Cosmic Queries: Monsters with Bill Nye

With Halloween just around the corner, guest host Bill Nye and co-host Chuck Nice apply a little science and rationality to fan questions about zombies, ghosts, vampires, dragons, Frankenstein’s monster, and Bill’s old boss.

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.

• 0:21Bill Nye?

  Greetings, greetings, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, kids of all ages. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Bill Nye, hosting this week for our beloved Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I am joined once again by the brilliant, the insightful, the nominally handsome Chuck Nice. And this week on Cosmic Queries, with the Hallowedeen coming up, the eve of All Saints' Day, we're gonna do Monsters. Cosmic Queries Monsters. Monsters, and I of course am thoroughly charmed by the great many questions that have come in regarding monsters. Well, monsters are such interesting people. They are. Now, right there, we put in a joke about politicians. There you go.

• 1:06Bill Nye?

  Yeah, okay, but before we do that, or as we do that, this is really fun. The Halloween in my neighborhood has become such a celebration of something. Kids just love it. People love to get dressed up. There's the candy thing that's been associated with it, but apparently it goes way back to Celtic celebrations having to do with how they reckoned the calendar. Okay. So, this would be, the harvest is harvesting, being harvested. Right. Winter is upon us. Right. And so, November 1st was the New Year. Oh, really? Apparently. Then, as is so often the case, the churches of Europe overran these guys,

• 1:51Bill Nye?

  the Romans and then the Catholic Church, and absorbed the holiday and made it their All Martyrs' Day, their All Saints' Day, became...

• 2:02Bill Nye?

  Uh, the day after the hallowed eve.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  All hallowed eves, right?

• 2:06Bill Nye?

  So it's quite a thing, but I know the kids that I, uh, in my neighborhood just go wild for it. I mean, I enjoy it, of course, but it is ultimately about monsters, about adrenaline and being scared.

• 2:19Chuck Nice?

  And don't forget, it's also about, uh, taking any profession, no matter what it is, and turning it into a sexy outfit for someone to wear.

• 2:30Bill Nye?

  I, I don't know if I've ever noticed that.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, just let me think about it. Every single costume.

• 2:36Bill Nye?

  Chuck, I think about it all the time.

• 2:40Bill Nye?

  Let's take a cosmic query regarding monsters. Read on.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Mario Bevelaqua coming to us from Facebook. Do you believe physics could explain the existence of ghosts and spirits? It reminds me of Carl Sagan's illustration about the fourth dimension with the analogy of geometric forms living in a two-dimensional world and having contact with three-dimensional creatures. Do you believe in another level or dimension or another level of existence?

• 3:15Bill Nye?

  No. And so as far as physics goes, uh, we have, we love to say this, uh, all science is either physics or stamp collecting. All science is either physics or just collecting facts. Then the other expression we love is, uh, they say, um, everything happens for a reason. And that reason really is usually physics.

• 3:38Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. Okay.

• 3:40Bill Nye?

  If you consider the human consciousness to be a chemical reactions, biochemical, the thing that humans struggle with, and I hang out with the occasional neuroscientist, and that is this nature of consciousness. You know, I've spoken to dogs about this. Right. I've spoken to my pet mice, occasional hamster about this. Mm-hmm. But they don't seem to be troubled by the finite nature of life, the way you and I are. No, they're not. They don't seem to be. They don't get paralyzed by self-doubt. But humans do, because we can see that we're not gonna live forever. And so it's very easy to take, or it seems to be easy for us,

• 4:21Bill Nye?

  to take an unexplained phenomenon and attribute it to something beyond ourselves, because we can't, we have trouble imagining it all coming to a close. Correct. And I think that's where ghosts come from. And it's so easy to scare people. And as I say, what do you wanna be afraid of? Lions and tigers and bears? Oh, my. They're hardly any trouble at all. No, they're not. The thing to be afraid of- Especially here in Manhattan. That's right. Very few. The occasional superintendent of a building, perhaps. But the thing to be afraid of is another human. Another human that you can't see. Another human that's able to make noises in an old house. Right. Another human that makes spooky sounds.

• 5:06Bill Nye?

  And so humans create ghosts to explain the unexplained. But can you do your, can you do your ghost again?

• 5:17Bill Nye?

  All that said, I don't think- That is a ghost I wanna meet, by the way. That's the ghost of the- I wanna meet that ghost. Well, you wanna meet her if she's hot. But, uh, uh, in general, uh, I don't think there's anything beyond. People have looked and looked, and Houdini gave his mom a secret word. Yeah. Said, "If you go to a séance, mom..." Just listen for the secret word.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  And you'll, and you'll know.

• 5:46Bill Nye?

  You'll know that I'm back there. I'm out there, but.

• 5:49Chuck Nice?

  There's a famous account that he was, uh, at a seance and I believe the medium called him a name that his mother never, would never call him. She only called him by his true name, his, his given birth name. And the medium called him whatever.

• 6:05Bill Nye?

  Oh, and, and saying, claiming it was his mom.

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  Right. Claiming that it was his mother checking in, but called him like Harry.

• 6:12Bill Nye?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:12Chuck Nice?

  And she would never do that because that wasn't his given birth name. She only called him one and he knew right then and there.

• 6:18Bill Nye?

  That it was a fake.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Bill Nye?

  So if you, everybody, next time you're in New York, New York, the town's so nice, they named it twice. You can go to the Houdini Museum. And see this extraordinary, uh, setup or set of props that he had to simulate seances.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:33Bill Nye?

  So Houdini created seances and people believed it. They wanted to believe and go so badly. They wanted to contact people who have come and gone.

• 6:42Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:43Bill Nye?

  Uh, so badly that they were, uh, easily duped. Now, why don't we connect with people who aren't born yet? Why don't we connect with people way out there in the future who can give us some decent advice?

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:55Bill Nye?

  Doesn't happen.

• 6:55Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't happen. It's always somebody.

• 6:57Bill Nye?

  We can't, we can't imagine it, so it doesn't happen.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  It's always somebody with unresolved issues.

• 7:01Bill Nye?

