Cosmic Collision
My UFO Debate with Carl Sagan
40 years ago, after doing a ‘live’ half-hour show with Carl Sagan about Voyager II’s Saturn flyby, we debated UFO reality in a PBS parking lot. It was a close encounter I’ll never forget.
Okay, on one level, I get it. Dr. Carl Sagan was a very cool guy. He was a renowned astronomer and astrophysicist, popular around the entire planet. He appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and was practically a regular. That show taped in Burbank in the late afternoon which afforded him the chance to watch himself at 11:30 at night on tape delay and maybe smoke a bowl or two while doing it.
That’s right, we now know that Sagan had a thing about marijuana. He was a lifetime user, thought it enhanced his work, and advocated weed’s legalization. It would be freaking great if this story was about the two of us bonging into the night and talking about aliens. This isn’t that story.
This story is the one that really happened. The one where Carl Sagan and I stood in the PBS parking lot after taping a show together and argued about UFOs.
