Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980)

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television documentary series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, and presented by Sagan. It premiered on 28 September 1980 on PBS.

The series covers the origin, evolution, and nature of the universe and humanity's place within it, blending scientific exposition with Sagan's personal reflections and a sweeping visual style. It remains one of the most widely watched public television series in history, having been broadcast in over 60 countries and seen by more than 500 million people.

Each episode takes a different theme — from the scale of the cosmos and the evolution of life, to the nature of light, the lives of the stars, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan's narration made abstract scientific concepts accessible without sacrificing rigour.

Watch

Video source: Internet Archive — cosmos_202209 · Select an episode from the panel to begin.

Episodes

Select an episode from the player above. Episodes are listed in broadcast order.

1. The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean — A voyage through the universe introduces the cosmic calendar and the scale of space and time.
2. One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue — The origin of life, the evolution of DNA, and the tree connecting all living things on Earth.
3. The Harmony of the Worlds — Johannes Kepler's discovery of the laws of planetary motion and the music of the spheres.
4. Heaven and Hell — Comets, asteroid impacts, and the greenhouse effect on Venus as a cautionary tale for Earth.
5. Blues for a Red Planet — Mars as imagined and as found by spacecraft; the search for life and the possibility of terraforming.
6. Travellers' Tales — The Voyager missions and what the outer solar system reveals about the history of exploration.
7. The Backbone of Night — The Milky Way seen from a Brooklyn childhood; ancient Greek astronomy and the nature of stars.
8. Journeys in Space and Time — Relativity, time dilation, and what it would mean to travel to the stars.
9. The Lives of the Stars — How stars are born, live, and die — and how they forged the atoms of which we are made.
10. The Edge of Forever — The Big Bang, the nature of time, and speculations on other universes.
11. The Persistence of Memory — The human brain, the evolution of intelligence, and the library as an extension of memory.
12. Encyclopaedia Galactica — The search for extraterrestrial intelligence and what contact with other civilisations might mean.
13. Who Speaks for Earth? — The destruction of the Library of Alexandria; nuclear war and humanity's responsibility for its own future.

Copyright status

The episodes of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage on this page are hosted by the Internet Archive. They are presented here for educational purposes. Carl Sagan's original series aired on PBS in 1980 and is available through the Internet Archive's collection.

References

1. Sagan, Carl (1980). Cosmos. Random House. ISBN 0-394-50294-9.
2. Head, Tom (2006). Conversations with Carl Sagan. University Press of Mississippi.
3. Davidson, Keay (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life. John Wiley & Sons.