The human stories behind the science: Dava Sobel receives the Cosmos Award

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Science is a human story, and few have told it as beautifully as Dava Sobel. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. 

Dava Sobel, the bestselling author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, and The Glass Universe, has been awarded The Planetary Society's Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science. 

We'll hear from Dava in conversation with Matt Kaplan, the creator of Planetary Radio, and senior communications advisor here at The Planetary Society. We'll revisit her moving acceptance speech, alongside tributes from Bill Nye and Matt Kaplan. 

Then, Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations, joins us. He has an encouraging update on the public's overwhelming response to the proposed NASA Science budget cuts. And as always, we'll wrap things up with What's Up? with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist. He'll drop by to talk science, communication, and share a new random space facts. 

If you love Planetary radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and are place within it. 

Storytelling is essential to exploration. It transforms data into meaning and gives discovery a sense of wonder. It can also turn missions into movements. At The Planetary Society, we believe that science needs storytellers. Those who can communicate not just the facts, but the awe and the struggle, and the joy of the scientific journey. 

To honor the people that truly excel as storytellers in science, The Planetary Society created the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science. Of course, it's named in tribute to The Planetary Society's co-founder, Carl Sagan, and his groundbreaking television series, Cosmos. 

The award recognizes people who, like Carl Sagan, brings science and scientists to life for the public through accurate, imaginative, and emotionally resonant storytelling. The award isn't given annually, but only when people truly deserve it. The first awardee was James Cameron, the filmmaker and deep sea explorer who won the award in 2005. 

Paula Apsell, who you'll also hear a bit about in this episode, was a longtime executive producer of Nova. She won it in 2007. Theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, was honored in 2010. Astrophysicist and science communicator, Neil deGrasse Tyson, received the award in 2015. And most recently, Alan Stern and the New Horizons team won it in 2016 for their storytelling about the mission's Pluto flyby. 

Now in 2025, the Cosmos Award is being presented to Dava Sobel, author of Longitude, Galileo's Daughter, The Glass Universe, The Elements of Marie Curie and so many others. In addition to her best-selling books, Dava has written for publications like The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Scientific American. 

Her Work brings to light the often overlooked human stories behind scientific breakthroughs. Just hours before she received the award in Washington D.C., Dava joined Planetary Radio founder, Matt Kaplan, for a conversation. They spoke about her life's work, her connection to Carl Sagan, and the enduring power of storytelling and science.

Mat Kaplan: Dava, welcome back to Planetary Radio.

Dava Sobel: Thank you.

Mat Kaplan: You are very welcome, and congratulations. I am thrilled to talk to you mere hours before you received The Planetary Society's Cosmos Award, one that I think you richly deserve.

Dava Sobel: Thank you very much.

Mat Kaplan: And what better place to do it than the-

Dava Sobel: The Cosmos Club.

Mat Kaplan: Exactly.

Dava Sobel: Almost too cute.

Mat Kaplan: You are joining one of the most exclusive clubs on our pale blue dot. I'm sure you've seen the complete title of the Cosmos Award, is the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science. Our leadership only selects a Cosmos awardee when they really are confident that they found somebody who absolutely meets that description. That means there hasn't been one, as far as I could tell, in nine years. So it's not often. 

Can you believe that it has been now more than 22 years since you adapted your bestseller, Galileo's Daughter, for that wonderful Planetary Society-sponsored stage performance? Linda Purl, John Rhys-Davies. I went into The Planetary Radio archive, because I hadn't heard that in quite a while, and dug up the interview that I did with you, very brief, informal interview that we did just prior to the performance backstage. And it was there that you said to me among other things, that you were happy to be doing this for the organization that Carl Sagan was a co-founder of because Carl had meant so much to you in setting your course, the directions that you've taken.

Dava Sobel: Yeah, yeah. So in 1972, I went to a public lecture that he gave at Ithaca College. So I was living in Ithaca, he was on the faculty at Cornell. And as my friend Diane Ackerman says at the time, he was not famous, "He was just a badly combed scientist." And he gave a fantastic presentation about looking for other solar systems, planets of other stars and what those would look like. I remember sitting there thinking, "This is about the most interesting thing I've ever heard." And then shortly after that, some of the journalism students from the college, who were now recent alumni, and they had started a little local newspaper called The Ithaca New Times, and they offered me the chance to interview Carl Sagan, and they would pay me $5. But I thought, "Wow, I could get to talk to him." And he agreed to talk to me the same day he turned down an interview with Newsweek. He did things like that. 

So, we had a very good talk. And I had worked at a newspaper, so I went home and wrote my story, and I called him the next day to read it to him over the phone to make sure it was correct, and he really appreciated that. He corrected a thing or two. And then I told him that the science writer's job at the Cornell News Bureau was open and I was supplying for it, and he said, "Oh, would you like me to write you a recommendation?" And that's pretty much how everything happened for me.

