The Golden Record

This is Love - Vox Media Podcast Network

The episode explores the creation of the Golden Record aboard NASA's Voyager spacecraft, a message of human culture and emotion launched in 1977. It centers on Anne Driehan and Carl Sagan’s collaboration, blending science, art, and love. The record, carrying music, sounds, and images, was designed as a hopeful testament to humanity’s beauty and fragility. Decades later, it remains a symbol of conn

Key takeaways

• The Golden Record was a profound act of hope and cultural preservation.
• Anne Driehan and Carl Sagan saw the project as a sacred, love-driven mission.
• It included sounds of Earth, music, and greetings to represent humanity’s diversity and emotion.

Transcript preview

In 1977, for only a few months, the planets would line up in a configuration that only happens every 176 years. An alignment that would allow a spacecraft to pass by the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and then to leave our solar system. short window to send us images and data from so far away. They were called The Voyagers. After their mission was complete and their transmitters had died, they would still be out there. The most distant objects made by humans, continuing on their way for millions and maybe billions of years. The astronomer Carl Sagan was asked to create a message to put on their way for millions and billions of years. The astronomer Carl Sagan was asked to create a message to put on board the on the tiny chance that it might be found one day. A greeting and a portrait of Earth and of us. He asked a writer named Anne Driehan to help him make it. Anne was 27 and she just published her first novel. She'd met Carl years before at a dinner party hosted by Nora Ephron. And when he asked you to be part of the project, did you immediately say yes? There was no hesitation on my part, you know, because frankly, my mother gave me a deep sense of how this is your one and only life and, you know, seize the day. And so when Carl proposed this project to me, I kind of felt like this is what my life had been leading up to you. And it was, you know, I took it as a really a sacred undertaking from the first mention of it to create my first response was a Noah's Ark of human culture because at the time we were just beginning to understand climate change, but moreover, at the time, the whole planet was in a hostage drama. there were some 60,000 nuclear weapons on hair triggers. And so we were profoundly cognizant that this could even be a last will and testament because of it's, because it would last so long and because the life of the Earthlings was so tenuous at that point. So our inspiration was to say, let's convey to the putative extraterrestrial of our imagination, something of just the great joy and romance of life in the cosmos on this little tiny world to convey what it was like to be gloriously alive in the spring of 1977. I'm Phoebe Judge and this is love. The message would be encoded onto two copper phonograph records plated with gold, one for each of the voyagers. They would come with a needle to play the records and instructions about how to do it, written and symbols. Each of these golden records could contain a little less than two hours of sound and around a hundred images, and would last for more than a billion years. How do we even begin to start thinking about what ideas and what you want to convey? The first thing I thought of was the things that I really wanted to include. And years before, a very dear friend of mine had taken me to a friend's apartment so he could play a single record. And it was the vague Quartets recording of the Cabotina, a movement of one of Beethoven's late Quartets. And he played it for me on this turntable. This was like 1970, maybe 71. And he played it for me on this turntable. This was like 1970, maybe 71. And he played it for me on this turntable. first thing I thought when it was done was how can I ever repay Beethoven for this music? This is what he's given me, how he's made me feel. And so the very first thing I thought of when Carl mentioned that we could put music on the record was, this is my chance to repay Beethoven. And so the very first thing I thought of when Carl mentioned that we could put music on the record was, this is my chance to repay Beethoven. And so it was more like that that when he first mentioned it was like my I thought, oh, what are we going to put on this record? I immediately started having ideas, too many ideas at once, about what we could do. And it was absolutely, it was thrilling. How long did you have to work on it? We only had six months and it was great six months. It was, you know, every day I would wake up and I would wake up and I know. really had this conscious feeling that I was in a dream because it was a chance to save so much beauty and I couldn't think of a better gig really. Anne says it felt like a race to finish in time and that she remembers lying awake at night thinking what if we leave out something truly important. Carl Sagan was the project director, Anne was the creative director. Timothy Ferris, who was an editor at Rolling Stone, and also Anne's fiance, was the producer. Linda Salzman Sagan, Carl's then wife, gathered the greetings they planned to put on the record. John Lomberg, who was an artist, worked on gathering images to include in the message. And Frank Drake, who was an astrophysicist, was responsible for figuring out how those images could be encoded onto the record and for designing the record cover which included a star map with our son at the center. It must have been a great weight thinking about the responsibility of choosing what would be included. Absolutely and in our deliberations some of which went all night long that was constantly on my mind and I think on theirs. We knew we wanted to to have pictures and music. And I think I, as you know, in that first conversation said, well, you know, what about what about the breeze coming through the trees on a summer day and what about bird song and what about, you know, Carl kind of lit up and and then I began to think about how since when I was a kid we listened to the radio. That was one of our primary means of communication. And then because it was on the radio, the pictures had to appear in your mind. It wasn't that you were watching TV. So I asked Carl, how about a sound essay? Utilizing sound, give more information about us. And he loved that idea. And he loved that idea. And he loved that idea. And he said, go do it and I was give 12 minutes of the record and that was a nice big piece to be able to really create something. And then, you know, at the very beginning and I don't know who said this first but we immediately were thinking about greetings, you know, how to introduce ourselves. Were there things you decided not to include? Yes, the big question that hung over. the project while we were doing it was are we going to just put our best foot forward or are we going to convey something of our cruelty our brutality to each other are we going to show that mountain of baby shoes at Auschwitz you know how comprehensive and how honest how truthful is this message to these extra And Carl's belief and something that we all came to agree with in a, you know, very deeply was he said, you know, when I meet someone, I don't, at first, I don't tell them the first thing my deepest resentments about my childhood, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't tell them, the first thing my deepest resentments about my childhood, you know, I don't, I don't bad mouth the people in my family or anything like that that because it would