  Yes, and boy, the place, the world is lousy with them, let me tell you. Lead on.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So now wait, just a, just a quick follow up to that. When you talk about different dimensions and you talk about a multiverse.

• 7:12Bill Nye?

  When you say you, this is a cosmic query person regarding the monster show. Yes.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:17Bill Nye?

  He or she said.

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  So i- is it possible on any level that one multiverse could bleed into another multiverse?

• 7:28Bill Nye?

  Oh, like multiverses are like bleeding in and out all the time.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  Totally.

• 7:33Bill Nye?

  And they're like merging.

• 7:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Bill Nye?

  And that's why, you know, I, I, um, didn't finish my homework.

• 7:42Bill Nye?

  Okay, it could be, but it's so far out of our everyday experience. There is so far no evidence.

• 7:47Chuck Nice?

  No evidence.

• 7:48Bill Nye?

  Bring it on, though.

• 7:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:49Bill Nye?

  If there are ghosts, bring it on. Come, let's take a meeting.

• 7:52Chuck Nice?

  All right, so there you go.

• 7:53Bill Nye?

  Ghost and me.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  Mario Bebel Aqua, no ghosts. So, sorry, you and the kids, you and the kids in the Mr. and Machine are just gonna have to keep driving around, eating those Scooby snacks. Okay, Juan Diego, Juan Diego Lopez from Facebook wants to know this. He says, "Hi, it's Juan Diego Lopez from Colombia. What are the odds of a mind-controlli fungus, uh, or zombie fungus, uh, could evolve to use human beings as its host?"

• 8:26Bill Nye?

  I don't know, Chuck. Your words are strange to me. Uh, so apparently, the zombie thing comes from some, or one very reasonable rumor, is that it comes from a drug that was created that made people spacey.

• 8:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:45Bill Nye?

  Uh, thoughtless, uh, dumb, uh, weird. And so, this led to the myth of zombies. And there are certain diseases that make people have trouble completing sentences. Completing sentences. And so, this is where I think these myths got started. I don't think, uh, it's also very, it's also very reasonable that a fungus can evolve to have hosts. And there's all kinds of things living in us, all sorts of microbes.

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we are already the host for a heck of a lot.

• 9:16Bill Nye?

  More microbes in your tummy than there are people on Earth.

• 9:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:20Bill Nye?

  It is a crazy thing. But the thing that did it, that lives is, lives in us, is not a fungus. It's, there, there are other systems, biological entities, we call generally bacteria. But there are successful funguses that use us to get around. I think of athlete's foot.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 9:38Bill Nye?

  Without, uh, athlete's foot makes its living off human toes.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  Which is why I always wear shower shoes, even in my own shower.

• 9:46Bill Nye?

  Uh, TMI, uh, too much information, Chuck.

• 9:49Chuck Nice?

  I just don't wanna give myself.

• 9:51Bill Nye?

  Ah, can't hear you. Okay. No, but I know what you're saying. So I gotta say it's reasonable that funguses do it, but in general, the funguses that succeed with humans are live on the outside of our bodies. But bacteria, huh, we're lousy with them.

• 10:05Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. Okay, that's a pretty cool.

• 10:08Bill Nye?

  Thing it has to do with hyphae, their delicate hyphae.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  So, you know, the, the, so there is some basis to this zombie belief.

• 10:16Bill Nye?

  Apparently having to do with a natural drug or drug that locals in the Caribbean were able to isolate.

• 10:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:22Bill Nye?

  And make you a little zombie-ish.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  Ah, there you go.

• 10:26Bill Nye?

  Carry on.

• 10:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Okay, this is Zach King from Facebook. Um, since we're talking about zombies, Zach has a great little question I'd like.

• 10:34Bill Nye?

  What is with the zombie thing anymore? But let's, Zach hit me with the question.

• 10:37Chuck Nice?

  Zach is a, this is a great question. I wanna, I wanna get your take on this, man. Zach wants to know, Bill, out of zombies, vampires, and ghosts, which do you believe is the most plausible and why? See, I love this question because I know you don't believe in any of them.

• 10:55Bill Nye?

  Well, but vampires, it's obviously vampires.

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  Why?

• 10:58Bill Nye?

  Because they're vampire bats and they're mosquitoes. They make their living sucking your blood. And now vampire bats to suck cow blood.

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they lap up cow blood.

• 11:08Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, but they're good at it. And so that's, so of those three, if I gotta pick those three, it's definitely vampires.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, because they exist, vampiric animals exist.

• 11:18Bill Nye?

  Obviously. Look, you guys, you can't see him, it's radio, but he is into it right now.

• 11:22Chuck Nice?

  Because.

• 11:23Bill Nye?

  Bill, Bill, Bill.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  I know, because you're, you're making it too scientific. Of course they exist, but we're talking about the plausibility of the undead versus the plausibility of, um, a being who is possessed by an eternal, eternal demon that gives it a bloodlust in order to sustain itself.

• 11:44Bill Nye?

  Wow, quite the authority.

• 11:46Chuck Nice?

  And then of course, uh, the plausibility of the imprint of a human being still resonating after that person ceases to exist in their earthly body. So of the three of those, which of those would make more sense?

• 12:04Bill Nye?

  I, I'll say again, sucking somebody else's blood for nutrition is the most reasonable of those three. Cause you watch people, it's, look, it's sad.

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:13Bill Nye?

  And I will be there myself, but as people get older and lose, many of us lose our faculties. It just doesn't seem like that young go get them spirit lives on in some ghostly entity. It just seems like you wind down and you die, which sucks. I mean, first to admit it sucks. Then that's the ghost thing. And then the zombie thing. Well, if you ever met my old boss.

• 12:39Bill Nye?

  No, but people taking drugs to act stupid. There's a lot of that. Unable to form sentences. There's a lot of that.

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say, now, when you look at drug use, I, there's some zombies out there.

• 12:50Bill Nye?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  There's some real zombies.

• 12:51Bill Nye?

  But there are animals that make a living sucking other animals' blood.

• 12:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:57Bill Nye?

