Zombie Apocalypse (Part 1)

There’s no escaping the Zombie Apocalypse when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Max Brooks, author of World War Z and the world’s leading “authority” on these nonexistent killers.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Hello, great to be back.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You like my co-host so often now.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I know.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, is that a good thing or not? I don't know.

• 0:44Speaker 01

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

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yes, the living coming back to life?

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well-

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Or never quite dying enough?

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be not dead enough.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:13Speaker 01

  How popular zombies are?

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:17Speaker 01

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

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Sean Penn?

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:53Speaker 01

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

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:09Speaker 02

  A pleasure to be here.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:32Speaker 01

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

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:44Speaker 02

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

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:51Speaker 01

  You ever consult on the movie Contagion?

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yes, many times.

• 2:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:57Speaker 01

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

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:09Speaker 02

  It did well. It did well.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:12Speaker 02

  It did well scientifically, too. I mean.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you say so yourself.

• 3:16Speaker 02

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

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Always get the backend.

• 3:22Speaker 02

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

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  We did not tackle zombies.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:51Speaker 01

  One of the top Brooks's in the world.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 4:50Speaker 03

  I based the zombie virus on AIDS.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, on the transmittibility.

• 4:55Speaker 03

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

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's just some exotic cases.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Right. It would have been, oh, remember that weird disease in the 80s? We called it grid. So I wanted to make it about our mistakes.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying we could have rendered AIDS extinct?

• 5:28Speaker 03

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

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like airborne viruses, sneeze-borne viruses.

• 5:42Speaker 03

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

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this formed an infectious disease model for you?

• 5:52Speaker 03

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

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Right, zombie virus. It's out there.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:08Speaker 03

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

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Well, if only that were true.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:44Speaker 02

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

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:55Speaker 02

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

• 7:10Speaker 01

  What if the pamphlet was huge?

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Like, is it that it's just too small?

• 7:15Speaker 02

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

• 7:19Speaker 01

  A pamphlet that say two feet by four feet.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Blanketing the United States.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 7:28Speaker 01

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

• 7:32Speaker 02

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

• 7:37Speaker 01

  The Big Bang?

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  That was one of the things.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give him a break here.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  And herpes flew out of a star at Earth.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Big Bang might have been an orgasm, who knows?

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a quick break.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Thanks, God.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always, tweeting at Eugene Mirman.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I follow you. You make me laugh.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Exactly, and I learn from you almost every time.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Sure, Max Brooks.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Max Brooks.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Zombie expert.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 9:16Speaker 02

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

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, excellent.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  They, they keep me up at night.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Yes, 70%.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Animals other than humans, yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 02

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

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like mad cow, I guess they.

• 9:52Speaker 02

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

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  SARS?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  SARS.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  SARS is an acronym for what?

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Uh, severe acute respiratory syndrome.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:04Speaker 01

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

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:12Speaker 02

  It's a pretty good name, SARS.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  It's not bad. I like it.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  It's catchy.

• 10:16Speaker 01

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

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Could play music.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:24Speaker 02

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

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And people do weird stuff with human excrement.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  People do very weird stuff.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 10:37Speaker 01

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

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:43Speaker 02

  But the most efficient one is always blood.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  That's the best. That's my favorite.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  If you're really.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  I mean, if I was gonna give someone a disease.

• 10:50Speaker 02

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

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Because people, you know.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:00Speaker 02

  No, that's, that's true.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a typical.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Because they don't make bonds every day.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  But they certainly do exchange other bodily fluids.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Name four.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For sure.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Just kidding, please don't.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:16Speaker 02

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

• 11:21Speaker 01

  No one's blaming you.

• 11:22Speaker 02

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

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:31Speaker 02

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

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:44Speaker 02

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

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  It's science.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's science, yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Medical science.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Yes, my buddies, yeah.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're brethren in the community.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 12:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Along with new wave, not blaming, just saying.

• 12:07Speaker 02

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

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, for blood donors, of course.

• 12:20Speaker 02

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

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 12:49Speaker 01

  God complex.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 12:53Speaker 02

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

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shape shifting virus.

• 13:02Speaker 01

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

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:24Speaker 01

  And that period's years, like decades.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  It can be.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:47Speaker 03

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

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a zombie.

• 13:56Speaker 03

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

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 14:03Speaker 03

  No, no, it will kill you.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It will kill me.

