Carl Sagan Writes a Letter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

in Science, Television | April 29th, 2014

sagan letter to tyson

Carl Sagan, the turtle­neck-sport­ing astro­physi­cist from Cor­nell, was the great­est com­mu­ni­ca­tor of sci­ence of his gen­er­a­tion. Not only did he pub­lish hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic papers and was instru­men­tal in putting togeth­er that gold­en record on the Voy­ager space­crafts but he also wrote twen­ty crit­i­cal­ly praised best sell­ers on sci­ence, appeared reg­u­lar­ly on the Tonight Show, and even had a catch phrase — “bil­lions and bil­lions.” But Sagan is per­haps best known for his land­mark 1980 series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age (watch it here). He took view­ers through a tour of the uni­verse, show­ing them things from the mind-bog­gling big to the infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small and every­thing in between. The show proved to be a huge hit; close to a half-bil­lion peo­ple tuned in world­wide.

Even before the reboot of Cos­mos pre­miered on FOX in March, Neil deGrasse Tyson — who hosts the show — was already seen as Sagan’s suc­ces­sor. Not only does he serve as the direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in New York City and was instru­men­tal in kick­ing Plu­to out of the broth­er­hood of plan­ets, but he also authored numer­ous books, appears reg­u­lar­ly on The Dai­ly Show, and fre­quent­ly hosts AMAs on Red­dit. He’s also one of Amer­i­ca’s most vocal defend­ers of sci­ence at a time, unlike Sagan’s hey­day, when Cre­ation­ism, cli­mate change denial, and anti-vac­ci­na­tion hys­te­ria seem to be mak­ing inroads in our cul­ture.

Any­one who saw Tyson’s heart felt trib­ute to Sagan at the begin­ning of the first episode of Cos­mos knows that Sagan’s influ­ence on his younger coun­ter­part extend­ed much fur­ther than his media appear­ances. It was per­son­al. In 1975, Sagan, who was already famous at that time, was so impressed by Tyson’s col­lege appli­ca­tion that he per­son­al­ly reached out to him, hop­ing to con­vince the high school stu­dent to attend Cor­nell. He even offered to per­son­al­ly show Tyson around his lab.

You can read Sagan’s let­ter, dat­ed Novem­ber 12, 1975, below.

Dear Neil:

Thanks for your let­ter and most inter­est­ing resume. I was espe­cial­ly glad to see that, for a career in astron­o­my, you intend to do your under­grad­u­ate work in physics. In this way, you will acquire the essen­tial tools for a wide range of sub­se­quent astro­nom­i­cal endeav­ors.

I would guess from your resume that your inter­ests in astron­o­my are suf­fi­cient­ly deep and your math­e­mat­i­cal and phys­i­cal back­ground suf­fi­cient­ly strong that we could prob­a­bly engage you in real astro­nom­i­cal research dur­ing your under­grad­u­ate career here, if the pos­si­bil­i­ty inter­ests you. For exam­ple, we hope to be bring­ing back to Itha­ca in late cal­en­dar year 1976 an enor­mous array of Viking data on Mars both from the orbiters and from the lan­ders.

I would be delight­ed to meet with you when you vis­it Itha­ca. Please try and give as much advance notice of the date as you can because my trav­el sched­ule is quite hec­tic right now and I real­ly would like to be in Itha­ca when you drop by.

With all good wish­es,

Carl Sagan

Tyson was deeply moved by Sagan’s kind­ness and sin­cer­i­ty. He did ven­ture out to Itha­ca from the Bronx on a snowy after­noon. As Tyson recalled years lat­er, “I thought to myself, who am I? I’m just some high school kid.” In the end, Sagan’s per­son­al plea wasn’t quite enough to con­vince young Tyson to attend his school. As you can read in his response below, dat­ed April 30, 1976, Tyson decid­ed to go to Har­vard.

