Cosmos
When the National Geographics came out that had the Voyager photos of Jupiter and Saturn in them, I visited them on their shelf in the den almost every day. I looked at them hundreds of times, until the pages started to separate; I just couldn’t get over them, the planets themselves or that we had gotten photographs of them somehow. For a brief period in the early ’80s, I knew everything about Saturn’s moons and rings and how the unmanned craft got through the asteroid belt and on and on.
Obviously, then, I couldn’t wait to sit down with the entire run of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, not realizing when I began watching that 1) he filmed the bulk of it before Voyager 2 sent back the really good shit from Saturn and 2) most of the series is not about the specifics of the solar system anyway.
I stuck with it, figuring I could just bail out after the Jovian-moon-volcano-porn episode, but by the time that episode arrived, I’d become attached to Carl Sagan, whose enthusiasm for his subject is infectious even when taking nerdy form. One of the instructional conceits he uses is a “spaceship of the imagination,” in which he and the viewer travel to distant points in space. It sounds Smurfy enough on paper, and you can imagine the special-effects execution of 30 years ago — it’s kind of like NASA installed a ViewMaster in a giant snowflake.
But then, at least once an episode, Carl Sagan gazes out the front “windshield” with a look of contented awe, usually after admitting that he used to stand outside as a child and wait for Martians, and at first, I would say aloud, “Really, Carl Sagan?” But after a few episodes, my reaction changed to, “…Aww, Carl Sagan.” He’s that teacher who, even in seventh grade at the nadir of your ability to show compassion for others from the depths of your own pocked misery, you didn’t have the heart to mock, even when he looked like a marionette in Gloria Steinem aviators as he rode his bicycle to illustrate color-shifting near the speed of light. You kind of had to respect a guy who would stop at nothing to blow your mind.
It seems like we don’t have that kind of ambitious “let’s try to teach everyone about the breadth of an entire subject in 13 hours” TV anymore. I mean, boyfriend bit off the whole cosmos: outer space, the brain, evolution, the periodic table, Einstein, Kepler, world religions’ relationship to research, quantum physics. Ken Burns tries, but it’s not quite the same as series like Cosmos or Lord Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, which is the Cosmos of Western art. I think the ambition is still there; it’s the optimism that seems to have gone missing, the belief that the topic is interesting and that people will care. It’s probably easier to put that kind of project over when not everyone has cable, but as far as the attitude behind it, that we can use television as continuing ed, I think that’s gone.
If you’ve never seen it, give Cosmos a go, but I’d advise treating it more like a radio broadcast; between the sometimes-draggy reenactments and the “special” effects, it’s sometimes a chore to watch, but it’s a worthwhile listen. Putting it on while you do chores or pay bills and occasionally giving your full attention to the bits that seem interesting is your best bet. (Should you decide to give Civilisation a spin, definitely stay in motion while it’s on. Lord Clark has the most narcotic BBC voice ever recorded, and ten minutes into each episode, you’ll find yourself wanting to curl up on a futon stuffed with tweed and Earl Grey and take a nap while insights into Viking carvings wash over you.)
Tags: Carl Sagan Ken Burns Lord Kenneth Clark TV
Was this the original super-cheese effects or the sorta-cheesy anniversary series with new effects?
If you liked Cosmos you might enjoy “A Short History of Nearly Everything” which has the same ambitious DNA but is largely Earth-bound. I just finished the unabridged audiobook. Good stuff, especially all the 19th C. scientist infighting. Those guys were bitches.
I and my friends still, yea these many years later, have Sagan’s oddly sibilant “billions and billions” ensconced in our repartee repertoire. And if that ain’t a hat tip, nothing is.
I LOVE Cosmos. I love listening to Carl Sagan tell me about planets and black holes in his Agent Smith-like voice. Whenever they run it on The Science Channel I make my husband suffer through as many episodes as I can cram in.
Aww, I love Carl Sagan so much. He really inspired me to become a scientist.
PS: Check out this goofy yet compelling Cosmos remix! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
@Glark: Sorta-cheesy anniversary series — but the chyrons say it’s ten years later, which still only puts it at 1991, so in a way it would have been better just to leave it defiantly 30 years old, instead of proudly “only” 20 years old.
@Laura: Aw, Carl Sagan imitating a whale! That’s totally what I mean. Dude is not afraid. (The “Carl Sagan is psyched about the universe” face is at 3:10.)
“He’s that teacher who, even in seventh grade at the nadir of your ability to show compassion for others from the depths of your own pocked misery, you didn’t have the heart to mock…”
Just…perfect. Well done.
Carl Sagan is one of the dorkiest dorks to ever dork, and I sorta can’t help but love him for it.
I was the child of a physicist, and we ate Carl Sagan and James Burke (Connections) UP in my house when I was a kid. Also World at War, but that was another enthusiasm.
