January 29, 2018 7:03 pm

Tuesday, Carolyn Porco, Sean Ono Lennon, Maeve Higgins, and Emer Reynolds Look Back on Voyager 1 (Repeat)

This week on StarTalk All-Stars we’re revisiting our episode about one of the greatest achievements of space travel – Voyager 1. To celebrate properly, “Madame Saturn” Carolyn Porco sits down with Sean Ono Lennon, comic co-host Maeve Higgins, and filmmaker Emer Reynolds.

Emer’s latest film, The Farthest, documents the creation, launch, and impact of Voyager 1. The film is now streaming on Netflix and the trailer can be found here.

You’ll hear about the surprises and difficulties Emer encountered during her filmmaking process, including raising funds, cutting material, and more. You can tell that this was a passion project for Emer and it’s interesting to compare that to Carolyn’s experience describing her efforts on the Voyager missions, including working with Carl Sagan. Both creative journeys were deeply emotional and it’s fascinating to hear about the experience from the sources directly.

After that, Sean tries to come up with a way to crowdsource music for a new Golden Record, while Maeve warns that the voting process could be hijacked by a certain fan following. I think it still would be an interesting experiment given the wide range of music and different population densities around the world. The biggest benefit from a worldwide voting process would probably be people discovering great world music they’ve never heard before.

Voyager was audacious when it launched in 1977. It was unpredictable if the mission was going to be impactful. I’m 23 years old and in my living room I have a framed print of the “Pale Blue Dot” photo. It’s a photograph that gives me constant inspiration and reminds me to think from a different viewpoint. Looking back, I think it’s even more incredible that something so audacious in its beginning can still be impacting lives today, over 40 years after launch.

Please join us tomorrow night for Celebrating Voyager 1, with Carolyn Porco (Repeat) at 7pm ET right here on our website, as well as on our All-Stars channels on Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and TuneIn. If you’re an All-Access subscriber, you can listen to this episode ad-free at 7pm, too.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Ian Mullen