Carl Sagan, in my opinion, was one of the best science communicators of all time. In this video clip, he is on The Tonight Show in 1978 when Johnny Carson was the moderator. In the section I've marked below, Carson asks him about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, an endeavour
Ricky Gervais is the answer to the question: can a comedian be a science communicator? In this episode of physicist Lawrence Krauss' The Origins Podcast, Krauss talks to award-winning British comedian Ricky Gervais. Gervais gained fame as the creator of The Office, and went on to make people laugh (and
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. Carl Sagan's famous passage about Earth, our Pale Blue Dot, in his book with the same name, is probably
In this interview, AI researcher and podcaster Lex Fridman interviews Richard Dawkins. They cover a wide range of topics, from pondering if we live in a simulation to memes. Watch the video of the interview here Expectedly, with Dawkins, religion and morality come up. Dawkins argues that we shouldn't base
In this report produced in 1973 by the Yorkshire public television, Richard Feynman talks about the importance of original ideas. Another topic that comes up is simplicity. According to Feynman, nature is usually much simpler than our thoughts. Therefore, when trying to explain phenomena, we tend to overcomplicate things. Often,
Christopher Hitchens died over ten years ago in late 2011. This conversation between Richard Dawkins and Hitchens was recorded in October 2011 by Dawkins, however it was only released by him earlier this year. He had thought that he had lost it, but luckily rediscovered it. This is Hitchens' last
Welcome to the first issue of The Cassandra Dispatch! The simple idea behind this newsletter is that I pick and send one video every two weeks that features a speech or discussion by a great science communicator like Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins and others. The “accessible” part is important -