Episode
Cosmos: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Overview
An exploration of human potential for change, concluding with the story of one of history's greatest monster and his virtuous transformation.
Details
- Series
- Cosmos
- Season
- Season 2
- Episode
- Episode 11
- Air date
- 2020-04-13
- Runtime
- 43 min
Episode context
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is Episode 11 in Possible Worlds of Cosmos. It aired on 2020-04-13. The runtime is 43 min.
Previous / Next
Episode 10: A Tale of Two Atoms
How a deadly embrace between science and state altered the fate of the world, and a gripping cautionary tale of mass casualty and unlikely survival.
Episode 12: Coming of Age In The Anthropocene
A baby is born on the day the show premieres. What kind of world can she expect to grow up in? One of her possible futures is explored.
More episodes from this season
Episode 9: Magic Without Lies
Meet the man who stumbled on a hole in the reality of quantum mechanics and the still-unfolding technology that made it possible.
Episode 13: Seven Wonders of The New World
Take a trip to the 2039 New York World’s Fair, where the problems we now consider hopeless have been solved and thrilling possibilities exist.
Episode 8: The Sacrifice of Cassini
The mysterious untold story of the scientist who figured out how to go the Moon while fighting for his life in a WWI trench. He wrote a letter to fifty years in the future. It made the Apollo Mission possible. And the saga of the twenty-year long odyssey of a robotic explorer ordered to commit suicide on another world.
Episode 7: The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth
A revelation of the hidden underground network that is a collaboration of four kingdoms of life, and a true first contact story between humans and beings who communicate in a symbolic language and have maintained a representative democracy for many tens of millions of years.
Episode 6: The Man of a Trillion Worlds
A child lies on the rug of a tenement dreaming of interstellar adventures. At the dawn of the space age, a young Carl Sagan's career is forged in the clash of his mentors, two scientific titans. Sagan goes on realize his childhood dreams, to carry their research forward and communicate its significance to the whole world.
Episode 5: The Cosmic Connectome
A voyage of discovery through the evolution of consciousness with stops in ancient Greece, a visit to the largest life form on Earth, into the poignant dream of an abandoned orphan that opened the way to our understanding of the architecture of thought and beyond to a vision of a galactic network of thought.
Episode 4: Vavilov
In the first half of the 20th century pioneering geneticist Nikolai Vavilov traveled 5 continents assembling a treasury of the worlds seeds. He dreamed that science could be the means to end hunger. His refusal to tell a scientific lie cost him his life. The heroism of his colleagues and its direct impact on your life is one of the most stirring stories in the history of science.
Episode 3: Lost City of Life
A new vision of genesis at the bottom of the blood red sea of the infant Earth. And the story of the man who found the first clues to life's beginning in a green jewel. As he searched for life's origin, he risked his own, daring to toy with his Nazi tormentors.
Episode 2: The Fleeting Grace of the Habitable Zone
There is no refuge from change in the cosmos. There will come a time in the life of the Sun when Earth will no longer be a home for us. The story of our ancestors who rose to a comparable challenge and a long-term vision of our future on other worlds.
Episode 1: Ladder to the Stars
An adventure spanning billions of years into the evolution of life and consciousness. A visit to a 100,000-year-old laboratory. The story of the change in life-style that radically altered human existence and the life of the heretic who found god in the book of nature, opening our way to the stars.