Dear Prof. Sagan

Thank you for your offer con­cern­ing the Viking Mis­sions. After long thought and deci­sion mak­ing I have cho­sen to attend Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty this Sep­tem­ber. I chose it not sim­ply because of its “valu­able” name but because they have a larg­er astron­o­my depart­ment in addi­tion to the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry, so while I am major­ing in physics I will have more sur­round­ing me in the way of on-going research in astron­o­my.

I want to say that I did enjoy meet­ing you and I am very grate­ful for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty and the time you spent with me while at Cor­nell. I will through­out my under­grad­u­ate years keep you informed on any note­wor­thy news con­cern­ing astron­o­my-relat­ed work that I’m involved in. I do plan to apply again for the Viking Intern­ship next sum­mer.

Thanks again

Neil D. Tyson

You can see Tyson talk about his after­noon with Sagan. 40 years lat­er, he still seems incred­u­lous that it hap­pened.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Orson Welles Tells Some Damn Good Stories in the Orson Welles’ Sketch Book (1955)

in Film, Television | April 21st, 2014

On the first episode of Orson Welles’ Sketch Book, the man who made Cit­i­zen Kane remem­bers an anx­i­ety-induc­ing evening ear­ly in his career: hav­ing some­how already gained a rep­u­ta­tion as an enter­tain­ing after-din­ner speak­er, he found him­self stand­ing before a room­ful of what seemed like every movie star in the flesh that he’d ever seen on the screen. Des­per­ate to impress all these celebri­ties who had so impressed him, he pulled out the only amus­ing sto­ry in his reper­toire, only to real­ize halfway through the telling that he could­n’t remem­ber how it end­ed. Luck­i­ly, one of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s earth­quakes struck just before he reached that for­got­ten end­ing, send­ing the whole Hol­ly­wood crowd out the door and let­ting him off the racon­teur hook. By the time he tells the next tale, of his longer-ago, more stress­ful and much more for­ma­tive debut onstage in front of a decid­ed­ly unco­op­er­a­tive Dublin audi­ence, you’ll won­der why he could­n’t han­dle the after-din­ner speak­ing; if any­one has a nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller’s instinct, he does.

The BBC must have thought so, in any case, when they put togeth­er this series of tele­vi­sion com­men­taries from Welles, none of which need more than his then slight­ly unfa­mil­iar face (with­out, he under­scores, the usu­al false nose he wears for roles), his unmis­tak­able voice, and his illus­tra­tions — tak­en, lit­er­al­ly, from his sketch­book. In these six fif­teen-minute broad­casts, which orig­i­nal­ly aired in 1955, Welles talks about not just the inaus­pi­cious begin­nings of his illus­tri­ous work­ing life but his expe­ri­ences with the crit­ics, the police, John Bar­ry­more and Har­ry Hou­di­ni, the infa­mous radio pro­duc­tion of War of the Worlds (which you can hear in our post for its 75th anniver­sary), and bull­fight­ing (see also our post on his friend­ship with Ernest Hem­ing­way). Though inter­est­ing in and of them­selves, he uses these sub­jects to tie togeth­er a vari­ety of rec­ol­lec­tions and obser­va­tions from his life and career: on the fin­er points of pro­duc­ing Shake­speare with voodoo witch-doc­tors, on media-induced gulli­bil­i­ty, on the inva­sion of pri­va­cy, on the art of line prompt­ing. Not set­tling for sta­tus as a cre­ative genius in film, the­ater, and radio, it seems Welles also laid down the exam­ple for a form that would­n’t actu­al­ly arrive for anoth­er fifty years: vlog­ging.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Remem­bers his Stormy Friend­ship with Ernest Hem­ing­way

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Revis­it Orson Welles’ Icon­ic ‘War of the Worlds’ Broad­cast That Aired 75 Years Ago Today

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

.

