we treat each other. This spring has been a moment of tremendous optimism for me, because i am change in the united states. Not as a result of a single charismatic leader, but a sea change in the hearts of all of us. And thats what is so inspiring because that is what has to happen. And so i feel a great sense of hope, and that hope is, i hope, completely permeates every page, every word, every shot in both the series and the book. In possible world we imagine a distant future that our descendents could conceivably experience on the worlds that circle other sons, in places that we can only dimly apprehended at this moment with our most powerful telescopes. How do i dare imagine that future when its 100 degrees fahrenheit at the arctic, with our poisoning of the ocean, the rivers, the land, the air, the climate is so rampant and so completely out of control . Well, part of it is that i feel that there is a widespread yearning to find the future fight for the future. And i also feel that unlike before, we have each others phone number. We are able to communicate with each other. Our planet just at the moment that we are reaching this urgent and Dangerous Branch point in human history, we have developed a means to become an in a communicating orbiter and to reach people all over the world. Im so proud of the fact that the original cosmos series, a personal voyage, has been seen by nearly a billion people. And that both cosmos a spacetime odyssey and cosmos possible worlds shown in 180 countries around the world. The message at the heart of cosmos is to make the case for science. Not that science hasnt known since. Of course it has, because it is practiced by human beings. We are deeply flawed. Thats true. But the dangers we currently face can only be dealt with, with scientific knowledge and a scientific approach, completely unflinching, looking at our true circumstances, whether it be Climate Change or the global pandemic. Which has brought us to a halt. These are the days that the earth stood still. Before this pandemic began i dont think any of us thought that anything could make a stop in our tracks. And i personally have been quarantining alone since the first of march until just a month ago. And for me that was a tremendous experience. Yes, there were moments of great sadness, great, great pain, and yet i was able to observe the unfolding of spring in beautiful ithaca where i live, as never before, to appreciate each new leaf on the tree, and the way that nature towards any fantasy or these stories that we could ever make up. And so it has left me with a greater conviction than ever that we have what it takes, and that you will see if you read the book or etc the show, the book is important i think because it can tell these stories in such greater depth than is possible in a show thats on for an hour. But what you will see in these stories is not only the possible world, the exoplanet, the other worlds that made late in our future, as well as the lost worlds of this planet, the lost civilizations of which we know so little. Waiting to be discovered and unearthed. And finally its about the possible world that this can be, this can become if we are resolute, if we are unified. If we are clear eyed, keep our eye on that most precious of all prizes, its a beautiful this beautiful plant so completely graced by life is almost every conceivable training nuke and cranny, great diversity of life that is so precious. If we can value this world and the way that it sustains us and our fellow earthlings, above money. If we can value it about a certain inconvenience, if we can value the air, the water, the climate, the things that we need to thrive as an organism, above those other things that are just recent constructs that will make the last few centuries, if we can keep our eye on this most precious of all prizes, then the wonders that await us in this cosmos are beyond our wildest imagination. Science has done somehings to us that many people feel very hurt by, and i respect thatnd understand that. We started out in 1609, to go back to galileo. Yo know, a lot of us cherish the idea that we were the only children of creator that the entire universe revolved around us. An one by one, what i call great demotions of sit come one by one, well, once the world had accepted, to the extent that we have, the work of the earlier scientis copernicus who said that the sun was at the center of the solar system, once we said okay, were nott the center of the solar system but we are at the center of the galaxy. We are the center of the universe. No, no, no. Not any of those. Well, weere created separately from the rest of the all of the ling beings on this planet. We are gods only children. Well, no. It turns out thate are so deeply related to each other and to all of the life that we share this planet with, that we have more i common genetically, you and me, with the sunflower than were likely to have with and being from any other world in the cosmos. And so i cherish what carl sagan said, if a person disagrees with you, let him live. You will not find another in 100 billion galaxies. So this is some of the values of science, the image. You know, for me when i look at that and i look at it countless times, since that first moment that carl showed it to me back in the early 90s, when i look at that image, i say, this is where science and spirituality and emotion, and even aesthetics need in one place. You do not need an advanced degree to understand what that pale dot is telling you. Its saying its just a tiny dot your how, how can a nationalist, a chauvinist, polluter, the purveyor to fossil fuels, and other products that will destroy our future, how can they look at that dot and escape its a meaning . And so theres always been a kind of wall, a