Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Science of Godzilla, Zombies & Other Monsters, with Charles Liu About this episode Would Godzilla be structurally sound or too big for its own weight? Neil deGrasse Tyson, with co-host Matt Kirshen and “Geek-in-Chief” Charles Liu, takes a look at the monsters that have terrified us and the scary speculative science behind them.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We had to do an episode on the physics of monsters.
0:02 Matt Kirshen? We had to.
0:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my gosh.
0:04 Matt Kirshen? I've learned so much and I don't look behind you right now, but I think there's something creeping up on you.
0:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not just the physics, but the biology of monsters, the chemistry of monsters, all that coming up on StarTalk.
0:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Today, we're talking about the physics of monsters.
0:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got with me Matt Kirshen.
0:41 Matt Kirshen? Hey.
0:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How you doing? Professional comedian?
0:43 Matt Kirshen? Yeah, that's the, that's the job title. That's a successful tax return.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're on tour now.
0:47 Matt Kirshen? I am on tour. I'm on, I'm on a couple of tours at the same time. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm opening for Sarah Milliken, who's a fantastic UK comedian. And we're doing some lovely theatres around the country. And then I'm doing kind of off the back of that, I'm doing some club headlining sets where I'm telling, you know, her many, many audience members like, hey, if you enjoyed me for 15 minutes.
1:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you're pilfering her audience.
1:08 Matt Kirshen? I am shamelessly, I'm shamelessly siphoning off some of her success.
1:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my God.
1:14 Matt Kirshen? So yeah, mattkirshen.com for all of the dates. I'm gonna be around the country.
1:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Plus you have a podcast, Sometimes Science.
1:21 Matt Kirshen? Probably Science.
1:24 Matt Kirshen? I know you do this on purpose. I know you do this on purpose, but every time.
1:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've only ever been on once. I'm waiting for my next invitation.
1:32 Matt Kirshen? We got it. I think we're talking about, because you've, you've always got another book coming out and I think we're gonna try and, again, shamelessly piggyback off of your success on that one as well.
1:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Call me, Matt.
1:42 Matt Kirshen? So we'll get you on for, for the definitely Science episodes.
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this monster subject, you know, I have some interest in the physics of monsters, but when we hit topics like that, we've got to call the geek and chief.
1:56 Matt Kirshen? I'll let you introduce him, but I've done one other episode with our guest.
1:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With the geek and chief.
2:00 Matt Kirshen? It's lovely to see, it's lovely to see you be, you be topped on this subject. It's lovely to see.
2:06 Charles Liu? Someone outnervy on.
2:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm not worthy. Charles Liu, welcome back to Startalk.
2:11 Charles Liu? Thanks for having me, Neil. What a pleasure. Hi, man.
2:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Man. You're a professor at CUNY, Staten Island.
2:17 Charles Liu? Yes.
2:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? CUNY City University of New York.
2:20 Charles Liu? Yes.
2:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Many campuses in the city.
2:22 Charles Liu? Twenty-five.
2:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my gosh.
2:23 Charles Liu? A quarter million full-time students.
2:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
2:25 Charles Liu? Wow. Yeah, it's a great system.
2:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow. And you have a podcast that started a few years ago?
2:32 Charles Liu? Yes.
2:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The L'universe?
2:33 Charles Liu? The L'universe.
2:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see what you did there.
2:35 Charles Liu? It wasn't me, okay? My family did. I would, I'm proud to have it as the name, but I always thought it was a little bit weird to put your name into the universe and claim that you had any real role in that.
2:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Almost everybody's podcast has their own name in it.
2:50 Charles Liu? Yeah.
2:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So don't be afraid of that.
2:51 Charles Liu? Okay.
2:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. But when I heard you, how clever this was, the universe, I started thinking others, like lunatic.
2:58 Charles Liu? Oh, I could fit that description.
3:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's a lot of Liu, you know?
3:02 Charles Liu? Oh, yes. And then there is the Liu.
3:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yep. The Liu, yeah.
3:06 Charles Liu? The British lewd behavior. It's all that.
3:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, gee. Mute behavior, yeah. So the physics of monsters.
3:13 Charles Liu? Yes.
3:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gosh, that topic has no end.
3:17 Charles Liu? No, it has no end whatsoever.
3:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And monsters, there may be actual animals in our environment.
3:23 Charles Liu? Yes.
3:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That we didn't know much about and only showed up at night, maybe had beady eyes and people, maybe they worked their way into legends as monsters.
3:32 Charles Liu? Yes.
3:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And one of my favorite was, is it the triceratops skeleton?
3:37 Charles Liu? Mm-hmm.
3:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was coming out of some eroded cliff face?
3:41 Charles Liu? Uh-huh.
3:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was like, what animal is this?
3:44 Charles Liu? That's right.
3:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is this a dragon? Before anyone had any understanding of dinosaurs or extinction or anything.
3:50 Charles Liu? Yeah. There's a famous, I don't know, human nature makes us think about monsters because when we have something that's unknown and we fear it, we want to explain it. We want to put it in a context. And so with me. As a professional scientist, I still am driven by the unknown and the creative and the strange things.
4:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As you must be if you're gonna be a good scientist.
4:16 Charles Liu? Yeah, I love comic books, I love science fiction and fantasy and everything like that. And what we did as a species centuries or millennia ago, anything we didn't know, didn't understand and feared, we tried to personify or put into this concept of a monster, make it more accessible to us. And then years later, as we have learned more about our natural world, we see that those monsters aren't monstrous at all. In fact, they're very natural and it's scientific. And that kind of connection and learning about these creative things makes us feel cooler and makes us feel better about the whole.
4:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So do you have a favorite monster? We all do presumably.
4:55 Charles Liu? At the moment, my favorite monster is Godzilla.
4:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's almost too easy.
5:00 Charles Liu? It is.
5:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Godzilla is classic.
5:02 Charles Liu? It is the longest-running movie franchise of all time.
5:06 Matt Kirshen? Is it really?
5:07 Charles Liu? The first Godzilla movie came out in 1954. So it's been 70 years of Godzilla.
5:14 Matt Kirshen? So you're not counting train coming towards you as a monster?
5:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, in the original silent movie.
5:20 Charles Liu? In the silent movies, that's right.
5:21 Matt Kirshen? Or slowly galloping.
5:23 Charles Liu? Well, those are monsters of a different kind, right? Those are the monsters in our imagination.
5:27 Matt Kirshen? Right.
5:27 Charles Liu? Things that we think are frightened and scary, they must be a monster, but then turns out it's just a train. Right? It can still smush you, but it's just a train.
5:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My niece, who grew up in Pennsylvania.
5:38 Charles Liu? Yeah.
5:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, came to New York for the first time. I think she was seven or eight. And we're about to take the subway. And we start walking down the stairs. And this sound of a train comes in. And she doesn't know what it is, but it's coming from that direction. And she runs back up the steps.
6:00 Charles Liu? That's right.
6:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And would not go down the stairs.
6:02 Matt Kirshen? It is a very, the New York subway particularly is an aggressively loud sound.
6:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and it rumbles. And so that was her, that was a train, which she'd never seen before, a subway train. But that, why fear it unless you think it will harm you?
6:15 Matt Kirshen? It is kind of monstrous, and it's coming out of the darkness. You don't.
6:17 Charles Liu? First, first there's the noise, then the lights.
6:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, and there's a tunnel, and it's a, yeah, all of the above.
6:23 Charles Liu? And, and so humans will do that, right?
6:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
6:26 Charles Liu? Now, the thing about Godzilla, which is extra special to me, is that it can be that kind of subway monster, loud, scary, and it burns you with its atomic breath and everything like that, right? But culturally, when it came to the United States, it took on a different kind of life. You see, in Japan, monsters, since time immemorial, have not necessarily been these evil scary creatures. They are just non-human creatures. And as a result, they can be different from humans in ways that you can find in literature, in stories, in mythology, that allows you to tell things, much like the gods of Olympus did, say, in ancient Greek times, about things that we don't understand and are trying to
7:09 Charles Liu? understand, not just of nature, but of human nature.
7:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Going back to Greece and Rome, are you suggesting, for example, that in our 88 constellations of the sky, there are non-human creatures up there that you might think of as a monster? We have centaurs and...
7:24 Charles Liu? Yes, we have Draco, the dragon.
7:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Draco the dragon.
7:27 Charles Liu? Wrapped around the North Star.
7:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and we have Minotaur, which is like half bull.
7:31 Charles Liu? That's right.
7:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Those, that, if one of those showed up at my front door, I'd be scared.
7:36 Charles Liu? Those are pretty monstrous, too, right?
7:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they're not portrayed as scary, they're just non-human things.
7:42 Charles Liu? Yes, and that is precisely how I see monsters, based on that kind of cultural thing, right?
7:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have Asian heritage from Taiwan.
7:51 Charles Liu? Yes, absolutely.
7:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, our exposure to the Asian, if I may group it that way, dragon, is very different from the European dragon.
8:01 Charles Liu? Hundred percent.
8:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The European dragon is a menace.
8:03 Charles Liu? That's right.
8:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Whereas the Asian dragon is just a playful thing that...
8:07 Charles Liu? Not only playful, but noble, and very helpful, and so forth. The constellations of the Chinese zodiac that you know, right? The dragon is kind of in the middle. The, the story is very long, but to cut it short, the reason it's number six, as opposed to number one, because it's such a powerful creature, is because it saw a rabbit in trouble crossing a river, and so he went back to help the rabbit cross the river, and let the rabbit finish in the contest before he did. So the rabbit comes before the dragon.
8:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is some kind.
8:41 Charles Liu? That is great.
8:41 Matt Kirshen? In real life, by the way, if any rabbits are listening to this, you shouldn't actually trust dragons, because that is just a myth.
8:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Public service announcement.
8:49 Matt Kirshen? I just need to get that in before you get into lawsuits from, well.
8:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But if I'm, if I remember correctly.
8:55 Charles Liu? Yes.
8:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From my Chinese zodiac.
8:57 Charles Liu? Yes.
8:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The dragon is the only non-actual animal of the 12.
9:01 Charles Liu? It is the one truly mythological creature.
9:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right.
9:04 Charles Liu? That's right, in the zodiac, and indeed dragons are considered particularly successful, particularly smart, particularly potentially wealthy. So people will actually change their birth dates of their children so that they are born in the year of the dragon. They will delay C-sections, they will wait and so forth, just to make sure. This is the kind of thing that I want people to think about when it comes to monsters, right? They're not necessarily good or bad unless we project those facts in. In fact, aren't the true monsters we humans ourselves?
9:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think it was a deliberate act of naming that on Sesame Street, the puppets, muppets, were all called monsters.
9:50 Charles Liu? C is for cookie, that good enough for me?
9:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they're lovable and playful and colorful, and so I think it was intended to de-scarify.
10:01 Charles Liu? Yes.
10:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A monster in the eyes of small children.
10:04 Charles Liu? Yes.
10:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are lovable monsters.
10:06 Charles Liu? Yes.
10:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so now you're going to talk about a monster, I'm just going to laugh at you.
10:08 Charles Liu? That's right.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because monsters are.
10:10 Matt Kirshen? Monsters teach you the alphabet.
10:14 Charles Liu? Yeah, absolutely.
10:14 Matt Kirshen? They save rabbits and they teach you how to count.
10:17 Charles Liu? 100%.
10:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, that was the count who taught you how to count.
10:20 Matt Kirshen? That's a good point.
10:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Get your character straight, dude. You're from the UK, what do you know?
10:25 Matt Kirshen? Is a vampire not a monster? I don't know.
10:28 Charles Liu? Right, is a vampire a monster?
10:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
10:31 Charles Liu? Absolutely it was, right? When the original Vlad, right, the impaler, right? And was later on died and then people in Transylvanian area, not Transva itself, but that area of Eastern Europe wanted to scare their kids, they said, be careful because Vlad will come get you, even though he's dead. Right, the concept of the undead, which had been around for thousands of years in folk mythology, got embodied in this one guy, right, Count Dracula, which was then brought into modern times by Bram Stoker, and then into the movies with Bela Lugosi, right, and you kind of went from there.
11:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And Tom Cruise, yeah.
11:09 Charles Liu? Oh, yeah, that guy.
11:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't forget Tom Cruise.
11:11 Charles Liu? Interview with the Vampire, there you go, Lestat. Yes, so that kind of monstrosity, right, is literally a human being that has become something non-natural. So, the evil comes from not the fact that he's not human, but because he used to be a really bad human. Right. Right? The Count, just Count, ah, ah, ah, ah, right? He wasn't scary at all, but he was a vampire. He was a monster.
11:51 Speaker 03 I'm Joel Cherico, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
12:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was simultaneously enlightened and disturbed.
12:13 Charles Liu? Yes.
12:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I came to this realization that Godzilla.
12:18 Charles Liu? Yes.
12:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In Japan.
12:20 Charles Liu? Yes.
12:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Within 10 years.
12:23 Charles Liu? Yes.
12:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of the dropping of the atomic bombs.
12:26 Charles Liu? Yes.
12:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Shows up as a radioactively influenced.
12:33 Charles Liu? Created.
12:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The radioactivity created him. I was thinking to myself, Japan is the only country against whom. Atomic weapons have been used.
12:42 Charles Liu? Yes, this is not a coincidence at all.
12:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why I want to affirm here that it became part of their storytelling culture. What are we going to do with this? How are we going to come to terms with it?
12:53 Charles Liu? Yes.
12:54 Matt Kirshen? So again, it's a way of sort of embodying your fears and the worst things that have happened to you.
12:58 Charles Liu? That's right.
12:58 Matt Kirshen? And personifying them.
12:59 Charles Liu? Think about environmental degradation, right?
13:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
13:02 Charles Liu? Godzilla was the result of, according to the mythology, atomic testing. And the radioactivity that basically awoke a sleeping giant or transformed something that was large and powerful but benign.
13:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You didn't even have to give the specific details of that. Just that there was, it created this life form.
13:24 Charles Liu? And turned it into this terrible thing that destroyed humans. In other words, you know, what did we create?
13:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Destroy cities. Oh, there's city killers. Humans are collateral damage.
13:35 Charles Liu? And that's a great point. Yeah, we are, but minor. But you see, what happened was other monsters, like Gamera, okay? Big giant flying turtle, by the way. Very cool. Very similar to Godzilla in size and shape, but different kind of.
13:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is also from?
13:49 Charles Liu? Oh, yes, from that Japanese tradition.
13:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's the name of this one?
13:52 Charles Liu? Gamera.
13:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How come I know, I don't remember Gamera?
13:53 Charles Liu? Oh.
13:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I remember Mothra.
13:55 Charles Liu? Mothra, yes, who attacked Gamera also would sprinkle little things onto Godzilla and confuse him.
14:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But my favorite, can I say my favorite?
14:02 Charles Liu? Yeah.
14:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I want to, keep telling me about Godzilla. I just have to get my favorite out there.
14:06 Charles Liu? Get your favorite out there.
14:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? My favorite was Rodan.
14:08 Charles Liu? Rodan, big flying guy.
14:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was basically, it was basically a pterodactyl.
14:12 Charles Liu? Pterodactyl is just fine.
14:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it was supersonic.
14:15 Charles Liu? Okay.
14:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It would like fly and trucks would tumble in its, in its, in its.
14:21 Matt Kirshen? Its wake.
14:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In its wake.
14:22 Matt Kirshen? That's right.
14:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I said, if I were a super monster, I want to be.
14:27 Charles Liu? Well, before Mothra became a butterfly, Mothra was a caterpillar who flew.
14:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I thought Mothra was a moth.
14:33 Charles Liu? Mothra became a moth after, but originally Mothra was larval. And like nature, right? Butterflies come from caterpillars or moths come from caterpillars.
14:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But moth and a butterfly, not the same thing.
14:47 Charles Liu? My bad. Not bad. Mothra is a moth.
14:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you.
14:51 Charles Liu? Waterflier is a butterfly. But yes, Mothra, before achieving the flying state, was a caterpillar. A silkworm, literally, that blew out lots and lots of stuff.
15:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Again, you get the regional culture.
15:05 Charles Liu? That's right. And so there was actually one of the great monster movies of all time. It was a collab. They had Godzilla, Mothra, and Rodan together to fight King Gidora, which had three heads and was very, very dangerous and was like brought in from alien. King Gidora was not a product of Earth. It was an evil monster.
15:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wasn't there an episode, wasn't there one of these movies where Mothra as a caterpillar spins a cocoon to trap the enemy monster?
15:41 Charles Liu? Oh, many episodes.
15:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, many episodes. Okay.
15:43 Charles Liu? Many things like that. Yes. And in fact, there's episodes, or keep calling it episodes, but they're just individual movies, but the franchises have become so huge that they're almost like individual episodes. But at least in one movie that I saw a long time ago, I don't remember the exact details of it.
15:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When Charles says he doesn't remember the exact details, it means he doesn't remember every single detail.
16:06 Matt Kirshen? You can't go into the syllable, but it just has the kind of like broad stroke. Okay, yeah.
16:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, just someone clarify. Okay.
16:12 Charles Liu? And the eggs hatched and there were two new Mothras. The scientist says knowingly, yes, multiple births are common in the natural world, or the insect world, or whichever world it was, was talking about. But that kind of connection between these monsters being representations of nature, something like King Gidora, which the representation of evil and conquest, right, wound up coming against each other. And monsters like Godzilla, which wiped out cities in early episodes, or early movies, wound up saving humanity more than once, including ironically against humans creating a new monster because of environmental degradation, not nuclear, but pollution. Famous movie Godzilla versus the smog monster.
16:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The smog monster.
16:59 Charles Liu? A smog. Why do you, why do you know this? Charles?
17:03 Matt Kirshen? There's also Godzilla agrees to bike to work a couple of days a week.
17:10 Matt Kirshen? Godzilla cuts down on meat consumption. Godzilla goes, does veganery.
17:16 Charles Liu? That's right. Well, Godzilla's difference from just a big dinosaur is his atomic breath. Right? And the physics of the atomic breath have been retconned over and over again. How does he breathe fire? Right? How does he breathe this?
17:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. Was dragons breathing, breathing fire before Godzilla did?
17:32 Charles Liu? Yes.
17:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But here, this, this is a different account.
17:34 Matt Kirshen? And also presumably the myth of dragons breathing fire long predates any human knowledge of atomic energy.
17:40 Charles Liu? That's right. That's right. And so the idea that this fire comes from that is very important. And, and it's atomic in nature. But Gamera, that turtle guy I was referring to earlier.
17:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A flying turtle?
17:51 Charles Liu? Yes, actually.
17:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Turtles must go to the drive-ins all the time to see this.
17:55 Charles Liu? Turtles are great. Uh, they love that stuff.
17:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because they, they're the slowest moving thing.
17:59 Charles Liu? That's right.
18:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you have a flying turtle.
18:01 Matt Kirshen? They got flying, they got ninjas.
18:05 Charles Liu? And Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda.
18:08 Matt Kirshen? They're doing, they're, they're batting above their average.
18:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that also a turtle in Kung Fu Panda?
18:12 Charles Liu? Oogway is turtle in Mandarin Chinese. And Master Oogway is the turtle.
18:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stupid. Did you know that?
18:19 Charles Liu? Yeah.
18:20 Matt Kirshen? I'm more of a Cantonese speaker.
18:23 Matt Kirshen? They're different languages, right?
18:24 Charles Liu? Linguistically different, even though they share the same written forms.
18:28 Matt Kirshen? Good. It's nice to have my joke fact-checked. In real time, I like that. Thank you.
18:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just glad turtles got some, get some love.
18:33 Charles Liu? That's right.
18:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Get some loving out there.
