Editor’s note– Ann Druyan is an award-winning science communicator. She co-wrote the popular 1980 documentary science series ‘Cosmos: A personal voyage’ with her husband Carl Sagan (1934-1996). She is co-creator, writer and producer of the 2014 ‘Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey’ series, and the 2020 sequel ‘Cosmos: Possible Worlds’ . As a creative director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message Project, Ann Druyan worked on designing messages intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The golden records with the messages, including music and images, were placed on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes, launched in 1977. The space probes are now beyond the outer planets of the Solar system, and are the most distant man-made objects from the earth. Ann Druyan is the CEO of ‘Cosmos Studios’ that produces science-based entertainment. She has an asteroid 4970 Druyan named after her, and has a season 4 of ‘Cosmos’ in mind.
Photo credit: National Geographic
Writer Shubhobroto Ghosh, presents an exclusive interview with Ann Druyan about ‘Cosmos’, Carl Sagan and their links with India.
Shubhobroto Ghosh: How is India featured in the new ‘Cosmos’ with reference to science, technology, culture and history?
Ann Druyan: From the very first season of Cosmos, Carl and I had wanted to tell the story of Ashoka’s stunning transformation from a sadistic murderer to the shining light of humanism. When we were writing this new season and book, some forty years later, our son, Sam Sagan, suggested we tell Ashoka’s story. It is part of the episode/chapter which poses the question: Can we change? From beneath the long shadow cast by environmental destruction and climate change, I think we all wonder if there is something about our species that dooms us. But Cosmos comes from a place of hope — not wishful thinking — but an optimism predicated on a vision of the world where our science and high technology are used with wisdom and foresight.
Shubhobroto Ghosh: Whilst it took 34 years for the ‘Cosmos’ series to be started again, it took only six years to transit from ‘Cosmos 2’ to ‘Cosmos 3.’ What have been the primary objectives of making the third series of ‘Cosmos?’
Ann Druyan: I think Cosmos: Possible Worlds is the season that was inspired by the greatest sense of urgency. It seemed to me that the only future we imagine in popular culture is the ruined nightmare world of dystopia. I wanted to create a dream of the future that was shaped by the wise and humane use of science and high technology. I imagined a civilization capable of taking what the scientists are telling us — both their dire warnings and their stunning revelations about the universe — to heart, so that they have operational consequences. So that we are changed by them. And so in this newest season of Cosmos we are taking a global audience into the future — the near future of the 2039 New York World’s Fair, but also the very distant future of that time when the fleeting grace of the habitable zone moves on from Earth and we have to chart a course for new worlds.
Shubhobroto Ghosh : Have recent political developments in the world influenced the making of the new ‘Cosmos?’
Ann Druyan : Yes, in the United States, during the last three years, scientists have been urged from their government jobs for simply reporting their findings. This ugly and dangerous trend spells trouble. I wanted to remind the world of the achievements made possible by the scientific method. When we turn away from science, we are turning away from reality.
Shubhobroto Ghosh: The previous ‘Cosmos’ series highlighted the contributions of many scientists over the millennia. For example, one principal figure in the past productions of ‘Cosmos’ has been Michael Faraday. Are there any new stories on any scientists in the new ‘Cosmos?’
Ann Druyan: One of the great strengths of the book and the new season are the number of unsung heroes of science I have discovered in the course of my research. There’s the botanist who dared to stand up to one of histories most implacable killers; the forgotten genius who discovered the gravitational assist as a means for our spacecraft to swing from world to world as our ancestors once swung from tree to tree; the 19th century scientist who devised an ingenious way to record the dream of an abandoned child and the scientist who made first contact with a species that uses symbolic language to communicate, and the man who stumbled on a hole in the curtain of classical physics, to discover a universe where its laws do not apply.
Shubhobroto Ghosh: Please tell us something about your new book, ‘Cosmos : Possible Worlds.’ How is the book being promoted along with the television series?
Ann Druyan: The book is for those who wish to know more. In a television hour we can only tell so much of a story before it’s time to move on. I loved the luxury of going deeper into the story in the book and also having the chance to write a more personal version. When writing the show, Brannon Braga and I are writing words for Neil to speak, In the book I get to write in my own voice and to tell something of my own life when it’s relevant to the topic.