very tall wall between science and the rest of us. I was not born inside those walls of science. I was a lousy student. I was not a good math student or a science student, and and i dt come to my love of science until i was an adult, until i found those philosophers and begin to feel included. And then when i met carl sagan, in my view, one of the greatest teachers of the last thousand years or more, when i met carl sagan and had the honor and privilege to stand 20 years thinking with him, writing within, working with him, building our beautiful family together, i felt this overwhelming desire to share the spiritual uplift, the joy, the pleasure of knowing even a little bit about the universe revealed by science with everyone on earth. As carl used to say, when he was asked why you spend all your time in the laboratory . Why did you want Television Shows and go to immigration and naturalization ceremonies and kindergartens, and so many other things that he did to talk about science. He would say, when you are in love, you want to tell the world. Thats how i feel about my book, which is very personal in many ways and, of course, personal in ways that a Television Show could not be. I felt really thats what i wanted to do was to share this knowledge which was no longer impenetrable to be, which was no longer boring, which was no longer something that i felt alienated from. But instead i felt an almost evangelical desire to tell these stories of these great scientist, these heroic figures. People who tell of death rather than telling a lie about science. I dont think i could do that. People whove never heard of, they are not the darwins for the galileo is. They are not the household names, but instead they are Unsung Heroes who live so bravely, so dramatically, and who made it possible for us to venture to the stars. I have never known anyone who was able to integrate both a very rigorous evidencebased, mathematical knowledge of physics and chemistry and biology that was comprehensive and able to integrate that very rigorous skepticism with boundless imagination and sense of wonder and joy you know, the founding myth of our civilization is that if you partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, you will be ruined and miserable and doomed, and it is a criminal thing to do. Whereas i feel that in the story of genesis when we do partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, thats when we become our human cells. Its the most natural thing for ulster this is what were really good at. And so you cant do it just with skepticism. Im not the first person to say this, einstein, carl, many people have said this way before me. But you cant feel you need that kind of that baloney Detection Kit in your brain which helps you discern things that are real from things we want to be real but are not. So you need that but then you also need imagination and a sense of the great beauty of life. When i think of the person who is able to integrate those two things perfectly, never won at the expense of the other, i always think of carl. Because he embodied that. He followed his quest, and i think was probably one of the most fully realized human beings, well, he was the most fully realized human beings i ever met. Because he never lost his sense of the great joy of life, the romance of life, the romance of being alive. In cosmos i think when at the reasons he is so beloved is he has that great urgent sense that the universe was, we now think it is 13. 8 billion years old, but the universe lets say is 13. 8 billion years old. How long do we live . We are mayflies. A hundred years its the best we can get. And yet carl knew, he internalized it, it wasnt just the service, was just something he preached. He knew how brief life is, and so he lived it with that sense of great pleasure and appreciation for even the smallest things. But at the same time dreaming so big, dreaming of what it would be like to stand on the world of another son, to travel into the very distant future or into the past. And so i feel like something happened since we began space exploration. Before the space age began, and i write about this in the book and would actually tell the story in the show. Before the space age began, all of the different scientific disciplines were very siloed so there was not a single germ on planet earth were a biologist and a geologist could coauthor of peerreviewed scientific paper. And in the beginning of carls career, even when i come into his life, he was constantly criticized for being wildly interdisciplinary. And yet i think he understood that once you leave this planet, whether you are sending your instruments or other human beings, theres no way to explore and to understand without a complete synthesis of many different scientific disciplines. You cant go to mars without a geologist. You want an astronomer, you want a chemist, you want a physicist and you probably want and astrobiologist if youre going to hunt for a past mars life, if there is any and so he was part of that generation, and, in fact, he edited the very first scientific journal which made it possible for a collaboration among the scientific disciplines. Thats another facet of i always think of as great teardown of walls. Not just the wall between site and the rest of us but also the walls between the disciplines and then was such great humor in joy and imagination of what the next experiment on the next spacecraft would be, but also how to enthrall people of all ages with the joy of discovery. There need not be you need not sacrifice your humanity and your soul to be a scientist. If you are a writer, an artist, a musician, you did not lose any of that Creative Juice by knowing something about nature. In fact, i think it makes everything we do that much richer