StarTalk Live! Parasites and Poisons at The Bell House

A strange brew of poisons, parasites and infectious diseases is on tap at The Bell House when Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman welcome guests Mark Siddall, the Leech Guy, and comedians H. Jon Benjamin and Jessica Williams.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, have we got a show for you tonight. Do they know the topic?

• 0:28Eugene Mirman?

  No, they don't know the topic.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know the topic? You all came not even knowing the topic?

• 0:32Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The topic is poisons, parasites, and infectious diseases.

• 0:41Eugene Mirman?

  The enthusiasm I've come to expect.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to bring out my special guest for this. Believe it or not, there are people in the world who are experts at this stuff. He's a colleague and friend from the American Museum of Natural History. Give me a warm Brooklyn Bell House welcome. For Mark's it up, Mark!

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mark curated an exhibit on poison at the American Museum of Natural History. So, I got my man, who'd you bring?

• 1:18Eugene Mirman?

  Damn.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, can you do better?

• 1:25Eugene Mirman?

  Certainly not in the world of poison. But I will bring two comedians out. One is a bit of a father and a bit of a spy. From Bob's Burgers and Archer, H. John Besseman!

• 1:42Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Tonight I will be playing the part of the parasite.

• 1:51Speaker 03

  I'm Jewish, so there you go.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, just every night that we do this, we create a special drink just for that evening, themed by that topic. And so, Kim, the bartender, earlier she and I concocted a parasitic poison drink. That's what it's called. A special drink just for this evening. It did not exist before tonight.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Well, you really phoned in the name of that one.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  You didn't even go for like parasitini or anything. Anything would have.

• 2:30Eugene Mirman?

  All right, our final guest. She is awesome. This is so exciting that she could make it. From The Daily Show, ladies and gentlemen, Jessica Williams.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hi, guys. Hey.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's get this party started. So, let's just clarify. So, Mark, you're curator and professor at the Sackler Institute of Comparative Genomics in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. His professional expertise is leeches. And in fact, his Twitter handle is TheLeechGuy.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  I am TheLeechGuy, and I can attest that Neil deGrasse Tyson could never possibly get that name because when we went in the field with Nova Science Now...

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, well, we profiled some of his work back when I was hosting Nova Science Now. It took me into a leech pond.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  And they wouldn't, they wouldn't feed on you at all?

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, none of the leeches. I felt unloved because they, he got out the leeches all, I had no leeches on me at all.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Did I ever say, they fed here and I swelled from my knee to my ankle?

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just creepy.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  I did this for you.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's really creepy. How do you get dates?

• 3:47Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, is that what it says on your Tinder?

• 3:55Speaker 03

  Well, I don't need dates. I have a charming and lovely wife who actually illustrated the book I wrote.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, yes, yes, there's a book.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  It's not about leeches. We'll do a leech book next.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  These are the stories about poison that we couldn't put in the exhibition.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So sinister species with deadly consequences.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  Yes, indeed. It's not an allegory for our marriage. I just want to make clear.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your wife illustrated the book.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Yes, and I believe she's in the audience, aren't you, Meghan? Yeah. Over there.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  All right, all right.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You couldn't get her a seat, apparently, okay.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me ask you, Mark, let's just start off. Isn't it true that almost anything will kill you given a high enough dose? So how are we to know what's poison and what's just someone being stupid?

• 4:45Eugene Mirman?

  What's the most amount of regular blood you could drink before it was like, too much?

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Did you say blood or alcohol? I'm sorry, I didn't get that.

• 4:53Eugene Mirman?

  Blood.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 4:54Eugene Mirman?

  Poisonous blood.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  So poison's a funny concept. If you ate enough hammers, they'd kill you, right? Does that make hammers poisonous? No. So the way we tend to think about it has to do with whether or not they're screwing with your physiology. So salt, you all need salt or your nerves don't work, sodium chloride. All of your nerves use sodium to get their stuff done. If you eat like a cup of salt, it'll shut that down. That's poisonous. Water, well, you drink too much water, it dilutes everything. Is it really a poison if you, you know, it's not really a solid concept as to what is a poison or what is not. It has a lot to do with...

• 5:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your field has yet to define poison. This is what you're telling me.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  I think I am. And in fact, when we were working on these ideas...

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the exhibit?

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  The intersection between the concept of poison and toxin and venom and so on was really a very English-language-centered kind of semantic argument, and we just gave up on it.

• 5:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So toxins and venom, I mean, how many movies have extracted venom from a frog or a snake, put it in a bullet and, you know, there's a lot of this...

• 6:03Eugene Mirman?

  Seven.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  You know your movies. Name them.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  So, go, no, go ahead.

