This is pretty impressive.
Apparently, when he wasn't doing Cosmos, he was writing under a pseudonym about the many intellectual uses of weed. Anyone who's remotely interested in either the subject or the man will probably find that article to be pretty cool.
Basically, weed seems like an analogue for dreaming. It combines random ideas in ways that wouldn't have been combined while sober, and therefore produces both incredibly stupid ideas, as well as insights.