Mat Kaplan: And my goodness, you have, I think so honored him and how he felt about the importance of sharing the wonder of it all in all of your work.

Dava Sobel: Well, I remember how he said that he believed that scientists who were funded with public money should give at least 10% of their time toward public explanation of science, but so few scientists could do it as well as he could, and I think a lot of them resented him for it-

Mat Kaplan: Oh, yes.

Dava Sobel: ... and accused him of showmanship. But he was a great presenter. I don't have to tell you, there's an entire generation of astronomers who are astronomers because they watched Cosmos on television.

Mat Kaplan: To say nothing of a Cosmos television series.

Dava Sobel: That's what I mean.

Mat Kaplan: As far as I know, is still inspiring those future astronomers.

Dava Sobel: Right. Because they watched that as children, teenagers and decided that was what they wanted to do. Because I've interviewed so many astronomers, and there's that cohort, that age group, and I always ask them, "What made you want to be an astronomer?" "I watched Cosmos on the television."

Mat Kaplan: I still hear it.

Dava Sobel: The impact was gigantic. It still is.

Mat Kaplan: Yeah. Yes. May it continue.

Dava Sobel: Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: I'm pretty sure that we've talked as each successive book appeared, I was late getting to your latest 2024's, The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. And in past books, you've often written about forgotten or overlooked scientific, or at least in one case, a technological pioneer. This time, it's maybe the most famous female scientist of all time.

Dava Sobel: Definitely, she is.

Mat Kaplan: And yet, you still amazed me with the revelations that they were certainly new to me, they were revealing to me so much about her life and accomplishments. And there is one example that I've been sharing with friends and family, just to say, "Look, there's so much more to this woman than most of us know about today." And that was her act of courage and initiative during World War I. And I won't ask you, I don't think for any other anecdotes, though you are welcome to volunteer some, but this one I will ask you to tell people about, what she did during the war?

Dava Sobel: So her first response to the war was to put together the new field of x-rays, to realize this would be the first war in which it would be possible to x-ray wounded soldiers. And she also knew that this was not a widespread technology, that there would be a lot of doctors unfamiliar with it. 

And she designated herself as a person to create a mobile x-ray unit that she could take to different hospitals around the city, and as close to the front as the army would let her. She personally outfitted 18 of those cars. She rode in one of them with her 17-year-old daughter, who trained as a nurse as soon as the war broke out. 

The two of them went around, and at each place, they had to convince the doctors that this was worth doing, and the doctors were immediate, as soon as they saw what could be done, they were converts. And then they would want her to set up an x-ray facility at this mobile hospital or wherever they were. So she was doing that, too. 

And then, she started a course for French women to become X-ray operators and technicians. And while she was doing all of this, she trained 150 women to do this work. If that was all she did, if she hadn't discovered two elements or everything else and-

Mat Kaplan: And received the Nobel twice.

Dava Sobel: Two Nobel Prizes and two areas of science. But the reason I chose her was because I found out about the other women in her lab, and that was really the story for me.

Mat Kaplan: That is so much what I want to talk to you about here, this theme that runs through most of your work, this exploration of forgotten and overlooked scientists, innovators. In this case, not just the women that she trained to be X-ray machine operators, but also all of these women that she brought into her labs who went on to their own notable achievements in science, including her daughter, one of her two daughters. 

These women in science, who as I said, many went on to make their own notable achievements. I mean, the daughter who went into science eventually winning a Nobel as well, I was completely unaware of. And certainly unaware that she had made it a major goal of her life to bring in these women, and men as well, but particularly women, and allow them to begin to reach their potential, which was an awfully difficult thing for women to do at that time.

Dava Sobel: Yeah. I don't know that she intended to bring them in. My sense is that they were drawn to her because she was so famous so early, and the science was new and interesting, and there were not a lot of places you could go to learn about radioactivity. And if you were a young woman wanting to go into science, you would have a sense that she'd be more likely to let you in. And that was the case.

Mat Kaplan: I did not realize that she... I knew, of course, about her fame, but the notoriety that she got, this tremendous celebrity that she achieved at that time, including in the United States.

Dava Sobel: Oh, absolutely in the United States. Yeah, she was received as a heroine here, as a great humanitarian, because radium was the cure for cancer. So, people were happy to raise money for her, to buy material for her research, to shower her with honorary degrees. It was more than she could tolerate as a not very socially outgoing person.

Mat Kaplan: In her correspondence, she's quite lively and playful much of the time.

Dava Sobel: She was a wonderful writer, a paragon of clarity. Her scientific papers are really, really something to read. She's perfectly clear.

Mat Kaplan: While we're on the topic of, well, I brought it up of correspondence, it plays such an important role in this book. And I have to think also of Galileo's Daughter, where it is the whole basis of the book, the letters between Galileo and his poor sequestered brilliant daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. It's amazing the revelations that you get from these very personal communications.