• 14:05Speaker 03

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

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 14:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because their bone.

• 14:17Speaker 03

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

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, how, how fresh?

• 14:24Speaker 03

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

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So really fresh?

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Really fresh.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like embalmed fresh?

• 14:32Speaker 03

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

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zombie walks into a morgue.

• 14:38Speaker 03

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

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 14:56Speaker 03

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

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:05Speaker 03

  No, that's like a cemetery.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:09Speaker 03

  And that's it.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 15:09Speaker 03

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

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we shouldn't fear cemeteries anymore.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Don't fear cemetery.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Right, right. I bite you-

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got, all my muscles are intact.

• 15:28Speaker 03

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

• 15:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:39Speaker 03

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

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:59Speaker 03

  They knew.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was a goner.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  That happens a lot.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 16:08Speaker 03

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

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The storytelling.

• 16:12Speaker 03

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

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. You'll be thinking about dying.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  Every day.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 16:45Speaker 02

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

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got another one cooking up as well.

• 16:50Speaker 01

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

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Offhand, to me.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  There are some viruses that cause very little disease, but they spread very rapidly and very easily. And there's some viruses, I think Eddie Murphy talked about herpes simplex, you know, you keep it forever like luggage, you know, you'd never get rid of it, but most people don't die. People don't normally die from herpes. And Ebola is definitely a bad one to have.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  My major concern with his, um...

• 17:22Speaker 01

  What's your least favorite?

• 17:24Speaker 02

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

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Right? You know, so you bite somebody, you bite somebody and eventually...

• 17:33Speaker 01

  It's a self-defeating virus.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a self-defeating virus.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 17:40Speaker 02

  They could.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you don't know you're infected and you are infected, that makes you especially dangerous in society, isn't that correct?

• 17:48Speaker 02

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

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 18:07Speaker 02

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

• 18:10Speaker 01

  You're like, it's all...

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 18:46Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just confirming that.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Totally likable.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 18:58Speaker 01

  It probably says something clearer and less scary.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:18Speaker 01

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

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just have to listen from the beginning.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called the rewind button.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  I look forward to the four that don't.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Sexy bite.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:51Speaker 03

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

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're a perfect viral organism in that respect.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  They are a walking plague.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 20:12Speaker 03

  They're literally a virus.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 20:25Speaker 03

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

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Infants do that.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  From infant.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they bring it to your mouth, even if it's not food.

• 20:41Speaker 03

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

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 20:52Speaker 02

  At some, at some level, yeah.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So if you're, if you have AIDS and you bite someone, you can give them AIDS through your bite in principle?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  No.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 20:59Speaker 01

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

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Just curious.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 21:12Speaker 02

  That's the way it's typically transmitted.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a saliva to blood, I guess.

• 21:15Speaker 02

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

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The propagation of the virus.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  That's certainly a way of looking at it.

• 21:45Speaker 01

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

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's a good question.

• 21:49Speaker 02

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

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like rabies colonies, right.

• 21:55Speaker 02

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

• 21:56Speaker 01

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

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Eugene.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Most of the time, it's like just dogs.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Just an idea.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Probably so.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 22:26Speaker 01

  That's the evolutionary sound.

• 22:29Speaker 02

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

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Cause it's rude?

• 22:40Speaker 02

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

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you have to live long enough to spread it.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. Otherwise, it will die.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  But the other thing that, that cholera does, which is really, which is really interesting, is it, it causes diarrhea, right? So that, so that lots of viruses spread out into the environment so that it can find new hosts.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into the water supply.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  That's what it's purposefully doing.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Right, so.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Would die.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Wouldn't do very well either.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  But the cholera that made you poo lives.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  That's its slogan if it had a chance.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Poo to live.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, poo to live.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Slogan.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  I'm just trying to help cholera market itself.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 23:33Speaker 01

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

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 23:45Speaker 02

  HIV.

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's still.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Still for me is the big one.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 23:51Speaker 01

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

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Well, if you're, if you're asking me what bothers me most in terms of the state of the world, it really is HIV. And number two would be influenza and number three would be the one I don't know about. Because we're seeing new things all the time.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:27Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not going to ever catch Dutch elm disease.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  I have, I have a question.

