---
title: "Growing up in the Sagan household"
date: "2014-03-17T12:11:04+00:00"
modified: "2014-03-17T12:11:04+00:00"
url: "https://rationalists.org.uk/2014/03/17/growing-up-in-the-sagan-household/"
post_id: 6164
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# Growing up in the Sagan household

Chris Stedman, Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and author of the book *Faitheist*, has a lovely interview on his blog with Nick Sagan, son of Carl and his second wife Linda Salzman.

In the interview, Nick discusses his father’s work and legacy, his thoughts on the new remake of the iconic Cosmos series, and what it was like growing up in the Sagan household. You can read the [full interview on the Religious News Service](http://chrisstedman.religionnews.com/2014/03/16/cosmos-nick-sagan-strange-childhood/), but to give you a taste, here’s NIck on being asked to record a message for extraterrestrials for the famous Voyager space probe gold disk when he was just six years old:

> I had a strange childhood. Looking back, much of it feels deeply surreal. It seemed perfectly ordinary at the time for my parents to plop me down in front of a microphone and ask what I’d want to say to extraterrestrials, should any happen to exist. It’s fair to say I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of what we were doing.
> 
> \[…\] That’s a moment from my childhood, and it’s flying away on two of the farthest spaceships we’ve ever sent, never to return. When you and I are long dead, when the sun has burned out, Voyager will still be careening through endless black. That message is my ghost.

Source: [Religious News Service](http://chrisstedman.religionnews.com/2014/03/16/cosmos-nick-sagan-strange-childhood/).