Dava Sobel: Yeah, so Madam Curie and her two daughters wrote to each other all the time. They were frequently separated by travel or various situations, and they wrote letters and they all saved each other's letters. So, a lot of them have been published in France just as little collections of letters, just as Galileo's Daughter's letters were published in Italy. That was one of my favorites. So I had two collections of letters. One, her letters to both girls, and then there was another collection that was just the older daughter, and Marie.

Mat Kaplan: It's such a marvelous way to reveal someone's interior.

Dava Sobel: It's such a shame that people don't write letters like art anymore.

Mat Kaplan: Yes, you're right. Yeah. I pity the Dava Sobels of the future who tried to emulate this work.

Dava Sobel: Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: I told you recently that long-suffering clockmaker John Harrison-

Dava Sobel: Harrison. Yes. You met Louise Devoy.

Mat Kaplan: I did. The hero of your book, Longitude, which I don't think we got to talk about, but it did inspire me when I was in London to make the trip to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, climb up the hill and go and see his work. Because there are these two mechanical masterpieces, H2, H4. one of them, this thing that looks like a Rube Goldberg device that worked.

Dava Sobel: Yeah, that's H1.

Mat Kaplan: Yeah. And then reduced to the size of a pocket watch. And solved this wonderful challenge that the king had set, but he had a devil of time getting the reward for.

Dava Sobel: Yep. And when that book came out, a number of people told me the same thing would happen today, because he wasn't part of the-

Mat Kaplan: He wasn't in the establishment. Exactly. Yeah.

Dava Sobel: He wasn't educated. He wasn't in the university system. And that's part of why he succeeded, because his thinking was totally original.

Mat Kaplan: And it was a huge challenge. There were ships being lost, running aground all over the planet because they couldn't tell where they were east and west. North and south, not difficult because of the sun. East and west, huge challenge. And the king put up this reward for anybody who could come up with an accurate enough clock, which was key to being able to do all this. Really, it seems like the greatest advance in navigation, perhaps in history, at least until we get to GPS.

Dava Sobel: Yes. And GPS is a marriage of the rival systems from the 18th century, because you have this network of satellites, so they're like man-made stars, and then they're broadcasting time signals on atomic clocks.

Mat Kaplan: Every GPS satellite has an atomic clock built into it. And I hadn't drawn that parallel to the work that Harrison did. Absolutely-

Dava Sobel: Just wish the Board of Longitude could have gotten to judge that idea. They were all long gone.

Mat Kaplan: Who knows who John Harrison was, unless people read your book or otherwise ran across his work? So many of these people, unknown or very little known, underrated, certainly for me, in the case of Madame Curie. The exception may be Copernicus?

Dava Sobel: Galileo.

Mat Kaplan: Galileo, certainly, yes. Right. I keep thinking of Maria Celeste. But with Copernicus, certainly as he was alive and writing down his thoughts, he was not as well known as we know him today.

Dava Sobel: Oh, no. And he was afraid to make the idea public. That's what interested me, was the relationship between Copernicus and the person who convinced him to publish. He had resisted it for decades. 

Originally, I wanted to write a play. That was all I was going to do, this confrontation between this young man from Protestant Germany comes to Catholic Copernicus in Poland and tries to convince him to publish the idea, and manages to do it.

Mat Kaplan: He's quite a character too, the fellow character goes to Copernicus.

Dava Sobel: Yeah. And then he manages to get it published with a dedication to the Pope. I think the whole thing is just-

Mat Kaplan: You can't make it up.

Dava Sobel: You can't make it up. Yeah. And his presence in Copernicus diocese was illegal because all Lutherans had been banned, but somehow they managed to work together for two years. Anyway, it started out as a play and then it became a play within a book.

Mat Kaplan: There is a bit of this relationship between religion and science, more directly, of course, in the story of Galileo, that can be found here and there, I think, in your books. Do you agree?

Dava Sobel: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a factor. It's something Carl Sagan talked about at great length. Yeah, I'm just reporting on it. I didn't have much trouble with that myself. My parents were not religious and very interested in science, so there was no conflict for me. 

I think the big conflict wasn't even a conflict. It was just not recognizing that I was not looking at women scientists with an unbiased eye, so the story of The Glass Universe, the Harvard women.

Mat Kaplan: Yes.

Dava Sobel: So my real theme in the beginning was astronomy. And Harrison was a clockmaker, but that looked like a problem that was going to be solved through astronomy. And actually, in that situation, the astronomers were the bad guys because of the competition. But I chose the Harvard women's story because their work was so important. 

The first time I interviewed Wendy Friedman, she was in charge of a Hubble Telescope key project, and she said, "We're using these stars as distance markers, and this is all based on the work of a woman who lived 100 years ago." So that was my introduction to Henrietta Leavitt. And then when I went to learn more about Henrietta Leavitt, turned she was in this whole room full of women.

