Books: A Personal Voyage…

I saw this the other night and just had to share. It's from Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, a thirteen-part TV series by the science-writer and astronomer Carl Sagan, originally broadcast in 1980 but recently re-mastered and re-released as a gorgeous DVD box-set. I couldn't recommend the series - or the book that accompanies it - highly enough if I had a thousand years and all the adjectives in all the languages of the world at my disposal. It's a fascinating, inspiring and deeply poetic voyage of discovery through life, the universe and everything.

This clip is from an episode called 'The Persistence of Memory' (other episodes have such titles as 'One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue', 'The Backbone of Night' and 'The Edge of Forever') which looks at intelligence and the evolution of the brain. Luckily, some kind soul had posted it on YouTube. I apologise for the quality - but only of the picture!