Extended Classic: Zombie Apocalypse (Part 1)

There’s no escaping the Zombie Apocalypse when Neil Tyson interviews World War Z author Max Brooks and epidemiologist Dr. Ian Lipkin. Now extended with 13 minutes of Neil, Bill Nye and Steven Soter discussing Carl Sagan and “Cosmos” in the Cosmic Crib. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/.

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.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City, where I also serve as Director of the Hayden Planetarium. This week, my co-host is the one, the only Eugene Merman. Eugene, welcome back!

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Hello, great to be back.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You like my co-host so often now.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I know.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a good thing or not? I don't know.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  I think it's a great thing for both of us, and for the world. Mostly the world and then us.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, this show topic is long overdue. You know what this is gonna be about? The zombie apocalypse.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yes, the living coming back to life?

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well...

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Or never quite dying enough?

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be not dead enough.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, zombies, I have to admit, I am a little surprised how popular the genre has become.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  How popular zombies are.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't understand it. I mean, it's not...

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Well, are zombies the dead risen, or are they simply sort of very sick people who bite and are powerful?

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, rather than me being the one who answers that, we thought I'd like to check with others who've thought long and hard about this.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Sean Penn?

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll get to that in just a moment, because zombies, in fact, have been analogized to viruses, the spread of disease. And if you think of a disease not as a human being wanted to bite you with their limbs falling off, but as the vector-delivering vessel of a way to get sick.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  As a tiny invisible human being the size of a virus.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One way to do it. So you know, we so we combed the land and we went, we needed to find the most virus fluent person we could. And we came up with Dr. Ian Lipkin. Dr. Welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  A pleasure to be here.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta read your title. You are like professor of epidemiology, neurology and pathology at Columbia University, and you also direct the Center for Infection and Immunity, which is a lab focused on microbe hunting and chronic diseases. That, that, you know, and now I noticed you didn't shake hands with anyone when you walked in here. I don't know what Petri dish you've been digging in before you arrived.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, at first I thought it was to save yourself, but now I realize it's to save me.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To save human beings from yourself. And you're also director of the Northeast Bio Defense Center. I didn't even know such a thing existed. What is that?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  That's, that's part of our role is to make sure you don't know who we are.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. But you're bio defending me, I would hope.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  You ever consult on the movie Contagion?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yes, many times.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, did you do, did you do your homework before you came here?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  No, I'm just guessing. I mean, look at the thing.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're not only, you're not only professor, we study this stuff, but you've been tapped by pop culture for this expertise. So how did Contagion do as a movie? Did they get it right?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  It did well. It did well.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I meant, I mean scientifically, did they?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  It did well scientifically, too. I mean.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you say so yourself.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I didn't have any of the backend, if that's what you're asking, but I was paid.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Always get the backend.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's, I didn't know that at the time. I know now. But actually, it was fairly accurate.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  We did not tackle zombies.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not in, in the movie. But, but we wanted to find out why they relate to each other at all. In fact, for this show, I have you as my sort of expert in-house scientist commentator on an interview that I captured with Max Brooks, who, if you're into sort of who's genetically related to whom out there, he's the son of Mel Brooks, it turns out. Yeah.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  One of the top Brooks's in the world.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I, and I didn't know this guy is like one of the world's experts on zombies. And it was my interview with him where I first learned of this sort of sociocultural analog between zombies and disease.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I bumped into him when we were at Comic Con two in 2012 in San Diego. Crazy place, as crazy as I'd ever imagined it to be. But let's pick up with my interview with Max Brooks. And we've got Dr. Lipkin here to help us react to it. Just to put Max Brooks on your radar. He's the author of the book, The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, which is an oral history of the zombie war. And in fact, that book is becoming a movie titled World War Z starring, guess who? Uh, Matt Damon. Brad Pitt, you know, one of the leading men of the day. Let's check out my first, let's check out my first clip and see where he takes us and leaves us in this story.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  I based the zombie virus on AIDS.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, on the transmittibility.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  On the transmittibility, because I wanted to make it very hard to get, just like AIDS was very hard to get. And therefore, from a storytelling point of view, the mistakes were made by us. Because the truth is, let's face it, if in 1980 Reagan had gone on TV and said, my fellow Americans, there's a disease that's real hard to get, but if you get it, it's going to be really bad. Here's 10 things you can do to avoid it. Boom. AIDS would have been a paragraph in a medical journal.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just some exotic cases.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Right. It would have been, oh, remember that weird disease in the eighties? We called it grid. So I wanted to make it about our mistakes.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying we could have rendered AIDS extinct.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  We could have made AIDS extinct with a pamphlet. That's how we could have stopped it. Because we're not talking about influenza. We're not talking about Ebola Reston. We're talking about something that's really hard to get.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like airborne viruses, sneeze born viruses.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  It's not cholera. It's not waterborne. It's so hard to get, but through our mistakes as a society, we let the genie out of the bottle.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this formed an infectious disease model for you?

• 5:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was purely my model because I'm 40 years old, so I'm a child of the AIDS generation. Yay.

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so there's a zombie virus, I guess.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Right, zombie virus. It's out there.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just declare it and then then you could treat it like it's a biological weapon in a sense.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Right. And my attitude is I'm not as interested in the origins as I am in the reaction. Because quite frankly, I don't care where AIDS came from, you know? I love green monkeys. Good for you guys. But what I care about is how we reacted to it.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor, this is the first time I'd heard zombies analogize to infectious disease, and he went right out and implicated sort of AIDS as something that could have been stopped on the spot. And I think I'd heard that in some other circles, but you live in this. How do you see that assessment?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Well, if only that were true.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, so it's a little oversimplified.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  So, in 1981 to 84, I was in San Francisco when this virus first appeared. First of all, it took us a while to figure out what it was, and that's also true.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're groping in the dark, right, right.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  We have no idea. And we were looking at whether or not people had overexposure to different types of drugs, and we had the wrong virus a couple of times, and we finally figured out what it was. But even then, I don't think a pamphlet would have changed the course.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  What if the pamphlet was huge?

