‘Cosmos’ — with Ann Druyan and Neil deGrasse Tyson — is back more than three decades of the debut of the first show/ Credit: Patrick Eccelsine/FOX
Do you remember the TV show “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage”? It’s been 34 years, so you might have forgotten. But now the show is back with 13 brand new episodes.
For the next 13 Sundays, astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson will try to teach us more about science and the universe in “Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey,” on FOX. Ann Druyan will be writing, producing and directing the series, as she did with the first show over 30 years ago. She’s the widow of astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who hosted the original show back in the ’80s.
And there couldn’t be a better time for a comeback, both Tyson and Druyan agree. With popular shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and “CSI”‘ and movies like “Gravity,” Tyson is sure that people will show interest in this show.
“There is an unserved hunger — an unserved curiosity for the world around us that manifests it in several ways,” says Tyson.“Among them, I don’t even understand why, but I have 1.7 million Twitter followers. Every day I want to remind them and say, ‘Do you realize I’m an astrophysicist? Do you know what you’re doing here?’”
The show is a way to bring science into the living rooms of Americans in an easy and accessible way — making it down-to-earth, so to speak.
“I believe we are a story-driven species and that we understand how things are put together in the context of narrative,” says Druyan. “I think it’s a shame that science hasn’t been taught that way in a long time.”
“Carl Sagan always used to say that when he was trying to explain something to someone, he would go back to that time when he didn’t understand it and then he would retrace his thought steps so that he could make it absolutely clear, and that’s what I learned,” she adds. “I found that it was easiest to convey the information in the context of the life of the scientist or in the context of our own personal experience.”
One subject the show will look into is intelligent life in places other than Earth.
“That’s one of the most compelling subjects in science and you know, we’ve only been going at this scientifically for about 70 years, so we’re still very new to this subject as a species,” says Druyan.“We may be living at that moment, on the cusp, when we go from being a species that feels a kind of loneliness in the cosmos to actually one sometime in the not too distant future being able to confirm the existence of other intelligent life.”
Tune in March 9th at 9 p.m. on 21st Century Fox’s channels, including Fox, National Geographic Channel, FX and more. On Mondays, the show will re-air on the National Geographic Channel with bonus footage.
With a little help from their friends
Funnyman Seth MacFarlane is one of the reasons why this show is back. He was big fan of the original show, and after he learned that Ann Druyan and Neil deGrasse Tyson were looking to do a new season, he helped them present the idea to 21st Century Fox, who gave the green light to the project.