I got a copy of “Cosmos” a few years ago, not realizing it was one of those Asian knockoff DVDs, but the series was complete, and it was a perfectly fine (original) edition. Watched it once, “aww Carl”-ing all the way, but I haven’t put it back in since (though “Connections” I have watched many times, as with “The Day the Universe Changed” – both simply fabulous series). I have to admit, one aspect of Carl which apparently escaped my particularly religious family (dad became a scientist mostly out of wonder at G-d’s creation) at the time, began to wear on my nerves a bit a few hours into the re-viewing – Carl’s atheism. It’s not a particularly strident note, but it is repetitive, and the “well obviously” superiority that a scientist must necessarily be an atheist jags my nerves in the same way kids used to, on the playground, making fun of me because my dad “couldn’t believe in G-d” because he was a scientist. This sort of thing is strictly personal, but it has kept my copy of “Cosmos” in its original box even when I’m desperate for housecleaning background noise.
Just as an aside, Sagan actually didn’t say “billions and billions”, attica. He did say “billions” from time to time – and in that inimitable, slightly-lip-splosive way he had – but the quote itself is actually an intensified overstatement, with a repetition he wasn’t actually responsible for. Little known fact. Hee.
You may enjoy this. (Intern is not responsible for earworms. Offer void where prohibited by law.)
My dad & I used to borrow the “Cosmos”videos from our library when I was young – probably 8 or 9. What Mr. Rodgers was to my early childhood, Carl Sagan was to my middle childhood. Those are some of my very very best memories.
We loved the series so much, my dad was inspired to buy a small telescope. He would get me out of bed after my younger sisters had fallen asleep and we would go out into the back yard and see what we could see.
I wonder what my almost-6-year-old would think of “Cosmos”?
@Diane: Noo!
You know, I’m going to insist that he did utter the b&b version — if not on Cosmos, then on one of the billions (heh) of talk show gigs he did back then. Can’t you just picture him saying that sitting next to Johnny Carson?
If not, it’s a lie I’ll tell myself. Hee!
“Carl Sagan, whose enthusiasm for his subject is infectious ”
Bill Nye gets to me in the same way. Smart guys are hot.
Uhm, so I just watched the Carl Sagan video, and his eyebrows ate the cosmos. Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows called to say they are mildly impressed.
Aw, Carl! I loved Cosmos, I was glued to the set. I loved how he said we were made of “star stuff.” My friends and I giggled amongst ourselves, but we were really digging it. Billions of stars and billions of planets, why should we think we are alone?
I’ve never seen Cosmos, which I’m ashamed of because I’ve harbored a deep love for the mysteries of outer space since I was a young’un. And I wanted to be a scientist early in high school (they used to interview Michio Kaku a lot on TechTV back when the channel existed/was good and I blame him for that idea). But being a hobbyist is plenty now.
History has a documentary series called The Universe that is pretty good. Watching an entire season in a couple of days is not advisable because you get kind of tired of getting beaten over the head with certain subjects (Them: “Black holes black holes black holes black holes” You: “Isn’t this episode supposed to be about, like, building a space elevator?” Them: “BLACK HOLES!!!”), but if you can ignore that, it’s fascinating, relatively up-to-date stuff (considering how fast science moves). It airs Tuesdays at 9/8c — not at the moment, though, sadly — and you can watch whole episodes online.
My favorite episodes are a couple of Season 2 episodes, one about exoplanets and another about alien weather. And I won’t go any further into detail because I’ll start on my IT RAINS FREAKIN’ IRON ON BROWN DWARVES YOU GUYS! overenthusiasm. No one needs that.
Awww, Carl Sagan! My 8th grade science teacher WORSHIPPED that dude, down to the hairdo and the tan blazer/maroon turtleneck look.
It was through Carl Sagan (and, um, drugs) that I realized that all those stars in the sky? There are bits of the exact same materials IN ME. Whoa, dude. Heavy.
Laura and Intern Came Out of the Sea, those videos plus another are on The Symphony of Science website – I love these beyond all imagining. I’m on the mailing list so that I know whenever they come out with a new one. Even better: the songs are available for download.
I really don’t like Autotune, but this is my one exception.
Carl Sagan is one of my two major celebrity crushes, the other being Jeff Goldblum. I am supremely dorky, and I don’t care who knows it.
@Kermit – that’s the same line that jumped out at me, and I echo your comment. Brilliant.
Sars, I think you’re right, we don’t have TV that assumes that you might be excited to learn about geeky stuff so much anymore. I wish we did.
Oooh, Carl Sagan and the guy who did “Connections” are my two favorite people in the universe, closely followed by Neil Degrasse Tyson (side note, if anybody has seen “Connections” available on DVD, hook a girl up.) I met Carl Sagan when I was in high school, not very long before he died, at a seminar he gave at SMU in Dallas. At the time, I was a little shit who was going to be a doctor or a research scientist because “that’s what smart kids do” but, looking back, he is the SINGLE REASON that I left scientific research and became a science educator. He managed to embody that “the world is JUST AWESOME” feeling way before the Discovery channel made it part of their branding. There’s something incredibly cool about a smart person explaining science and the universe because they think you DESERVE to know…
LOVE Cosmos, in large part because of Carl Sagan. That VOICE!! Dork-tastic!