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Is it that it's just too small?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  That's an interesting thought. I hadn't considered the possibility of a pamphlet...

• 7:19Speaker 01

  A pamphlet that say two feet by four feet.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Blanketing the United States.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, your issue is not that it wasn't red enough, but that even a pamphlet that was red perfectly would not have worked.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Because people already knew about STDs, and they didn't care about those.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  STDs had been with us since the beginning of time, and I don't think they're going anywhere.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  The Big Bang?

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  That was one of the things.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the literal beginning of time. He meant the beginning of humans on Earth.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give him a break here.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  The herpes flew out of a star.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Big Bang might have been an orgasm, who knows?

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a quick break.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Thanks, God.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come right back with Dr. Lipkin and my co-host Eugene Mirman. We're talking about zombies, we're talking about viruses. We're StarTalk.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm here in studio with Eugene Merman.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always, tweeting at Eugene Mirman.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I follow you. You make me laugh.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not every single tweet, but enough that I stay with you.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Exactly, and I learn from you almost every time.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And joining me, straight from Columbia, Columbia University, Dr. Ian Lipkin, who like studies viruses. This is what this man does. And does he bathe every hour? I don't know. Is he a walker? I don't know what, where he's been, or where he's going. But he's an expert on this stuff. And we, we left the last segment with my interview with Max Roach. Max Roach, that's the guy from Little Rascals.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Sure, Max Brooks.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Max Brooks.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Zombie expert.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a zombie expert. And we analogize zombies to the AIDS virus. And you were concerned about how he oversimplifies this, how rapidly it could have been, the spread could have been prevented, I guess.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  I want to go on record as saying that I'm very concerned about zombies.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  They, they keep me up at night.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. The only apocalypse any of us should ever actually worry about. You've heard it here first. So I guess a big challenge, you were in San Francisco when AIDS broke out. And a big challenge there is finding the, the patient zero, I guess, right? And at some point, this came from animals, right? I mean.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so 70%.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Animals other than humans, yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, 70% of the diseases we're concerned about, these emerging diseases, come from animals.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like mad cow, I guess they.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Well, mad cow disease, West Nile virus, influenza, rabies.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  SARS?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  SARS.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  SARS is an acronym for what?

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Uh, severe acute respiratory syndrome.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that means you don't really know that's.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  You, you kind of said it a little slowly where you're like, I could define it right now for everyone.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but imagine it doesn't have a fancy name yet. You're just spelling it out.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  It's a pretty good name, SARS.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  It's not bad. I like it.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  It's catchy.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I would have a band with that name if I had.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all diseases aren't spread the same way, clearly. And this must have been part of your greatest challenges at the beginning of this.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are diseases that are spread through the blood supply, respiratory tract. Fecal material, urine, all kinds of ways.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And people do weird stuff with human excrement.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  People do very weird stuff.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  There's a lot of punk rockers in danger of getting a bunch of weird diseases.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So you gotta be on your toes for this.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  But the most efficient one is always blood.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  That's the best. That's my favorite. I mean, if I was gonna give someone a disease.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  If you wanna be a virus, but the other one, of course, is sexually transmitted diseases and they frequently is a lot of overlap.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Because people, you know.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but people don't exchange blood every day.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  No, that's, that's true.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a typical.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Cause they don't make bonds every day.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  But they certainly do exchange other bodily fluids.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Name four.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For sure.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Just kidding, please don't.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how did you go about finding, uh, so the first AIDS was isolated when? What, the virus?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Well, so the virus was discovered in eighty-three, but I didn't discover that virus. It was discovered really by.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  No one's blaming you.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  By my, my French team. So I was an observer, but I was impressed by the fact that it took us so long to figure out what it was.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How long had it been infecting people before you guys isolated it?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Oh, the first documented case of HIV infection goes back to fifty-nine, but it really surfaced in a major way in eighty, eighty-one.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you went back to fifty-nine, once you knew what to look for, then you looked at the journals of symptoms.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  It's the royal we, so I didn't do any of that.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  It's science.

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's science, yeah.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Medical science.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Yes, my buddies, yeah.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're a brethren in the community.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, alright, so you, the earliest case is once you dig through the books, so nineteen fifty-nine, but it's, it starts showing a big in early eighties, obviously.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You isolated in eighty-three, then what do you do?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Along with new wave, not blaming, just saying.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Well, then the first thing you wanna try to do is to develop a diagnostic test so you can figure out who has it, who doesn't yet have symptoms. And you can protect the blood supplies, you can test blood.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, for bu- blood donors, of course.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Exactly, for blood donors. And then, and then everybody starts focusing, trying to make a vaccine, right? I remember having a conversation in eighty-four with some senior virologists who said to me, "You shouldn't work on HIV and we're gonna solve this one with a vaccine within the next six months." So this is now twenty-plus years later and, uh, we're still nowhere near a vaccine.

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, why were they overconfident? They just had too high, high, uh, their ideals too high, or did they think they were smarter?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Complex.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, they thought they were smarter than they actually were.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  This was really new. I mean, nobody really had seen a virus that had the ability to change its shape so dramatically, so quickly.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shape shifting virus.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  A shape shifting virus, but I'm glad they were cocky about how quickly they could solve it nonetheless. They're like, I've never seen this before, but I'm pretty sure I could definitely solve this.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is really cocky. And, and so AIDS, from what I can tell about this, from what I could tell, what made it hard is that you get infected, but you don't know you're infected for a little while. So there's this period where you keep infecting people before you even know you're susceptible.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And that period's years, like decades.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  It can be.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's, let's pick up my interview with Max Brooks, who has analogized for us the zombie apocalypse with this spread of virus. And my whole conversation with him fused, was infused with these kinds of references. And like I said, we met up with him at Comic Con 2012 in San Diego.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's check out what more he has to say.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  In my stories, you have to get bitten or the virus has to get in your bloodstream. You get sick, you die, then you wake up again.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a zombie.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  As a zombie. Your body has been carjacked by the zombie virus.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait a minute, if I'm bitten by a zombie, it won't kill me? I have to wait to die for some other cause?

