The Books That Shaped My Childhood

Your Carl Sagan meeting and how it affected your view of how to treat the young kids coming up made my heart so happy.

Hey Neil, it’s inspiring to see how your curiosity has grown into something that sparks curiosity in all of us. You’re an incredible science communicator!

There is no greater gift than to instill the love of reading.

I once read "Reading is a flight simulator for life."

It’s kinda crazy how easy it is now to read these old books, you can find so many of them for free through libraries or online. Wasn’t this simple back then

I miss the person of Dr. Carl Sagan greatly! He was so perfect at explaining the complexities of the universe to lay people. Thank you for continuing in his footsteps. And let's us hope one of your students, or someone you have met and influenced continues after you. Let this cycle of Education of the mind continue on.

This has to instantly be one of my favorite videos from you. I always wonder what shapes people into who they become and what their support system looked like in their formative years. It’s further proof that our environments and exposure to what’s beyond our current worldview helps us to build on what we didn’t know we needed to see or what was already there. Powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing!

What a cool moment in your life with Carl Sagan! Thanks for sharing that, and bringing it forward to new generations of aspiring scientists.

Wonderful video. Thank you. I read Gulliver's Travels while in college studying engineering. Swift's satire was eye opening. One part I found particularly amusing and which offers lessons for today was the description of a king and his retinue of flappers. The flappers carried poles with a paddle at one end which covered (or uncovered) the king's eyes and ears thus controlling what information the king saw and heard. And if the flappers were powerful enough they also had flappers attending them and those flappers had flappers and so on. Sounds very much like today.

I can listen to neil talk about science and space damn near all day. As someone who is scientifically ignorant, i appreciate his method of explaining things simplisticly. I had the pleasure of watching one of His talks live in chicago a few year ago with my husband. Such a magnificent person & mind.