• 6:13Eugene Mirman?

  No, I would rather be cut off.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Uh, where?

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh.

• 6:22Eugene Mirman?

  Wow. Yeah, just the very, very front.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  So.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so, so poison affects you chemically, that's what you're saying?

• 6:30Speaker 03

  It affects you physiologically and invariably is chemically, yes.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, when I think of some poisons that are just chemicals that you might find out there, like arsenic, right?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Yes, or dihydrogen oxide.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean water?

• 6:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, water.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, who do you think, you're messing with it?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, who do you think you're talking to?

• 6:53Speaker 03

  No, wait, this actually makes a point. People think things are poisonous because of their complicated names.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell that story, you know the story about dihydrogen oxide?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Oh, no, you tell.

• 7:00Eugene Mirman?

  The story of water?

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

• 7:04Eugene Mirman?

  No, it's a good story, go on.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was, there was, there was.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Some of you might want to leave.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a kid who was sort of testing the gullibility of the public, or at least their fear of science and things that sound bad, set up a petition in the street to ban dihydrogen oxide. Because if inhaled, it creates suffocation.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is the biggest ingredient in acid rain.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  It sure is.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you go down the list, everybody signed the petition.

• 7:40Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I would have definitely signed the hell out of that.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  So, this is something that we get at the museum, right, is, "What's it like living on a planet with poison gas? Because that's got to be terrible."

• 7:52Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, so far, I agree.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  So far, I love it.

• 7:55Eugene Mirman?

  That's why I don't leave Earth.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  So it turns out you're living on one. One of the most destructive elements to your body is oxygen. I mean, all of the things that oxygen does to your DNA is absolutely terrible. This is a poisonous planet and we're surviving, it's amazing.

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we should go in a room with no oxygen and we'll be healthier.

• 8:12Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, what are some of the bad things?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna go home and eat a bag of hammers and get it over with.

• 8:19Speaker 05

  Um, please elaborate on all the things that oxygen does to my body, because I am a hypochondriac and this is-

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Oh, really?

• 8:26Speaker 05

  A wonderful episode for me to be involved with right now.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  I'm right, I'm right there with you. Suffice it to say ripping your DNA apart is probably not a good thing.

• 8:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but it's obviously takes its time.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, we're comparing ripping your DNA apart eventually and dying within three minutes.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Oh, no, there's only one thing that will kill you in three minutes.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, do tell.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  It's not a bad joke by Jon Stewart. Whoa, whoa.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  I don't know, I don't care.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Wait, what's the Jon Stewart joke?

• 9:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, what?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm so screwed. I'm never gonna be invited on this show.

• 9:08Eugene Mirman?

  Is this something from Big Daddy?

• 9:10Speaker 03

  No.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying-

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Do we wanna dig deeper into his, uh, film career? No, no, no, go away.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  I actually do wanna know about-

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, if you complain about oxygen, if you don't have any oxygen at all, you will die sooner than whatever bad things the oxygen did to your DNA would kill you. Right? Is that a fair statement to make?

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Probably. So, the thing is, is that what we're doing in our own bodies is ripping electrons off of things and giving them to oxygen at the end. That's how we get energy, but that's a pretty caustic thing to be doing. And we've got enzymes and other things in our body that make that happen, and we control all of the free radicals and so on. But it doesn't mean that oxygen isn't toxic. It's wicked toxic. It's horribly toxic. There's a huge cottage industry on antioxidants. What do you think that's about?

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what anti- uh, anti-

• 10:01Speaker 05

  I never even thought about the word, but I was buying all of it.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, of all the animals out there, how many are poisonous?

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Ah, so poison and venom is a funny thing. So, I like to say that there's no such thing as a poisonous snake. There isn't a single snake you can't eat. You can eat a snake.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, now wait.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  He's looking at you, man. Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  There are boatloads of venomous snakes, and of course, the Aussies. Are there any Australians in the audience? Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi, is that what you... Again.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  So Australians love to say, "Oh wow, we've got 18 of the most venomous snakes on the planet, and 12 of the most venomous spiders, and 8 of the most venomous fish, and yada, yada, yada, yada." Okay, fine. But you're really very... And 90 of the drunkest ladies.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  You're really unlikely, extremely unlikely to die of any of those things in Australia, because Australia has western medicine like we have, and you're probably gonna survive. The place where you're gonna die from a snake bite is where you can't get care, like Burkina Faso, from a snake that's not nearly as venomous, but you're just not gonna find care.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're cool with venomous animals out there, just as long as you have a snake bite kit next to you. I just wanna get a sense of how dangerous it really is out there.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  I don't like snakes.

• 11:31Eugene Mirman?