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“The Periodic Table of Storytelling” Reveals the Elements of Telling a Good Story

in Chemistry, Design, Film, Television, Writing | April 18th, 2014

periodic table storytelling

Dmitri Mendeleev might have designed the orig­i­nal peri­od­ic table – a graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all the basic build­ing blocks of the uni­verse – but artist James Har­ris has done some­thing way cool with that tem­plate — the Peri­od­ic Table of Sto­ry­telling.

That’s right. Har­ris has tak­en all the tropes, arche­types and clichés found in movies (not to men­tion TV, com­ic books, lit­er­a­ture, video and even pro­fes­sion­al wrestling) and syn­the­sized them into an ele­gant­ly real­ized chart. Instead of group­ing the ele­ments by noble gas­es or met­als, Har­ris has orga­nized them by sto­ry ele­ments — struc­ture, plot devices, hero arche­types. Each ele­ment is linked to a vast wiki that gives def­i­n­i­tions and exam­ples. For instance, if you click on the ele­ment Chk, you’ll go to a page explain­ing the trope of Chekhov’s Gun. And if you click on Neo, you’ll go to the page for, of course, the Cho­sen One.

Below the chart, Har­ris has even cre­at­ed sto­ry mol­e­cules for a few spe­cif­ic movies. Ghost­busters, for exam­ple, is the com­bi­na­tion of an atom con­sist­ing of 5ma (Five Man Band) and Mad (Mad Sci­en­tist) and one con­sist­ing of Iac (Sealed Evil in a Can) and Hil (Hilar­i­ty Ensues).

So if you’re in film school or if you have a copy of Robert McKee’s Sto­ry on your book­shelf or if you’re one of the rough­ly three dozen peo­ple in the Los Ange­les cof­fee shop where I’m writ­ing this arti­cle who are bang­ing out screen­plays, you need to check this table out. But be warned: it will suck away a good chunk of your day.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling

Ira Glass, the Host of This Amer­i­can Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Sto­ry­telling

World’s Small­est Peri­od­ic Table on a Human Hair

“The Peri­od­ic Table Table” — All The Ele­ments in Hand-Carved Wood

Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Watch Episode 1 of Years of Living Dangerously, The New Showtime Series on Climate Change

in Environment, Television | April 12th, 2014

Ever since Al Gore’s An Incon­ve­nient Truth came out to crit­i­cal acco­lades, Con­ser­v­a­tive scorn and a hand­ful of Oscars, there has been no short­age of well mean­ing doc­u­men­taries about the per­ils of cli­mate change. Most fea­ture a Hol­ly­wood celebri­ty or two, a lib­er­al amount of lib­er­al guilt, and a dis­tinct sense of preach­ing to the con­vert­ed.

The new Show­time series Years of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly might have plen­ty of those first two ele­ments but none of the third. In the first episode of the series –which has been released for free on YouTube (above) – Don Chea­dle asks, “Is there a way to dis­cuss cli­mate change with­out pol­i­tics or reli­gion get­ting in the way?” Pro­duc­ers James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger and Jer­ry Wein­traub try valiant­ly to answer that ques­tion in the affir­ma­tive.

The series fea­tures a vari­ety of celebri­ties — Schwarzeneg­ger, Matt Damon, Jes­si­ca Alba – and celebri­ty reporters – Les­ley Stahl, Chris Hayes, Mark Bittman – who inves­ti­gate dif­fer­ent facets of the top­ic.

In Cheadle’s seg­ment, he tracks down an unusu­al fig­ure in the heat­ed, tire­some cli­mate change debate – an Evan­gel­i­cal cli­mate sci­en­tist. In a fas­ci­nat­ing scene, she talks to the devout denizens of Plain­view TX, try­ing to con­vince them that the drought that caused the clos­ing of the local meat­pack­ing plant – the town’s biggest employ­er – was the result of some­thing oth­er than divine will.

