“We Are Star Stuff” – Ann Druyan Joins The Rotation to Talk Cosmos, Cannabis, and the Fight for Truth

Carlos Hermida
Nov 17, 2025
9 min read

Streamed live November 2, 2025 – Suncoast NORML’s “The Rotation”

On the Sunday after we “fell back” for Daylight Savings, The Rotation used that extra hour the best way we know how: in a rotation.

This episode was special. Our guest was Ann Druyan – Emmy- and Peabody-winning writer, producer, director of Cosmos, creative director of NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Message (the Golden Record), co-writer of Contact, and a longtime NORML board member.

Hosts Gary Stein (Suncoast NORML’s political & policy director), Chris Cano (executive director), Carlos José Angel Hermida (deputy director and owner of Chillum Mushroom & Hemp Dispensary), and communications director Katrina Pink spent nearly two hours exploring everything from interstellar messages and love stories written in brainwaves… to cannabis, book bans, AI, Florida politics, and why truth still matters.

Below is a recap of the conversation – and how it ties directly into the cannabis reform fights we’re waging right now in Florida and across the country.

A Love Story Written Into the Cosmos

Ann began by telling the story so many space nerds know pieces of – but rarely hear in her own words.

In the mid-1970s, at a small New York dinner party hosted by writer/director Nora Ephron, Ann met Carl Sagan. Both were there with other partners, and they became friends first – collaborating on a children’s television project and, soon after, on the Voyager Interstellar Message.

Voyager was humanity’s first grand tour of the outer planets – a once-in-170-years alignment that allowed two spacecraft to sling past the outer worlds and then leave the Solar System entirely. Affixed to each probe: a Golden Record, designed as a “Noah’s ark of human culture,” with 118 images, greetings in dozens of human languages, whale songs, and a sound essay representing life on Earth.

Ann served as the project’s creative director. As she told our audience, the team had to imagine a message that could last billions of years – longer than Earth itself will exist – and possibly be encountered by another civilization circling our galaxy.

In one of the episode’s most intimate moments, Ann described being wired up for an hour-long session in 1977: EEG, EKG, heart sounds, total sensory deprivation. Just days earlier, she and Carl had realized they were in love and would spend the rest of their lives together. During that hour, she meditated on Earth’s history, the problems we face, and what it felt like to fall in love.

Those brainwaves were compressed into one minute of audio and encoded on the Golden Record – a literal recording of falling in love, now racing through interstellar space.

“Those brainwaves and heart sounds at that peak moment… were preserved for five billion years with a fate we can only imagine.”

Ann also shared some beautiful family details:

Grandson Tonio Sagan composing new work inspired by the Golden Record
Son Nick Sagan, youngest staff writer in Star Trek history
Daughter Sasha Sagan, author of For Small Creatures Such As We
Son Sam Sagan, a writer and producer on later Cosmos seasons

And then there’s the literal “wedding ring orbit”: two asteroids – one named for Carl, one for Ann – whose paths around the Sun are gravitationally linked, like intertwined rings.

“We were in paradise… The 20 years we spent together were the greatest honor, blessing, joy of my life.”

Where Did We Go Wrong? Civics, Ignorance, and the War on Reality

The conversation soon turned from the stars back down to Earth – and to the question that troubles so many of us: how did our culture drift so far from truth, science, and basic empathy?

Ann didn’t pretend to have a simple answer, but she offered a few powerful diagnoses:

We stopped teaching civics.Kids aren’t the problem, she emphasized. Leadership is. When leaders stop modeling curiosity, critical thinking, and responsibility, the culture follows.
We started celebrating ignorance. As Ann put it, there was a time when a single obviously false or unhinged statement could end a political career. Now we live with a “steady diet of idiocy.”
Book bans and “library purges” are a giant red flag.Ann was blunt: if we don’t recognize book burning and censorship as “the cheapest, easiest, most unmistakable sign of things going horribly wrong,” we’ve learned nothing from history.
Service over self – or collapse.Echoing the Air Force Academy’s motto, she argued that “service before self” is the only way our technology-heavy civilization survives. Without a political framework that channels tools like AI toward curing disease rather than concentrating power, we already know how that story ends.

