The Science of Godzilla, Zombies & Other Monsters, with Charles Liu

Summary

StarTalk Radio – The Science of Godzilla, Zombies & Other Monsters

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guest: Charles Liu (astrophysicist & CUNY professor)
Comedian Sidekick: Matt Kirshen
Date: October 21, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores the fascinating intersection of science and pop culture through the lens of monsters—ranging from Godzilla and King Kong to vampires and zombies. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, science communicator Charles Liu, and comedian Matt Kirshen dig into the physics, biology, and cultural significance behind famous movie monsters, asking what these creatures reveal about our scientific knowledge, our collective fears, and, ultimately, ourselves.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why We Imagine Monsters

Timestamps: [04:23]–[06:02]

• Monsters embody the unknown and the fearful; throughout history, humans have personified things they didn't understand as "monsters."
• Many early legends about monsters stemmed from misunderstood phenomena or animal encounters (e.g. triceratops fossils thought to be dragons).
• Charles Liu: "Human nature makes us think about monsters because when we have something that's unknown and we fear it, we want to explain it." [05:00]

---

2. Godzilla: Science, History, and Culture

Timestamps: [06:04]–[19:36]

• Godzilla as the Ultimate Monster: It’s the longest-running movie franchise, starting in 1954.
• Cultural Differences: In Japan, monsters (kaiju) aren't always villains; they're non-human, sometimes noble or helpful.
  • Asian vs. European Dragons: Asian dragons are playful and noble (helping rabbits cross rivers); European dragons are menacing. [09:14]
• Godzilla’s Origins: Created in Japanese culture as a metaphor for atomic radiation and destruction after the atomic bombings.
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Japan is the only country against whom atomic weapons have been used... that's why [Godzilla] became part of their storytelling." [14:40]
• Godzilla’s atomic breath—a blend of biology and science fiction—has been "retconned" many times.

---

3. Science vs. Fiction: Can Monsters Exist?

Timestamps: [22:46]–[25:44]

• The Physics Problem: Scaling up animals (e.g., Godzilla’s size) isn’t biologically plausible.
  • Charles Liu: "If Godzilla [is] 400ft tall... all known bone would shatter. He would just be a blob of protoplasmic stuff because he couldn't support himself." [24:26]

---

4. Monster Evolution: Sympathy for the Beast

Timestamps: [25:44]–[34:08]

• Sympathetic Monsters: King Kong and Frankenstein’s monster are emblematic—creatures misunderstood until mankind intervenes.
  • Charles Liu: "King Kong was benign on Skull Island... only then did he become bad and harmed people." [25:58]
• Frankenstein: The birth of science fiction, involving electricity as a "life force," derived from contemporary experiments (e.g., Galvani’s frog leg).

---

5. Undead and Zombies: Why They Haunt Us

Timestamps: [34:13]–[39:12]

• The undead fascinate us due to our anxiety about death and the unknown.
• Modern iterations (The Walking Dead, The Last of Us) use zombies to reflect cultural fears—pandemics, environmental collapse.
• Charles Liu: "Things that are not alive fascinate us because we are alive and we don't understand them." [35:01]
• Zombie physics: Classic zombies couldn't "run"—contradicts both science and old horror tropes.

---

6. Science Fiction as Cultural Mirror

Timestamps: [39:12]–[53:32]

• Sci-fi and horror use monsters to reflect anxieties of the era:
  • "The Last of Us" links global warming to a fungal pandemic (cordyceps evolving to survive in humans) [39:56].
  • "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" leverages the “uncanny valley” phenomenon: fear of things almost human but not quite.
• The ultimate lesson: Often, humans themselves become the monsters.
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson (on “Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”): "We are the monsters." [48:31]
  • Charles Liu: "Once we become familiar with monsters, they're not so evil anymore... They become friendly, they glisten, they're handsome.” [49:14]
• Carl Sagan’s “Demon-Haunted World” and the parable of the dragon in his garage: monsters (or claims) that can’t be tested are indistinguishable from no monster at all. [50:51]

---

7. Physics Monsters?

Timestamps: [52:40]–[53:41]

• Few monsters in fiction are based on pure physics (as opposed to biology).
• Black holes were once considered “physics monsters,” but are now understood and “defanged.”

