AS150: Pale Blue Dot, Part 2

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking with your host, Thomas Smith. This is episode 150. That's kind of a milestone, right? Party! Anyway, let's celebrate that very important milestone by getting to part two of Pale Blue Dot. Again, thank you to everyone who participated. It was great, it was fun, and I think it's a really good concept. I'm very excited to continue it. So I guess that's all I have to say. Let's get right back to those segments.

0:01:17 Thomas: My next guest is Jay. Thank you so much for coming on and for being part of the reading club. What's the first part of Pale Blue Dot that you'd like to talk about today? Ah...

0:01:26 Jay: I'd like to talk about the first part of the book, the intro, and I guess the first four chapters where, uh, Carl Sagan, I think, talks a lot about our place in the the cosmos. And, um, of these, I guess, kind of deeply held intuitions and beliefs we have about our place in the cosmos and how they may not, we don't exactly fit into those. Um, um—well, there's a couple quotes I'd like to, to go over That, that kind of encapsulate this, so I won't have to go into too much detail, but just a couple things that I noticed he touched on that a lot of other books and discussions about belief don't go into too much details, but I think are pretty important. Let me just read this one quote.

0:01:55 Thomas: Sure, that sounds great. Sure.

0:02:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:16 Jay: Posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. That's

0:02:29 Thomas: I love it. Well, that's, that's from the, uh, yeah, is that from when he did the pale blue dot, uh, the picture looking back, right? And then

0:02:37 Jay: I think, I think that's what he's referring to is when, when we look at that.

0:02:37 Thomas: Yeah. That entire thing is So great, I love that whole bit he wrote about that, yeah.

0:02:39 Jay: Right. As soon as we get a different perspective ourselves and then our beliefs can change, um, so I think that that says, it says it very well, and he has a way of putting things much better than than most other people.

0:02:54 Thomas: Yeah. I, I think that's particularly good, I, I always, it's, it's hard to not be emotional when you hear that, especially when they played it in the, uh, Cosmos, the new Cosmos series, when they paid that whole thing about the pale blue dot.

0:03:09 Jay: His writing often to me verges on poetry and in the images that he can bring forth.

0:03:09 Thomas: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Good. Stuff, right?

0:03:18 Jay: One other thing that he touched on to, that that's, I think, is very important and influences not just our religious beliefs but all our beliefs, and that's our intuitions. Let me read this quote. Now, he's talking about Einstein's special theory of relativity. He says, its consequences are bizarre, counterintuitive, and grossly contradict common sense, but only at very high speeds. Careful and repeated observations show that his justly celebrated theory is an accurate description of how the world is made. Our common sense intuitions can be mistaken, our preferences don't count, we do not live in a privileged reference, reference frame. Think that's something I've done a lot of reading on and can verify that our common-sense intuitions can very often be mistaken. We have to be very careful of even some of our most deeply held beliefs and examine them to make sure that they actually do sort of of represent the world, the Way.

0:04:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:04:19 Jay: That it is, right?

0:04:20 Thomas: I, that's, uh, that's something that I really have appreciated learning from a lot of these similar books, like Dawkins and and others, that have really taught me about evolution and about how our, uh, our a lot of our instincts are just based in that, you know, in the plasticine, they're not based, they don't make sense, you know, if we're, uh, at a very small, if we're a very, very small, uh, bug or something, we would view forces of nature so much differently and our intuitions would be so much different, and it's really interesting, right?

0:04:40 Jay: Right. Yes. Many of our intuitions, you know, theory is that they developed a long time ago, you know, when we were evolving and for other reasons, but now, you know, other things in the world have kind of taken them over, and we have to be careful and make sure that we realize exactly what the intuitions were originally for and Yeah.

0:05:12 Thomas: Right. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:13 Jay: Another, another strong intuition we have is the tendency to sort of animate and the world. A Quick quote is, some ancient level of our thinking endows inanimate nature with life, passions, and forethought. Thought so from that, you know, and some of these other things, it's a god, then, becomes more sort of intuitive if we think that things are sort of animated, that there's some mind or agency behind them, right?

0:05:21 Thomas: Right, yeah. Yeah.

0:05:44 Thomas: Like we assign kind of a human agency to almost everything, yeah.