Mat Kaplan: Yeah. Literally, a-

Dava Sobel: A room full of women. So I thought, "Well, that's a great story." And then when I started to work on it, I remember I just kept being surprised by what they had done. And I finally had to admit that I really had a very negative attitude about women, which was a revelation, but I think it was partly a product of growing up in the 1950s.

Mat Kaplan: You certainly have made amends for that. And of course, the book you're talking about, The Glass Universe, documenting these amazing women, who in large part, laid the basis for much of what was to come, even including that the universe is expanding and that those little blobs we see out there are not just clouds in our own galaxy, but entire galaxies of their own.

Dava Sobel: Right. That was Henrietta Leavitt's work. That's what enabled Hubble to make that observation. And this year, 2025, is 100 years since his announcement based on her work. And it's also 100 years since Cecilia Payne published her doctoral dissertation, in which she pointed out that the stars, against all expectations, consisted mostly of hydrogen. This was considered a wacko idea, and she was advised not to make too much of it in her thesis, but.

Mat Kaplan: I will, just in passing, I'm sure you know, Hubble, who, of course, did his work at the wonderful 100-inch Telescope on top of Mount Wilson, it's really in fairly recent years that women, female astronomers have been allowed to go and do work of their own using that instrument, which of course now has been surpassed by many others, but it took us so long.

Dava Sobel: There was no place for them to stay.

Mat Kaplan: Yes.

Dava Sobel: In the monastery, I saw the transit of Venus at Mount Wilson, and I got to stay in that building.

Mat Kaplan: In the monastery?

Dava Sobel: Not that it was all that comfortable or wonderful, but what a thrill to just be able to stay there. Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: So much of your books are these marvelous scientific achievements, but also telling the stories, the very personal stories in every one of these books of what these scientists and others went through to make these achievements, to have the careers and make the discoveries that they did.

Dava Sobel: I think people have a very mistaken view of scientists. Most people don't know a scientist. And scientists are so badly presented in the media as weird, antisocial, awkward, uncaring. I don't have to tell you how negative the stereotype is. So that's very much on my mind. These are people actually extremely passionate about what they do, real human beings. And the more of that that comes out, the better.

Mat Kaplan: I have never met a scientist, a good one, who doesn't show that passion. What are our boss, Bill Nye, calls the PB&J, the passion, beauty and joy, the wonder of exploring and examining and understanding the cosmos. Can you say something about your process, how you come up with concepts, stories that you want to turn into a book and then research and do your writing?

Dava Sobel: It's different every time. With Longitude, I went to a symposium at Harvard as a magazine reporter, and it was called The Longitude Symposium. It sounded wonderfully weird, but I had met the organizer and he was a dynamic, interesting, charismatic fellow. He was so excited about this program. I knew it was going to be great. 

I had an awful time convincing anybody to let me write about it because it sounded... What were the rejection letters? It sounded, "Boring, weird, and esoteric." Who turned me down? The New Yorker, even National Geographic. I also have 12 or 13 rejection letters from British publishers telling me that, "The Brits don't want their history from an American." And that turned out not to be true. 

But anyway, I had a lot of trouble. I couldn't sell the idea for the story, even to Harvard Magazine where I was a contributing editor. And then just maybe three days before the meeting started, Harvard Magazine had a change of heart. They called me, "Could you drop everything, come up after all?" And I think it was because they heard that Alistair Cook was the banquet speaker. 

And there were 500 people on the campus did attend it. It was three days, and it was wonderful. It was well-organized. You didn't have to choose. There was just one program to go through and it covered everything, the history, the relevance, the personal story. And then there was a museum exhibit of important timekeepers from the Harvard Collections, Alistair Cook at the banquet. 

So I wrote this article, and then the magazine made it the cover story. If you've gone to Harvard, if you've been a Nieman Fellow, if your kid went to Harvard, you get that magazine forever. So the magazine went to an alumnus who had just taken a new job at a small publishing house in New York, George Gibson. He read the article, and he was thinking of a series of science books for adults who would not identify themselves as being interested in science, which I thought was a great idea. 

And he said, "And this story I think could be the first book in that series. Do you have enough to turn it into a book?" And I did. And then that was the research. Everybody who'd been at the meeting was the person to go to about this or that. So it really came together very quickly. 

So I went to a watch and clock museum in Pennsylvania where I just happened to read this book about Galileo's efforts to solve the longitude problem. And there in the book was a letter from his daughter about the clock and her conduct. And I didn't know Galileo had children or the fact that she was a nun, he was a heretic. The whole thing, it was just explosive. 

And the letter was fantastic. And that book was written by Silvio Bedini, who was a member of the Cosmos Club and who had some connection to the Library of Congress. Anyway, I wrote to him, it turned out he had translated that letter for inclusion in the book, but if I was going to read the other 124 letters of hers, they were still an Italian. 