  Because it's full of all the nutrients you would ever need, animal wise.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and you know, I gotta say, I, I once had an iron poor diet and I, you know.

• 13:04Bill Nye?

  Ah, can't hear you.

• 13:07Bill Nye?

  Lead on Chuck, next monster based cosmic query.

• 13:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, this is so much fun. I love it.

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  This is Rob Akins coming to us from Facebook. All right, this is another zombie question, okay, but, and once again.

• 13:25Bill Nye?

  No, but this is a good one.

• 13:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, but once again, this is a different take on the zombie.

• 13:29Bill Nye?

  And I'm sorry, not too sorry, I'm delighted that I'm here, but Neil and his daughter are just really into zombies.

• 13:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 13:35Bill Nye?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  I mean, I've heard Neil talk about the zombie thing, but I didn't know that he was that into it.

• 13:39Bill Nye?

  Well, I mean, I think by familial leadership.

• 13:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:43Bill Nye?

  Yeah, lead on there.

• 13:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool. Have you ever watched any of these zombie crazies?

• 13:47Bill Nye?

  But the zombies they had, they were a big hit when I was a kid. And now they've made a comeback.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  That's true. I mean, when I was a kid, Night of the Living Dead was the big rage.

• 13:55Bill Nye?

  That's it, that's all it is.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  It was the big rage.

• 13:57Bill Nye?

  And the big thing is, you know, could you be undead? And there used to be a series, Dark Shadows, which people watched every day to find out what these vampire guys and gals were doing.

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  That's right, people, long before there was Twilight, there were middle aged, unattractive vampires.

• 14:16Bill Nye?

  No, but the vampires were generally young and hot.

• 14:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's true. Long before there was, uh, Robert Pattinson.

• 14:21Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  All right, so here's what Rob wants to know.

• 14:23Bill Nye?

  You know, and Bill Nye.

• 14:26Chuck Nice?

  Here's what Rob Atkins Akins wants to know. And zombie again, have you ever considered that zombie type virus, so he's talking from a virulent standpoint, might actually be beneficial to long space flights? Here's the, let me tell you something, this is a pretty cool question.

• 14:43Bill Nye?

  Okay, well you'd get suspended animation from a zombie virus, or zombie drug.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  So, so, so with that, yeah.

• 14:48Bill Nye?

  There's something to be learned perhaps from the zombies.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, I mean, what do you think about that?

• 14:52Bill Nye?

  Oh, it's very reasonable that you could have an infection, something that would affect your genes, that would allow you to live a long time, or allow you to doze off, but you'd want to undo it, you'd want an antidote.

• 15:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:06Bill Nye?

  And when, and just, he specifically used the word virus.

• 15:09Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he did, he said a zombie virus.

• 15:10Bill Nye?

  Antiviral drugs are trouble, they don't work all as effectively, in the same way that antibiotic drugs work, but I follow you, but you'd want to be able to undo it and you'd want to count on your crewmates to undo it for you, or maybe you understand it so well that this virus infects you and you go to sleep at lunch.

• 15:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:33Bill Nye?

  And then your body takes years to overcome the virus and then you wake up ready to play.

• 15:38Chuck Nice?

  So it's kind of like a, uh.

• 15:40Bill Nye?

  Could be.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Uh, what do they call that, an induced coma?

• 15:43Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  The vi- a viral, a viral induced coma?

• 15:46Bill Nye?

  A space travel virus coma thing. And then everybody's got a, the people who get the gig as astronauts have to respond to it in the proper way.

• 15:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:56Bill Nye?

  I'm not saying it's very reasonable, but it's a cool premise for science fiction.

• 15:59Chuck Nice?

  It is a cool premise for science. Hey, Rob, man, write your book, buddy, write, write your book.

• 16:04Bill Nye?

  Don't forget, act two's the hard part.

• 16:08Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Okay, I don't want another zombie question here.

• 16:10Bill Nye?

  No, Chuck's, Chuck's zombied out.

• 16:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:13Bill Nye?

  Yeah, see, you'll notice there are no mirrors in the studio.

• 16:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, eh, yes, that's right.

• 16:17Bill Nye?

  Then I could see that Chuck's not really here.

• 16:19Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 16:20Bill Nye?

  Take it.

• 16:20Chuck Nice?

  I don't know if you people are familiar with Blackula, but he's here, baby.

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. This is Steve Fleming. Steve Fleming wants to know this. Hey, Bill, I want to know if you know anything about sleep paralysis. Now, that's all he asked.

• 16:43Bill Nye?

  Well, I've definitely routinely woken up and I can't move for a moment.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, that's happened to you, too?

• 16:49Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 16:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay. And for me, it's been longer than a moment, though. I mean, I've been fully-

• 16:54Bill Nye?

  Are you awake now?

• 16:57Bill Nye?

  No, so the-

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  Many question that.

• 16:59Bill Nye?

  There's a lot to look into this. A lot of people look into this.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:02Bill Nye?

  My speculation, it has to do with your cerebellum.

• 17:07Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 17:08Bill Nye?

  The part of your brain that helps you walk. The part of your brain at the, at the base between your spinal cord and your cerebrum.

• 17:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:14Bill Nye?

  Where you do your thinking. And so it's very reasonable. The sleep paralysis is more pronounced in some people than others.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:21Bill Nye?

  But so far, it is not genetically lethal. Like, people have this sleep paralysis. They're paralyzed for a few moments when they awaken. But look, Chuck, you've got three kids, right?

• 17:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 17:33Bill Nye?

  And some of them are probably going to show up with the same nice syndrome.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  This is true, where they're, yeah.

• 17:39Bill Nye?

  I hope they don't get the mean spirited syndrome. But this is very reasonable. And this, if you have an interest query-erist, query person.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  Steve Fleming.

• 17:49Bill Nye?

  Look into it. Become a medical doctor and understand the cerebellum and dare I say it. Change the world. This is Cosmic Queries. This week it's Monsters with Chuck Nice, and I'm your host, Bill Nye, and we'll be back on StarTalk right after this.

• 18:08Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Bill Nye, sitting here with Chuck Nice.

• 18:13Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 18:14Bill Nye?