0:05:47 Jay: And then again, that's very innate, and that may have come when we were evolving and it helped us to survive, but today that's been kind of taken over by some, some other things too, which, you know, may or may not exist. So, so Yeah, there's a lot of these things that kind of come together, and he went into them in some detail here in the first part of the book, which was, you know, my favorite other thing that goes along with that, if we have intuitions and we think things are animated and there's agency behind them, is also he talks about the illusion of design. Let me read this quote. There is in this universe much of what seems to be designed. Every time we come upon it, we breathe a sigh of relief. We are forever hoping to find, or at least safely deduce, a designer, but instead we repeatedly discover that natural processes, collisional selection of worlds, say, or natural selection of gene pools, or even the convection pattern in a pot of boiling water, can extract order out of chaos and deceive us into deducing purpose where there is none.

0:05:48 Thomas: Right, Interesting, hmm.

0:06:09 Thomas: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

0:06:50 Jay: Yeah, that, that's another, I think, major, um, intuition, if you will, or bias that we have to see design where maybe it actually isn't there, right?

0:07:01 Thomas: I, I think that sometimes I do really just look at some complicated function of our body or something, you know, and just think, man, it is, it is all too easy to just to believe that someone designed it just because of how incredibly complex all the chemical reactions, just everything, and and but it's it's really cool to to see some of the experiments people have done to show just how powerful natural selection can be as a force, you know, when you have something that reproduces and you have some criteria that that makes it so that that only certain, you know, only certain iterations survive. It just is such a powerful force. It can make incredible things really quickly. But, yeah, I totally can see that, though, and I can really have a lot of sympathy for people before Darwin, you know, who thinking that it must be God's design because, man, it's hard to imagine pre-Darwin, you know, somehow nature just coming up with this vast system.

0:07:23 Jay: Yes. Right.

0:08:07 Jay: Uh, certainly the life on earth is very complex, uh, it's certainly anything that's complex seems to imply design, but that's, that's not always the case. I mean, if you have certain elements, certain certain forces. And I think something else that contributes to this illusion of design is the time involved, you know, the millions of years it takes.

0:08:18 Thomas: Right, yeah. Right, right, right.

0:08:28 Jay: And we just cannot conceive of millions of year. You know, we are just, we're just in our little world where we can conceive something as small as maybe a fraction of a second, but not much more than maybe a hundred years or so. But we're talking about vast lengths of time here that go into this. And that, yeah,

0:08:32 Thomas: Totally. Yeah. Right.

0:08:42 Thomas: That's that's a good point. Yeah, it's just so inconceivable, so it's hard to even imagine billions of years, yeah.

0:08:49 Jay: Yeah, yeah, we just cannot, we literally cannot conceive of them, no. Let me finish, one last quote, which to me is the most quoted line from the book, and I had seen it before and didn't realize it was from Pale Blue Dot until I read it. And it just says, better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable.

0:08:52 Thomas: Yeah. Cool. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:11 Jay: And I think that kind of underscores a lot of what he's talking about, about that we we have to face reality the way it is and not the way we want it to be.

0:09:11 Thomas: I recognize it. Yeah, Yeah, uh Danielle pointed out how much time he dedicated, or I guess, uh, how much room on the page he tended to dedicate toward, toward, you know, global warming and ozone layer concerns. And, uh, I think that fits in with that too, not only just in general that quote of, you know, it's better to embrace truth, but I think there that also could be directed toward people who want to conveniently believe that, you know, someone has a plan for the earth, when really it's like, well, we pretty much need to have a plan for the, because that we're the ones who need it, and it's kind of down to us.

0:09:54 Jay: Right. Right, we need a plan soon, based on some of the things that may be happening.

0:09:58 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, all right, well, uh, did you have any other parts

0:10:04 Jay: That was mainly it, I mean, those were just some of the quotes I pulled out, there were so many others, but you know we could we could talk about forever and he does go into a lot more detail on some of these things, but I

0:10:09 Thomas: Yeah. Overall, impression, did you, did you enjoy reading the book? Yeah.

0:10:18 Jay: I did, I especially enjoyed the first part, obviously, and And then I did learn a lot about how we discovered and journeyed to the other planets and bodies in the solar system. But the book was about 20 years old, so some of the things were somewhat dated. And he was talking about things, yeah, unfortunately.

0:10:32 Thomas: It would be nice if he'd write a new one, it would be nice, yeah. Yeah.

0:10:39 Jay: But he talked about things that were going to happen to the future, and the future to him was 1996 and 2003, and those have already happened. Yeah, it would be nice to have maybe somebody could update this.