And I, 30 years previously, had taken three or four years of university-level Italian for no good reason at the time. And if I hadn't done that, I could not have taken on that. I've had a lot of wonderful coincidences. I've been very fortunate. So that's how that idea happened. It grew directly out of Longitude. 

And then if you work on Galileo, you wind up at Copernicus, then the Harvard women, and then the realization that I had this latent misogyny that I wasn't aware of. And I was asked to review a book called Women in Their Element, which was about women chemists, a collection of essays about women chemists by numerous authors. Madam Curie was one, her daughter was another. 

But then there were so many other women I'd never heard of who had passed some time in Madam Curie's lab. Well, that was a story. That was something that I knew nobody knew about Madam Curie. And everybody's heard of her, but most people don't know anything about her. She feels familiar, but her life is so much more wonderful.

Mat Kaplan: So much richer. What a life.

Dava Sobel: What a life. Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: Yeah. These personal stories, which draw me and draw so many people into the books, but you find a balance between that and presenting the science.

Dava Sobel: It's a lot of science in this book.

Mat Kaplan: Yes.

Dava Sobel: Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: And that challenge of finding the right balance is something that I think every science communicator, science storyteller that I have met, and certainly I have struggled with, finding that balance between accessibility and doing justice to the science, giving it the right depth and accuracy as well. Do you struggle with that at times?

Dava Sobel: No. That's one of the few things I don't struggle with. And I'll tell you what works for me, is I've taught science writing, and this is what I tell the students too, which is not to think about the general public because who is that? And I try to keep one person in mind that I am telling the story to, and that answers a lot of questions about how much I have to explain.

Mat Kaplan: You pick a specific person?

Dava Sobel: Specific person. And so I wrote Longitude for my mother. She was still alive then and she navigator. She took courses from the Power Squadron when my father got interested in sailing, and she took me with her because I was little and it was night school. Of course, I didn't pay attention, but I remember that it was that important to her, that she did that. She had a sextant, but I knew she didn't know the history. And it was so much fun to share that story with her. And then she was still alive when the book came out and she got to enjoy that.

Mat Kaplan: What a gift.

Dava Sobel: Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: Your stories have resonated, well with me and with so many people because they're so well told.

Dava Sobel: Thank you.

Mat Kaplan: But at their core, it's so easy to become involved in these personal stories of discovery. Do you think about why these are still so appealing to people in the 21st century?

Dava Sobel: I think everybody can relate to or want to know what that must feel like when you discover something. It's not something that the average person can experience.

Mat Kaplan: We are not far off from the dinner tonight with the Board of The Planetary Society and you receiving the award. I'll cut it off with one more question, and that is whether you ever think about, and whether this in any way it goes into your writing, finding relevance for the challenges we face today in these wonderful examples from history?

Dava Sobel: I think there's always relevance. The most obvious one is that scientists are always having a struggle for funding, for public understanding. That never changes. How they're perceived, how they're treated, I'm always interested in that. 

And at this moment, things look so dark and dreadful. A lot of people are asking, "What can I do?" There aren't many things that I feel I can do, but I can tell these stories. And I don't know how much it helps, but I like to think it does. I hope it does.

Mat Kaplan: I can safely assure you that it helps enormously, because I'm sure that there are a few people up the street here, senators, members of the House of Representatives, and certainly members of their staff who have read your books, and because of that, know the importance of this quest. Certainly, we at The Planetary Society to feel that way, and it's why we feel this honor, the Cosmos Award, is really, I'll say it again, so richly deserved.

Dava Sobel: Well, thank you. It's extremely meaningful to me, especially because of Carl Sagan. I was with them on the filming of Cosmos. I went as a representative from ARCO, who was the funder. So, it just feels very, very close and special and wonderful.

Mat Kaplan: Thank you, Dava.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be right back with the 2025 Cosmos Awards after the short break.

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Sarah Al-Ahmed: Now that you've heard Dava Sobel reflect on her remarkable career, it's time for the moment that we've all been waiting for, the presentation of the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science. Bill Nye, our CEO of The Planetary Society, kicks things off with a few words about Carl Sagan's legacy and the power of storytelling in science. 

Then Matt Kaplan is going to return to share a beautiful tribute to Dava and her impact on generations of readers and explorers. Finally, Dava takes the stage to share a few words about what this award means to her.

Bill Nye: Greetings. Greetings. It's so good to be here. I am honored to be here, honored to be here with our honoree. So, the Cosmos Award was created as I would think of it as an outgrowth of the mission of the society. So The Planetary Society was formed to advance space science at a time when the founders, our beloved Lou Friedman, who's still running around, Bruce Murray, head of the Jet Propulsion Lab at the time, and the Carl Sagan felt that public interest in space exploration was very high, but government supportive was not so high. And the same thing is going on today. 