Mean­while, New York Times colum­nist Thomas Fried­man traces the ori­gins of the Syr­i­an civ­il war to – you guessed it – cli­mate change. He cross­es into that war torn coun­try (briefly) to dis­cov­er that the seeds of the con­flict were sown by the government’s indif­fer­ent response to a long-run­ning drought.

But the most enter­tain­ing seg­ment is Har­ri­son Ford explor­ing the caus­es of Indonesia’s rapid defor­esta­tion. Appar­ent­ly, palm oil – that anony­mous ingre­di­ent in every­thing from cook­ies to choco­late bars – is such big busi­ness that it’s turn­ing Bor­neo into a burn-scared moon­scape. Who knew?

Ford’s charis­ma and grav­el­ly bari­tone can turn the most inane line — “That’s a lot of cars” – into some­thing with almost Tal­mu­dic pro­fun­di­ty. It makes for some riv­et­ing view­ing. The show ends with Ford chomp­ing at the bit to inter­view Indonesia’s utter­ly cor­rupt Forestry Min­is­ter. That meet­ing, which occurs in a lat­er episode, promis­es to be a 60 Min­utes-style smack­down. You think Mike Wal­lace was daunt­ing? Try Indi­ana Jones.

Years of Liv­ing Dan­ger­ous­ly pre­mieres on Show­time on April 13.

For a more aca­d­e­m­ic intro­duc­tion to this sub­ject, see Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Watch the First Episode of Sil­i­con Val­ley, Mike Judge’s New HBO Series

How Cli­mate Change Is Threat­en­ing Your Dai­ly Cup of Cof­fee

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Free: Watch the First Episode of Silicon Valley, Mike Judge’s New HBO Series

in Technology, Television | April 9th, 2014

Mike Judge’s 1998 movie Office Space struck a nerve with just about any­one who ever wound up in a thank­less low-end white col­lar job. Few movies before or since have been able to artic­u­late the pet­ty indig­ni­ties, the inani­ties and the gen­er­al soul gnaw­ing awful­ness of such gigs. Though the film is far from per­fect, its abun­dance of painful­ly fun­ny jokes along with some emi­nent­ly quotable lines — “Ummm I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomor­row” — have enshrined Office Space into the canon of cult movies.

Six­teen years lat­er, Mike Judge has a new sit­com that aims its satir­i­cal sites on anoth­er white-col­lar ecosys­tem – Sil­i­con Val­ley (the home of Open Cul­ture). The series cen­ters on neb­bish pro­gram­mer Richard who unwit­ting­ly devel­ops a new rev­o­lu­tion­ary way to com­press files. Soon he finds him­self in a bid­ding war between two of the tech world’s biggest entre­pre­neurs. Like Office Space, the fun of the show is its wry, acer­bic obser­va­tions about the rar­i­fied cul­ture of the val­ley.

Just like some apps that offer them­selves for free before mak­ing you pay, the cre­ators of Sil­i­con Val­ley are offer­ing the first episode of the HBO series for free on YouTube. Check it out above. Now if only they would do the same thing for sea­son four of Game of Thrones.

Recent Posts:

The Secret His­to­ry of Sil­i­con Val­ley

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Watch Episode #5 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: Unlocking the Mysteries of Light (US Viewers)

in Astronomy, Science, Television | April 7th, 2014

Episode 5 of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cos­mos series aired last night on Fox. Thanks to Hulu, US view­ers can now watch it online. The episode, called “Hid­ing the Light,” explores the wave the­o­ry of light. It moves across 2000+ years of his­to­ry and even­tu­al­ly gets into the sci­en­tif­ic work of Isaac New­ton, William Her­schel and Joseph von Fraun­hofer, before wind­ing up in mod­ern times and touch­ing on big ques­tions con­tem­plat­ed by astronomers. (For a deep­er dive into this mate­r­i­al, see our col­lec­tion of Free Astron­o­my Cours­es.) If you need to catch up on ear­li­er episodes, you can find them below.