• 14:04Speaker 03

  No, no, it will kill you.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It will kill me.

• 14:06Speaker 03

  It will kill you within hours or days, but you're going down.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, there's been about 110 billion people who have ever lived. Not all those people are eligible zombies.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because their bone.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  Oh, no, no, no. You gotta be fresh. It's not like suddenly the graveyards of the world are gonna erupt forth.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, how fresh?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Alive. They gotta be alive and then die and then come back.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So really fresh?

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Really fresh.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like embalmed fresh?

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Not even that. If a zombie walks into a morgue, sounds like a joke.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zombie walks into a morgue?

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Zombie walks into a morgue, for some reason starts biting dead bodies. Those dead bodies aren't gonna come back to life. They're gone. Once you die, you die. Literally, if I'm running from a zombie and he's about to eat me and I suddenly have a heart attack and die and then he bites me, I ain't coming back.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so zombies crawling out of graves is the wrong image that you're...

• 14:56Speaker 03

  No, no. Especially because, let's face it, how many people today are buried, especially in America, in these zinc boxes?

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, even if it was a wooden box, they're not getting out.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  No, that's like a cemetery.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Able-bodied, you know, a Uma Thurman can get out of a box.

• 15:09Speaker 03

  And that's it.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  That's it. No, I always say a cemetery is one of the safest places to be, because all the dead bodies are basically locked up in safes.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we shouldn't fear cemeteries anymore.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Don't fear cemetery.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, just to clarify, you're a zombie chasing me, you bite me, I become a zombie.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Right, right. I bite you.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got, all my muscles are intact.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  Right. Step one, I'm a zombie, I'm chasing you. Step two, I bite you. Step three, you get away and you go, oh, I got away. Oh, but I got this nasty bite. Step three, you get sick and die. Step four, you wake up as a zombie.

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's the time between dying and waking up?

• 15:39Speaker 03

  It depends on how badly I've bitten you. If I've, let's say, tore out a major blood vessel, you're gonna die very soon. But if I scratch you, it may take days.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotcha. And so, when I saw, I don't, forgive me, I don't even remember what movie it is, because there's so many zombie films out there. So, one of them was, their best friend got a scratch, and they knew.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  They knew.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was a goner.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  That happened.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, he said, "Shoot me in the head now." So, there's an interesting dynamic tension.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're for your friend, and they're not yet a zombie.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  And that, to me, is what's so powerful, because it builds the drama.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The storytelling.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  It's like, oh my god. I mean, it's sort of like, you know, you go into the doctor's office, and he tells you, you got something, and you're not gonna recover from it. But you've got six months to live. You'll have six months, but you won't really be living.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. You'll be thinking about dying.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Every day.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every day. So, my interview with Max Brooks there. So, Dr. Lipkin, you, the fundamental variance here is that some diseases have a longer incubation time, where you are dangerous to others, whether or not you know it. And that's, that's gotta be the worst kind of virus there is.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Uh, well, it depends. I mean, we have this.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got another one.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I don't know, Ebola sounds pretty bad, too. You're like, you have years where you can still make omelets. That's not as bad. A boat, like, when blood comes out your face and you die, sounds worse.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Offhand, to me.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  There are some viruses that cause very little disease, but they spread very rapidly and very easily. And there's some viruses, I think Eddie Murphy talked about herpes simplex, you know, you keep it forever like luggage. You keep it like luggage, you know. You'd never get rid of it, but most people don't die.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, in Beverly Hills Cop.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  People don't normally die from herpes, and Ebola is definitely a bad one to have.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Um, my major concern with his, um...

• 17:23Speaker 01

  What's your least favorite?

• 17:24Speaker 02

  This is, but if you're a zombie, this is sort of like a Ponzi scheme, you know, because eventually you run out of bodies.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Right, you know, so you bite somebody.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  It's a self-defeating virus.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a self-defeating virus.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just particularly concerned because once you know you are infected, then a responsible person could keep their distance or

• 17:40Speaker 02

  They could.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you don't know you're infected

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Just like AIDS.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you are infected, that makes you especially dangerous in society, isn't that correct?

• 17:48Speaker 02

  It is true. So viruses have different lifestyles. Some kill their host very rapidly, or they kill some portion of the host, like the respiratory tract, flu viruses, things like this. Uh, but because they can always find another victim easily, they survive, they evolve and they, they take over and they do quite well.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they float out of your body through the air and a sneeze and there you go.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Exactly, and, and some of them are spread in fecal material and so forth.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Sure like it's all

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take another break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, the zombie virus edition. We'll be right back.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. You know, you can find us on the web at www.startalkradio.net. We're also likable on Facebook. Eugene, are we likable?

• 18:46Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just confirming that.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Totally likable.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we're here with Dr. Ian Lipkin, who's a professor of everything virally nasty at Columbia. Uh, I don't know if that's on his business card, but

• 18:58Speaker 01

  He probably says something clearer and less scary.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for being on StarTalk. We're analyzing sort of a zombie apocalypse, but analogizing that to the spread of viruses. And we've got clips from my interview with Max Brooks, who's in fact, uh, he wrote the book on which, you know, zombie apocalypse stories have been based.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  If somebody catches this interview in the wrong place, they're going to think that you are really getting information about actual zombies

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actual zombies.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  And how to actually survive.