I loved Cosmos! And Carl Sagan too, I have to admit I was so in awe of him that it sort of turned into a crush. My dad sat my brother and I down in front of the TV when he got those Cosmos tapes and we’d be glued to the screen. Then we’d go to museums and planetariums and ask the people who worked there very complicated questions while my dad just grinned from ear to ear.
But I like nerds. I have a crush on Neil deGrasse Tyson and my boyfriend is a mechanical engineer.
@Diane: I know that some people don’t think there is a difference, but Carl Sagan said that he was agnostic, not atheist. He was asked about it in an interview and he said “An atheist has to know a lot more than I do”. He said that existence of a higher power was hard to prove or disprove.
Adrienne, James Burke did “Connections” and “The Day the Universe Changed”, both of which feature much of the gee-whiz-bang cuteness and enthusiasm of Sagan’s ouvre AND … history geekishness. James Burke, not least because he’s the British avatar of my late, beloved father, is MY geek crush.
Along with Jeff Goldblum, oddly enough, Sandy. Mmm. Tallness. (I’d totally need to tape his mouth shut, but – mmm, yes. The tall.)
attica: will “billions UPON billions” work for ya … ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_sagan#Billions_and_billions
Okay, I just realized how gross it is to say someone’s my crush because he reminds me of my dad. Please understand my celeb (and geek) crushes tend NOT to be of the “do me James Burke” variety …
That’s almost grosser than the THREE INCH COCKROACH I just had to spend an hour remediating here at my office. Ugh.
Also – Adrienne, that’s why my dad was a teacher as well. *Grin*
Sars (and anyone else really) along the lines of “blow your mind educational TV” I’m curious what you think of the whole Planet Earth series?
Glark, I adore A Short History! The snarkiness and outright crazypants behavior from the great nineteenth century will never be matched in our time, I fear (sigh…)
With you on the Saturn and Jupiter photos – I did ‘show and tell’ on the photo of Saturn the day it was published in the paper. I still love those photos.
The Planet Earth series, while painstakingly beautiful and awe-inspiring visually, kinda suffers from the lack of a narrator who truly sounds fascinated by the topic. The narration is the one part that is so restrained as to be dry.
Which I guess is the point though: my cat certainly loved the series enough to actually try to climb inside the tv so he could join (say) the lions on a hunt, and the one thing that usually bugs him about our TV is hearing human voices he doesn’t know coming from it. ;)
I loved the series enough that I bought the soundtrack album( and have fruitlessly searched for it again on CD – it’s the reason I own a USB turntable).
It was a sad, sad day, the day the VCR ate Tape 3 of Cosmos. (sigh)
I love Carl Sagan.
I’ll admit it. My husband showed me the “Glorious Dawn” Sagan video, thinking I’d be amused by it (I cackle madly at “AutoTune the News”) and I TOTALLY got choked up. “A still more glorious dawn awaits… a morning filled with 400 billion suns.” It’s SO BEAUTIFUL, y’all.
A fun little ‘toon for the Sagan fans: http://xkcd.com/663
@Adrienne, I checked out “Connections” on DVD from Netflix this year, so they must exist somewhere…
“Carl Sagan Meets Billions and Billions of Martians” will not be shown today…
Ooh, James Burke fans! I’ve found my people! “Connections” and “The Day the Universe Changed” were the two most powerful educational weapons in my high school history teacher’s arsenal. We all looked forward to Tape Tuesdays.
My cat is named after Carl Sagan. Do I win? (Hee!) (She’s named Carina, which is a cop-out, but we couldn’t quite live with “Carla.”)
I also have HUGE love for Contact, the book, which is ponderous and full of lecturing and Mary-Sue-ing, but is so effing awesome to me because the aliens are discovered when they…send a bunch of numbers to earth. No ray guns, no green antennae, no action WHATSOEVER. But if you were hanging around looking at space noise and suddenly a ton of prime numbers were being transmitted…that would be pretty goddamn exciting. A bunch of scientists sit around trying to figure out what the HELL could be the reason for SETI suddenly receiving an unending stream of prime numbers, and it is (to me at least) riveting. I was OBSESSED with that book. And the end, I don’t want to give it away, but math doesn’t usually make me cry.
I ran the SETI@home screensaver for YEARS before they redesigned it and it got unwieldy and didn’t work anymore. Man, I loved that thing. Hopefully I helped find some aliens, someday.
I love you, Carl.
“My cat is named after Carl Sagan. Do I win?”
Belatedly: yes. Yes, you do.