  It's the Cosmic Queries, and this week, what with the Hallowed Eve, the eve of All Saints' Day coming up, we are doing- Monsters.

• 18:24Chuck Nice?

  Monsters.

• 18:25Bill Nye?

  Cause such a popular costume theme. And speaking of costume themes, my goodness, we went to Comic Con. Wow.

• 18:34Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 18:34Bill Nye?

  It's a lot of, a lot of costumes.

• 18:37Chuck Nice?

  You know, that's all there is is, but some of them are very, very good. And you know, the, the ones that are people purchase, I'm like, okay, fine.

• 18:45Bill Nye?

  Chuck is like, okay, fine. That's what he's like.

• 18:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but the homemade, the homemade costumes, you see the, the.

• 18:53Bill Nye?

  Diligence.

• 18:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes, the time and effort.

• 18:55Bill Nye?

  Detail.

• 18:55Chuck Nice?

  And the passion that the people put into.

• 18:57Bill Nye?

  The thought.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, everything from, uh, the collector to Morikai and JC for, you know, Cartoon Network to comic books, you know, the people with these homemade costumes, they really, really pour themselves into it.

• 19:13Bill Nye?

  And they have fun.

• 19:13Chuck Nice?

  It's awesome. I gotta give it to them. I mean, I would never, you know.

• 19:17Bill Nye?

  Not on purpose. What's this thing you're wearing now, though?

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm wearing my, uh.

• 19:22Bill Nye?

  My kid because I love.

• 19:23Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is true. I'm wearing kind of a costume. I'm wearing a, uh, uh, Albert Einstein t-shirt that I picked up.

• 19:29Bill Nye?

  He has a pipe, but it has a enormous flame coming out of it.

• 19:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, the flame is like, I don't know, it looks like a nebula or something coming out of this pipe.

• 19:35Bill Nye?

  Nebula coming out of this pipe. So with that said.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:38Bill Nye?

  We went to Comic Con and we got some cosmic queries with the monster theme. Take it Chuck.

• 19:45Chuck Nice?

  All right. Well, let's hear from our, uh, Comic Con.

• 19:48Bill Nye?

  It's a recording. Oh, yes. Play it.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Hey Bill, Alex from Brooklyn here in New York City Comic Con. Why is it that the dragon and the sea monster are so pervasive in so many cultures mythos?

• 20:01Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's a good question.

• 20:03Bill Nye?

  Well, I think the sea monster thing is easily explained. If you've ever been on the ocean.

• 20:07Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:08Bill Nye?

  And a big fish shows up.

• 20:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Bill Nye?

  Which they do.

• 20:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:11Bill Nye?

  It is amazing and often frightening. And I say big fish, a big whale.

• 20:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Bill Nye?

  Could would be among those that would take you off guard. Man, they're huge and they're moving around in the water. You can't see them. And they're, they're, they can be scary. And I, this, I cannot help but reflect.

• 20:30Bill Nye?

  On a classic Twilight Zone with the sand monster. Do you remember the sand monster?

• 20:35Chuck Nice?

  No, I don't.

• 20:36Bill Nye?

  He moved under, or she moved under the sand, eating astronauts. Very troublesome.

• 20:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. That sounds like the premise for the movie Tremors.

• 20:43Bill Nye?

  Yes, but you can't, exactly. You can't see them. So I think that sea monsters are very easy to create in any culture because so much goes on below the surface that you can't see and there must be extraordinary forces at work to produce these extraordinary large animals. As far as dragons go, I think, just, I mean, how bad would it be if alligators could fly? I mean, they've got big jaws, they bite you in half. And by the way, alligators are super trouble. If you're in an African river and you're, or in Florida.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Bill Nye?

  And you're just trying to walk through the marsh or the swamp or the wetland.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Or a golf course.

• 21:21Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 21:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Bill Nye?

  Or a golf course. Very troublesome.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Very troublesome.

• 21:25Bill Nye?

  Take it up another notch where they're flying. No, wait, there's more. They can breathe fire. It just gets worse and worse.

• 21:31Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 21:31Bill Nye?

  But I think it starts in the sea and the mystery below the surface.

• 21:35Chuck Nice?

  Got you. Got, well, that makes perfect sense because the sea is mysterious. Miss, miss.

• 21:41Bill Nye?

  It's easier to explore the surface of the moon.

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  And it's easier for me.

• 21:44Bill Nye?

  Than the bottom of the ocean.

• 21:44Chuck Nice?

  It's probably easier than for me to say the word mysterious, apparently. So fantastic.

• 21:49Bill Nye?

  Try it again. Wish to share. Wait. Mysterious. I can never say wish to share.

• 21:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's move on to, uh, Andy Bracken, Bill, wants to know this. I like this question, man. Is the Frankenstein monster even remotely possible and how?

• 22:11Bill Nye?

  Did you ever meet my old boss? Okay, so this is, the premise is you take a brain out of one person and put it in another.

• 22:18Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 22:19Bill Nye?

  I, I don't, I would ask medical science, but it's, and there's a lot of nerves to connect. Plenty could go wrong.

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  It could go wrong.

• 22:27Bill Nye?

  And, uh, uh, while it seems reasonable, I think, uh, it's not gonna happen. I know people that wear the bracelet to get their heads frozen.

• 22:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Bill Nye?

  So this would not be putting a brain in a guy. This would be putting a head on somebody.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Head in the jar.

• 22:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah. I just don't think, I think there's a lot more to it.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 22:49Bill Nye?

  People talk about in medical science, they talk about your central nervous system, your CNS.

• 22:56Bill Nye?

  And I think the connection between your central nervous system and your brain is very complicated. And if nothing else, you've probably had a cut and your finger or that part of your arm went numb.

• 23:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 23:09Bill Nye?

  But then as years went by, it got unnum. Have you ever had that feeling, that experience?

• 23:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, it hasn't gone unnum yet, but yeah, I chopped off a piece of my finger and it's still numb there.

• 23:20Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so, but has it gotten more sensitive?

• 23:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I have, I have sensitivity.

• 23:24Bill Nye?

