MonitoRadio Conversations; #67; Carl Sagan [1985-10-01]

Good evening, I'm Lisa Taylor, producer of Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. Tonight is show number 67 for October 1st, 1985. Segment times are as follows, number 1, 1, 10, segment number 2, 7, 0, 3, segment number 3, 6, 46, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 5, 45 seconds. The promo is 32 seconds long. The following times are based on a running show time and they denote when each commercial break starts and are based on a two -minute commercial break time. Commercial break number 1 starts at 1, 10, commercial break number 2 starts at 10, 13, commercial break number 3 starts at 18, 59, and commercial break number 4 starts at 27, 15. The promos will start about 10 seconds after the end of the show feed. There will be five promos on each night starting to night, five stations, and each station please pull off your own promo to be used the following day for that night's

show. The show will start in about one minute and head of, have a good evening. The show will start at 1, 10, commercial break number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4, 6, 16, segment number 4 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 5, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 5, 6, segment number 4, 6 , segment number 4, 6, segment number 4 , 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4, 6, segment number 4 , 6 , segment number 8 This is Conversations with the Christian

Science Monitor, your host, Bob McDonne. Welcome to the program. My guest tonight almost needs no introduction. Dr. Carl Sagan, who most of us know as the host of the Emmy Award -winning TV series Cosmos, is the most popular science writer in the world. The book Cosmos, he wrote as a companion to the TV series, has sold over 1 million copies. Throughout his professional career, Dr. Sagan has been deeply involved with spacecraft exploration of the planets and the radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Tonight, we're going to be talking about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence as we discuss his new book and first novel titled Contact. It's about humanity's first encounter with other intelligence in the universe. Dr. Sagan is the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Studies at Cornell University, where he also serves as director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies at the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research. In addition to all of that, Dr. Sagan is the co -founder and president of the Planetary Society. Please stay with us. I'll be

back with Dr. Carl Sagan right after this. This is Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. I'd like to welcome my guest this evening, Dr. Carl Sagan. Carl, welcome to the program. Thank you very much, Bob. Carl, among your many titles and awards, is the president of the Planetary Society. And I was reading in a recent issue of the Society's magazine, The Planetary Report, that the 1980s may well become known in history as the decade of SET or SETI, which stands for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Why is that? Well, in one way or another, for all of human history, people have wondered, are we alone, are there other intelligent beings in the sky? You can see it reflected in the myth and folklore and religion. But this is the first time when we have the actual capability to find out. There's no guarantee, of course. We can now

use large radio telescopes and extremely sensitive detectors to see if anyone on a planet of another star is sending us a message. The Planetary Society has been able to support and finance what is by far the most sophisticated search for such radio signals from space ever attempted, done at Harvard University with the person in charge is a professor of physics and a remarkably clever instrumental designer in Paul Harowitz, and certainly we will spend years or decades on it, but we have a chance of finding out. And the search is underway now to this moment. You know, I was reading that you prepared an international SETI petition, which has been signed by scientists all around the world. Just briefly, what was that petition and what did it say? It essentially said that the time for

debating on whether they are there or they're not there is over that the technological means of finding out are at hand and we ought to get on with the search. And one of the wonderful things about this is how inexpensive it is. It's a tribute to progress in the art of microelectronics among other things. Could you give me an example? Well, we have just upgraded the system from 128 ,000 channels, 128 ,000 separate stations, if you wish to think of it that way. That you could pick up simultaneously, to 8 .4 million. And the cost of that upgrading is $100 ,000, which was - That's it? Just 100? That's it. Contributed, incidentally, all of it to the planetary society by Hollywood producer and director, Steven Spielberg. So something very nice about the public is interested in extra -trust your life. It sees movies such as ET

and then Mr. Spielberg gives back to the science that motivated him in the first place. Some of the money to really do the search. It's something awfully nice about that. And the continuing support for the program is part of the contribution by members of this Pasadena -based planetary society. My guest is distinguished astronomer, Dr. Carl Sagan. Well, Carl, let's get to your new book. It's your first novel and it's called Contact. And you've been so successful with nonfiction books. As I mentioned at the top of the show that Cosmos is sold, for instance, over a million copies. Why did you choose to write a novel about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence? Well, first of all, there are people who read novels who don't read the nonfiction. And I wanted to get across to as large an audience as possible this extraordinary possibility before us. But beyond that, the freedom of the novel permits me not only to talk about the science, but to get into the hearts and the minds of the scientists involved. I don't see much in