Ann also offered a deep time perspective: for hundreds of thousands of years, humans lived as small bands of hunter-gatherers – 70 to 100 people who knew how to share, care for the young and the old, and live collectively. Agriculture and large-scale societies are very recent experiments. In her view, we’re still suffering the “post-traumatic stress” of that transition, struggling to design social systems that reflect our best instincts rather than our worst hierarchies.

Her core message: it matters what’s true. Carl taught her that – and it’s the opposite of the “feels good, must be true” politics dominating today.

“You can’t lie your way to Mars.”

Cannabis, Creativity, and the Myth of the “Unmotivated Stoner”

Then came one of the most powerful parts of the show: Ann talking openly about her six decades of cannabis use and her long service on NORML’s board of directors.

She first got high as a teenager in Queens in the 1960s, lying in the grass in a light rain, smoking a joint. She became aware of an ant climbing a blade of grass near her and suddenly flipped into the ant’s point of view. That shift in perspective – from “being herself” to feeling another creature’s world – changed her life.

“Cannabis has made my life better in every conceivable way.”

Key points Ann made:

She never experienced cannabis as addictive or compulsory:
“I’ve never felt like I had to smoke a joint… never, never, never in 60 years.”
Cannabis deepened her empathy and connection with family and friends, and enhanced creative work – not just for her, but for Carl as well.
Even during the peak of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” era, Carl refused to lie. On a late-night Larry King call-in, when asked if he’d ever smoked marijuana, he simply said:
“Of course.”

Ann served for years on NORML’s board alongside Keith Stroup and Allen St. Pierre. Together, they dreamed up a public campaign to demolish the old “amotivational syndrome” myth: giant heroic portraits of major contributors to American life – including Carl – with the caption “Victim of Amotivational Syndrome” and a list of everything they’d accomplished.

The episode also revisited Carl’s famous “Mr. X” essay about marijuana, written under a pseudonym while he was still deeply involved in NASA missions. Ann believes the pseudonym likely reflected professional caution early in his career. But his views were clear: criminalizing cannabis is a tragic waste of a tool that fosters “serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship.”

Ann also took aim at a familiar bit of prohibitionist rhetoric:

For decades, government officials have claimed “today’s marijuana is so much stronger” than in the past.
Her lived experience says otherwise. She reminded us of the legendary Thai sticks of the ’60s and ’70s – intense, golden, time-dilating cannabis that many modern budtenders have never even heard of.

Her rule of thumb: when someone is trying to control you with fear, odds are good what they’re selling isn’t real.

Public Funds, Public Media, and Who Our Heroes Should Be

From there, the conversation wove through public broadcasting, NASA, and who actually deserves our admiration.

Ann pointed out that we know people like Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, and Carl Sagan largely because of public television – the very institution now under attack. The same is true of NASA’s greatest achievements, funded by public dollars but shared freely with the entire world.

For Ann, the issue isn’t “public vs. private” money. It’s whether the people controlling resources operate from service over self or pure profit and power. Space exploration, Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, and public health are all legitimate “business of government” when they protect human dignity.

She connected this to cannabis, too: propaganda about “protecting children” while jailing parents, stripping medical cards, or seizing kids is the same fear-based politics we see in book bans and science denial.

NORML News: From a Virginia Firefighter to Florida’s Front Lines

After Ann signed off with a moving reminder that “the great beauty of life is worth protecting, defending, and speaking out for” – and acknowledging the role cannabis has played in fueling that impulse – The Rotation shifted into NORML News.

Chris and Gary highlighted several critical policy battles:

1. A Win in Virginia – and What It Means for Florida

A judge in Hanover County, Virginia issued an injunction protecting a firefighter who uses state-authorized medical cannabis off-duty. The ruling makes clear:

Public employees can lawfully use medical cannabis away from work.
Employers cannot automatically fire or discipline them for that lawful use.
Local governments are not at risk of losing federal funding for respecting state-legal medical cannabis.