Carl Sagan is famous for being such a remarkable communicator of science. And The Planetary Society's mission or values are to engage people around the world, that space exploration is for everyone. Space exploration is, if I may, part of the human story. And so, when we have people who can tell stories about space exploration and about the cosmos, that's worth celebrating. So along this line, the Cosmos Award was created. 

We give this award not regularly, only when we feel it's deserved, and when we feel it's important, and when we want the world to know. As Carl Sagan said, many, many times, "When you're in love, you want to tell the world." And so the awardees of the Cosmos Award are people that are in love with science. We're in love with scientific knowledge and the process of science, and how space exploration especially brings out the best in us. 

So it is my honor, everyone, to read our declaration from the Board of Directors. Whereas The Planetary Society established the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science to honor individuals, who in the tradition of co-founder Carl Sagan, inspire public engagement with science through accurate, imaginative, and compelling storyteller. 

And whereas Dava Sobel has made significant contributions to science communication through her bestselling books and articles, bringing the history and human stories of scientific discovery to a global audience with clarity, elegance, and insight. 

And whereas her work exemplifies the values of intellectual curiosity, accuracy, and accessibility that are central to the Cosmos Award, and her impact on public understanding of science reflects the very spirit in which the award was created. 

Now therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Directors of The Planetary Society hereby recognizes Dava Sobel as the 2025 recipient of the Cosmos Award for Outstanding Public Presentation of Science, this the 30th day of May 2025. I'm going to introduce my colleague and long time friend. Perhaps you recognize Matt Kaplan from Planetary Radio. Ladies gentlemen, Matt Kaplan.

Mat Kaplan: It is my profound honor to be part of presenting this award to Dava Sobel, whose remarkable contributions science writing have enlightened and inspired millions around the world. I am among her biggest fans. I first encountered Dava now it's 22 and a half years ago. How many of you were lucky enough to be at the Pasadena Playhouse when Linda Purl and John Rhys-Davies and your board colleague, Robert Picardo, who directed them, brought Galileo's Daughter to life, which was based on, of course, her Pulitzer Prize finalist book, Galileo's Daughter, which you excerpted to put together the script for that performance? 

I was excited to catch Dava for a few precious moments shortly before the performance. It was a backstage conversation. And she has since been, was my guest on Planetary Radio for nearly every book as it came out, and every time it was utterly charming. I recently read and loved Dava's latest, The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. We got to talk a little bit about this and other things when I interviewed her a few hours ago today. 

Marie Curie once stated that, "In science we should be interested in phenomena, not individuals." And that's fine if you're a scientist, to focus on objective observation rather than the observer. There's wisdom in this approach. In separating the human element from the pursuit of natural laws, the ones that run the cosmos. It has shaped so much of scientific discourse and progress throughout history, but Dava's not a scientist, and she has shown us the incompleteness of that perspective. 

Through works like Galileo's Daughter, Longitude, The Glass Universe, she has demonstrated that science is not merely a collection of discoveries, but a deeply human enterprise that is filled with passion, struggle, wonder, and perseverance. She transformed, with Longitude, what might have seemed a dry technical challenge, determining east-west position at sea, into a captivating human drama. 

The story of this guy, John Harrison, the chronometer maker, wasn't just about the mechanics of building a clock, but about his lifelong struggle against skepticism, institutional resistance, and the limitations of his era. Through Dava's eyes, we witness not just the solution to a scientific puzzle, but the triumph of human ingenuity and determination. 

Similarly, in Galileo's Daughter, Dava revealed this astronomer as not merely a scientific revolutionary, but as a father whose correspondence with his daughter, this secluded, sequestered, poverty-stricken nun, Sister Maria Celeste. He revealed, in his correspondence with her, his doubts, his joys, his humanity. Those Galilean moons of Jupiter and so much more are made so much richer when we understand the individual who observed them and the price he paid for his discoveries. 

I think that what makes Dava's work extraordinary is her understanding that scientific breakthroughs don't emerge from cold mechanical minds, but from the dreams, ambitions, and curiosities of real people navigating real constraints. She has shown us that to fully appreciate discovery, innovation, and exploration, we must understand the human context from which these emerge. That while scientific truths may be universal, the path to discovering them is intensely personal, and shaped by the unique perspectives of those who seek them. In short, she reminds us that science is not a sterile laboratory or a robot crossing space, but a human adventure. 

Dava, you have also shown us that science and wonder have never been the exclusive provinces of men, though demonstrating this truth can still be a struggle. Marie Curie faced and largely overcame profound challenges, elevating scores of brilliant, dedicated women of science. It's sad to think, when you consider that, we still need to be reminded of this, but you have shown us how uplifting and rewarding this struggle can be. 

Your work stands as testament to the power of storytelling in science. You have shown us that the universe is explained not just through equations and experiments, but through human stories. And you've made distant historical figures breathe again, allowing us to see science through their eyes and feel their wonder. I feel like I've accompanied you on these journeys. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dava Sobel, historian, journalist, masterful chronicler of the human spirit and its quest to understand the cosmos. For illuminating the human dimensions of scientific discovery, for your meticulous research, and for your remarkable writing gifts, you have earned the Cosmos Award, a small token of our appreciation for the worlds you have opened to your readers. Thank you.