Shubhobroto Ghosh: Please do share your thoughts to clear one lingering doubt in the minds of many people, especially academicians. Was Carl Sagan an excellent science communicator or an excellent scientist or both? To this date, some scientists dismiss his scientific contribution based on the fact that he was denied tenure in Harvard and had his membership rejected at the American Association of Advancement of Sciences. There is a counterview to this perception also and the late scientist, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar had supported Carl Sagan’s nomination for membership at the American Advancement of Advancement of Sciences. Many scientists have also stated that the reason behind Carl Sagan’s rejection of the membership of American Association of Advancement of Sciences was based on jealousy rather than any objective merit. Can you please share your thoughts on Carl Sagan as a science communicator versus Carl Sagan the scientist?
Ann Druyan: Carl studied mathematics under the great Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar at the University of Chicago. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. We were honored to have Chandra and Lalitha as guests in our home. I hope to tell Chandra’s remarkable story in a future season. His contributions to science are so numerous as to fill a series of his own.
“I discovered what true mathematical elegance is from Subrahmanyan Chandrashekhar”- Carl Sagan
the demon-haunted world
Carl authored or co-authored some 600 refereed scientific papers. Only those blinded by elitism or snobbery would deny his prodigious excellence as a scientist. Those that do are merely projecting their own feelings of inadequacy or their bias against the citizen scientist who would share the insights of science with the widest possible public. There’s a word for the way the scientific community punishes a truly great scientist for communicating with the public, it’s called the Sagan effect.
Photo credit: National Geographic
Photo credit- National Geographic
The original ‘Cosmos’ series aired in 1980 was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television for ten years. This series was based on Carl Sagan’s best-selling book ‘Cosmos’ which explores cosmic-evolution and the development of science and civilization. The concept of covering major areas of human endeavour in the ‘Cosmos’ series of Carl Sagan is similar to that of the books, ‘Cosmos : A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe,’ written by the German explorer and scientist, Alexander von Humboldt’ published in five volumes between 1845 and 1862. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson presented ‘Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey’ and ‘Cosmos: Possible Worlds’. ‘Cosmos’ is an attempt by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan to make science accessible to the general public, out of the confines of laboratories and technical boundaries of scientists.
Author: Shubhobroto Ghosh is a former journalist with the Telegraph newspaper whose work has also been published in The Statesman, New York Times, The Hindu , Montreal Serai, BBC, Sanctuary Asia, Saevus, Down To Earth and Nature India online. He is the former coordinator of the Indian Zoo Inquiry project sponsored by Zoocheck Canada and has attended the Principles and Practice Training course at Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. He did his Masters thesis on British zoos at the University of Westminster. He has worked at the Wildlife Trust of India, TRAFFIC India and is currently Wildlife Research Manager in India for World Animal Protection. He has contributed to several books, including ‘The Jane Effect’, a biographical tribute to Jane Goodall by Marc Bekoff and Dale Peterson and ‘Indira Gandhi : A Life In Nature’ by Jairam Ramesh. He is the author of the book, ‘Dreaming In Calcutta and Channel Islands’ published in 2015.
Editor: Roopsha Sengupta is the Editor-in-Chief at ClubSciWri. She did her Ph.D. at the Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, and postdoctoral research at the Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, specializing in the field of Epigenetics. During her research, she was involved in many exciting discoveries and had the privilege of working and collaborating with a number of inspiring scientists. As an editor for ClubSciWri, she enjoys working on diverse topics, and loves to explore the confluence between science and art.
Illustrator: Arghya Manna is a comics artist, illustrator, and a Ph.D. dropout. He began his career as a doctoral student at Bose Institute, India. He had been working on Tumor Cell migration in a 3D environment. Along with this, he was an active participant in several projects related to tumor immunology and cancer stem cell. After leaving the lab without bagging the degree Arghya found refuge in art and got involved in drawing comics. He is an enthusiast in History of Science and has been running a blog named “Drawing History of Science”. Arghya wishes to engage the readers of history and science with the amalgamation of images and texts.
Blog design- Roopsha Sengupta
The contents of Club SciWri are the copyright of Ph.D. Career Support Group for STEM PhDs (A US Non-Profit 501(c)3, PhDCSG is an initiative of the alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
The primary aim of this group is to build a NETWORK among scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs). This work by Club SciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