18:35 Charles Liu? Gamera not only like catches a child that's falling, like he eats fire. It was figured out in the first Gamera movie that the reason he was destroying cities is because he was seeking fire. And he wanted to eat it because he needs that. That's his nutrition. And so when he knocked over a structure where a little child was watching and it was like, the child was going to fall to his death. Gamera caught the child, put it down. It then literally was willing to leave the world to save Earth. What happened was the humans said, you know, we want Gamera to survive. Gamera is obviously not evil, but he can't come around and knock down our cities and eat our oil refineries. And so they created something called Plan Z.
19:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He said he hates fires.
19:18 Charles Liu? Yeah, like Plan Z, okay? And they had him stalled at a train depot and just kept sending trucks and train cars full of gasoline onto him so they would catch fire so he could eat the fire. And then they cut that off when they got Plan Z ready. They had all these flares that would slowly get him up a mountain. And they'd walk up the mountain, okay? But unfortunately, a hurricane came, a typhoon, and blew out all the flares. And so he was like, oh, blasted typhoon. It was gonna, he was gonna head back down to the city, but then the volcano erupted. So he kept going up toward the volcano.
19:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is this Fujiyama erupted?
19:58 Charles Liu? I don't remember which mountain.
20:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How many volcanoes are there in Japan?
20:01 Charles Liu? Right, but you know, this is just amazing coincidence. You have a typhoon coming and a volcano erupting at the same time. And then he slowly went up to the top and then he got into an area which had a lot of fire and then the area closed up and turned into the top part of a rocket, which then sent him to Mars.
20:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow, okay.
20:22 Charles Liu? Yeah, isn't that cool?
20:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, in terms of the science of monsters, many of these are derived from actual life forms that are important to us, what we think about and care about.
20:37 Charles Liu? Dinosaurs, for example, in the case of Godzilla.
20:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One thing I've always had an issue with was to be that large, yet that nimble.
20:46 Charles Liu? Can't do it.
20:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can't do that.
20:47 Charles Liu? Can't do it, no, it's physically impossible.
20:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so talk about that.
20:50 Charles Liu? Well, the scaling of volume and surface area and height, right, goes at different powers.
20:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mathematical powers, not physical powers.
21:01 Charles Liu? That kind of too, right? So if I increase, if I double in height, I'll actually increase by a factor of eight in volume. Right, two times two times two, left and width and height. So I would be eight times larger in volume. And thus presumably all of the stuff inside me is made of the same material. I'm eight times heavier. That means my legs have to support eight times the weight. Right. Now, if I get bigger, it gets worse. If I'm 10 times taller and wider and thicker, then I'm a thousand times more massive. Okay, my legs are increasing in surface area, in cross-sectional area, only by a factor of 100 in that case. Right.
21:45 Charles Liu? So my bones have to be 10 times stronger to support my weight.
21:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, because your strength goes not as the volume, but as the area.
21:53 Charles Liu? That is generally true.
21:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The cross-sectional area of the muscle.
21:55 Charles Liu? Right, so.
21:55 Matt Kirshen? And your muscles have to be 10 times stronger to propel them.
21:58 Charles Liu? That's absolutely right. So if Godzilla being 400 feet tall or so in the first movie.
22:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Godzilla weigh a billion tons.
22:06 Charles Liu? Yeah, so much that all known bone would shatter, right? All known muscles would tear. He would just be a blob of protoplasmic stuff because he couldn't support himself. Never mind walking with that cheerful little gait that he has. Right.
22:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, he's nimble.
22:22 Charles Liu? Yeah.
22:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
22:23 Matt Kirshen? Yeah, same way like actually with real things that like a cricket can jump many times its own height. Whereas humans can.
22:29 Charles Liu? That's right, and so.
22:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, if the cricket were outside, it would just collapse under its own.
22:34 Charles Liu? Yeah, its legs would not be able to support itself.
22:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a spindly little leg.
22:36 Matt Kirshen? Because when you read about it as a kid, they'll say like, oh, a flea can jump however many times its own height. And if that were a human size, then it'd be able to jump over your, over the Empire State Building or whatever it is. And I was actually, no, it wouldn't. It would just kind of lie flat on the floor. Like, kill me, kill me now.
22:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are people who don't know physics who are giving those answers.
22:52 Charles Liu? This is where that creation of monsters like Godzilla get exciting to us. Because we do see animals, insects, things like that, that are smaller than us, do amazing, superhuman things if they were scaled up to size. Right. So we imagine that if they're even bigger than we are, they'd be even more amazing and powerful. But the physics prevents that, right? That doesn't make them any the less cool. And so, modern monsters, right, are looking more and more friendly and cuddly, right? Less and less evil and scary.
23:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're very helpful there. And so, I just realized, we had a monster earlier than, our version of a monster, earlier than Godzilla. And that would be King Kong.
23:32 Charles Liu? Yes.
23:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? King Kong, that's now, that's 20 years earlier.
23:35 Charles Liu? That's right, that's right.
23:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
23:37 Charles Liu? And, and a giant monkey ape chimp type creature, who was benign and perfectly friendly, and was living on a skull island and doing great, until humans decided to take him to New York and show him off as the eighth wonder of the world. And only then did he become bad and unharmed people.
24:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, the movie, now that I'd forgotten this, was quite sympathetic.
24:04 Charles Liu? It was, very much so. It was the, it was, some people think that it was a way that the movie makers were trying to say, "Hey, don't, don't hurt the environment guys, you know, take, take good care of nature, lest it comes back and bite you, or bite you in half." Which was one, one of the scary scenes of King Kong, where he actually had a human being in his teeth.
24:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dangling, right.
24:25 Charles Liu? Dangling, and while he like bit down on it, and he was like, "Oh yeah!" That's, that's scary, right? But that was sort of nature unfettered if humans messed it up, right? And he wound up being in love with Fei Ray, the, the girl, climbed up the Empire State Building, and then airplanes came and shot him and killed him, and he fell down to earth. And the last line of the movie, "Twas beauty killed the beast."
24:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As he's laid there dead on the street. It wasn't, it was the airplanes, right?
24:54 Charles Liu? That's right. Or...
24:57 Matt Kirshen? Something technical.
24:59 Charles Liu? Or, it was humans that killed the beast, right? The beast was, oh, this beast was actually a very friendly guy. I mean, he treated the humans with perfect kindness and, and normal behavior, until he was put in this environment and, and, you know, the, one of the things also was the humans losing control of nature, right? Because when...
25:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Another repeating theme.
25:21 Charles Liu? That's right. When the, when the reveal of Kong happened in New York City, and the flashbulbs were popping, and he was getting upset, and he was pulling against his constraints, right? Well, the, the impresario said, "Don't worry, ladies and gentlemen, those shackles are made of chrome steel. There's no way he can break out of those."
25:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm.
25:43 Charles Liu? And then he breaks out of them. Because humans underestimated the power of nature in our hubris.
25:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we overestimated the power of our-
25:54 Charles Liu? Chrome steel.
25:56 Charles Liu? Which back then, in the 1930s, was like, "Oh, wow, chrome steel."
25:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why they made car bumpers out of chrome steel.
26:01 Charles Liu? That's right.
26:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, before your day.
26:03 Matt Kirshen? I've seen chrome.
26:05 Charles Liu? Before my day. Okay, I don't know about your day. But, uh, yes.
26:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, uh, another sympathetic monster-
26:12 Charles Liu? Yes.
26:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you have to remember that you were sympathetic to him is Frankenstein's monster.
26:18 Charles Liu? Yes, absolutely.
26:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That, you know, I felt sad for the thing.
26:21 Charles Liu? Considered by many to be the first true science fiction novel in the European tradition, Percy Bysshe Shelley's wife, Mary Shelley, wrote this book, Frankenstein. It went through several editions in the early 1800s. But the monster was the creation of Dr. Frankenstein, who was trying to-
26:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Frankenstein.
26:43 Charles Liu? That's the Gene Wilder version, uh, which I liked very much as well, yes. And Igor instead of Igor, right?
26:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
26:50 Charles Liu? But, um, it was an allegory about what happens when you try to violate nature, because he was a man trying to reproduce, trying to create life.
27:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Trying to be God.
27:01 Charles Liu? That's right, trying to be a woman, trying to give birth to life. And so the combination of just defying nature and defying God caused Mr. Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein, to lose control of the monster, and the monster winds up becoming this bad thing.
27:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So comment on the details of how he accomplished this. So the idea, so he went to graveyards-
27:26 Charles Liu? Yes.
27:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And got body parts that are long dead.
27:29 Charles Liu? That's right.
27:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then-
27:30 Charles Liu? Which at that time was also social taboo.
27:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, of course.
27:33 Charles Liu? You weren't supposed to mess with people.
27:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Since Da Vinci's day.
27:35 Charles Liu? That's right.
27:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where else is he gonna know where all the muscles are? Cause he digs up cadavers-
27:38 Charles Liu? That's right.
27:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the dark of night.
27:39 Charles Liu? You're not supposed to do that.
27:40 Matt Kirshen? Yeah, and would presume, and, yeah, they were, they were grave diggers, grave robbers, who they would-
27:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, they would take.
27:46 Matt Kirshen? Employ on the fly.
27:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, no, they wouldn't care about your body. They wanted the jewelry.
27:49 Matt Kirshen? Right. And there were also, but there were people who would then rave, rob and steal for the medical, for the cadavers, right, for the artists or for the, for the.
27:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Would they?
27:56 Matt Kirshen? Eventually. Yeah.
27:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so they got a third party to steal.
27:59 Charles Liu? Well, that, that came later, sort of in the late, mid late 1800s.
28:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what I'm getting at is the idea that the body is absent some life force.
28:09 Charles Liu? Yes.
28:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. And you can't have electricity in your novel until electricity has been discovered.
28:17 Charles Liu? That's right.
28:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As a thing that you can harness. And so do you remember the exact year of the?
28:24 Charles Liu? 1817, 1818, I think, is the first edition.
28:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So Ben Franklin was active with electricity.
28:30 Charles Liu? By then, Ben Franklin had already figured out plenty of electricity.
28:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
28:33 Charles Liu? And, and at that time, guys like Galvani, right, Alessandro Volta, these guys had started attaching electrical connections to like frog's legs and things like that and made them twitch.
28:46 Matt Kirshen? Right.
28:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yes.
28:48 Matt Kirshen? And therefore realized that there was a connection between human or animal movement and electricity.
28:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct. And so now you have Frankenstein with these body parts that no longer have a life force, whatever that was understood to be in the early 19th century.
29:04 Charles Liu? Reanimated by lightning.
29:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When he stitches it all together.
29:07 Charles Liu? Yes.
29:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now you take the best source of energy you have available.
29:11 Charles Liu? That's right.
29:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's going to be a lightning bolt.
29:12 Charles Liu? That's right.
29:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it goes into the electrodes and he becomes animated.
29:16 Charles Liu? Even at that time in the 1800s, although folks like Benjamin Franklin had already figured out that lightning was electricity, you still had most of the people in Europe and America thinking that lightning was an act of God, that it was the divine something.
29:34 Matt Kirshen? Right.
29:35 Charles Liu? And you, you can go back to the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks who thought that Zeus or Jupiter was throwing thunderbolts down at us. But now that we know that it's lightning and so forth, you just kind of remove that monstrosity of Frankenstein being a natural, was perfectly natural for that to happen. Another idea of physics eventually informing monstrosity.
29:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. So what I like about it is, given the other experiments, like you said, with the frog leg.
30:03 Charles Liu? Yeah.
30:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is not such a far out idea.
30:07 Charles Liu? Not at all. Not at all.
30:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At the time.
30:09 Charles Liu? Yeah, that's right.
30:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And today, what do we do? Your heart stops. I throw electricity into it.
30:13 Charles Liu? That's right.
30:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To bring it back.
30:14 Charles Liu? To get it started. Uh, Mary Shelley was actually very, uh.
30:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I remember Percy Shelley was the author.
30:21 Charles Liu? Percy Bysshe Shelley was an author, a, a poet, actually.
30:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what I, okay.
30:27 Charles Liu? But Mary Shelley was actually, perhaps in, in sort of retrospect, the more talented of the two. And Mary Shelley, aside from writing Frankenstein, also wrote a, an apocalyptic novel about a pandemic that actually killed everybody except a few people. I think it was called The Last Man. Uh, I have to check that. I'm sorry. I don't remember exactly the name. At that point, she was speculating about science fiction, about how people could travel from London to Cambridge in a matter of days by balloons that had wings attached to them that were flapping like birds, you know, really neat ideas, but then.
31:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why, but a horse gets you from London to Cambridge?
31:06 Charles Liu? It does.
31:08 Charles Liu? Maybe it was to Glasgow. You know, like somewhere far away.
31:11 Matt Kirshen? About 60 miles.
31:12 Charles Liu? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so it was airships, you know, the idea of, of airships.
31:17 Matt Kirshen? So she's, I mean, really, cause I, I, I knew her for as being considered the sort of form, formation of science fiction just from Frankenstein. I didn't know that.
31:27 Charles Liu? That's right.
31:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
31:27 Matt Kirshen? Yeah, all these other.
31:28 Charles Liu? Many of these other books.
31:29 Matt Kirshen? Strengths to her book.
31:30 Charles Liu? That's right. That's right. So she has really good stuff and she did this all before Jules Verne started doing things like Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and, you know.
31:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To the moon and back, yeah, Journey to the Moon.