  How long would it take that snake to kill you?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  The one that you just mentioned?

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Which, I didn't actually mention.

• 11:35Eugene Mirman?

  The snake that where you're somewhere and it takes a while and it's because they know western medicine?

• 11:39Speaker 03

  In Australia, the inland type, and there's a guy named Kevin Budden, who was...

• 11:44Speaker 02

  A snake?

• 11:45Speaker 03

  No.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  What, they're naming him one by one now?

• 11:52Speaker 05

  Ah, yeah, that's Kevin, he been my cousin.

• 11:54Speaker 03

  So this guy Kevin, and he's a herpetologist. It turns out that most people who die of snake bites are probably herpetologists, because they're the ones who are handling snakes.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're the ones who study snakes?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  I'm hoping.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Herpetologist?

• 12:06Speaker 03

  I could help you with that.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't study herpes, they study snakes.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  Sick, sick job, better job.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  So herpes means creeping.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Creeping?

• 12:15Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that, cool.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  So we're in the same place here.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, alright.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  So this guy Kevin, in the 50s, he found this inland type, and he grabbed it with his arm, and it wrapped around, and it started spitting all over him, and he couldn't hold on to it. Some guy drives up in a pickup truck and sees this guy in distress, and says, "Oh, come on, get in the cab." So he gets in the cab, and he explains that he's got this incredibly venomous snake, the most venomous snake on the planet. The guy who's driving the truck is like, "Um, can you maybe get out?" But he takes him down to the museum. Unfortunately, the snake gets away, bites Kevin Budden. The point of Kevin-

• 12:50Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, he takes him to a museum?

• 12:52Speaker 03

  The Museum of Natural History. These are great places where lovely things happen. I work at one.

• 12:58Eugene Mirman?

  I thought in the story someone was bitten by a poisonous snake-

• 13:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 13:02Eugene Mirman?

  And then taken to a museum? I get why museums are great.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  That's what you did back then.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  I'm doing a little story contraction.

• 13:09Eugene Mirman?

  Okay.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  That was hard to follow, though.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  So unfortunately, Kevin died. He was bitten-

• 13:17Eugene Mirman?

  That's a lot of traction!

• 13:19Speaker 03

  It's because they took him to a museum instead of a hospital.

• 13:23Eugene Mirman?

  What year was this?

• 13:25Speaker 03

  It was in the 50s.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, they didn't know the difference between hospitals and museums.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  So, anyone who's been bitten by this incredibly venomous snake in Australia has Kevin to thank because that very snake was the source of antivenom, which we can create if we have a live animal. And he insisted that that animal never be killed so that it could be used to create lifesaving-

• 13:50Speaker 05

  I do have a question. How do they make antivenom, though, from a live animal?

• 13:53Speaker 03

  So that's a great story, especially as it concerns the origins of it. The United Fruit Company, which you all know as Dole.

• 14:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know United Fruit Company was Dole.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  I thought you made it up.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did anybody else? Was I the only one?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  It's now Dole.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  No.

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:09Eugene Mirman?

  Great, somebody from Monsanto knew.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  They're everywhere.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Logical progression. You clear a forest, you plant banana trees to sell bananas to people in the United States. You've got a lot of people who are working in those banana plantations. And all of a sudden, you've got a lot of rodents in there that are eating the bananas that are not being sold to Americans. So the snakes come in and start eating the rodents. But then people are working in a place with a lot of snakes, and people start dying, getting bitten, so forth. So the United Fruit Company created serpentariums in places like the Honduras. And also down in Brazil in order to find ways to create antivenoms for the workers so that if they got bit, you could save their lives.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  So, okay, as a leech biologist, my animal, the thing I've decided to study is a biodiversity scientist looking at leeches. They're attracted to me, so I don't have to really go looking.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that was clever.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  How hard is it to find a black hole?

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we can find it, we just can't, we're not gonna bring it, we're not gonna bring it into the lab.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Well, no, they'll bring us eventually.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, they'll get us.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  It's a long wait.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not what, just, I happen to know something, just, you're not the kind of leech guy who studies the leeches that lodge inside of a hippopotamus rectum, are you?

• 15:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, what kind of a leech guy are you?

• 15:53Speaker 02

  I'm actually... Are you a hardcore leech guy, or are you like, "I don't come in the rectum"?

• 15:59Speaker 03

  So, so, yes, I, yes, I am that leech guy.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are!

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Oh, wait, but I noticed that you just brought black hole and leeches into the same sentence with the hippo-rectum thing.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  'Cause that's how I roll.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Just so you know, I'm that kind of hippopotamus.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Have I got an undergraduate for you.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Have you got a forearm for me?

