Carl Sagan is the host of the television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which consists of thirteen episodes and was written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter. It was produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles, and Gregory Andorfer, and it was directed by the producers, David Oyster, Richard Wells, Tom Weidlinger, and others. Adrian Malone served as the show's executive producer for the project. It covered a wide variety of scientific topics, including a perspective of our role in the universe as well as the beginnings of life on Earth. The series had its debut on American public television in1980, when it was initially aired for the first time by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Prior to the airing of The Civil War, it was the series that garnered the greatest number of viewers in the history of public television in As of2009, it was still the PBS programme that had the greatest number of viewers all around the world. It was nominated for both an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and it has since been shown in over 60 different countries to over 500 million viewers worldwide. In addition, a book was written and released to coincide with the series.