Cosmos/Tear Jerker

In the last episode, Carl Sagan does his desperate plea to cherish life and to stop nuclear proliferation, which threatens everyone on the planet. This, for those of you keeping score, was filmed in 1980. Sagan was ardently against nuclear weapons, and was even arrested for once breaking through a fence with protesters trying to stop a weapons test. Fast forward ten years later — 1990, right after The Great Politics Mess-Up — when Sagan was filming updates for the series. He talks about how "the impossible has happened" and how old enemies (namely the US and Russia), are now working together. The statement, after decades of fighting against the Cold War and nuclear proliferation, against the constant threat of death and of mutually assured destruction, he simply says "perhaps we have, after all, chosen life".

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