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what I want to understand: there are all of these, all of these ways animals and plants can poison you or stick venom in you.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have a, could you give us an overview on what their poison and venom does to your body? Because there was a whole recitation in Kill Bill with, as, as, Daryl Hannah?

• 16:49Speaker 05

  Daryl Hannah.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Daryl Hannah's sister watches the guy die, as she's thumbing through her, her Google Notes on how, so, could you give us some...

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Well, that was a black mamba, and black, well, she was black mamba.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was her.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Of course, there was a black mamba. So, snakes actually, typically with a snake, there's a cocktail. And similarly, like your cocktail, there are lots of poisons in things like snake venoms and in plants and so forth. Very rarely will you find any animal that has only one, or plant, that has only one. When I said that I love plants because they can't run away, they're defending themselves with something: nicotine, caffeine. Theobromine in cocoa, all of these things are actually insecticides.

• 17:34Eugene Mirman?

  Meaning insects won't eat caffeine plants.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  They eat them and they go lie down in a hammock and go, "I need more." Or that's self-defense, right? That's the way that...

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the ingredients that resist insects, we find other uses for them.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Cinnamon, vanilla, all of those things are insecticides.

• 17:53Eugene Mirman?

  They're delicious.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Which means you're not an insect. Which means you're not an insect.

• 18:00Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's evidence.

• 18:01Eugene Mirman?

  That's how you can tell. That's the test I do.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the evidence, yeah.

• 18:03Eugene Mirman?

  I'll give someone vanilla and if they eat it, I'm like, "Not an insect." "Would you like to get dinner sometime?"

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, alright, so I get it. So that's fascinating to me, that there are chemicals out there that the plant uses to protect itself, yet it doesn't work when humans come in because we... they're recreational drugs for us, right?

• 18:28Speaker 03

  Well, it sometimes does work, in the sense that things in the belladonna family, for example, belladonna...

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a famous group of food.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 18:42Eugene Mirman?

  A family of porn stars.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Which is flying ornaments, where basically plants ground up and smeared on the skin. Now, it's a very bad idea to do this. We have this thing that we call a therapeutic index, which is the difference between the effective dose and the lethal dose. And you really want those to be very, very, very far apart. Because if the effective dose is very close to the lethal dose, then you could overdose very easily and...

• 19:19Speaker 05

  That's death.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just making sure you're with us.

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Oh, I got you. I got you. I'm not with you for a lot of it, but I am with you with death.

• 19:29Eugene Mirman?

  It's why people warn you about heroin.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Heroin, very good example. And by the way.

• 19:35Eugene Mirman?

  Yes?

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, give the example. Don't buy it away yet. Give me the, what are you saying?

• 19:41Speaker 03

  Mushrooms.

• 19:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah?

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Psilocybin.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, confirm what I've just learned.

• 19:47Eugene Mirman?

  Wrap it up, Burning Man.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just learned, this year, I learned, please confirm for me, that humans or mushrooms are more genetically alike than either humans or mushrooms are to green plants.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Oh, clearly, yeah, of course. Their sperm is the same.

• 20:04Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, wait.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I didn't, I didn't get that.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Let's go back, let's go back.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't get that far in the similarity. We have.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  But without, that's the evidence, their sperm is the same. You didn't want to go there, did you?

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I didn't know that that was a place to go.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  Wait, what did you say?

• 20:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  What about the sperm? What part of it, what did you say about it?

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 20:19Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, I've been following nothing, and then that?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  It's just science.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, wait, so you gotta bail us out of this one.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just said we're related. You're talking about sperm.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  Okay, they're not exactly the same, but they look the same. So mushrooms, let's go back to psilocybin, I think we're safe for this.

• 20:39Speaker 05

  Please, okay.

• 20:40Eugene Mirman?

  Just for that guy.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  So, which of you three have ever done, uh, no, I'm not gonna ask you that. Unless you want to answer.

• 20:47Eugene Mirman?

  Altogether, or just?

• 20:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:50Eugene Mirman?

  Do you want three people to go like when I was 19?

• 20:54Speaker 03

  So, psilocybin, the effective dose, the dose to get whatever effect that you might possibly want, is measured in femtograms. Now, you're the astrophysicist, how, how many zeros?

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a metric prefix of a very small number.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So femto, so we have, uh, I don't know, femto, that might be 10 to the minus 15? Or 10 to the minus 12?

• 21:18Speaker 03

  So it's like 14 zeros and then a something?

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, minus 12, so it'll be like.

• 21:22Eugene Mirman?

  And you don't want us to switch to ounces right now?

• 21:28Eugene Mirman?

  You wanna figure out the femtogram?