fiction about how scientists think and how passionate they are about their subject. And this was a good opportunity to do that. Also to set the search in a political and social and even religious context. And I just thought it was a wonderful challenge to try to do all that together. What's the premise of the book? The premise of the book is that after a long and arduous and disappointing set of years in which there's no signal, one eventually arrives. And it has to be, first of all, you have to authenticate it. Make sure it's not some mistake, some hoax, some natural astronomical radio source that you didn't know about before. Then once it's clear that this is a signal from an intelligence out there, question is, what does it mean? What are they telling us? What should our response be? How does human society respond? What are the implications for politics and for international relations

and for religion and for science? And that's a wonderful opportunity to talk about all the subjects. And then in the book, the extraterrestrials in the message are asking us to do something. And the question is, should we do it or not? And then what happens? Do you think we're prepared for a message? No. But I don't think it's going to be, if we get such a message, I think it will be how to say a character building experience for the human species. I think there are great many aspects of our lives that we simply do not scrutinize, that we assume that the conventional wisdom is true. Well, how would an event like this affect our character? What do you foresee? Imagine, never mind anything about the content of the message. Just imagine the receipt of a message from another civilization, which is clearly in advance of us. There is a kind of humility, which I think would follow in the face of that. Also, a

message intended for the planet Earth, not for anyone nation, they don't even know about nations. Nations to them are some minor and time dependent, that is short -lived aspect of the way things are in the Earth. The message is to all the people on the planet. Well, it's, I think, much harder to sustain a kind of international tension when the differences that divide us on the Earth are trivial, compared to the differences between any of us and any of those guys up there. That's what I mean. There's a kind of cosmic perspective that I think is tremendously beneficial once you get it. You also get that perspective from simply being in Earth orbit and looking down on the Earth, which is something else I try to do in contact to portray, to do a verbal portrait of what that would be like and what it would feel like to do that. Let's pause right here. I'll be back with Dr. Carl Sagan right after this.

Welcome back. My guess this evening is distinguished astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan, and we're talking about his new book. In first novel, it's titled Contact. Carl, are you convinced that it's only a matter of time before we do get proof of intelligent life in the universe? Well, no. I, of course, cannot be sure until it, until it happens. Maybe even then, I won't be sure. Maybe even then, I'd be skeptical. But all I can say is this is such a rich and deep and significant question. How unique are we? Are we alone? That it's worth expending some modest resources that's all it takes to do it. If we succeed, we've hit the cosmic jackpot, and it represents a complete transformation of human history, I believe. But suppose we fail. If we fail, we've learned something of

the rarity and preciousness of at least our kind of communicative life. And that is also something very much worth knowing. It says something about about how we have to take care of each other, because there may be no one else out there to do so. The reason I asked was there is a definite debate among some of the characters in the book about the existence of life. And I was wondering if that debate mirrored a debate going on in the scientific community today. It mirrors a debate which at least used to go on in the scientific community, in which it was argued, well, maybe things that happened around here happened very similarly elsewhere. Maybe we're very rare or the first planet to have intelligence emerge upon it. But that is a fundamentally sterile debate. The all you want to accomplish by such a discussion is to see that it is not wholly implausible that there might be intelligent life else,

where once you've established that, then the only way to decide it is experimentally, you don't make up your mind before the evidence is in, you wait until the evidence is in, and then make up your mind. The hero of your book is Dr. Eleanor Arrowway. And I was wondering why did you choose to have a woman as the hero of contact? Well, there are many reasons. First of all, since more than 50 % of the people on the planet are female, just statistically it's more likely that than anybody would be. But it's author. No, it's author. I liked the idea of the trouble to describe the trouble that women have in science as in most other professions, against a kind of obdurate entrenched male resistance. I thought that was a very good counterpoint to the issue of contact between humans and extraterrestrials, the issue of contact in the broadest possible sense between men and women. There are other such themes I tried to talk about the contact between humans and animals