  So there's something going on. There's stuff that grows, stuff that doesn't grow or doesn't multiply and stuff that does. And I think the connection between those is very hard to establish. If I were you, I would live for now and not freeze your brain. Although there's a few people I wouldn't mind to put in a jar.

• 23:43Bill Nye?

  Next question, Cosmic Queries of Monsters.

• 23:46Chuck Nice?

  Monsters. All right, here we go. Amy Kolev.

• 23:51Bill Nye?

  Amy, take it.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  Amy says this, "We often talk about life as we know it and as it exists in our universe outside of Earth. Less often, we talk about life as we don't know it and what other kind of life there could be, how to define it, define it and further detect it. What are some possibilities of other life that we don't know?" Now, it's very difficult for you to tell us the life that we don't know because we don't know it.

• 24:22Bill Nye?

  Well, this is what you should do, Amy. You should go to school and study astrobiology.

• 24:30Bill Nye?

  No, seriously, this is where people sit and think deeply, and some of them stand, I'm sure, and think deeply about what it would take to be a living thing with a different chemical system than we know.

• 24:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:41Bill Nye?

  So everybody, shooting from the hip, if you're not an electrovor, as Carl Sagan speculatively, "There's some pure energy field and you just absorb electricity." If you're not that.

• 24:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:54Bill Nye?

  You're gonna have to have a solid form and you're gonna have to have a solvent, a liquid.

• 25:00Chuck Nice?

  A liquid.

• 25:01Bill Nye?

  That can move chemicals around. This is what people speculate. So if you have liquid that moves chemicals around, what liquid would that be? Uh, ammonia.

• 25:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay. That's a stinky race of people.

• 25:13Bill Nye?

  Gaseous thing, chlorine.

• 25:15Chuck Nice?

  Chlorine.

• 25:15Bill Nye?

  Something that reacts strongly, maybe. So probably would not be a noble gas. There's probably nobody in made of helium.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:23Bill Nye?

  Running around or xenon.

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  Even though the people who are made of helium would sound awesome.

• 25:28Bill Nye?

  It would be unusual.

• 25:31Bill Nye?

  With that said, everybody loves water because we've studied all these things. So if you look at, imagine a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.

• 25:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:40Bill Nye?

  Fastened to the skull cap that is there as they so often are.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:44Bill Nye?

  If you look at it right side up, it looks one way. If you let it flop down upside down, it looks another way. But if you look at it edge on, like across the person's shoulders.

• 25:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:53Bill Nye?

  It's you can't, they're symmetrical.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  Looks like a fin.

• 25:56Bill Nye?

  So these wonderful properties where it's polar, as it's called, has polarity, has a north and south pole one way. And not the other way, give water these wonderful chemical properties that we all embrace. So this is why astrobiologists currently are so kooky for water. And why it was such a big deal, such a big story a couple of weeks ago, when scientists showed that there are seasonal flows of water on Mars. That is to say, every Martian year, super salty water seems to flow on the surface. If we found super salty water, very reasonable that we will find some super salty water-loving Mars crobe.

• 26:37Chuck Nice?

  Mars crobe.

• 26:38Bill Nye?

  This could change the course of human history, as I so often say. They wouldn't be monsters. They'd be Mars grobes.

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  All right, Amy, there's your answer. Everybody loves water. Uh, the universe's most popular sitcom. Okay, uh, let's go to, let's go to Amanda Weisman.

• 27:01Bill Nye?

  Hydro and his wife Aqua. Yes.

• 27:04Chuck Nice?

  This is Amanda Weisman. Uh, Amanda would like to know this. What do you think is the origin of?

• 27:12Bill Nye?

  It's very easy for you to say.

• 27:14Chuck Nice?

  It is. Of the lycanthropy myth, or werewolves. The lycanthropy myth.

• 27:19Bill Nye?

  Well, I have known some guys that are hair suit.

• 27:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, hair suit? You mean they look like they're wearing a hair suit?

• 27:27Bill Nye?

  Well, they're hairy.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, wolf is hairy. Wolf has, uh, like it's some dogs have, you know, clean jowls, unshaven, they don't need to shave their jowls.

• 27:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:37Bill Nye?

  So, uh, wolves are scary.

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they are.

• 27:40Bill Nye?

  You're alone in the woods. That's what you're afraid of is a pack of wolves. They're packs of wolves. They're scary. So, um, and there's also these extraordinary claims that people do act weird during full moons. And I think that that's, there's no statistical evidence of it in the modern world.

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:59Bill Nye?

  Moon, full moon, not full moon, people act the same number of trips to the emergency room, hospitals have the same business. But back in the day, by the way, Chuck, where's the phase of the moon right now? Do you know?

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  I do not.

• 28:11Bill Nye?

  You don't need to. Cause we've got electric lights everywhere.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  So true.

• 28:15Bill Nye?

  So we no longer need to know the phase of the moon. But if you were a bad guy, and you're gonna work a problem, getting through the woods at night to do nefarious things, you do it during a full moon.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Of course, because you want the illumination of this.

• 28:28Bill Nye?

  That's when people were out. That's when people did their full moony cold business. And that myth is still with us. As to where it exactly came from, I'm not an authority, but I think wolves are scary, people at night during full moons are scary, and they converged.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  There you go. You know, that makes perfect sense. I love it. There you go, Amanda. Uh, an extremely salient answer offered by none other than Bill Nye. Okay. Uh, let's go to Susan Minob, uh, or Minobi, I'm not sure. Uh, Susan wants to know this. Have you encountered a monster or something that was downright weird or inexplicable in your science life?

• 29:09Bill Nye?

  Not so far.

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 29:11Bill Nye?

  No. I've been scared out of my mind by flashlights. I've been scared.

• 29:17Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute.

• 29:17Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  Well, well, well, Bill, you, you just can't gloss over, I've been scared out of my mind by flashlights.

• 29:24Bill Nye?

  Well, this guy in the Boy Scouts was really good with this. He could move his flashlight so that a shadow. Would come towards you really fast. A shadow would be out there and then it would come at you really fast. And he was just good with manipulating his flashlight. I was scared.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 29:40Bill Nye?