• 21:30Speaker 03

  Do you want the smiley face, or do you want the rainbow?

• 21:33Eugene Mirman?

  Please don't draw on my food.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  So it's measured in femt-

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just to be clear, so nano, as in sort of nanotechnology, that's one billionth of a thing.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  And I think femto's like a millionth of that?

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think so, yeah, no, a thousandth of that, so you have nano femto, oh, it's a pico, thank you.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Oh, pico, oh, right, yeah.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it's nano pico femto ato.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Can we agree that it's a very small number?

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, go.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  That's what I was asking, I couldn't tell.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm good.

• 22:00Eugene Mirman?

  Whatever this number is, it sounds like I took too much.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  So therapeutic, therapeutic index, therapeutic index is the ratio of what is effective for what you want, and what is lethal. The lethal dose of magic mushrooms is 15 pounds.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 22:21Speaker 03

  You have to eat 15, can you even-

• 22:24Eugene Mirman?

  I was close.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  15 pounds?

• 22:27Eugene Mirman?

  I feel like, I was like, but... 15 pounds would be, I mean, uh-

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a mound, mushrooms are mostly air.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  I'm thinking you're walking in front of a bus before that.

• 22:39Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  And after.

• 22:42Eugene Mirman?

  So if any, yeah, if you're listening, they're safe.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, wait, just, just-

• 22:55Speaker 03

  This message is not endorsed by the American Museum of Natural History.

• 22:59Eugene Mirman?

  Just by those who work there.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So-

• 23:03Eugene Mirman?

  And where in the back I get my mushrooms.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, some of these things people do recreationally, but other things we come next to and snuggle with, knowing it'll kill us. Like in Japan, they have the pufferfish, what do they call it?

• 23:17Speaker 03

  The fugu.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fugu. People eat that, and that'll kill you, yet they eat it.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 23:26Speaker 03

  I don't know, it's tasteless. Really, it's terr- I mean, look, okay. So, and I think they eat it because of the, the, the risk of, of dying like a Kabuki actor. What was his name? Do you remember? There was a Kabuki actor.

• 23:41Eugene Mirman?

  Marcel Marceau?

• 23:41Speaker 05

  I don't have any of that here.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  My total recall for Kabuki actors is...

• 23:47Speaker 03

  I brought some poison. Would you like some?

• 23:50Eugene Mirman?

  That's a book. Or is it poison inside it?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  No, that's a really bad-

• 23:54Eugene Mirman?

  Is it like one of those things where you hide pot in a book?

• 23:56Speaker 02

  It's a really unfortunate way to hide poison.

• 23:58Eugene Mirman?

  It really is poison.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, this is-

• 24:00Speaker 02

  That is poison.

• 24:01Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, that is a bunch of poison. Sorry, that's not a book. You really brought poison.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You walk around with this?

• 24:07Eugene Mirman?

  But it's like one of them's salt? And peppers, or those, is that poison?

• 24:11Speaker 03

  Well, here, if you'll, if you'll allow me-

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Can you clarify this for everyone really quickly?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Barnes and Noble was fooled entirely by this.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Security at the Bell House was fooled entirely. So, uh, just a couple of things. Would you pass that to the gentleman on your right?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Uh, okay.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mark is now passing around poisons among the panel.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Passing cinnamon bark.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Do I have to wash my hands, or?

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Well, if you don't like the smell of cinnamon.

• 24:36Eugene Mirman?

  Cinnamon, he's right.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Like, as we said earlier, a lot, a lot of the things-

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Just eat all that now, quickly, and it'll be over soon.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yuji, why are you licking something out of a box called poison?

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Poison. Well, you are really-

• 24:51Eugene Mirman?

  Because, first of all, I trust him. Second of all, it tastes like cinnamon.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Thirdly, you shouldn't trust me. Here's some curare.

• 24:59Eugene Mirman?

  What's that?

• 25:00Speaker 03

  Ah, don't lick it, I think is-

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Jesus, I don't want to touch anything you give me.

• 25:04Eugene Mirman?

  It was really when you said cinnamon bark that I stopped being scared. But when you said the other word, I am a little scared.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  But it does, it does raise a really good point, is that, you know, plants can't run away, so they're producing things to protect themselves from insects, or, or herbivores. And we, being thoughtful, thinking, uh, human beings, most of the time, have figured out how to leverage these things for our benefit. Sometimes, for example, for hunting, sometimes for medical purposes.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hunting as in tips of arrows that would-

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Sure, yeah, there's a, there's a bug, uh, I shouldn't call it a bug, it's a beetle larvum, bug. That the San in South Africa would grind up and put on arrows in order to take down big mammals. It turns out, that whole mythology of elephants chewing on marula fruit and getting high, and getting a little bit drunk, there's not enough alcohol in marula fruit to make them drunk. They're getting high off of the toxin from the beetles in the marula tree. Which is the same one the San were using for like, killing things. Because an elephant's a big animal.