• 19:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just have to listen from the beginning.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called the rewind button.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  I look forward to the four that don't.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, let's go straight to, uh, my, my clip with, uh, Max Brooks. And we talk about how you spread viruses, not through sex, not through kissing or other traditional bodily fluids, but by the simple bite. Let's find out what he says.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Sexy bite.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is the zombie compelled to bite you? Why do they even care?

• 19:51Speaker 03

  It's their biological imperative to spread the virus. Through the eating, they're not ingesting nutrition, but it is an act that is familiar to their DNA. They already know how to eat, and that's the best way to spread the virus is to bite.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're a perfect viral organism?

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that respect?

• 20:08Speaker 03

  They are a walking plague.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have no other point but to spread what they are?

• 20:12Speaker 03

  They're literally a virus.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so why does it seem like in some movies I've seen where zombies attack a person and it looks like they'd want to eat him? Like vultures around a carcass? Because more than one of them don't have to attack the same woman.

• 20:25Speaker 03

  Right, no, no, and they are, they are eating. They're not smart enough to know that if you eat too much of the person, it won't be mobile enough to keep going. But there's nothing more primal in the human mind than to eat, than to bring food to your mouth. That's it, that we know that.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Infants do that.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  From infant.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They bring it to your mouth even if it's not food.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Exactly. And therefore, the virus doesn't have to teach the zombie to do that.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Doctor, the AIDS is transmitted sexually, but it's a blood exchange at some level, correct?

• 20:52Speaker 02

  At some level, yeah.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so if you have AIDS and you bite someone, you can give them AIDS through your bite, in principle?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Not even a little? What if you bite their ding dong?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Just curious.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the after-hours show, we can try that. So, but clearly though rabies is among those that are bite transmitted.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  That's the way it's typically transmitted.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a saliva to blood?

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Right, so the virus grows very, very high levels in the salivary glands, so it's in the saliva. And one of the things that happens as animals get into later stages of rabies is that they have difficulty swallowing. And they also become very aggressive. And they bite other animals, not to eat them, but again, just because they're aggressive.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this feature of the virus changing the behavior of the host is in the service of the survival of the virus?

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The propagation of the virus?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  That's certainly a way of looking at it.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  If people had rabies, would they want to bite people?

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a good question.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Well, that hasn't, you know, there aren't a lot of people who've been observed in those stages of rabies.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like rabies colonies, right.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Most of the time, yeah, most of the time.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  That's something we should do with prisoners, just to see.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay Eugene.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Most of the time it's like just dogs.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Just an idea.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so that's interesting. So had the, had that virus triggered dogs to rest peacefully in the corner? Then the rabies virus would render itself extinct.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Probably so.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. So all the variations of the rabies virus, the one that makes you want to bite other dogs or other mammals, uh, that's the virus that propagates itself.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  That's the evolutionary sound.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  So the virus, if for, for a virus to succeed, it can't kill all of the hosts before, and it certainly can't kill the host in which it's living, until it has an opportunity.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Cause it's rude?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Until it has an opportunity to jump into a new one.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. See, I have to live long enough to spread it.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Right. Exactly. Otherwise it will die.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause I heard that, that's true about cholera. For example, if cholera is too effective, you can't even move to another place and infect someone with it. So the virus kills you and nobody else. It's gotta just have a little bit of time delay.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  But the other thing that, that cholera does, which is really, which is really interesting is it, it causes diarrhea.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  So that, so that lots of viruses spread out into the environment so that it can find new hosts.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into the water supply.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  That's what it's purposefully doing.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Right. So.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the, I guess the, the cholera that made you constipated, uh.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Would die.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Wouldn't do very well either.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  That made you poo, lives.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  That's its slogan if it had a chance.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Poo to live.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Poo to live.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slogan.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  I'm just trying to help.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I can't get that out of my, I can't get that out of my head now. Viruses with slogans.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause eventually they're gonna have to fight each other. Once they kill us all.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So professionally, what viruses are you guys most worried about in today? It's the 21st century. Just top three in order. What is it?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  HIV.

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's still.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Still for me is, is the big one.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's too bad. I mean, it's still out there.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Something like Ebola or things that like make you bleed out of your face if you look at someone or however, how does it?

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Well, if you're, if you're asking me what bothers me most in terms of the state of the world, it really is HIV.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  It's HIV.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  And number two would be influenza and number three would be the one I don't know about.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Because we're seeing new things all the time.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of the greatest sources of unknown viruses is other mammals.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a reminder how genetically we're related, we're related to them because if you can jump species, as far as the virus is concerned, it's just another kind of mammal, right? It's not. That's correct. We're not going to ever catch Dutch elm disease.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  I have, I have a question.

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, hold that, hold that for the break. After the break, you're listening to StarTalk Radio. We're talking about viruses, we're talking about zombies, we're talking about getting bitten and dying. We'll be right back.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. You know, we tweet at StarTalk Radio. Check it out. You can all find out where all our live shows are and when we're on the air, when we're not, who our guests are. Go ahead and follow us there. Now, we're, today's subject is zombies, viruses. So I've got the zombie expert in clips that we obtained from my last trip to.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  You recorded him at Comic Con.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Comic Con. And so I got that side of it and I got the viral side of it with Dr. Ian Lipkin from up at Columbia University, one of the world's experts on viruses and how they transmit. And could you just give us some virus 101 here? Are they alive and how, what the hell are they? Just, you know, in 30 seconds, can you do?

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't we, why don't we start off with the Max Brooks clip? Cause he's going to talk about the science of zombies and then we can talk about the science of the virus. I'm looking forward to this. Coming right after that.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's hit my, let's hit that clip with Max Brooks. Check it out. Now, I assume you saw that research paper on zombies that came out maybe a year ago or so. It treated zombies in a predator prey.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, calculation. Did that get a lot of mileage in your circles?