31:40 Matt Kirshen? But he did it louder and in a deeper voice, so.
31:42 Charles Liu? That would help. That would have helped back then, unfortunately.
31:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Frankenstein comes back from the dead.
31:48 Charles Liu? Yes.
31:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The undead is a, there is no end.
31:53 Charles Liu? A rich, rich area.
31:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why is it so rich? I, I was never as enchanted by the undead as so many other people have been.
32:00 Charles Liu? And nowadays, uh, just to sort of contextualize your, your question.
32:06 Charles Liu? Zombies and undead things are indeed the monster du jour, right? On our, whether it's The Walking Dead from past years, now there's The Last of Us.
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Zombified by fungus.
32:21 Charles Liu? Zombified by fungus, 28 days, 28 years later and that kind of thing.
32:26 Matt Kirshen? Whether the cause is a virus or a fungus or whatever.
32:30 Charles Liu? Things that are not alive fascinate us, simply because we're not dead, right? Think about this, things that are not alive fascinate us because we are alive and we don't understand them.
32:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We have no idea, unless you're religious and you have a strong belief ethic in that.
32:46 Charles Liu? That's right.
32:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We have no idea what happens after death.
32:48 Charles Liu? That's right.
32:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nothing can be spookier.
32:50 Charles Liu? That's right, and even those belief systems cannot be confirmed in any sort of experimental strategy. People have tried, as you know, they're even expressed in fiction, like Dan Brown's novel, Angels and Demons. There supposedly was an experiment where they had somebody who was about to die and weighed him, and then he died and they weighed him again, and it's a little lighter, you know, some sort of physical thing, like a soul.
33:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, and you gotta give them credit for doing the experiment.
33:17 Charles Liu? You gotta try.
33:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, so if everyone thinks you have a soul and there's science that can test things, why not test your soul? So, right after Wilhem Wunschin discovered X-rays, X-rays can see through your body. No one else ever saw through your body.
33:35 Charles Liu? Right.
33:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, X-rays, so they get somebody dying on the bench, and they waited for him to die to see if they saw something leaving his body with the X-rays, and they didn't.
33:44 Charles Liu? They did not, that's right. So there have been continuous experiments trying to understand what it is that makes something alive versus not alive, right? Because a living person and a dead person, seconds apart, for example, right? One moment, they're talking, they're breathing, they're whatever, they're holding your hand, next moment, they're not. And we can't get into their brain to figure out how that works.
34:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? An important feature of The Walking Dead, in my judgment, was if you were dead for a long time, so your body was putrefied, you're not gonna come back to life.
34:15 Charles Liu? That's right.
34:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So they recognized that your organs and everything-
34:20 Charles Liu? You have to be mostly dead.
34:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have to be not so dead that your organs would not be harvestable.
34:30 Charles Liu? That's right.
34:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By, by the card that you signed.
34:33 Charles Liu? That's right.
34:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On your driving license.
34:34 Charles Liu? Right.
34:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, and that's where the transition comes, when you become a zombie.
34:39 Charles Liu? And, and one, another thing about The Walking Dead was that everybody was infected, whether they were dead or alive. The moment you died, you became a zombie. So, what's the point of even trying to stay alive? When you know you're gonna become a zombie anyway? But that's sort of the existential question of what makes a monster and what makes a human. Right? Uh, if you've died, you automatically become a monster? Or do you become inanimate? Are you different from a rock? Or a steak?
35:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did you see the Key and Peele skit? With the zombies are taking over the suburban town?
35:15 Charles Liu? No.
35:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's just like a Saturday afternoon, people are barbecuing.
35:19 Charles Liu? Yes.
35:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And there's, there's a black family over on the side.
35:22 Charles Liu? Okay.
35:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the zombies, like, avoid the black people. These are racist zombies.
35:28 Charles Liu? Yeah, yeah. And if, of course, you can do something like what happened in World War Z? Where the author said, "We actually don't know why these zombies violate the laws of physics so completely." And yet they do.
35:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't like World War Z because the zombies ran. You can't, you can't, if you're a zombie, come on, you gotta drag a foot, drag something. You don't be chasing me down the street.
35:49 Charles Liu? In the movie, they ran, and they were very fast. In the book, they were actually quite slow.
35:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You read the book?
35:55 Charles Liu? Of course. The, the Battle of Yonkers? Did you, did you not see that?
36:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
36:01 Charles Liu? Oh, oh, incredible story. Without ruining, uh, spoiling the story for everybody, basically, the army wants to make a big show of force to stop these zombies. And so they bring the soldiers over, and they, like, have all this firepower. Turns out that they're routed by the zombies. Because the army has not thought through how to stop them. And so again, humans, in our hubris, thinking that we can control a force of nature, when in fact, nature comes back and tells us, "Uh-uh, it's not gonna happen."
36:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, one feature of sci-fi, which is, I think, its finest feature, when well done, is, it's taking place in another place, and yeah, there are aliens, and there are rockets, and it's in the future, but there's some... Story element, that's a reflection of the time in which you live.
36:51 Charles Liu? Absolutely.
36:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that there's a lesson in there.
36:54 Charles Liu? Yes.
36:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Either a moral lesson or philosophical lesson.
36:59 Charles Liu? Yes.
36:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So in the zombie storytelling, the zombie genre, I'm almost fatigued, wondering, is there more lessons that they can teach? And what lesson was there to start with?
37:09 Charles Liu? Let's use The Last of Us, okay? Which was built originally as a video game, but now has been turned into a very successful television series. That's right. Remind me to tell you about Monster Hunter. Okay, that is a great game franchise, but that's in a moment. Right now, we would say that the reason that The Last of Us happens and humans are threatened, global warming is the culprit in The Last of Us.
37:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I did not remember that fact.
37:37 Charles Liu? Yes. Mushrooms or fungi, okay? Particular group of fungi, cordyceps, is, there are hundreds of species of this particular fungus.
37:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let me remind people, fungus is an entire branch in the tree of life.
37:51 Charles Liu? It's a kingdom.
37:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a kingdom.
37:52 Charles Liu? Yeah.
37:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the animal kingdom. When I grew up, there were only two kingdoms.
37:55 Charles Liu? That's right, animal and plant.
37:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And plant. The fungus is its own kingdom.
37:58 Charles Liu? Yes.
37:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's how badass they are.
38:00 Charles Liu? We now understand that's the case, right? But you see, fungi, they can't survive parasitically in humans because we are warm-blooded. We have a higher body temperature than most fungi can tolerate. So fungal parasitism or infection happens all the time in the cold-blooded world, okay? Ants, wasps, they are parasitized by fungus all the time. There's a famous zombie ant fungus that causes the ants to go up and then their fruiting bodies grow out of their antennae and then they pop and then the fungi continue to reproduce.
38:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That is nasty.
38:40 Charles Liu? It is nasty stuff, but it is actually, we believe...
38:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm gonna say that better. That's nasty.
38:46 Charles Liu? Right, but it's natural, right? And we consider that to be very scary because that doesn't happen to humans. When we get diseases, it's from viruses and bacteria most of the time.
38:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not from fungus.
38:56 Charles Liu? But not from fungus.
38:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We get skin to skin fungus.
38:59 Charles Liu? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get little things.
39:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
39:01 Charles Liu? But what happens in The Last of Us mythology is that because of global warming... Funguses or fungi start to evolve to be able to live in warmer temperatures. And eventually, one of those parasitic fungi, the cordyceps, whatever, whatever.
39:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jump species.
39:20 Charles Liu? Jump species, and is able to live in humans even though our body temperatures are 98%.
39:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not just on the skin.
39:26 Charles Liu? That's right.
39:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where it's not.
39:27 Charles Liu? Inside.
39:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Body temperature.
39:28 Charles Liu? And so we basically become parasitized by this fungus. And the fungus is not evil. The fungus is just a fungus, right? There are fungus.
39:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's trying to make more fungi.
39:39 Charles Liu? It's a fungus among us. There is nothing of evil stuff. But what happens when humans are now threatened as a species by the fungus? You find out, we humans do monstrous things like kill and oppress and push away and isolate and so forth because we are afraid of what we have created from the global warming and from the natural reaction of nature. Fungus evolving to thrive in what we create.
40:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For whom the bell tolls?
40:11 Charles Liu? The monster bell.
40:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The monster bell tolls for us.
40:15 Matt Kirshen? Stop ringing that monster bell. We've told you so many times. I don't even know why we have a monster bell, to be honest, but the fact that, just stop it. Stop.
40:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Monster.
40:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You would give zombie storytelling high grades?
40:51 Charles Liu? Yes.
40:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For continuing this tradition of science fiction to hold up a mirror?
40:57 Charles Liu? Absolutely. Absolutely.
41:00 Charles Liu? Nowadays, right, we can't see these things, these biological monsters. They're microscopic, right? Unlike the macroscopic ones.
41:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They're smaller than we are rather than bigger.
41:10 Charles Liu? So they sneak in and they are as unknown and as unknowable as ghosts and spirits and so forth. Right? So it's the frightening part of it is that what we don't understand and what we don't know. This has been true for all monsters throughout all of history.
41:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, what about Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
41:28 Charles Liu? Yes!
41:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was interesting because the monster was just another-
41:32 Charles Liu? A spore.
41:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it was a complete other human being. They didn't look weird, they didn't look scary.
41:37 Charles Liu? That's right.
41:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they were not-
41:39 Charles Liu? They had been co-opted by interstellar or non-human spores. So instead of a fungus that had evolved from our Earth, they had dropped in from somewhere in space.
41:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And but you would come out of a pod.
41:54 Charles Liu? Mm-hmm.
41:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Some have said those are some of the most terrifying scenes-
41:58 Charles Liu? Absolutely.
41:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ever.
41:59 Charles Liu? Yes, because we have the closeness to humans and recognizable things, but just a little bit off and we can imagine ourselves in that predicament.
42:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's where it is.
42:11 Matt Kirshen? Well, that also kind of reminds me a bit of the uncanny valley and that that effect with humans. If you certain animations or certain models of humans or like realistic human-
42:24 Charles Liu? Why are we afraid of dolls?
42:26 Matt Kirshen? They make us-
42:26 Charles Liu? Why are we afraid of clowns?
42:27 Matt Kirshen? Something that looks- Yeah, and it is that thing of something that if it's a long way from human, if it's very cartoony, we're fine with it.
42:35 Charles Liu? That's right.
42:35 Matt Kirshen? If it's completely human, fine, but if it's just a little bit off, then we find that uneasy.
42:40 Charles Liu? It's our dream.
42:41 Matt Kirshen? If an animation of a human is just a bit too real, but not perfectly real, that's-
42:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know what I was told? I haven't verified this, but I was told this, that in the humans that are portrayed in Finding Nemo are a little bit sort of clunky.
42:55 Charles Liu? Yes.
42:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they did it on purpose because if they were too real- It would just be weird.
43:02 Charles Liu? And we wouldn't be able to sympathize with the fish.
43:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You could. Right? Because that's the goal.
43:07 Charles Liu? That's right. And so the irony is, again, who are the monsters in Finding Nemo? Not the fish, not the shark, the humans.
43:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One of the most, I'd say, top five famous episodes of The Twilight Zone has the word monsters in it. So this episode, I forgot the exact name, that monsters are due on Maple Street?
43:29 Charles Liu? Yes, that's right.
43:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In one of the homes, the lights start flashing.
43:32 Charles Liu? Ah.
43:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Their car automatically turns on. And the neighbors wonder, what's wrong with the Joneses over there? Why are they, why is their house doing this? And, you know, are they, you know, they're, they're monsters? Or they're, they start to fear them because things are happening to them. But we're your neighbors, we're your this. And then, and then it doesn't happen, it goes to another home and weird things happening. The garage door opens and closes. And then they start turning on each other.
44:02 Charles Liu? Yes.
44:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this continues and, oh my gosh. And then it ends, I have to do it because it's, the show's 60 years old, I'm allowed to give.
44:10 Charles Liu? Blashes out to the aliens.
44:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It comes out to the aliens. And the two aliens observing Elm Street. And they said, does this happen every place we do these experiments? They said, yes, the humans will turn on themselves just by the, it says, so they will be easy to conquer.
44:27 Charles Liu? Yes.
44:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We don't have to.
44:29 Charles Liu? A hundred percent.
44:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We are the monsters.
44:32 Charles Liu? That's right, that's right.
44:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Period.
44:33 Charles Liu? We are the monsters. The monsters in space, in Monsters by Godzilla, the monsters that infect us with their fungal, mycelial spores and stuff, right?
44:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stop, don't say that.
44:46 Charles Liu? I know, right? They're just forces of nature. The thing that makes them bad is we, is us. And this is the commentary about monsters. Once we become familiar with monsters, they're not so evil anymore. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right? They, Angel, they have monsters now that are friendly, or the Twilight books, right? The vampires are just lovestruck teenagers and stuff. And they're friendly and they glisten a little bit.
45:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they're handsome and cute.
45:14 Charles Liu? That's right. So they are.
45:15 Matt Kirshen? The real monster is unrequited love.