  But I'm satisfied that B, he did not have superpowers.

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:44Bill Nye?

  And A, it was anything but a flashlight.

• 29:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 29:48Bill Nye?

  So I've been scared, but I've never really been scared. And I've been scared by other people.

• 29:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 29:53Bill Nye?

  A guy tried to rob me. I've had a guy pull a gun on me. That's being scary, but it's not the same as a supernatural ghost zombie monster guy.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:02Bill Nye?

  Or some thing.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  So let, let me follow up to Susan's question here with, uh, just along that vein. Have you encountered anything scientifically? That makes you wanna poop your pants? On any level, something that just goes, holy crap, there's no way we should be. We're not ready for this. Or as, as humankind, we're too irresponsible, we're too irresponsible for this or, or infantile. Or anything along those lines. Is there, is there a power or something out there scientifically? That you look at and go, ooh, that is seriously scary.

• 30:39Bill Nye?

  No.

• 30:40Chuck Nice?

  No?

• 30:40Bill Nye?

  No.

• 30:41Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 30:42Bill Nye?

  I'm scared of people. That's what I'm scared of.

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  The science is fine. It's, it's the hands. It's whose hands the science is in.

• 30:50Bill Nye?

  So really, uh, I am. I am not afraid of any power of the universe.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:57Bill Nye?

  Akin to, let's say, the first nuclear weapons that were set up. People were terrified of them.

• 31:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm still terrified.

• 31:02Bill Nye?

  I have respect for nuclear weapons. But I'm not scared of them on their own. I'm scared of the people that might wield them. And, uh, I'm also scared once in a while of politicians who, for example, there was this kid, um. Adolf Hitler.

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  That kid.

• 31:21Bill Nye?

  Who was big trouble for humankind.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh Adolf, you again.

• 31:26Bill Nye?

  No, but he was huge trouble for humankind.

• 31:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he was.

• 31:30Bill Nye?

  And it was people who did not recognize how scary he was, or they went along with him for whatever reason. And you worry about that on that, not at that same scale in the Middle East or in other parts of the world where people wield enormous amounts of power.

• 31:45Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 31:45Bill Nye?

  And do great harm to others. It's not because of science that I'm afraid. It's because of the people and the people who support them. So, uh, I.

• 31:56Bill Nye?

  I get it that there's science fiction things which I think are largely based, uh, or largely, science fiction largely came into existence because of the Cold War and nuclear weapons, where this enormous powers could be held, could be wielded by one guy with the red button, let's say. But, uh, that is the people that you're afraid of, not the instrument.

• 32:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you go. Science, not scary. People, yes. Oh, very cool, very cool. All right, here we go. Uh, we don't have a lot of time here, so let's go.

• 32:29Bill Nye?

  But let's just make a good answer for a change, Bill. Take it, Chuck.

• 32:34Chuck Nice?

  That is not what I was saying.

• 32:36Bill Nye?

  That's what I heard.

• 32:37Chuck Nice?

  No, come on now. James Clayton from Facebook, James wants to know like this. Um, uh, is there any way a person could live on blood like a vampire? So biologically, is, could you sustain yourself on blood?

• 32:56Bill Nye?

  I don't think so, because it's too salty.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 32:58Bill Nye?

  Yeah, I think you have to have water, too. And then the nutrients that are in blood, there's a lot you'll miss, I think, uh, just from the blood.

• 33:08Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 33:09Bill Nye?

  I'm shooting from the hip here, but everything, every cell is nourished by blood.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:14Bill Nye?

  So all the nutrients are in there, but I think there's all sorts of mechanisms that control how much of each one is in your blood at any one time.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 33:22Bill Nye?

  And so you'd have a temporal problem, like you'd have to be sucking the blood full-time or having it circulating through you full-time. Wait. We do have blood circulating through us full-time. We're, we are all monsters. We're all vampiric or, this is, this is the most frightening show ever, on the eve of All Saints' Day, on the Halloween. Ah, Chuck, you've led me down this road. You, you, you've created a monster. And we'll be back on StarTalk Radio with Chuck, Mike, and Bill Nye, right after this. Thanks for listening.

• 34:05Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. It's Cosmic Queries this week because of Halodene. It's monsters.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:14Bill Nye?

  Which is including some other stuff, some zombies and vampires and ghosts and other living things on other worlds in the cosmos. Anyway, I'm here. It's Bill Nye, your guest host this week, sitting in for our beloved Neil deGrasse Tyson with the brains of the outfit. Chuck, nice. Chuck, you've got a whole stack of Cosmic Queries there.

• 34:37Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I do.

• 34:38Bill Nye?

  Which one appeals to you on this scary week of autumn?

• 34:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I think we're gonna go with a question from one of our Patreon patrons, and this is Sergio.

• 34:49Bill Nye?

  The Patreon is where someone's a patron and a supporter of StartTalk Radio. And you're saying they get precedence.

• 34:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they do.

• 34:57Bill Nye?

  They're buying their way onto the air.

• 34:59Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely, just like an election.

• 35:02Bill Nye?

  Wait a minute. That's a cosmic perspective.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they are. But Sergio Rizzuto from Colts Neck, New Jersey, wants to know this, and specifically for you, Bill. What is the worst outcome we can expect from a GMO-resistant monster bug?

• 35:22Bill Nye?

  I don't know. When you say monster bug, you may be conflating a couple of things. The conflating's a modern word. Mixing together a couple of ideas. Genetically modified organisms are almost entirely plants.

• 35:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:40Bill Nye?

  And they are modified in order to be resistant to viruses, bacteria, and other parasites. And so what does happen, though, in the example of pigweed?

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  Pigweed?

• 35:55Bill Nye?

  Pigweed. There's an Arranthus. It's a very large genus of plant.

• 35:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:00Bill Nye?

  The Arranthus weed family. They have some amplified genes. They have many, many repeats of the same gene, and they are resistant to, for example, glyphosate, with the popular branding being Roundup.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  Which is a weed killer.

• 36:15Bill Nye?