0:10:45 Thomas: Yeah. True. I wonder, I wonder if anyone has, that's a good question, I mean, and Andrean is still around, maybe she could do it, but yeah, okay. Yeah.

0:10:59 Jay: Right. Or Neil deGrasse Tyson, right?

0:11:02 Thomas: Well, well, he's written his own books, maybe, maybe those will be more appropriate. I really have enjoyed the new Cosmos series, I hope they do another season of that, that's kind of a, I

0:11:04 Jay: Yeah. I thought it was very good, now I'm just curious, did anybody else that you talked to who read Pale Blue Dot say that when they were reading it they were hearing Carl Sagan's voice as they were read it, or am I the only one who did that?

0:11:24 Thomas: You know, I didn't ask, but I bet you that's got to be true, because I do the same thing, especially the parts where, where I recognize the quote, like I cannot help but, let's put it in his voice, yeah.

0:11:24 Jay: Okay. Right. Yeah, as much as possible I could just hear him reading this out, so yeah.

0:11:37 Thomas: Yeah. It's so funny, all right, well, thank you so much, that was great, I, I'm really liking this format, and I can't wait to talk about, uh, the next book, and thank you for taking your time to come on, hey.

0:11:48 Jay: Oh, No problem, yeah, I've, I've been wanting to read that book, so this gave me the excuse to just go ahead and start into it.

0:11:55 Thomas: You and me both, man, yeah.

0:11:56 Jay: Yeah, and it's a long one.

0:12:02 Clip: Hey, everyone. It's me again. Now, I know you've already heard this, but I'm going to do it again. I want to tell you again, you can support the show at zero cost to you, and I would really appreciate that because, you know, I go through a lot to make it, and it would be a really easy, cost-free way for you to support it. If you want to do that, simply go to atheisticallyspeaking.com and click on the Amazon link to the right when you want want to buy something from Amazon, it costs nothing extra for you and a tiny portion goes to me for the show, and it'll be like you're a patron. And, uh, if you don't want it, that's, if that sounds like effort to you, just go on to patreon.com/atheist and sign up for that. But if that doesn't sound like effort, it's a nice free way and we both, we all win. Yay. Uh, also, if you want to just go on iTunes and write a review for the show, that's close, that's that is just about the same. But I don't know, it's like half.

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0:13:09 Thomas: My next guest to talk about Pale Blue Dot is Adrian. How are you doing, Adrian?

0:13:15 Adrian: Very well thanks Tom.

0:13:17 Thomas: And Adrian's been on the show before on the segment that I can't believe I forgot about, Patreon of the Week. I need to, I gotta bring that back. Why, what happened to me? I got distracted. I think it was the wedding.

0:13:32 Thomas: So, uh, Adrian was living in Korea, right? And then, but now you're living somewhere else, which we will talk about later. Adrian and I started talking, and, uh, he's in, it got a kind of an interesting, uh, situation, well, I won't spoil it, but we might talk later, uh, about that. But for now we're going to talk Pale Blue Dot, how did you find the book, did you enjoy it?

0:13:57 Adrian: I actually enjoyed the book quite a bit, because you can look at the book retrospectively since it was made in the 90s, right, and we started to learn a lot more about things like global warming and space exploration. And I think some of the predictions that were made on the space exploration, you can, you can kind of see where that's going now, with a lot of the probes visiting places like Titan and Europa. I thought it was, you know, it's a very optimistic, but at the same time realistic book, so like every time he, he writes something optimistically, he very easily counters himself by saying, like, all of the pitfalls of this kind of, uh, planning for terraforming a planet, for example, or visiting another planet, and I thought that was, I think it was kind of refreshing because you can, you wasn't being too idealistic, right?

0:14:02 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, Okay. That's funny because another guest I had on, uh, thought it was a bit idealistic, but that's interesting, two different interpretations of it there, so you thought he tempered it a bit with kind of, you know, tempered the expectations a little bit?

0:14:56 Adrian: Right. Yeah.

0:15:14 Adrian: I mean, in the book he builds himself up so much, and then very quickly he kind of shuts himself down by saying, like, well, these, you know, if we terraform like this, and it might not work because it's so, so expensive, and you know the, it, the, the chemical reactions on the, on the planet, may not work as well, so I thought that was, yeah, I thought that was kind of refreshing in the book, that he would write so much about, you know, we can go to this planet and maybe this is, though, this is a way that we can form the planet, and then right after he talks about how it can, it might not, it might be quite difficult with the lack of technology, and and the difficulty of transporting all of these materials. So I thought that kind of, quite a refreshing, but the thing that kind of stood out for me a lot, which, you know, you hear, you often hear about, but you don't, they don't really explain in the media the details about it, was this, the idea of CFCs in our

0:15:19 Thomas: Interesting.