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, well, no, what I love is that you're starting to get genuine thinkers. You're starting to get genuine academics and, and smart people who are really looking at a zombie plague from an academic point of view. There was a, a Canadian mathematician who did a model, a mathematical model of how the zombie virus would spread. I thought was brilliant.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that was the paper I saw. Yes, yes.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  Uh, there's a gentleman from Harvard, Dr. Steve Schlossman, who wrote a book on the brain patterns of zombies. And he described.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, what is now, come on. Was this from the medical school? The Harvard Medical School?

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Harvard Medical School. And I mean, look, you gotta give him a break. I mean, it's not like he went for, to Yale.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so what is he imagining is the brain pattern?

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Well, he describes it as the crocodile brain. He describes that the frontal lobes of the zombies have deteriorated and the higher brain functions have gone with them. And it's the lower brain functions, the more basic-

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basic survival-

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eat.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  Eat and move, which is what a crocodile brain is, and that's why he calls it that.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why crocodiles don't have foreheads?

• 27:09Speaker 03

  That's it, excellent, I've never asked one, I've never gotten close enough to ask one.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Help, Dr. Lipton, what, what is a virus?

• 27:18Speaker 02

  I'm still trying to get my brain around a crocodile brain.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A crocodile.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  A virus is a, is a piece of genetic information that's wrapped up in protein. Uh, we used to call the, a very famous virologist once referred to a virus as a, a piece of bad news wrapped up in a protein coat. What they do is they inject-

• 27:37Speaker 01

  It's evil beef jerky.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Evil, very evil beef jerky.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why can't you have good viruses?

• 27:42Speaker 02

  You can have good viruses.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright then, so don't implicate the entire group.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Is, what's the best virus? Is there one that makes you super strong or you can fly?

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how about a virus that makes us smarter? Why don't you come up with one of those?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Or like a spider who is also a man? Just an example.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  That's terrific, I'll get right to work on it. I'm sure Columbia would be excited about the intellectual property with that one.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yes, if you make an actual Spider-Man, you then re-owns, you get it from Stan Lee.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, viruses are much, much smaller than bacteria, right? Like a thousandth the size or something, so-

• 28:12Speaker 02

  There's some large ones now, that have been discovered recently, that you can actually visualize under a microscope.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Like the size of like an antelope or a human foot?

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of a hangnail, because that's what any, the rest of us do under a microscope. Uh, but with, if you can, uh, but they're so small-

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Most of them are very, very small.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That creates one of the challenges of dealing with them, I guess.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  So what they do is they go into a cell, and they hijack the machinery of the cell. And they turn the cell over to their own design, so they start making genes and proteins and, basically hijacking the cell.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not only evil, they're diabolical.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  They are diabolical.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  They're the Saddam Hussein of whatever that would be in analogy.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Brian Mallow, who's called a science comedian, one of my favorite jokes of his was, a virus walks into a bar, the bartender says, "Sorry, we don't serve viruses." So the virus turns him into a bartender that does, and then orders his drink.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Little bit of bio humor there. So, so, so, but most viruses that you care about are the bad kind, I presume?

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what does the CDC do, the Center for Disease Control? Are they protecting us, or is it only you with your organization up there?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  I'm certainly not going to touch that one directly. So the CDC has, they have got a mandate to protect us against all sorts of things, including tracking viruses all over the world, bacteria, ensuring the safety of the food supply.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tracking viruses? So you gotta know where they're coming, where they're going, so you can put a gate there, presumably. I mean, a metaphorical gate.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have to be able to figure out where they're coming from, where they're going, how they're evolving.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  North Korea.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  You know, we haven't looked for viruses in North Korea.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can't get there, can't touch this.

• 29:49Speaker 02

  An interesting idea.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Let's go. The three of us, in my jet.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there could be viruses brewing that you know nothing about because they haven't actually spread to notice, to noticeable places yet?

• 30:02Speaker 02

  We estimate that there's somewhere between 500,000 and a million viruses that are yet to be discovered.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, get to work, man.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  So it's a growth, it's a growth industry.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk Radio, right now, I mean, we're, we're learning about the biology of viruses and why they're bad, and I didn't know that there were some good viruses.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  I know, I can't wait to find out about two good viruses.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking with Ian Lipkin, and I've, of course, got Eugene Mirman for StarTalk. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. By the way, I also tweet the universe. Don't expect them to contain current events, although they occasionally do. It's mostly cosmic brain droppings, really. That's all it is. I've got Eugene Mirman here, my co-host, and the continued clips

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  from my interview from Comic-Con with Max Brooks, who's the world's leading authority on the nonexistent thing called zombies, which we've analogized to the spread of disease.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Self-appointed, but agreed.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Self-appointed. I've got Dr. Ian Lipkin here from Columbia. And let's go straight to my final clip with Max Brooks. I think he was talking about, if you know you're going to die, what does that do? What anxieties descend upon you? Let's find out.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why is it that the zombies are always, they look like they're in pain? As though they had died a horrible death.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Right, well for me, the slouching thing from a storyteller point of view, it builds the drama of anxiety. Cause you know, the difference between fear and anxiety.

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't, no, tell me.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Well, for me, it's, it's the difference.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know literally, but surely there's a storytelling.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Well, in my mind, the difference between, the reason I don't do fast zombies, it's the difference between getting shot and getting cancer. You're attacked by a fast zombie, you'll be dead before you know it. But, slow zombies, you can outrun them. It's a tortoise and the hare. But you know they're coming. You board up the windows and doors of your house and they're banging.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's all about exploiting the anxiety as you tell your story?

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Yes, it's about pulling out that anxiety, those sleepless nights of knowing that it's coming for you.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's diabolical. You're an evil man.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  I'm just expressing my own obsessive compulsive neuroses.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because every time I see zombies struggling down the street,

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I say to myself, why don't we make a zombie that can run?

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And outrun you. But that's no fun.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  No, and they do. And there's plenty of fast zombie movies, but to me, that's not scary. Because it's over, you're done. It's the difference also, like, when you skydive, you say, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god", boom, you're on the ground. When you scoop-a-dive, there's plenty of time to think of all the ways you can die.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you are so much faster than zombies, why do they always catch up to people?