  Weed killer. It inhibits the shikimic acid pathway, shikimate acid pathway. And so, uh, the worst that's happening is you get weeds that the herbicides don't work on. That's the worst so far. But I could easily imagine, back in the day, you genetically modify a plant, and then it would mess up an ecosystem.

• 36:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:37Bill Nye?

  But that, now, what's, now, we can assay genes at such extraordinary speed and with such accuracy, that doesn't look like that's really gonna be the problem. The problem is still, any problem we have is still, the, um, these very successful herbicides and crop plants that have stacked genes, that where they're resistant to a variety of pathogens, or parasites, or trouble. Uh, anyway, they're planted in huge cultures, so-called monoculture.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:10Bill Nye?

  And that is the problem. The biggest problem seems to be the knock-on effect of just planting too many of the same plant in too big an area. And then the ecosystem of the farm doesn't work as well as it could. And the classic example being bees have apparently lost their genetic diversity, and this has led to the getting, any kind of parasite has wiped out entire hives, or caused huge trouble for entire hives.

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  Because there's a lack of genetic diversity within the bee colony?

• 37:37Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:38Bill Nye?

  Result of the lack of genetic diversity of the plants, the farm field.

• 37:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 37:43Bill Nye?

  And so, this is a solvable problem, everybody, but it's, it's tricky. It's complicated.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 37:48Bill Nye?

  But in science, we love complicated.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Yeah, man, I was so hoping that that answer would end up being, uh, the worst monster bug you could get from a GMO-resistant plant would, would be, uh, you know, like a plant with a black accent and teeth, you know, that lives in a little-

• 38:05Bill Nye?

  Maybe it's coming.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  Lives in a little shop in the village, just like, Seymour!

• 38:11Bill Nye?

  Let the record show that Chuck Nice created that little bit of comedy.

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's true. You never liked that play, man. Come on.

• 38:20Bill Nye?

  I liked it, but I couldn't pull it. I mean, I can't pull it off.

• 38:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:23Bill Nye?

  I would be within my career, even faster.

• 38:27Chuck Nice?

  Where you going, Seymour?

• 38:28Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 38:30Bill Nye?

  It's a good question.

• 38:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Okay, let's move.

• 38:32Bill Nye?

  Kind of unresolved, really.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  It really is. Let's move on. Let's go to Juan Herrera from Rhode Island. Coming to us through Facebook. Ron wants to know this. Hey, I wanted to know if gene splicing is real? And if so, would it ever be possible to use it to create a real life wolf man?

• 38:53Bill Nye?

  Well, we'll see. Yeah, gene splicing seems to be real. This is where you put a virus in somebody and it carries a gene that gets inserted in that person's or that entity's or that organism's DNA. And so then to make a wolf person, what makes a wolf person? He has exacerbated incisors.

• 39:13Chuck Nice?

  Right, so fangs.

• 39:14Bill Nye?

  His canine teeth are fangy.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:16Bill Nye?

  And then he's got a big beard and when there's nails, long nails, and when there's a full moon, he goes a little wild.

• 39:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:23Bill Nye?

  That's sort of a guy I used to work with. Sort of that guy. So I guess it's possible. Guy at Boeing, he was real good at removing paint. So anyway, anyway, yeah, it's possible. And the discoveries that are being made recently is genes go across species in nature. This is quite a discovery.

• 39:49Chuck Nice?

  This is quite a discovery.

• 39:50Bill Nye?

  Been shown several times where especially viruses carry genes from one plant to another.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so you're saying that we could use a virus as a delivery system to embed genes from another species into a human being that may end up carrying the traits of that species?

• 40:08Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Chuck Nice?

  And attributing those traits to that human being?

• 40:11Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 40:13Bill Nye?

  And apparently this has happened in ancient times. All these bacteria, all these bacteria have this issue and it happens enough in nature.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 40:24Bill Nye?

  But we are all here in shape. We have the size and shape that we have because. It is generally settled down. This guy wants to make a wolf person.

• 40:32Chuck Nice?

  Right. Wolfman.

• 40:33Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's gonna take a few minutes, uh, and...

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  I can make a wolfman right now.

• 40:37Bill Nye?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  Right now.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  Alright, here we go. That's right, it's me, Wolfman down here. We're gonna let the lim- okay, enough of that.

• 40:43Bill Nye?

  Monsters all over the studio. Green onions. And so...

• 40:47Speaker 04

  Let the midnight special shine its ever-loving light on you.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:51Bill Nye?

  And now, uh, another cut from the Beach Boys. But with that said,

• 40:57Bill Nye?

  the thing about Halloween costumes is you can take them off.

• 41:01Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 41:01Bill Nye?

  When you get the jeans in there, it's a little trickier. And by the way, if you put the jeans in the wolf guy, if you wolf-guy-ify his jeans or her jeans, and that prohibits or disables his or her ability to have offspring,

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:17Bill Nye?

  that modification will disappear.

• 41:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 41:20Bill Nye?

  Right?

• 41:21Chuck Nice?

  That is correct. And you know what? That, where did I read? That that's, there's an ancestor that we have that is no longer here because of that reason. The, oh, forget it.

• 41:30Bill Nye?

  Well, we used, apparently, humans, what we think of as humans, used to have sex with Neanderthals.

• 41:34Chuck Nice?

  Neanderthal, right.

• 41:35Bill Nye?

  But we outcompeted them, they got diluted, and here we are.

• 41:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:39Bill Nye?

  And then, of course, insert your, another old boss joke right here. I think he was a bit of a caveman.

• 41:48Bill Nye?

  Cosmic queries, lead on.

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  There we go. Fantastic. I love it. Alright, let's go to Alex Di. Alex is coming to us from Facebook, and Alex wants to know this, or he says this first. "I'm very skeptical, skeptical about ghosts, but given the complex way in which light energy behaves..." Now, listen, man, he's, he's on a whole nother wavelength.

• 42:09Bill Nye?

  Light energy is behaving...

• 42:10Chuck Nice?

  "Light energy behaves. Could ghosts merely be some form of leftover residual energy? Or could the brain, in fact, generate the image itself of a person?" Well...