Pre­vi­ous Episodes:

Episode #1: “Stand­ing Up in the Milky Way”

Episode #2: “Some of the Things That Mol­e­cules Do”

Episode #3: “When Knowl­edge Con­quered Fear“

Episode #4: “A Sky Full of Ghosts”

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Watch High Maintenance: A Critically-Acclaimed Web Series About Life & Cannabis

in Film, Life, Television | April 4th, 2014

Web series might have a rep­u­ta­tion for being ama­teur­ish, but that’s not entire­ly fair. High Main­te­nance, cre­at­ed by hus­band and wife team Ben Sin­clair and Kat­ja Blich­feld, for instance, is a high­ly pol­ished web series, fea­tur­ing sub­tle char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, wry humor and some of the tight­est writ­ing this side of Louis C.K.’s series Louie.

Each episode, which gen­er­al­ly runs between five and fif­teen min­utes, is about a new char­ac­ter — gen­er­al­ly a young pro­fes­sion­al Brook­lynite — who is wrestling with life’s small prob­lems. The one com­mon denom­i­na­tor is their name­less put-upon pot deal­er, played by Sin­clair. The show oper­ates on the same world of neu­ro­sis, self-absorp­tion and lone­li­ness as does Louie and Lena Dunham’s Girls. Mar­i­jua­na is the thing that makes their urban woes a lit­tle more palat­able.

Sin­clair recent­ly described his series to the New York­er:

The thing about weed is, we didn’t want to use it as a punch line. Instead, it’s this sub­stance that, like choco­late, caus­es peo­ple to expose their own foibles. Peo­ple become so human in pur­suit of this thing. And the inter­ac­tion they have with the per­son bring­ing it is often trag­ic, because there are a lot of lone­ly peo­ple out there who order it and then that is their human inter­ac­tion for the day.

The sto­ry of each episode hinges on the character’s inter­ac­tion with the deal­er. In the episode titled “Hei­di” (above) – one of my favorites – the deal­er tells a guy that the viva­cious lass he has fall­en for after meet­ing her on OK Cupid has a dark secret.

The episode “Brad Pitts” oper­ates in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent tone. A woman suf­fer­ing from can­cer is feel­ing too nau­se­at­ed to eat until her mid­dle-aged friend calls up Sin­clair. The results are not quite what any­one expect­ed.

In “Rachel,” an author, played by Down­ton Abbey’s Dan Stevens, strug­gles with both cre­ative and iden­ti­ty issues.

And final­ly, “Olivia” is about two of the most awful, tox­ic twits you would ever care to (not) meet:

You can watch all of the episodes here. And at some point this month (prob­a­bly 4/20) three new episodes are slat­ed to pre­miere.

H/T @sheerly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Extols the Virtues of Cannabis (1969)

Alice B. Tok­las Talks About Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Batgirl Fights for Equal Pay in a 1960s Television Ad Supporting The Equal Pay Act

in History, Politics, Television | April 1st, 2014

Fea­tured on the Emi­ly’s List Face­book Page today is this “PSA from the 1960s,” where “Bat­girl advo­cates for equal pay while sav­ing Bat­man and Robin.” Emi­ly’s List, a PAC aim­ing to put more pro-choice Demo­c­rat female can­di­dates into polit­i­cal office, goes on to note, “Over 50 years ago, Con­gress passed the Equal Pay Act, a law designed to end wage dis­crim­i­na­tion against women. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the fight’s still got many rounds left.”

Indeed, a 2008 Cen­sus Bureau report shows that wom­en’s medi­an annu­al earn­ings were 77.5% of men’s earn­ings, and efforts to address that imbal­ance with The Pay­check Fair­ness Act have been fil­i­bus­tered suc­cess­ful­ly by Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate. Although Pres­i­dent Oba­ma sup­ports the mea­sure, data shows women aren’t far­ing well finan­cial­ly in the Oba­ma White House either. Where’s Bat­girl when we need her?

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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