It’s been a long time coming, but here is the re-release of the new-and-improved version of To The Sky: Carl Sagan discusses the double-edged sword that is technological progress.

This one-hour TV special featuring Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and many others, aired on August 27, 1989 on TBS SuperStation to commemorate Voyager 2’s rendezvous with Neptune. Check it out, if only for the totally rad late-80s soundtrack that accompanies Sagan’s segments!

As an aside, why aren’t scientific discoveries lauded on national television like they once were? Might we once again see prime-time TV devoted to scientific discoveries like they were in Sagan’s day?

Thanks for the question! Here’s the answer via Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Death):

“After a long and difficult fight with myelodysplasia, which included three bone marrow transplants, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, on December 20, 1996. He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.”

For legal reasons, I am unfortunately unable to host the videos anywhere other than YouTube. Sorry about that!

For those of you who may have missed it, here is a wonderful video made by AJ Salas featuring the ever-so brilliant Neil deGrasse Tyson. 

Thanks for the submission, AJ:

Hello!

I just wanted to share a video I did over the weekend regarding scientific literacy and NASA (narrated by Tyson). Hope you folks like it, thank you for all the work you do to make science-education mainstream. 

-AJ

Thanks for the kind words! And sorry for the late reply

Thank you for the kind words! I’m working on getting the downloads section back online, including adding the newer videos. Stay tuned!

Thanks for the question! I’m working on getting the audio downloads section back up and running, including the newer episodes, ASAP. Thanks for your patience!

Have you ever wondered how Carl Sagan came to incorporate time travel into his novel Contact, which would later become a movie sharing the same name? Well Carl Sagan and Kip Thorne have the answer for you in these excerpts from a 1996 BBC Horizon special: The Time Lords.

Have you ever wondered how or why birds migrate such immense distances? For our best answers to those questions and so much more, check out this episode of The Method, a weekly science magazine television show brilliantly produced by a group of journalism students at Toronto’s Ryerson University.

Scaling Heaven was the first of my Carl Sagan videos to fall victim to copyright claims. Here is the new and re-worked version!

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” -Carl Sagan

This quotation provided the inspiration for the latest episode of the Carl Sagan Tribute Series, which makes a strong case for the Penny4NASA movement. What incredible discoveries could we make with some minor adjustments to our funding priorities? Watch and find out.

What do you get when you combine the musical genius of Kenley Kristofferson, physics, the Vancouver Chamber Choir, and musica intima? See for yourself.

Here’s what Kenley had to say about this beautiful piece:

It’s called ‘We Are Stars’ and it’s about where complex chemistry comes from - turns out it’s inside stars. Everything that isn’t hydrogen, helium or lithium is made inside those little pinholes in the veil of night, then seeded into the universe when it supernovas.

That’s where iron comes from, and calcium, and oxygen, and nitrogen… the stuff of matter and the stuff of life!

The music is rich and beautiful because the idea itself is rich and beautiful. Let’s use the beauty found in art to reflect the beauty found in science, teaching those who sing the words not only to make it lush, but to deeply connect with the meaning and ideas involved in the text. Let’s not just teach to performance, but let’s teach to understanding. Let’s use the arts to teach the sciences.

I am truly humbled to have been quoted in Brandon Fibbs’ wonderful new video, “Shock and Awe”, in which he explores the question: Why is it that, after denouncing religion, some atheists come to feel an even greater feeling of awe and wonder at the universe? Brandon lent his wonderful narration to convey my answer to this question:

“For me, my friend Callum summed it up best when he said that as a theist, he had ‘very little appreciation for life, no understanding of how truly lucky I am to be alive. After all, life was eternal. Now I understand that my existence occupies only a blink of the eye in cosmic time. I’ll live, hopefully, for 80 or 90 years. Then my consciousness will cease, and my atoms return to the universe from which they came. Knowing that my time on this splendid planet is limited, I can finally appreciate how wonderfully lucky I am. If you believe in eternal life, you cannot truly comprehend how fortunate we are to be alive’.”

(Quotation at 3:45, but watch the whole video - especially the ending, simply incredible!)