45:18 Charles Liu? You gotta watch out for those things. That's right. Bella will come for you if you're not careful. With the Monster Hunter video game, it's so popular that when it was coming out, other video game makers kept their new products off the shelf until there was enough until there was enough time for Monster Hunter to penetrate the market, right? The monsters coexist with the humans. They're just part of the ecosystem. And the monster hunters are just the people who have to keep the balance. Like, the monsters go a little wild. They're a little too violent. There are a little too many of them. You have to take care of them. You have to, like, control them. But then you have to figure out why those monsters went out of control.
45:58 Charles Liu? And in almost all cases, it's because somebody who is not one of those monsters tried to do something unwise and lost control.
46:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's, one of his several famous books, The Demon Haunted World. When I saw that title, I was like, "Oh, my gosh."
46:17 Charles Liu? Yes. Tremendously important.
46:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the fears. The monsters embody our fears.
46:24 Charles Liu? Yes, very much so. And also, what Carl did in that book was to make very clear the difference between a scientific and a non-scientific monster, right? Something that you could actually touch and feel and confirm and explain as opposed to...
46:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And experiment on.
46:42 Charles Liu? That's right. Do you remember in that book, the parable of the dragon in my garage?
46:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No. Tell me, real quick.
46:50 Charles Liu? The idea is that I tell you I have a dragon in my garage. And so you say, "Oh, let me see it." It's like, "Oh, no, it's invisible." Like, "Well, okay, so I might be able to hear it, right?" "Oh, no, it's completely quiet." It's like, "Oh, well, it flies, right? So I can hear wind?" It's like, "Oh, no, it flies so quietly you can't tell." And you keep telling you that there is a thing that exists there, but I keep telling you why you can't prove that it's there. Is it actually there? In that case, this is an attempt to obfuscate or to prevent you from actually learning reality.
47:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I felt the same way about the guys testifying that they have aliens in a lockbox.
47:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're not gonna show us the alien in your lockbox, that's the same thing as not having an alien in your lockbox.
47:34 Charles Liu? That's right.
47:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the same thing.
47:35 Matt Kirshen? I'm feeling kind of embarrassed now about the amount of money I paid for a dragon.
47:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's on your shoulders right now, right?
47:42 Matt Kirshen? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, and I feel comforted by that, but now I'm starting to feel maybe I've been had.
47:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When children have imaginary friends, adults laugh at them. They don't laugh, but they, they know.
47:52 Matt Kirshen? They poo-poo that, yes.
47:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They will outgrow this.
47:55 Matt Kirshen? Right.
47:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yet, as adults, we have a suite of things that are just...
48:00 Matt Kirshen? That again, reflect our fears and desires.
48:02 Charles Liu? That's right.
48:02 Matt Kirshen? That things that we wish.
48:04 Charles Liu? You're exactly right, Matt. And, and we laugh to some extent, right? You can prey on them in, in your comedy shows, right? And you make people laugh at themselves, at the kinds of things that we hold in our bodies that are not physics, that are not scientific, and yet, they rule our lives. And so, there is nothing wrong with something that's unscientific, right? Like a ghost idea, or a monster idea. It's only when you are trying to use that in a negative way, or to control, or to be otherwise, whatever, uh, negative toward people, that those monsters become truly monstrous.
48:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I find interesting that, just as a physicist, there are fewer physics monsters than biological monsters.
48:47 Charles Liu? At the moment, that is true.
48:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At the moment, right, right. And I don't know what a physics monster would even be, when I think about it.
48:53 Charles Liu? A black hole, maybe.
48:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it would have to have, it would have to have agency.
48:56 Charles Liu? When we first thought of black holes, we thought that they were like, you know, ooh, scary. But now, it's just like, oh, it's a monster like Cookie, right?
49:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cookie monster.
49:05 Charles Liu? Yeah, uh, it's not that big of a deal.
49:07 Matt Kirshen? They're hungry, but as long as you keep your distance and respect, they don't matter.
49:10 Charles Liu? That's right. And so...
49:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it, and he lives in his own trash can, you know?
49:14 Matt Kirshen? They're self-contained.
49:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't lift the lid, you'll get eaten.
49:17 Charles Liu? But, uh, there's a litany of science fiction stories, movies, books, novels, et cetera, uh, that had black holes as evil, scary places for a long, long time. And then now they're benign.
49:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not so much anymore, because we fully understand them.
49:30 Charles Liu? Because we understand them.
49:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yes. Because black holes really came in, in the 60s.
49:35 Charles Liu? That's right.
49:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, yeah, as long as you don't understand something, it's ripe for monsterizing.
49:40 Charles Liu? That's right. And so, the best way, eh, I think, to help us all deal with the monstrous ideas or fears in our lives is just to learn more about them.
49:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Best song ever about monsters?
49:53 Charles Liu? Which one?
49:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You tell me. Otherwise, I'll tell you.
49:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Monster Mash.
50:00 Charles Liu? Oh.
50:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Come on, guys. They did the Monster Mash. Yes. That's true. The Monster Mash. The Cryptkeeper Five. Yes, yes, brilliantly. Yes, Wolfman. It was very one-hit wonder, but all the rhyming was perfect for Halloween. So Charles, thanks for bringing your expertise here. What a pleasure. Man. What's, we have so much left to talk about. Now, now, Matt doesn't respect me anymore. I'm his geek friend. Yeah. And now. No, no, no. No, but here's, the real story here is that however geeky you think you are, there's someone geekier than you.
50:34 Matt Kirshen? There's always another. There's an infinity of.
50:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Infinity. It goes to infinity, okay? So it's just Charles is very far along that infinity scale. It's not linear, okay? You got lots of dimensions.
50:47 Matt Kirshen? Like a Hilbert's Hotel of geeky.
50:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There you go. Infinite number of funny things. Let me see if I can reflect on this subject. I'm a fan of science fiction, storytelling, of how inventive a next monster can be as portrayed in that storytelling. And I value anything that can bring insights to ourselves, brought to you by others, brought to you by your own introspection. And it's pretty clear that if all you do is tell stories about humans interacting with
51:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? humans, it's going to miss an important dimension of how we might behave on the edges of our self. And a monster will take you there. And let me add a little bit of bias. If you've earned the sci in the sci-fi label of your story, and you put a little bit of biology, chemistry, physics, material science in your monster, take it wherever you want beyond that. And we're going to be watching because in the end, the monster will teach us about ourselves. And that is a cosmic perspective. Matt, thanks for coming.
52:08 Matt Kirshen? Thank you so much.
52:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Visiting us from LA.
52:09 Matt Kirshen? I really appreciate you having me.
52:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. Charles. Hey. I want you more often. I want you every, every time.
52:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I just like, I like it because I learn something every single time. Oh. And... The same is true for me too. And I boost my, my geek.
52:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I can say I spent an hour with Charles today. Back off. Thanks Neil. Always happy to be here. All right. This, this has been another installment of StarTalk. Monsters Edition. Until next time. Keep looking up.
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