in the book as another subsidiary theme to give a sense of it because it may be that the difference between us and extraterrestrials is greater than the difference between the ants and us. But a woman seemed a very nice way to do it, and also I was greatly influenced in the writing of this book by my wife and Drian and all the best parts of... In what way were you in front? Our always character come from Annie. Well, I'm very fond of my wife. I'm in love with her. I think she's a remarkable person both in terms of integrity and strength of character, a sense of humor, and living with Annie, it's sort of natural that I would want to focus some of that into interfiction, if I'm writing fiction. It sort of happened without me ever questioning whether it was the right thing to do it. I don't claim that this is a great novel, but I hope it's pretty good, and I think a lot of the good parts of it come from having had the

experience of living with Annie. I'm talking with distinguished astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan about his new novel. It's called Contact. You know, one of the things you write about in the book, and you paint a wonderful picture of Eleanor Eroway as a child developing her curiosity and her desire to understand thing, which kind of builds a foundation for her career, which takes up the rest of the book. How is that similar to the experience that you went through? Were you writing from your own experience there? Some of it certainly was. Some of it was from Annie's experience. A little of it was from my perception of our two and a half year old daughter. Of course, that only takes her up to two and a half, but there was some of that. But the influence, the powerful influence of childhood experiences on career choices and view of the world later on, I think, is true for everybody. But for many people, there's somehow a sense of we don't begin considering the person until they're all grown up,

I think the formative years are absolutely essential in understanding anybody's character. The novel is set in the near future, and I was wondering, did you create a future that you actually think is going to come to pass, or did you create one that you needed to satisfy the needs of the story? There are many possible futures, all of which are within our ability to realize or not. And I merely tried to outline one of a wide range of possible futures, some of which are benign and some of which are ghastly. I think we are at a real crossroads in human history right now. Carl, what were the basic assumptions that you took as given for the view of the future that you chose to portray? Well, one is that as the millennium approaches, you know, the year 2001, there will be, as there was in the approach to the year 1000, a great deal of religious fervor and even mania. I also take as a given

that the United States and the Soviet Union have reconciled some of their differences in that there is a major build -down, deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals, a kind of uneasy rapprochement between the two countries, and that there is a significant further advances in science, and I try to wrap these up to show what would happen when contact with extraterrestrial intelligence is established. Let's pause right here. I'll be back with Dr. Carl Sagan right after this. This is Bob McDonald and you're listening to conversations with the Christian Science Monitor. My guest is Dr. Carl Sagan and we've been talking about his new book and first novel, Contact. Carl, when you were making Cosmos, did you think that it was going to make you the celebrity that you are today?

No. My motivation in Cosmos was essentially this. We had sent some extraordinary spacecraft to the other planets, especially Viking Tamars, and the media, especially television, didn't seem much interested. Here we had thousands of close -up pictures from another world and nobody wanted to see them, so I thought we would just do our own television program to show people what's out there. That's how it evolved. That of a sense of frustration with the commercial networks. Have you taken it as a kind of personal mission to get news from the scientific community into the broader public's knowledge or consciousness, as you might say? When you're passionately interested in something and you know that everybody else is really interested in it, but they don't have access to it, you want to communicate it just out of your own excitement and love for the subject. That's the way it's evolved. Did you know that you were going to become the most impersonated scientist in

the country, the famous Billions and Billions, which I never said. You never said that at all? I never said that. Johnny Carson said that, but no, I talked about hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy and billions of other galaxies, but I never said billions and billions. It's an exaggeration. No, but anyway, I had no idea that that would be one of the many interesting consequences of Cosmos. Who does your favorite Dr. Carl Sagan? I've only seen Johnny Carson's and that just a snatch of it, so I can't give a consumer's guide to the imitations. I've only have one product to examine. Now, what do you think of all the notoriety and the recognition that you have now today? What's your response to it? About any notoriety. Oh, come on. People know your name. You've been on TV. Johnny Carson and a person at you on the tonight show and you have a new book out with a big promotional campaign that's touting you as the best, what was it? I think it's the best writer to combine scientific vision

and storytelling powers and HD wells. Well, I didn't write that stuff, but my sense is that that I would like to communicate what science is, is about and I'm happy to use a variety of different media to do it, nonfiction, fiction, television, this radio program, for example. I think it's in a good cause. I think it helps science because science is supported by public funds. If the public doesn't know what the money is being used for, why should they continue to support it? And I think it's it's good for everybody. I think we are a natural, born scientist and somehow the schools and the societies cut off people's interest in science. And I think that's that's a bad thing. We live in a technological age. Our survival depends on understanding science and technology better. So those are my main motivations. I'm talking to Dr. Carl Sagan about his new novel contact. Carl, what surprised you most about writing a fiction book after all the nonfiction writing that you've been doing for years? The