• 32:50Speaker 03

  You underestimate them. You always think, "I'm gonna sprint", and then you tire yourself out and you go take a nap.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you get some distance and they're over the horizon,

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you get complacent.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  And then you go take a nap, and you wake up and you're being eaten.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  This, this whole zombie thing could be solved by simply going to Martha's Vineyard.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  For what it sounds like.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been there once, but I... So, Dr. Lipkin, uh, do we underestimate the, the threat of viruses in our culture? I'm sure you don't underestimate them, cause you work with them daily, but you think other people are too complacent and it'll catch up with us?

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Well, if we don't fund research on viruses, we're gonna be in in difficult straits.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Well, I'll vote to fund it. Are there any good viruses and what do they do?

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So we we heard about bad viruses. There's gotta be. All viruses can't be bad.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  No, no, there are. There are several. The there are people who are now using viruses to introduce genes for people who have disorders like Alzheimer's and diabetes and Parkinson's.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  And and using viruses to make vaccines. And there's a very cool story.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's because viruses are cleverer than we are about how to make that happen.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Well, we know. We engineer them. We put things into them and use them as delivery vehicles.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because they know how to get in a virus and mess with the DNA in ways that we can't.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Right, and they can produce some product that's useful. And there are people who are using viruses now to purify things like gold and to make electric circuits. So they're being used now for nanotechnology. So viruses are very interesting.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the basis.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  You can use a virus to make better gold. Sounds safe.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  You can make viruses that will specifically bind to gold or platinum.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  And you can flow seawater over them and capture it and concentrate it.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So viruses viruses is our future.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  And you've never you ever steal a virus and put it in someone's soup? Not like a deadly one, but just like, I don't like you and I'm gonna make you sick for.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, they tend to die in soup.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Ah, well, maybe a gazpacho then. Cold, cold. Solution. I'll help you think of a solution.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a a virus. So that's extraordinary. So the future of virologists is one not only of curing disease, but of transforming life.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Where alchemy left off, virology picks up.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said he answered yes to that question.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  I know.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  It's true. Viruses are great.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  They're the best. I'm gonna get a bag of viruses and sift through it, asking the questions.

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. And so now we need viruses to fight other viruses, maybe. I mean.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  True.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, now, here's here's something I always wanted to sort of confirm. We create antibodies to viruses when we're exposed to them at a very low level, correct?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so why don't, why doesn't that work for every virus that we've ever found?

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Because there are some viruses that we haven't seen before, so we can't mount immune responses to them. Now fortunately, we have recently discovered, and you should tell Max Brooks about this, a virus that kills zombies. And we plan to disseminate this virus.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  What's the virus? Is it like spinach? Is it a fake virus or is it a real virus? That prevents people from coming back from the dead?

• 35:53Speaker 02

  But I promise we're not gonna do this prior to the release of his movie.

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, there you go. You do it after and then everyone goes to interview him for how to cure the zombie. I'm sure the movie has its own solution. Uh, like, you know, cutting people's heads off.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, something, a nice, simple solution. Blow up the head, everyone's fine.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So doctors, anything, uh, we're running low on time. Anything that we, you need to tell us, that tell our listeners? From the point of view of someone who plays with deadly viruses daily?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Support our work.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Support.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Nothing more ominous could be said.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not wear a condom, not wear a condom, not, not.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Everyone knows to wear a condom. Everyone funds someone trying to cure wearing a condom. That's what he's saying. You give me money, you don't need any more condoms.

• 36:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Dr., I was about to call you Dr., thank you, Dr. Lipkin, for being on StarTalk Radio.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  A pleasure.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're now we know how to kill zombies and stay more healthy. You've been lis- and Eugene, you're always good. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, we'll have special guest Steven Soter, who co-wrote both Cosmos series with Ann, and also Bill Nye the Science Guy. All three of us happen to have been impacted directly by Carl Sagan. Hear more about how and why when we come back.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the Cosmic Crib section of StarTalk Radio. We're here in my office at the Hayden Planetarium where during the Cosmic Crib segment, we just chew the fat, whatever that fat is, but it's usually cosmic fat.

• 37:47Bill Nye?

  It's more of a gristle.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gristle?

• 37:50Bill Nye?

  It has connective tissue.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the voice of Bill Nye. Bill, thanks for coming into the Cosmic Crib. And I also have Steve Soter. Steve Soter, thanks for coming in. I do. He's a friend and a colleague, and he's worked on both Cosmoses. Is that the plural of Cosmos? Cosmi? 1980, he was co-writer with Andrian and Carl Sagan, and he was co-writer in Cosmos's Spacetime Odyssey, which I had the privilege of hosting. So just want to get back to you, because we're just chilling here. So Bill, you are CEO of the Planetary Society, co-founded many moons ago by Carl Sagan himself.

• 38:27Bill Nye?

  Yeah, in the winter of 1979, 1980. So the people like to say 1980. I got it in the mail. That was the state of the art. You got a letter, "Hey, you want to join the Planetary Society? It's a world organization."

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it was a letter, so there was no voice in it. You made up that voice.

• 38:41Bill Nye?

  Yeah, I did. And so it was, it sounded cool.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the voice you imagined the letter would have.

• 38:48Bill Nye?

  It was a radio voice. It was, it sounded exciting.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you joined the Planetary Society and now you are CEO of it?

• 38:55Bill Nye?

  So I've been a member since 1980.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just give me a two-sentence mission statement.

• 39:00Bill Nye?

  Well, what we do is advance space science and exploration, empowering citizens of the world to know the cosmos and our place within it.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. And this is a lot of the spirit that Carl Sagan brought to his work professionally and the public.

• 39:16Bill Nye?

