I think my dad would be thrilled to see how the Planetary Society is carrying on
what he and Lou Friedman and Bruce Murray came up with decades ago.
Welcome.
Thank you so much.
It didn't have those lacy curtains
the last time I was there, I think in my mind, but I know this picture very well.
That leather bomber jacket is so familiar to me.
Do you remember it?
Totally.
Can we show you around?
I would love it.
So much of what you're working on is a continuation of his ideas and hopes as evidenced by the
Johnny Carson clip of the LightSail that plays in the lobby and now it has
come to fruition thanks to the Planetary
Society.
This is sort of a LightSail corner.
Wow.
With a quarter scale model over your head.
Amazing!
Just to have that old footage and just to see that vision at that time.
Yeah, it was a great vision. I mean, now it's a reality it's over our heads right now.
It's amazing!
I certainly remember the Planetary Society from very early on.
I remember coming to the old location
I remember the logo the little pins sometimes were around the house
and the stationary my dad had the logo at the top.
I certainly had a very clear attachment from early on to the Planetary Society.
Wow! Oh, how great. Oh my goodness.
The clothes everything is just so perfect.
I think what brought me to the moment of starting to write For Small Creatures Such As We
is my husband and I started thinking about
starting a family and what would we instill in our children?
what would we celebrate with them? What would we teach them about life and death and where we are?
And what's worthy of celebration? The more we thought about it and talked
about it and the more I did a little research the more I thought this might be a book.
It's a great space it's so cool.
Yeah, hi guys.
The title comes from this idea, it's a quote from the book Contact
that for small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
The more we understand our place in the universe and the more that it's revealed
that nothing revolves around-- I mean the Moon does, but you know--
The Sun doesn't revolve around us, the universe doesn't revolve around us,
we are in an out-of-the-way place in this enormous, vast grandeur that we can barely begin
to wrap our minds around, well then what do we have? We have one another.
And the more deeply that we can feel that and the more we can realize that the
differences between us are so minor and superficial compared to everything else
that could possibly be out there, I think that it really can be a source of a
deep sense of bonding with one another. And the more deeply we can ask difficult
questions, the more deeply we can just look at the evidence and let whatever
doesn't stand up to scrutiny fall away, the more clarity we can have and the more
awe we can have because it's always more astonishing than what we imagined.