Dava Sobel: I won't be here for long, but I would like to say a few things. Longitude began as a project that sounded weird, esoteric. And people would ask me what I was working on, and I would say, "I'm writing a book about how the problem of finding position at sea was solved." People would just look down, just didn't know what to say. And my son, who was about 10:00 at the time, would ask me, "Do you really think anybody's going to read this?" And I used to say, "Well, my mother, a small circle of friends." And then we had this extraordinary experience of this book just becoming a phenomenon. This award is especially meaningful to me because I really did know Carl Sagan. I should say I met him and had interaction with him on many occasions. And I even had a little job on the filming of Cosmos. 

And the one other experience I want to share with you, Paula Apsell is a former winner, Paula did a production of Longitude for Nova. And then there was also a television version of Galileo's Daughter, which was called Galileo's Battle for the Heavens. And unbeknownst to me, this television production got nominated for an Emmy. So I thought, "Oh, that's nice, but I just forgot all about it." And then some months later, I got a frantic phone call, "Was I in New York and did I have a dress?" The Emmys were that night, and I was actually in California at a DPS meeting, and I had my son with me. So this is the same boy who wanted to know if anybody would read Longitude. And then we won. And Paula felt so guilty that they gave me the statue. I have the Emmy. 

But it was a wonderful teaching moment because I said to my son, "Just hope that whatever you do in life, you really enjoy it in the small moments of the day, because now you see, when it comes time for the big celebration, they could forget to invite you." So, I'm really happy to be at this celebration, just extremely validating, and I'm so grateful. Thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: As Dava Sobel reminded us, science has always struggled for support and understanding. And in moments like this, that struggle feels especially urgent. During the awards ceremony, Bill Nye spoke about the importance of public engagement in protecting the future of exploration. 

Now we turn to Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations, for a quick update on the latest developments in US space policy. The president's recent budget request proposes a huge cut to NASA's science programs, threatening to cancel and delay 41 missions across the agency. 

Thankfully, Jack has some wonderful news about the public response to our international petition and how you can still help keep science moving forward. Hey, Jack.

Jack Kiraly: Hey, Sarah. How's it going?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Pretty good. So I wanted to take a moment to ask you how our petition went, because it's an international petition. This is something we don't do very often, and the deadline is now closed, so hopefully we have some good news to share with people.

Jack Kiraly: Oh, we don't just have good news, Sarah. We have great news. So just as a little refresher, in response to the skinny budget, which was really the big top line numbers, really, that showed that science was going to get cut tremendously by 47% in the president's budget request. When that came out in early May, we began mobilizing our supporters. We've already had a banner year for advocacy. 

And so with this petition, we launched this because we wanted to give people all over the world an opportunity to voice their displeasure with this radical shift in space policy that would decimate space science at NASA. And we wanted to give a voice to the public in this process, and boy did people deliver. 

Our initial goal was 1,000 signatures. We hit that within the first 30 hours of the petition being live. And so we upped the ante, and we had to keep upping the ante, to right now, which I just submitted this to the Senate Appropriations Committee, 20,787 signatories from around the world signed this petition. 

The deadline was June 12th. That was informed by this appropriations process that happens on The Hill in less than a month. In less than a month, 20,000, almost 21,000 people signed the petition. We allowed them to provide some commentary, to provide a space for people to offer their thoughts. 

And I was expecting maybe 10% of people might take advantage of that. It's almost everybody wrote something to talk about what NASA Science means to them. And just some of the sentiments were, "That this is what leads the world, that this is something that engages students, that this is something that inspires technological innovation and scientific discovery."It's just a trove of great sentiments about what science means to the global public. And in addition to that, almost 17% of signatories that were international represented 109 countries.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Wow,

Jack Kiraly: 109. There's not that many countries, right? There's less than 200, and we have represented over half of them. The international public delivered. Almost 21,000 signatures, it's truly amazing, and I'm really grateful for everyone that signed this petition.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And I'm sure there are people who are listening to this right now who are like, "Oh, no, I had no idea there was a petition. I missed the deadline. I would still love to stick up for NASA Science." What are the next steps for this, and what can people still do?

Jack Kiraly: So right now, this petition has been submitted to the Appropriations Committee. They offer what is called outside witness testimony, which allows outside organizations to provide input as a part of the appropriations process. And so, this petition and the signatories have been submitted, but this is not the end of the dialogue. Really, the release of the budget request is just the beginning of the conversation about NASA's budget next year. 