0:15:34 Thomas: Yeah. Is That chlorofluorocarbons.

0:16:18 Adrian: Atmosphere.

0:16:19 Thomas: Is that what that is? Yeah.

0:16:20 Adrian: Yeah. Chlorofluorocarbons. It's like an organic material that, you know, in the 1930s it was supposed to be this like miracle, uh, chemical that they, that I think companies like DuPont synthesize that that was, you know, used in refrigeration.

0:16:21 Thomas: Huh.

0:16:34 Thomas: Was it like An aerosol thing?

0:16:38 Adrian: Yeah.

0:16:38 Thomas: Oh, refrigerator, oh, okay, yeah.

0:16:40 Adrian: Aerosols, refrigerators. It's like a propellant, right, that they they were used, and they, and they thought it was good because it was a very stable molecule, it doesn't react very well, so they thought, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a stable molecule, and it's safe, and you know, we haven't seen any negative things happen from it. And in the book, he mentions in the 1970s, two researchers that he said that, you know, their name should be known to every school child, which I thought was really profound that he writes that. You know, he wrote that these two researchers, Frank Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina, they were actually supported by NASA in their research on the effects that CFCs might have in the ozone layer. So they kind of predicted that fluorine and chlorine would be interrupting the ozone molecule in the atmosphere.

0:16:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right.

0:17:45 Adrian: So the chlorine atoms would, you know, kick off, they would be hit, they would be struck by UV rays and they would be kicked off and then they would be forming, uh, with the ozone. So like the ozone would is known as O three, right? That Would be the one, one of the O's would be kicked out and would be replaced. Uh, instead of an oxygen, it would be replaced with the chlorine, and that wouldn't allow more UV rays to so.

0:18:03 Thomas: Yeah. Well, That sounds like CO2, no wait, did you say carbon or chlorine? Oh.

0:18:22 Adrian: Chlorine, chlorine.

0:18:23 Thomas: Chlorine.

0:18:23 Adrian: Yeah. Yeah, so the, so it would be like CLO. CL2. And I thought that was really interesting. When I. When I read that, that their research, that that was funded by NASA, and the only, and the reason why they were able to get this, this research was because the study of chlorine and fluorine was used on Venus. So the probes that they sent to Venus to study the atmosphere in Venus, they got information about chlorine and fluoride, and they were able to apply it to Earth, right? They.

0:18:23 Thomas: Oh okay, yeah right. Right. Right. Yeah. Ah. Oh.

0:19:02 Adrian: Wanted to test a model. So they tested this model, and THEY predicted that there would be ozone depletion based on the, the increasing use of CFCs and in the atmosphere, and what I found interesting is later he writes that the predictions were confirmed, based on, again, the information that NASA had on the chlorine and fluorine, and that the, the these new researchers were able to confirm the predictions that were made by these two, which I read about more and they were, they actually won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

0:19:45 Thomas: Really?

0:19:45 Adrian: Yeah. In 1995 they won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry because of their research that they did on the CFC's, right?

0:19:53 Thomas: Huh, that's. Interesting, because this book was probably, I think the first published date was like '94, I want to. Say, yeah.

0:19:58 Adrian: Just. Yeah, just. Just before, right. And, and it's really, and I think it was really important to know this because their research, and you can see in the way that he introduces the, the chapter, is like, chapter 14, Exploring Other Worlds and Protecting This One, he kind of says how this science, these scientists who, who had, they were just interested in how halogens, right, chlorines, fluorines, work and their, how their chemistry interacts in the atmosphere. Their goal wasn't to find anything like a.

0:19:59 Thomas: Right. Right, right.

0:20:40 Adrian: Breakthrough. Discovery, and that their breakthrough discovery actually launched this massive international cohesion to ban. CFCs.

0:20:40 Thomas: Right.