• 25:58Eugene Mirman?

  So elephants can get drunk off of beetles? Beetle juice. Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Say that three times.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  What's in your? Alcohol. Number one cause of poisoning in the world.

• 26:15Eugene Mirman?

  Alcohol?

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to clarify, what you're saying is, what we call poison is, in some senses, biologically arbitrary, because it's the thing that'll kill us at a particular dose, but other doses could be just fine, be recreational, and we'll have fun, and medicinal, and all the rest. So for everything we ingest, we gotta measure where it kills us, then we call it a poison.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  So I'm gonna say, I'm gonna pull a Neil deGrasse Tyson on you.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anytime.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  It's not, it's not biologically arbitrary, it's actually biologically measurable. We can actually measure the-

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't, I really didn't mean arbitrary, I meant, it was, you don't know in advance-

• 26:51Speaker 03

  Dude, you use the word.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -that something is poison, until it kills you, and then you back off from that a few notches. Oh, and then you say it's recreational.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  No, it's actually worse than that. So, the, the way this is measured is LD-50, lethal dose 50. What that means is that you've got at least 100 things, and you've killed 50 of them with some dose, and then you know what the, so yeah, it's bad.

• 27:11Eugene Mirman?

  Say that again, but quicker.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  LD-50, lethal dose 50, you actually have to have like 100 mice, and at what dose do half of them die?

• 27:21Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, nice.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  What's nice is that we don't do it with comedians, we do it with mice.

• 27:28Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. It's, it would I imagine be illegal.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Well, my guess is it takes, it usually takes a higher dose for comedians.

• 27:35Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we're gonna wrap this segment, let me, so, just for the wrap-up, tell us what your favorite poison is. And you can buy whatever metric you choose. Your fa- because you're the man, who's the poison man, so you're gonna, tell us all, what's your favorite poison?

• 27:51Speaker 03

  It's like asking, what's your favorite child?

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sure it's exactly like that, yeah.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  A true psychopath. Okay, I gotta say, it's probably tetradotoxin, which is the poison in the pufferfish that you were talking about. It's a poison that acts on neurons, but what's amazing about it is it does not affect your heart. So you get to stay alive as you're dying.

• 28:17Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, it's like real torture.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  It's tr- it's total, total-

• 28:20Eugene Mirman?

  Does it hurt, or is it just upsetting?

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Actually, you don't feel much pain. You don't feel anything. But your brain's working and your heart's working and you're zombified.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Well, so your brain is working differently then, right?

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So what you're saying is...

• 28:39Speaker 02

  How do you know what you're...

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have an awareness...

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ...of your death and there's nothing you can do about it.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Well...

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Was it like the diving bell on the butterfly?

• 28:47Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have an awareness...

• 28:49Speaker 05

  Like Kiss at a Dragon, did you see that?

• 28:50Speaker 03

  You have awareness of all of the people around you.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I missed that one. I'm sorry.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  That was a great one. That's a Jet Li. It's classic.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Did I screw that up?

• 28:57Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, yeah. With the pin and he puts it in the guy, the French policeman. Yeah, yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  It's sick. It's sick.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  You have an awareness of all the people saving your life. Because you actually get to see them, you get to hear them, whatever. But tetralotoxin's kind of interesting because we know it from pufferfish, we know it from blue-ringed octopus, we know it from the rough-skinned newt in Oregon, and we only know that because some guy decided to eat his own pet in a bar.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  People shouldn't eat their pets. It's a bad idea because they're probably toxic.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why you shouldn't eat your pet. Because it might be toxic. Yeah, okay. That's...

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, does every animal out there have some parasite that just loves sucking its body fluids?

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Well, given that most of the animals out there are parasites, because every animal that's not a parasite has about five to a hundred, parasitism is the most successful strategy for animals all over the place. Way more than 60% of all animals are parasites.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are we?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Parasites.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Okay, so... According to the major. So, what you're saying is, it's easier, evolutionarily speaking, to figure out how to live off the nutrients derived from the fluids of another creature than to...

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Get a job.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a job. Yeah.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you're saying.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Part of the problem is, is that we consider things like tapeworms to be parasites, we consider malaria to be...

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Consider tapeworms to be parasites?

• 30:56Speaker 04

  We sound real judgy.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  We consider tapeworms to be parasites, malaria to be parasites. And they don't physiologically do the same thing. And yet we call them parasites. So this is really just a semantic argument about what is a parasite in certain respects. Uh, there's a, there's a textbook written by, uh, a friend of mine, John, John Janaby Jr. And if you look in the glossary under...

