Carl Sagan

After just finishing the Cosmos series on hulu, it was clear that Carl Sagan had a whole lot of good to offer. He enlisted Panoptico's favorite methods:
transparency: His information was broken down to be legible by common sense without reducing it to kindergarten level reading. Any of the heavy math work was broken down and represented. For example, his explanation of how many planets in the Milky Way could sustain intelligent life in the Encyclopedia Galactica episode.
playfulness: throughout the entire series, Carl returns to a place that we've grown attached to, The Spaceship of Our Imagination. From here Carl speculates on the image of Earth's civilization as could be seen by other intelligent civilizations. This along with on location shooting in Egypt and myriad shores fortified his cosmic analogies to dandelions and the cosmic sea. The entire time, Carl let us in on his enthusiasm usually only reserved for the explorer or discoverer.
Philosophy can no longer do the job to tell us what we are, science has definitely done that with the atomic and biological discoveries of the last two centuries. Richard Feynman, renowned Physicist from the Manhattan Project, says that the main goal of science is to strive for the why, but ultimately aim for the how. The only paths paved have been by the footsteps of the philosophers reacting to the discoveries of science.
It is the moment of discovery that is so exciting, and when it is portrayed right, discovery can excite people 25 years later. It is that fleeting moment we should aim to express, simply as to possibly include as many minds as possible. It is often the job of any doctor to use inaccessible ideas to keep their PhD glowing bright enough for us to confuse it with a halo. "Nice hat, but now what?"