0:20:52 Thomas: To get rid of CFCs,

0:20:54 Adrian: Yeah, and I think it was within 12, 13 years from the research that was confirmed, right? So in the 1980s, I think 12 years after the research, 1987, there was this huge protocol to ban all CFCs from further development. And I think they managed to implement that. And now, in the 90s, all of the manufacturing of CFCs has been halted. So like, well,

0:20:54 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah! You know, I'm not trying to quiz you. I'm curious, can you talk any more about the, you know, the planetary data, you now, from other planets that helped you? Can you describe that at all more? Or if not, it's okay. I don't want to quiz on specifics or stuff. But I'm wondering, did they think that this happened on other planets? Like some natural uh way of CFCs being produced caused that, or is it just some observations were able to extrapolate that, you know, CFC's would have this effect?

0:22:08 Adrian: They managed to extrapolate that. And part of the thing that, well

0:22:10 Thomas: Okay. Sorry. I was Wondering if they thought aliens were, you know, using too much hairspray with No, but I was learning if there's some, some way that they naturally were produced or something on other planets, or if it. But yeah, so it sounds like it was just based on other data about the atmospheres. They were able to kind of work it out.

0:22:33 Adrian: They actually, not directly but indirectly, Carl Sagan writes a little bit later on that the information from, you know, the Viking mission that he was responsible for sending the probe to Mars. They found that the lack of ozone in a planet like Mars made it very difficult for organic matter to settle because the UV rays would be able to very quickly destroy any organic matter that was present. So they kind of looked at it as the CFCs are a very thing to look at because without our ozone layer, we could very quickly become a planet like Mars, right?

0:23:22 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:23:23 Adrian: Right. When we Lose our ability to stop UV rays, because UV rays, what they do is they, they take a molecule like ozone and they break the bonds, and then the oxygen is able to replenish itself, like, cyclically. But if if you have this chlorine, it it takes the spot of that oxygen. Yeah,

0:23:23 Thomas: Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, okay. And you know what's funny is I remember hearing more about this in the 90s. And you don't really hear about it unless I'm crazy. It doesn't seem like everything's global warming now and there's not much talk about the ozone. Do you feel that way or is it just me? It's kind of weird.

0:24:02 Adrian: I do feel That. But I think part of the reason was that there was such a rapid implementation of banning CFCs that a lot of companies banned from using it. So it was such a quick, right.

0:24:20 Thomas: So there's nothing more we can do, really? Like, that's pretty much, maybe we already did the Band-Aid, and now it's more about global warming. Okay, that makes sense.

0:24:28 Adrian: Yeah, we did it. Yeah. We did it before it, it, got worse basically.

0:24:33 Thomas: Well, that is a really cool success story of science, you know? Because that could have been bad.

0:24:34 Adrian: Cause yeah. And I thought THIS was a really kind of interesting thing to look at because, you know, in the, you often hear about ozone layer and, you you know, the banning of CFCs. But I never really knew the details about this research and how, you know. A simple kind of prediction, an experiment that had nothing to do with seeking out a problem found a problem, right? Like a really bad one that we kind of left floating for 40 years. And after that prediction was made, within 20 years, we very swiftly managed to reverse reverse the problem and and kind of do it on an international level without any kind of controversy you know what I mean like with and I

0:25:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting that global warming is so much more difficult, you know, to get that global kind of consensus and to get everyone moving in the same direction, it seems like. Maybe it's good

0:25:39 Adrian: Think it's oh Yeah, I just wanted to say I think because that was so we had very obvious evidence of it right from space when we were able to to implement seeing the levels of halogens in the atmosphere, we were very quickly able to see that, right? And I think there was a very obvious danger that we prevented because the life of these CFCs range about 20 to 100 years, right, they kind of fluctuate and I think by doing this, they managed to eliminate any future damage that could have been done. So now we're kind of in this reversal phase. And I think within the next few years, they'll be completely eliminated. Because the developed countries had a very quick and swift banning, but in the developing countries, it's kind of more slow. So they wanted to implement that steadily, and they're managing to do that. That I think by now, a lot of it has been eliminated from usage outright.

0:25:40 Thomas: Yeah right yeah yeah I would also say another difference is I think it's a lot easier to simply stop using CFCs than it is with global warming. It's like well we just need to stop doing anything, we just needs to like completely stop moving, everyone has to stay still and turn off all electricity, gas, everything and just stop, it's a little harder

0:27:12 Adrian: Turn off your car, get out and walk.

0:27:13 Thomas: Yeah yeah exactly, so I guess it's little harder, I think it's, I think its a bigger economic impact to, especially in developing countries, to completely cut out fossil fuels and stuff than it is to stop using CFC, so that's probably probably a big part of it too, but that's a really cool success story of science. And I mean I suppose you could argue that science caused that problem in the first place, but you know, what are you gonna do, right?