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 25:22Speaker 01

  You recorded him at Comic Con.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Comic Con. And so I got that side of it and I got the viral side of it with Dr. Ian Lipkin from up at Columbia University, one of the world's experts on viruses and how they transmit. And could you just give us some virus 101 here? Are they alive and how, what the hell are they? Just, you know, in 30 seconds, can you do? Actually, why don't we, why don't we start off with the Max Brooks clip? Cause he's going to talk about the science of zombies and then we can talk about the science of the virus.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  I'm looking forward to this.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming right after that.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 26:09Speaker 03

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

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 26:28Speaker 03

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

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, what is, now, come on. Was this from the medical school?

• 26:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Harvard Medical School?

• 26:39Speaker 03

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

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 26:48Speaker 03

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

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Basic survival.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eat.

• 27:03Speaker 03

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

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that why crocodiles don't have foreheads?

• 27:09Speaker 03

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

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Lipton, what, what is a virus?

• 27:18Speaker 02

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

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A crocodile.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  A virus is a, is a piece of genetic information that's wrapped up in protein.

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:28Speaker 02

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

• 27:37Speaker 01

  It's evil beef jerky.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Evil, very evil beef jerky.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why can't you have good viruses?

• 27:42Speaker 02

  You can have good viruses.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 27:46Speaker 01

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

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 27:52Speaker 01

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

• 27:56Speaker 02

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

• 28:03Speaker 01

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

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, viruses are much, much smaller than bacteria, right?

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a thousandth the size or something.

• 28:12Speaker 02

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

• 28:18Speaker 01

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

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Most of them are very, very small.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 28:32Speaker 02

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

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 28:47Speaker 02

  They are diabolical.

• 28:48Speaker 01

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

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:20Speaker 02

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

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:38Speaker 02

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

• 29:42Speaker 01

  North Korea.

• 29:45Speaker 02

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

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:49Speaker 02

  An interesting idea.

• 29:50Speaker 01

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

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 30:02Speaker 02

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

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, get to work, man.

• 30:09Speaker 02

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

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 30:20Speaker 01

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

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking with Ian Lipton, and I've of course got Eugene Mirman for StarTalk.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. By the way, I also tweet the universe. Don't expect them to contain current events, although they occasionally do. It's mostly cosmic brain droppings, really, that's all it is. I've got Eugene Mirman here, my co-host, and the continued clips from my interview from Comic-Con with Max Brooks, who's the world's leading authority on the nonexistent thing called zombies, which we've analogized to the spread of disease. Self-appointed, but agreed. Self-appointed. I've got Dr. Ian Lipkin here from Columbia. And let's go straight to my final clip with Max Brooks. I think he was talking about, if you know you're gonna die, what does that do? What anxieties descend upon you? Let's find out.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 31:38Speaker 03

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

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't know. Tell me.

• 31:47Speaker 03

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

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 31:50Speaker 03

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

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:09Speaker 03

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

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:17Speaker 03

  I'm just expressing my own obsessive-compulsive neuroses.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because every time I see zombies struggling down the street,

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And outrun you. But that's no fun.

• 32:30Speaker 03

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

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:50Speaker 03

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

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you get complacent.

• 32:58Speaker 03

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

• 33:02Speaker 01

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

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right?

• 33:09Speaker 01

  For what it sounds like.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Well, we don't fund research on viruses. We're going to be in in difficult straits.

• 33:30Speaker 01

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

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So we we heard about bad viruses. There's got to be all viruses can't be bad.

• 33:37Speaker 02

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

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 33:47Speaker 02

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

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Viruses are cleverer than we are about how to make that happen.

• 33:53Speaker 02

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

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:02Speaker 02

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

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the basis.

• 34:14Speaker 01

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

• 34:20Speaker 02

  You can make viruses that will specifically bind to gold or platinum. And you can flow seawater over them and capture it and concentrate it.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So viruses viruses is our future.

• 34:34Speaker 01

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

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, they tend to die in soup.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Well, maybe a gazpacho then. Cold solution. I'll help you think of a solution.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Where alchemy left off, virology picks up.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said he answered yes to that question.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  I know.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  It's true. Viruses are great.

• 35:06Speaker 01

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

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 35:15Speaker 02

  True.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 35:25Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 35:29Speaker 02

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

• 35:45Speaker 01

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

• 35:53Speaker 02

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

• 35:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 36:07Speaker 01

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

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Support our work.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Support.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Nothing more ominous could be said.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 36:31Speaker 01

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

• 36:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 36:45Speaker 02

  A pleasure.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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