  The key word for me is, there's two, I guess there's three key words. Advancing space science, advancing exploration. And this is something that's on my mind a lot right now, is we're stuck in a space program that... Either is doing the same thing it's done for a long time, or is doing science, is going out with specific science goals.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Predetermined.

• 39:46Bill Nye?

  Instruments designed to do a specific thing, measure specific things, which is a worthy undertaking, to be sure. But there's some great value, and this is what we're trying to bring to the world now. There's great value in just exploration. Go out there and just look, look, observe, and take measurements.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounds like, I think it was Einstein, who said, "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." So at some point, you want to go out there and just not even have an objective, just explore.

• 40:16Bill Nye?

  Well, the objective be to take as many pictures you can, to measure as much radiation as you can, to measure as many temperatures as you can, to measure...

• 40:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Measure stuff.

• 40:24Bill Nye?

  But that's observation. That's what you would do if you had your five senses engaged.

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Or senses in addition to those provided by the methods and tools of science.

• 40:33Bill Nye?

  Like we can see in the infrared instruments. And so, my claim is, and I talk about this, Carl Sagan alluded to it a little bit, but if we were to discover evidence of life elsewhere, it would utterly change the world. Now, this, I'd really like to hear Steve Soter's view of this.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But part of it, so part of it is, in there is kind of the romance of discovery.

• 40:57Bill Nye?

  Absolutely.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is, and all of Sagan's writings are filled with this, coming and going. And so, Steve, you've been, collaborated with Carl on major projects. So how would you say, what was the split in terms of romance versus content versus... How did that, like, shake out?

• 41:22Speaker 05

  Well, the romance was there, but it was always firmly rooted in the science, in the reality.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying, but that requires some kind of teasing out of it. Because a whole lot of scientists don't know how to speak romantically about their topic.

• 41:37Bill Nye?

  Which makes me wonder about them. No, seriously. Don't you, when you make a discovery, this is another phrase I use continually now, is joy of discovery. When you feel that joy of discovery, that's when you want to, that's when your passion comes out. That's when you want to explore further.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's the word Carl Sagan's edict? When you're in love?

• 41:58Bill Nye?

  When you're in love, you want to tell the world.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell the world, right.

• 42:03Speaker 05

  No, that's perfect for him. That describes it.

• 42:06Bill Nye?

  I'm not sure they'd go with the word edict, but I follow.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, edict is a commandment. It's after, too many of those words describing those kind of phrases.

• 42:13Bill Nye?

  It's an inspiring sentence thing.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, thingy, right. So Steve, can you compare the first cosmos to the second?

• 42:21Speaker 05

  Well, technology's changed, so.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but in terms of creating it, writing it, thinking it up?

• 42:27Speaker 05

  Oh, yes.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's got to be a lot that's the same.

• 42:30Speaker 05

  Yes, in terms of the subjects.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, in terms of, of goals.

• 42:36Bill Nye?

  Let me ask you this. Steve, was it your idea to do Eretostenes?

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the original cosmos?

• 42:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. I don't remember it, it may have been.

• 42:46Bill Nye?

  I wouldn't be surprised.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eretostenes is the first person to.

• 42:49Bill Nye?

  First person to measure the earth. To within maybe, to within maybe four percent.

• 42:53Speaker 05

  He got it within a few percent.

• 42:54Bill Nye?

  With shadows of sticks, may I say, dude.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, this was good. This was good. To measure the circumference of, demonstrating that earth is a spherical object.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  Yes, not just demonstrating that it's a sphere, which a lot of people already knew because you could see its circular shadow on the moon during an eclipse, but.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, just to be clear.

• 43:15Bill Nye?

  He throws it out like.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, a disk will leave a circular shadow on the moon as well. A flat disk.

• 43:21Bill Nye?

  Only if it's presented.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hold on, hold on, hold on. A disk will leave a circular shadow, provided the sunlight is angled in the right way. And but

• 43:29Speaker 05

  In every eclipse.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every single eclipse, no matter the configuration.

• 43:32Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 43:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it. And so the only thing that leaves a circular shadow all and always.

• 43:36Speaker 05

  Is a sphere.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is a sphere. Correct.

• 43:38Speaker 05

  But so a lot of educated people then knew that the Earth was a sphere, but he measured the size, which is a more stupendous achievement.

• 43:46Bill Nye?

  Based on a note.

• 43:47Speaker 05

  On measuring shadows.

• 43:49Bill Nye?

  I'm walking down the street. You know, I noticed where I live, on the longest day of the year, sun's sticks cast no shadow. I see the bottom of the wells. Your friend, stranger.

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So.

• 44:00Bill Nye?

  What the heck?

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that that mumbled note is, of course, where must the sun be if you're going to see the bottom of a well? It has to be exactly directly overhead.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, every other angle is illuminating the side of the well and not the bottom.

• 44:12Bill Nye?

  And so he's got this in the back of his head.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in one part of the Earth, this happens on one day of the year.

• 44:16Bill Nye?

  You know, I'm going to wait for the longest day of the year. I'm going to walk outside.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:20Bill Nye?

  I'm going to take a look at that.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. He's got to be thinking.

• 44:22Bill Nye?

  Yeah, the whole in the background.

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that must mean that all the devices that distract us daily are not good for this kind of discovery.

• 44:29Bill Nye?

  I'm sorry, what? So here's there are people right now in this. I'd love to get your comment. This is a tangent. People who are obsessed with with meditation and getting this laser focus on a flame or a candle flame or whatever.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought people who meditate are more introspective than extrospective. That was my sense of it.

• 44:53Bill Nye?

  My what I was going to claim or argue or wonder about is what's going on in the background? That's how I think Eratosthenes worked this problem. That note stuck with him for months. Who knows? Maybe years. And it was back there. Just kind of why would that be? Just while he's eating dinner and.

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But but it's one thing to describe a story such as this, but it's another thing for the storytelling to carry depth of emotion. And there are scenes then and even in the current cosmos where I tear up.