And so, head on over to our action hub, planetary.org/save-NASA-science, and you can see all of the updates about things happening as a part of this process, find opportunities to advocate and support the NASA Science programs. All the other ways that you can support this effort to save NASA Science, bookmark it, make it your home page. That's where you need to go to find this information about what to do next.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, thank you for all the work that you're doing, and thank you to everybody out there who signed our petition, and everyone that is standing with us to try to save NASA Science. Thanks for giving us some good news this week, Jack.

Jack Kiraly: Yep. Hey, we need it, so I'm happy to be able to provide that. Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Now, it's time to check in with Dr. Bruce Betts for What's Up? Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We have a new Cosmos Award winner.

Bruce Betts: Yay.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, I've never met Dava Sobel, but I do hear that you got to meet her at some point.

Bruce Betts: Very briefly, yes. At a reading we had way back when for her Galileo's Daughter book. We had well known people doing a reading from it. So yeah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. I was a big fan of The Glass Universe. Anytime someone writes a book about the Harvard computers, I always read it. How many of the Cosmos Award winners have you actually met?

Bruce Betts: Three. So I guess about 50%.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Which ones? Obviously, Dava.

Bruce Betts: Yes, and Alan Stern and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Science communication was something that Carl Sagan, our co-founder, believed in very heavily. And I think in a lot of ways, the way we communicate about these space missions really changes the way that they're supported, and sometimes even designed. 

So, I wanted to ask you how you feel about that. Do you think the way that we communicate about these things actually makes real-world impacts on the way that we actually go about space exploration?

Bruce Betts: Yes, although typically for the big stuff, it's not a big driver. Typically, it's not a significant driver. However, once you have a mission trying to communicate it, both the missions, the entities involved, people like The Planetary Society, that's really, really important in getting the word out there. And sometimes things are involved early on. We've succeeded in getting small portions of missions devoted to public outreach. 

And obviously, there are other things that others have done. Back to the Golden Record Voyager, we've flown various artifacts on various missions, including the surface of Mars for educational and outreach purposes. So, we think it's important, and I certainly think it's important. And the communicating, getting people involved, engaged as much as you can, and then just putting the word out in an interesting way that's understandable and inspiring is what I like to do. 

I try to throw in a little bad humor as well. Sometimes it's good. And The Planetary Society works on all sorts of levels doing this with people like you, and our many other people who work in trying to get out there and get people engaged and inspired and working on these things. I guess that's all, to summary to say, well, yes, Sarah, yes, I'm a fan, I'm a supporter.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, if anybody out there is listening and you're someone that also communicates science, thanks for doing your part to try to shape the way that people feel about space and teach these stories, and share just the joy of all these things that we love. If you make it accessible enough, you can bring a lot of people in. And that's how we spread the word of the awesomeness of space.

Bruce Betts: Well said.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Hear, hear.

Bruce Betts: Communicator.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So what do you got from me, Bruce?

Bruce Betts: I've got a random spoof. [inaudible 00:58:43].

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, man. Someone totally just scratched your record. Just [inaudible 00:58:46].

Bruce Betts: Yeah, I know. I had trouble. Yeah, it was kind of a wild party back in the day with the records. Anyway, stars, what do you think, Sarah? Do you think the sun is... It's pretty massive.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's pretty big.

Bruce Betts: There's a lot of stuff. There are much bigger stars, as I'm sure you are quite, quite familiar with. Some of the largest can be somewhere about 200 solar masses, and that's when they're in their active burning stage before they do anything even crazier. That's impressive. And then the red dwarfs get all small and can be like 8% of the sun's mass. 

So, there's a lot of variety out there, which is easy to lose track of if you're just focused on our solar system, but there are some seriously... I mean, the sun's already unimaginably large, at least to my imagination. I can try to picture it, but it's so huge. And then the fact that you have these other things that are so massive and huge, it's an amazing universe we have, Sarah. Thank you for that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's so true though. I don't know. You can try to know how big the sun is and how tiny it is compared to other objects, but I really like watching those scaling videos, or going to a science museum where they actually show the scale of stars versus each other. Because once you realize just how tiny our sun is, it's actually kind of horrifying in a cool way.

Bruce Betts: Yeah. Although most of the stars are on the small side, but-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's true.

Bruce Betts: ... those big ones, phew, don't cross them.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But live fast, die young. They burn out a lot faster than other ones. They pay the price for their awesomeness.

Bruce Betts: They do indeed, as they have much shorter lifespans being normal stars before they burn out. And they burn much hotter, and they're much bluer as a result. And then those red dwarfs, they just chill at some hot temperature for humans, but cool for stars, and hang around for tens of billions in life in the universe kind of things, just sitting there burning some hydrogen going, "Yeah, this is cool. Oh my God, look at that dude over there. He's so hot."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: All right, let's check this out.

Bruce Betts: All right, everybody, go out there, look in the night sky and think about marshmallows. Thank you. Good night.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio T-shirts at planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. 

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Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreier is the host of our monthly space policy edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. And until next week, ad astra.