other authors have said this, but I had read it and simply put it aside. I was astonished to find that the characters took on lives of their own. Every what way? Well, for example, my hero, heroin, Eleanor, our way, for reasons of plot. I had imagined her falling in love with with one guy and that was it. But and I wrote it that way. But the only way I can describe what happened next is she didn't like him. It didn't make sense. And I had the sense of her finding serious flaws with him. And in retrospect, she was absolutely right. You see, phrasing it this way, it sounds a little daft. But only because other authors have said this. Also, do I think that you're not alone in this? And even at the time of the Greeks, people talked about the muse, sort of goddess of creativity or something sitting next to you, and telling you what to say. It feels very much like that. I'm awakened in the middle of the night with sort of instructions from my characters about what to

write down about them. And to me, a lot of it feels like just being the intermediary between the characters in the written page, printed page. Now, I know that's not what's happening, but what this really is is a communication between my unconscious mind and the printed page. But it's a wonderful experience to see it happen. What do you learn from writing the book? Well, lots of things that I learned. One was, if you're going to try, however unsuccessfully, to put down human, human character. You have to look at your fellow humans with a certain, from a certain point of view, which I think is a very good way to just go through life. You have to pay attention to what their motivations are, what they came from, what their history is. Well, I don't think I've been awfully, just in my personal life, awfully great at that in years past. And it's helped me in the research. You find yourself being more sensitive than... Yeah, absolutely. It's

been a wonderful experience that. And another one is that my wife, Andrienne, who helped me enormously with this book, I learned an enormous amount from her in the writing of the book. And that I felt was very good. I would recommend it to anybody. The book doesn't have to be published. Just the writing of a novel is a very good experience. Carl, thank you very much for being with me tonight on Conversations. It was a pleasure to be with you, Bob. Thank you. I'll be back with a preview of Tomorrow Night Show right after this. That's it for this edition of Conversations. Join me again tomorrow night when I'll be discussing the debate over comparable worth. Efforts are being made around the US to eliminate the dollar gap between female dominated and male dominated jobs requiring comparable skills. My guess will be Claudia Wayne, Executive Director of the National Committee for Pay Equity and Juno Neal, Director of the Program of Policy

Research on Women and Families at the Urban Institute. Thanks for listening. This is your host Bob McDonald. Have a good night. This has been Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor, produced in Boston, Massachusetts, and is a copyrighted broadcast. Hi, this is Bob McDonald. Join me tonight for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor when I'll be discussing the hotly debated issue of comparable worth. My guess will be Claudia Wayne, Executive Director of the National Committee for Pay Equity and Juno Neal, Director of the Program of Policy Research on Women and Families at the Urban Institute. I hope you can join us. Hi, this

is Bob McDonald. Join me tonight for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor when I'll be discussing the hotly debated issue of comparable worth. My guess will be Claudia Wayne, Executive Director of the National Committee for Pay Equity and Juno Neal, Director of the Program of Policy Research on Women and Families at the Urban Institute. I hope you can join us. Tune in tonight at 11 .30 for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor on WOR710AM. Hi, this is Bob McDonald. Join me tonight for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor when I'll be discussing the hotly debated issue of comparable worth. My guess will be Claudia Wayne, Executive Director of the National Committee for Pay Equity and Juno Neal, Director of the Program of Policy Research on Women and Families at the Urban Institute. I hope you can join us. Tune in tonight at 10 .30 for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor on

WNIB 97 .1M. Hi, this is Bob McDonald. Join me tonight for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor when I'll be discussing the hotly debated issue of comparable worth. My guess will be Claudia Wayne, Executive Director of the National Committee for Pay Equity and Juno Neal, Director of the Program of Policy Research on Women and Families at the Urban Institute. I hope you can join us. Tune in tonight at 9 .30 for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor on KIEV 870AM. Hi, this is Bob McDonald.

Join me tonight for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor when I'll be discussing the hotly debated issue of comparable worth. My guess will be Claudia Wayne, Executive Director of the National Committee for Pay Equity and Juno Neal, Director of the Program of Policy Research on Women and Families at the Urban Institute. I hope you can join us. Tune in tonight at 8 .30 and 11 .30 for Conversations with the Christian Science Monitor on KXLR 1260AM.