• 45:28Bill Nye?

  Oh, man.

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I can't be the only one out there for whom this is occurring. And so Anne, of course, is a big force in this because I you talked to Anne, and I tear up almost no matter what she's talking about.

• 45:40Bill Nye?

  But you guys, so just through Steve Soter and the other astronomers at Cornell, like Steve Squires.

• 45:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:49Bill Nye?

  And Jamie Lloyd, Jim Bell, I've been asked to do the astronomy lecture.

• 45:55Bill Nye?

  You know, I'll do one astronomy lecture and I say to myself, it's getting, the class lasts until 12:05, right, 11:15 to 12:05. I get around 12:01, 12:00, and I go, I hope, I go, I hope I can do this. I start to, I start to tear up.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:11Bill Nye?

  I start to, uh-huh-huh, because you're in this, I'm in the same room. The seats are upholstered in the same color, everything's the same as when I was there. There's some fancy push buttons at the chairs that didn't exist, but man, it just gets to me every time.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, to push emotional buttons, I mean, there are a lot of ways to do that, obviously. In one particular case, as, I don't know how much the public knows, that Anne and Carl, Anne Druyan and Carl Sagan, fell in love during the making of the original Cosmos.

• 46:38Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 46:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so now you are the third leg in this collaboration, and I, I think they can't have been easy.

• 46:47Bill Nye?

  Well, actually, they disappeared for about two weeks during the, the initial project meetings for, for, for the Cosmos, they went, they were in Paris, deliriously in love.

• 47:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Can't stop the love, you know, love is, if it's happening.

• 47:05Bill Nye?

  So, the production team was meeting in Los Angeles, and they were on a big table, and they were all looking at me, and, "Well, Steve, what is this going to be about?"

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you were in charge for two weeks of Cosmos?

• 47:18Bill Nye?

  No, but Steve, you, you organize things, you, you have a vision, right? Some of it, yeah.

• 47:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steve, you know what my problem is with you? When I say, "What do you, what do you know about this?", you say, "Only if you know everything about it, will you say that you know something about it." That's my problem.

• 47:38Bill Nye?

  I envy him in that way.

• 47:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you know something about something, you say you don't know anything about it.

• 47:45Bill Nye?

  Anyway, in his absence.

• 47:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That protects you, that protects your, yeah, it's cautious.

• 47:49Bill Nye?

  In, in Paul's absence, I then threw out a few ideas that I thought maybe the kind of thing he wanted to be in the show.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 47:55Bill Nye?

  Someone else actually got into the show.

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like what, like what?

• 47:57Bill Nye?

  Uh, well.

• 48:00Speaker 05

  Can we cut for a second?

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

• 48:03Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. We'll cut that.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  All right.

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got top people working on this. Go on.

• 48:08Speaker 05

  Well, like, one was a story of Flatland imagining the fourth dimension.

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flatland, beautiful. Let me people living in two dimensions, Flatland.

• 48:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Edwin Abbott story.

• 48:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, 1880 story about people living in a two-dimensional world who can't imagine a third dimension. And it was a metaphor for us living in a three-dimensional world who cannot imagine a fourth dimension, but we can see its shadows if we're very clever and think about what they might look like, just as.

• 48:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is kind of the stuff that blows people's minds.

• 48:36Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, and so Carl went with that and told that story.

• 48:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm glad that story was in there, because it was played well, and that was good. So in the current cosmos, what of the historical stories are you most proud of for putting in? Cosmos is space-time odyssey.

• 48:51Speaker 05

  Can we have another break?

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sure, sure.

• 48:54Bill Nye?

  Okay, what's your question, Helena?

• 48:56Speaker 06

  Did you turn it back on? I didn't understand. We got all of that, right?

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got everything here.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  I just said you turned it off.

• 49:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I was almost gonna turn it off. I was just gonna add time.

• 49:04Bill Nye?

  Katie, I mean Wesley.

• 49:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 49:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you look at Katie completely.

• 49:11Bill Nye?

  What, are you keeping track of time?

• 49:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm keeping. We've got about another 30 seconds here. Okay, so you ready? I was keeping track of time until they stopped the clock. Okay. All right, you ready?

• 49:20Speaker 05

  Well, there are a lot of them, but one.

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, ready. I'll be asked the question.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 49:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what are you most proud of in the current cosmos as co-writer?

• 49:29Speaker 05

  Well, quite a few things, but one was getting in the story of Ibn al-Hatham, who was, a thousand years ago, an Arabic scientist living in the Middle East, who was the first to understand how we see, how we form images in the eye.

• 49:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sight is not an active phenomenon, it's a passive phenomenon.

• 49:50Speaker 05

  Before then, people had thought that we sent out kind of like radar beams to feel the environment, and they would bounce back. We felt by touching, but no, he realized that it was completely passive.

• 50:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he's actually on one of the monetary notes in Iraq.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  Yes, he was, yeah. But.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  In the course of writing this and doing a little research, we discovered that he also made the first articulation of the scientific method, the experimental method, and a caution that you should not just listen to what the authorities of the past have said, but look at what the real world is telling you, and to also question your own prejudices, to be aware of your own predispositions because they could bias you in a direction that will lead you away from the truth.

• 50:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is 1600 years before Francis Bacon writes about this in his philosophical writing.

• 50:42Speaker 05

  This is about 1000 AD.

• 50:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 05

  So we had to put that in.

• 50:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, 600... So this is about 600 years before

• 50:48Speaker 05

  Right.

• 50:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Francis Bacon kicks this in.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  Right. And this was at a time when the Arabic world was the center of science.

• 50:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  And then, of course, it all fell apart.

• 50:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm glad we did that story. No, I felt good about that, putting it in. Guys, we're out of time. The crib conversation's gotta end. We cannot do this forever. Thanks for including me. Let's change the world, people. All right. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson signing off from the Cosby crib.