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, really, that's his name. It's not like you made up that name. I'm just saying.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Definitely struggle through it.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Uh, John, John, John, Jeremy, Jr. Uh, last name Junior.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Senior.

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Junior, Junior.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  You know, he's gonna listen to this.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  And he's gonna know that he's loved.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  He doesn't exist.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Enough with the sham already.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  You have no friends.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Oh, come on.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  I don't mean that.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  I'm okay.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  I'm your friend.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  So, the definition of parasite is the raison d'etre of parasitologist. And if you go to the glossary under parasitologist, it's a quaint old fool who sits on one stool while looking at another.

• 32:16Speaker 05

  Um, hey, but seriously though, this is all great, but how many parasites do humans have?

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'd like to know that.

• 32:22Speaker 05

  What do I have? What parasites do we have at any given time? Uh, none of them.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does she have any parasites on her right now?

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Well, sure, she's got Demodex filicularum probably up in her eyelashes.

• 32:35Speaker 05

  Great, good night, good night, great, good night. Bye, good night.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which one of these classes of sort of organisms, what shows up a lot, like when we read about worms? Like nematodes and things?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how many of them are worms in our body?

• 32:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, how many worms do we have?

• 32:53Speaker 03

  You might actually leave. Okay. Shall we just go with New York?

• 32:58Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah.

• 32:59Eugene Mirman?

  Sure.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, okay.

• 33:01Eugene Mirman?

  What do you mean, there's like a lot, like Boston's like, ooh, you don't want to hear about that? They have all their Cambridge worms.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Everybody out there who had an itchy butt when they were a kid, raise your hand, okay?

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You.

• 33:18Speaker 03

  All of you who are lying, raise your hand. So, pinworms, pinworms. What about now?

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Like, right now? Yeah, so, pinworms.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Pinworms are a very common nematode in the, even in the developed world, the females lay their eggs in the... In your butt? Cause intense itching, and it's actually adaptive for the organism because, because it's itchy, you scratch, and that lofts the very lightweight eggs into the air, and everybody around gets infected. It's incredibly wonderful way to transmit.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  Sick.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Don't, ah, because you all got it!

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, what's the third creepiest parasite?

• 34:05Speaker 03

  No person is an island unto themselves.

• 34:08Eugene Mirman?

  But, no.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  And you're never alone if you're parasitized.

• 34:12Eugene Mirman?

  But, how many, do I have like?

• 34:13Speaker 03

  They're your real friends.

• 34:14Eugene Mirman?

  Like, 10,000 parasites?

• 34:18Eugene Mirman?

  But are there like 10,000 parasites, or are there like 85?

• 34:21Speaker 03

  You talking about number of individual parasites?

• 34:23Eugene Mirman?

  Species, yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Oh, so we're hosts to somewhere in the hundreds to low thousand kinda range that are... No, these are just things that are strictly things that are only in humans, they're not in any other animal.

• 34:36Eugene Mirman?

  Sure.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I feel better.

• 34:38Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, I was like, I don't have to share my parasites with cats.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, this is great. Wait, so these are living organisms?

• 34:44Speaker 03

  We're their universe.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we are the... They thrive within us.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Only us. Unless they're getting between us. Then they're kind of not with us.

• 34:55Eugene Mirman?

  But do we need them too? Please say yes.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great question.

• 34:59Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, maybe they clean our hair and give us mustaches.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. How many?

• 35:05Eugene Mirman?

  I don't know how anything works.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many do we have a symbiotic relationship with?

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Well, the good news is the word symbiosis just means living together, and that includes parasitism. So you're thinking of commensalism, or mutual...

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what I meant.

• 35:21Eugene Mirman?

  Whoa.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was testing you on that one. Yes.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  So, I'm sorry.

• 35:25Eugene Mirman?

  So how many?

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was there a question?

• 35:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah, the question was sort of how many things live what we used to call symbiotic, but I forget the new word.

• 35:33Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, on me and us.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Stuff that'll screw you up kinda thing?

• 35:37Eugene Mirman?

  No, something that's like, hey, thank God it's there, cuz it'll eat all your rice.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  So what we do know...

• 35:41Eugene Mirman?

  That's inside you that's... I don't know, but you get it.

• 35:44Speaker 05

  The extra rice that you will not eat.

• 35:46Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, exactly, that I just keep on my torso.

• 35:49Speaker 03

  We do know that your immune response is educated by some of the things you might get when you're young, including parasites. We do understand that some allergic related things, some asthma, not all asthma, is correlated with environments where you don't get exposed to parasites when you're younger. We also know that for some people with things like Crohn's, and a few other immunologically related diseases, you can actually give them parasites and it makes them better.