This is exactly the kind of protection Florida patients still do not have.

2. Florida SB 136 – Public Employment Protection for Patients

Suncoast NORML helped draft SB 136, sponsored by Senator Tina Polsky. The bill would:

Prohibit public employers from taking adverse action against an employee or applicant solely because they are a qualified medical marijuana patient.
Require advance notice of cannabis testing so patients can present proof of their card.
Provide recourse for patients harmed by illegal employment actions.

We still need a House sponsor and committee hearings. The hosts urged viewers to hit the NORML action alert, email their lawmakers, and demand movement on the bill this session.

3. Florida SB 130 – Protecting Parental Rights of Patients

The second bill, SB 130, would stop courts and child welfare agencies from:

Restricting or denying parental rights solely because a parent is a qualified medical cannabis patient.
Treating lawful patient status as “child endangerment” on its own.

This bill is modeled on protections already adopted in New York and is back for a second year. Once again, we need House support, hearings, and your voices pushing it forward.

4. Federal Action: Descheduling and Conviction Relief

At the federal level, Suncoast NORML is echoing National NORML’s call for:

Descheduling cannabis entirely from the Controlled Substances Act
Conviction relief for those harmed by 80+ years of prohibition
Ending the federal government shutdown and protecting healthcare for vulnerable families

Listeners were urged to send letters to the White House and Congress demanding an end to this failed experiment in marijuana prohibition and to the broader cruelty of shutting down essential services.

Science Corner: Cannabis, Dementia, and Diabetic Neuropathy

In a segment that hit close to home for Chris, whose father lived for years with dementia, The Rotation highlighted new research:

A placebo-controlled clinical trial in patients with Alzheimer’s-related dementia showed that those taking a balanced THC:CBD extract over 26 weeks improved in cognitive performance, while the placebo group declined.
A five-year longitudinal study in Israel followed 50 patients with treatment-resistant diabetic neuropathy using standardized inhaled cannabis flower. Patients reported:
- Dramatic reductions in pain
- Over 90% reduction in morphine-equivalent opioid use
- Major drops in gabapentin, duloxetine, and pregabalin
- Improved A1C blood sugar control

These findings match what patients and advocates have said for years: cannabis is not about “lazy stoners” – it’s a powerful tool in treating chronic, debilitating conditions and reducing reliance on more dangerous pharmaceuticals.

Why This Episode Matters for the Cannabis Movement

This episode of The Rotation did what Cosmos always did at its best: it zoomed out to the galaxy and back into the human heart.

Ann Druyan reminded us that:

We are “star stuff” with a steep learning curve – capable of going from Sputnik to interstellar missions in 20 years.
Cannabis can be a teacher of empathy, perspective, creativity, and connection.
Truth, civics, and service over self are not luxuries – they’re survival skills for a species wielding enormous technological power.
Prohibition, book bans, and fear-based politics all spring from the same refusal to trust people with reality.

She closed by saying that the beauty of life is worth defending – and that cannabis has helped her feel and fight for that beauty more deeply.

For us at Suncoast NORML, that’s the mission:

Defend truth against propaganda.
Defend patients against punishment.
Defend families against stigma and state overreach.
Defend the future by replacing fear with science, cruelty with compassion, and apathy with action.

What You Can Do Next

If this conversation moved you, here’s how to turn that feeling into impact:

Watch the full episode of The Rotation featuring Ann Druyan (embed or link here when posted).
Send action alerts for:
- SB 136 – Public Employment Protection for Patients
- SB 130 – Parental Rights for Medical Cannabis Patients
- Federal descheduling and conviction relief
Join NORML – donate at norml.org and become a Suncoast NORML member so we can keep gas in the tank to get our advocates to Tallahassee.
Bring others back into the movement.Whether you’re an OG who smoked Thai sticks in the ’70s or a younger patient or parent, we need you in this fight.