In His Final Interview, Carl Sagan Warned That Someone Just Like Trump Could Take Over America

"If we are not able to ask skeptical questions... then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan."

Sincere Skepticism

Beloved astronomer Carl Sagan made a prescient prediction about a populist "charlatan" that seems to have come true decades after his death.

In a 1996 interview with journalist Charlie Rose, filmed just a few months before his death at the end of that year, Sagan stressed the importance of public science education and pointed out that technology was progressing faster than the general public could understand it.

"We've arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces," the late "Cosmos" host said. "I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?"

Positioning scientific institutions and findings as monolithic authorities, as Sagan argued the better part of three decades ago, leaves the populace vulnerable to misinformation.

"If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along," he mused.

 

Universal Science

Though Rose suggested that people might not "want to learn" about science or that its lofty concepts and equations could be too complicated for the average American, Sagan insisted the opposite.

"People read the stock market quotations and financial pages," the scientist pointed out. "Look how complex that is."

"Understanding science is not more difficult than that," Sagan continued. "It does not involve greater intellectual activity."

Two decades after his death from the rare blood disorder myelodysplasia, Sagan's prediction came true. Much of the public has indeed been swayed, repeatedly, by the populist blowhard Donald Trump, whose strongman rhetoric and charisma check the boxes of a political and even pseudo-religious leader.

But beyond that obvious takeaway, Sagan's belief in the intelligence of everyday people, even in the face of the kind of scientific ignorance many scoff at, is inspirational.

As with his groundbreaking series "Cosmos," the astronomer emphasized until the very end that science wasn't supposed to be partitioned off in ivory towers or sterile labs, but to be shared with everyone. Be it 1996 or 2024, that's a message we all should be able to get behind.

More on the politics of science: Experts Find NASA Is in Major Trouble