0:27:42 Adrian: But it's also, I think, a success story of how there can be international cohesion on a scientific issue that kind of transcends petty nationalistic squabbles between countries. And like, okay, this is a problem on Earth, right? Right? This isn't like, there's no borders for this, right? This is like a massive thing that can damage and destroy our planet. And we have to stop it before it becomes completely irreversible. And I think that was, no, they don't care what flag you have.

0:27:52 Thomas: Yeah exactly yeah Halogens don't respect airspace for some reason, yeah it'd

0:28:19 Adrian: And that's the kind of point.

0:28:19 Thomas: Be funny if they did line up like exactly with the borders, borders, countries, I'd be like

0:28:24 Adrian: They just hate one country and love one another more.

0:28:25 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah, that's really cool, well, uh, anything else you wanted to say on that? That was a, that's a really good summary, I like it.

0:28:34 Adrian: I think I've said the most that I can. And I think that the book was a very optimistic book and did have its kind of downsides to certain things. But I found that, ability to, the drive to want to explore is in humans all around. And I thing that's a very important thing that we shouldn't lose sight of. I think it's part of a thing that can really overcome a lot of international squabbles and fighting and war if humans start paying attention to exploring the frontiers of space. I think that can really overcome the limit of Earth, the borders of Earth. Well,

0:29:22 Thomas: I think I think Carl Sagan would have been very disappointed by the state of our space program, at least, I mean, you're not, you're not in the U.S. now, but uh, anyway, I say R, I mean the Royal R or the U.S. space program, I, I mean, I think he would have been pretty disappointed by, yeah.

0:29:38 Adrian: You can, you can tell that he's kind of feeling a bit of disappointment already in the book, right? Like the kind of the, the budgetary failures and the lack of, uh, you know, the, the things that drove us in the 70s, right? Within, what, I think a decade, we sent men on the moon, we had this kind of goal to want to push to them to, to space, and as soon as the cold war ended, it, it's kind of like the, the drive, the drive that got us there was kind of gone, and I think he laments that a bit in the book. And and Neil deGrasse Tyson does too, you know, if you ever listen to him talk about space, it's like, you know, the the dive to explore and be big explorers was mostly political and war-based, right? And economics, and when those things kind of fell, so did our drive to be explorers. Oh

0:30:12 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

0:30:29 Thomas: Yeah, Well, this is a broader topic, but yeah, I agree. And I will say that there's another side of the debate, which is should we ever have really been sending humans into space when we can just send probes and do just as much? And there's kind of an interesting debate there that I've heard Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about. But I think we'll have to leave that for another day. And I want to say thanks for coming on and talking about this book, and I'm glad you enjoyed it, and are you going to be reading the next, which, which book are you reading next for the book club, are you going be reading Steven Pinker book?

0:31:07 Adrian: Yeah, I've already started the Steven Pinker book, it's a pretty, it's, it's actually, you know, the recent shootings, when I'm reading this book I keep reflecting on, you know, that kind of state of America and gun control and violence, and I think this book aligning with that is a very very good read, yeah. All

0:31:26 Thomas: Interesting yeah yeah, Danielle pointed that out as well to me and I was going to comment on that. Well, uh, uh, thanks again, Adrian, and uh, I will talk Talk to you again soon.

0:31:32 Adrian: Right Thank you so much, Tom.

0:31:46 Thomas: Well, there it is. Can you feel it? First Reading Club book in the books.

0:31:52 Thomas: Somewhat coincidentally or something. It's not ironically. What is the word for that? Anyway, in the book somewhat punnily.

0:32:02 Thomas: So that was a lot of fun. I really like that. I hope that we can do something even better for the next book. The next book is a lot more involved, so So we'll have to adjust appropriately. But, you know, I was thinking we really can't cover Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot and not go out with a great speech that was referenced a few times throughout these two shows. So I'm going to play us out with some beautiful Carl Sagan, absolute poetry that I love, his What better way to go out? So here we go.

0:32:36 Clip: From this distant vantage point, the earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering. Thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization. Every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer.

0:33:46 Clip: The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood. Spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings. How eager they are to kill one another. How fervent their hatreds, our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

0:34:49 Clip: It's a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere. To save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit? Yes. Settle? Not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience.

0:35:36 Clip: There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot we've ever known.