• 36:19Eugene Mirman?

  It makes the disease, it makes you better.

• 36:21Speaker 02

  One woman loves Crohn's.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  It makes you feel better.

• 36:24Eugene Mirman?

  It makes you feel better.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when you're young, exposure to some classes of parasites,

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  help out your immune system for later, so that you become stronger, more resistant.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  We think.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  It's hard to do controlled studies on humans.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, completely.

• 36:41Eugene Mirman?

  Not for me.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  You have a big basement.

• 36:49Eugene Mirman?

  An unstoppable addict.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, how about malaria?

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Uh, no, we're screwed.

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many people die, malaria, I mean, what's up with that?

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What can fix that?

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Malaria is theoretically eradicable, because only humans get it. Ebola, Ebola's like, you're, just forget it. You can't eradicate Ebola, because it's in, it's in all the bushmeat that people eat, and then get Ebola by eating bushmeat, so don't eat bushmeat, or you'll get Ebola, and kill a hundred thousand people.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Bushmeat, what is exactly bushmeat?

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I thought I was going-

• 37:23Speaker 02

  It's like a low-grade-

• 37:25Eugene Mirman?

  I mean, what do you mean?

• 37:26Speaker 02

  It's like a low-grade ground beef. Get it, some of your major chains.

• 37:30Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Well, you're saying you can eradicate Ebola, then? Because like you can eradicate the-

• 37:37Speaker 03

  We're like incidental hosts for Ebola.

• 37:39Eugene Mirman?

  Like it's in possums in the forest?

• 37:41Speaker 03

  It's actually, uh, we now know it's in, uh, fruit bats. Mostly fruit bats, yeah.

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying we would have to vaccinate fruit bats, as well as ourselves, in order to get rid of Ebola?

• 37:51Speaker 03

  You would have to either eat all the fruit bats, or eat all the humans, and-

• 37:55Speaker 02

  And all get Ebola.

• 37:57Eugene Mirman?

  You would have to not eat all the fruit bats, murder them.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  Right. So malaria, malaria's different. Malaria's, the malaria species that infect us only infect us, and so theoretically, we can get rid of it, but we got 200 million people who die of malaria. That's, two, so 200 million people, big number, right?

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait.

• 38:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For that to be right, there has to be a time muted in there, so-

• 38:22Speaker 03

  You want to time you in it?

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  200 mil, like, per-

• 38:25Speaker 03

  How about this?

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  7:47 jet crashing every minute and a half, and it's all full of children. That's malaria.

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. Okay, comedians, work with that.

• 38:40Eugene Mirman?

  Is there any way to get them to be teenagers?

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mark, so, so, so... If an actual 747 crashed every 90 seconds in one day ever, no one would travel and they'd ground all airplanes for the rest of the universe.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet, this is going on with the malaria, and what are we doing about it?

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Well, there are a lot of people doing a lot of things, and in fact, what's interesting in...

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And can you only get it from a mosquito?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  You get it from another human, and it's transmitted by a mosquito. So, what's interesting is that it exists in places where people are infected, and then other people get infected. So mosquitoes are not the cause, they're the vector.

• 39:33Eugene Mirman?

  So, what does that mean? Meaning, can you get it from a person and a mosquito, or...?

• 39:38Speaker 03

  No, the mosquito will bring it from one person to another, but if you, if you, if you actually cure someone...

• 39:42Eugene Mirman?

  It's like a terrible train.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, oh, I see.

• 39:46Eugene Mirman?

  I'm not flying or taking the train, no.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you, you catch malaria from another person because the mosquito got it from the other person and brought it to you?

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa. Okay, so, so malaria, we associate with the tropics. By the way, there was a hu... you must know this, back at the turn of the previous century, there was a big exhibit on malaria and mosquitoes, brought about by all the effort to make the Panama Canal. And we have that huge model, that's, I don't think it's on display, of this mosquito, it's like this big.

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Here's the funny thing, is, in our, in our museum, we, we've got a mosquito on display that's called a...

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's this big?

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's a mos... malaria mosquito, it's a male, and the males don't feed on blood.

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Idiots.

• 40:28Eugene Mirman?

  I knew that museum was wrong.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay, so I never knew, so, I didn't know that, so...

• 40:35Speaker 03

  I mean, that's not as bad as The Daily Show having the planet go in the wrong way, but... Oh!

• 40:39Eugene Mirman?

  Come on! It is literally worse. They're a comedy show, and you're a science museum.

• 40:52Eugene Mirman?

  But both can be corrected with money.