• 42:22Bill Nye?

  Cha. You have dreams.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Bill Nye?

  Where people show up you don't expect, or don't look like anybody you know, or are amalgams.

• 42:33Bill Nye?

  Of people you met, so human brains generate all kinds of human-like images, for sure.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  So true.

• 42:38Bill Nye?

  But is it a space light continuum situation? Maybe, but then why aren't, why are the ghosts always people we know?

• 42:47Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 42:47Bill Nye?

  Why do they always look like actors that we're familiar with? I want, if it's gonna be a ghost, I want this person to show up, really take a minute. And why isn't it somebody from the future? Why do we have all these past ghosts? Who only show up with special effects? I mean, really, everybody. I appreciate that we all, nobody wants to die. I mean, there's a few people you'd just as soon hurry up and do so, but that's different. It's, it's, we seem to fade out, not turn into ghosts. And where do they get the clothes, those ghost ones? It's just a lot of-

• 43:21Chuck Nice?

  And why do they need clothes?

• 43:23Bill Nye?

  That's right. They're a ghost. If they are pure energy manifestation in our brains,

• 43:29Bill Nye?

  you'd think they'd be a little more easily documented.

• 43:32Chuck Nice?

  Right. Okay, okay, well, there you go.

• 43:35Bill Nye?

  Well, Chuck, we're, we're, we're getting to the end of this segment.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we are, my friend.

• 43:38Bill Nye?

  Which is, I won't say the most exciting part of any radio show on Earth ever in history, but it is pretty exciting. I refer, of course, to the StarTalk Cosmic Queries Lightning Round.

• 43:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 43:51Bill Nye?

  Hit me.

• 43:52Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is where we'll just try to get through as many questions as possible, and you'll answer as quickly as you feel need be. All right, Jody.

• 43:59Bill Nye?

  Yes, no. Go, sorry.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  Jody A. Wolf from Facebook wants to know this. If zombies are the living dead, could they survive the cold, harsh realm of outer space? Whoa!

• 44:12Bill Nye?

  Uh, I don't know, zombies seem to breathe air. Can you suffocate a zombie? I don't think so.

• 44:18Chuck Nice?

  No, that's a good question.

• 44:19Bill Nye?

  I, I, I, they, I guess they'd be fine in outer space. Let's send zombies.

• 44:25Bill Nye?

  Zombies to Mars.

• 44:26Chuck Nice?

  Mars trip solved zombies. Okay.

• 44:32Chuck Nice?

  Here's Mark JP Gonzalez wants to know this. Uh, why do you think the stories about monsters reverberate around the world? And what could be the explanation for the variation? So for instance, it seems as though the same monsters stories come up around the world, but just in slightly different variations.

• 44:50Bill Nye?

  Well, let us keep in mind that all humans have a common ancestor.

• 44:54Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 44:54Bill Nye?

  Right? We are all from East Africa.

• 44:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:57Bill Nye?

  We are all humans. We pass on the same stories. We're all afraid of the same stuff. We're all more alike than we are different. So we have the same or similar myths.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  Bang. And by the way, uh, let me just say this. Mark, uh, ended saying, thank you and have a ni, nice day.

• 45:15Bill Nye?

  I get it.

• 45:16Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 45:17Bill Nye?

  Chuck nice, Bill ni.

• 45:19Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 45:20Bill Nye?

  I get it.

• 45:20Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right. So Guy Dagata wants to know this and Guy is coming to us from, uh, Nagoya, Japan. Uh, he says Godzilla. Uh, that's so out of the ordinary for a guy from Japan. Uh, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons, thought to be the greatest threat to humankind at the time. What, what kind of monster would you create to represent today's greatest threat? Bill ni, what a, first of all, let me just say Guy, that was a brilliant, brilliant question.

• 45:56Bill Nye?

  I'm not sure Godzilla is just from nuclear weapons. I think Japanese culture has had a lot of sea monsters. He comes out of the ocean.

• 46:02Chuck Nice?

  He does come out of the ocean.

• 46:03Bill Nye?

  It's a lot of trouble.

• 46:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:04Bill Nye?

  So the scariest thing right now is all these people. We have the most serious problem facing humankind is climate change.

• 46:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 46:12Bill Nye?

  And that is a result in the biggest of pictures that our atmosphere is barely a hundred kilometers thick, 60 miles thick. And there are 7.3 billion of us breathing and burning it.

• 46:23Chuck Nice?

  Holy crap.

• 46:23Bill Nye?

  And so the scariest thing is all these people having, uh, relentless people making without dying. So is that a single monster? No.

• 46:32Chuck Nice?

  The monster is us.

• 46:33Bill Nye?

  Oh my God. We're all monsters. So what we want to do is raise the standard of living of women and girls that they have fewer wanted children for a better tomorrow for all humankind. Clean water for everyone, electricity, electro storage transmission, and a top-down, successful regulatory scheme that puts a fee on carbon dioxide and methane production.

• 46:52Chuck Nice?

  Boom. There you go, guy. The calls are coming from inside the house.

• 46:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's go to Pavel Karpiski, who wants to know, greetings from Ireland. Dear Mr. Nye, what do you think about an idea of reviving dead people? Okay, like dead. It's happened though, right? People have been clinically dead and come back to life.

• 47:15Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but if you're doing it within 30 seconds, it's one thing. Then if you're doing it, you know, for like Abe Lincoln or somebody. So, you know, for example, George Washington drank water from the commonwealth of Virginia. And look, he's dead. So, no, I think it's really hard to bring people back to life. It's hard to keep people from losing their faculties as they age, let alone bringing them back when everything shuts down. I think there's a lot of postmortem chemical reactions that are very, very difficult to reverse because of that traumatic reality of nature.

• 47:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:50Bill Nye?

  The second law of thermodynamics. This has been StarTalk Radio, the exciting lightning round. Cosmic queries having to do with monsters, Halloween and stuff we're afraid of. And the thing to be afraid of, my friends, is fellow people. So let's all get along. It's been Chuck Nice. Hey. Co-hosting with me, Bill Nye, and I encourage us all to keep looking.