---

8. Monsters Teach Us About Ourselves

Timestamps: [54:53]–[56:33]

• Monster stories encourage us to reflect on human nature, embrace curiosity, and face our fears with knowledge and understanding.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: "If all you do is tell stories about humans interacting with humans, it's going to miss an important dimension of how we might behave on the edges of ourselves. And a monster will take you there." [55:06]

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Charles Liu: "The physics of monsters... gosh, that topic has no end." [04:23]
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: "The monster will teach us about ourselves. And that is a cosmic perspective." [55:53]
• Charles Liu: "The fungus is not evil, the fungus is just a fungus...it's trying to make more fungi. It's a fungus among us." [41:49]
• On Godzilla's legacy: "What did we create? Cities. ...They're city killers. Humans are collateral damage." (Neil deGrasse Tyson) [15:40]
• On scaling monsters: "If I'm 10 times taller and wider and thicker, then I'm a thousand times more massive... my bones have to be 10 times stronger to support my weight." (Charles Liu) [24:05]
• On The Walking Dead: "The moment you died, you became a zombie. So what's the point of even trying to stay alive when you know you're gonna become a zombie anyway?" (Charles Liu) [36:59]
• On humans as monsters: "The thing that makes them bad is wheat—is us... This is the commentary about monsters." (Charles Liu) [48:34]

---

Memorable & Humorous Moments

• Neil and Charles debate which monster is their favorite, with both nerding out over obscure kaiju (e.g., Rodan, Gamera, Mothra) [16:12–18:26].
• Extended riffing on why New York's subway system could be perceived as a monster by children (and, let’s face it, many adults) [06:45–07:29].
• Jokes about vampire lore and whether Sesame Street’s The Count is "scary enough" to be considered a monster [11:00–12:42].
• Ongoing geek one-upmanship between Neil and Charles, culminating in the “Hilbert’s Hotel of geeky” comparison [54:48].

---

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Why We Invent Monsters: [04:23]
• Godzilla and Cultural Meaning: [06:04], [14:40]
• Monster Physics (Scaling Laws): [22:46], [23:49], [24:26]
• King Kong & Frankenstein: [25:44], [29:00]
• Zombies & the Undead: [34:13], [36:27]
• Fungus Zombies – The Last of Us: [39:56], [41:19]
• Uncanny Valley & Body Snatchers: [46:11]
• Monsters as Mirrors of Ourselves: [48:31], [54:53]

---

Final Reflection

The conversation concludes with the insight that monster stories, no matter how fantastical, are really about our relationship with the unknown—whether in science, the environment, or human nature. As science chips away at fear and mystery, monsters lose their edge… only for new ones to emerge, shaped by our evolving anxieties and knowledge.

---

"In the end, the monster will teach us about ourselves. And that is a cosmic perspective."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [55:53]

Transcript

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Hi, I'm Jenny Slate, and believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

[Gabe Liedman]

I'm Gabe Liedman.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I'm Max Silvestri, and we've been friends for 20 years. And we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's called I need you guys.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Should I give my baby fresh vegetables? Can I drink the water at the hospital?

[Gabe Liedman]

My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

[Gabe Liedman]

I need to go.

[State Farm Announcer]

If your small business is booming and ready to expand, you might say something like, it's happening.

[Gabe Liedman]

Crushed it.

[State Farm Announcer]

But if you need someone who can actually help protect your growing business, just say, like a good neighbor, State Farm. He's there. And just like that, your State Farm agent can help you get the coverage you need for your new space for your small business insurance needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

We had to do an episode on the physics of monsters.

[Gabe Liedman]

We had to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Oh, my gosh.

[Gabe Liedman]

I've learned so much, and I don't look behind you right now, but I think there's something creeping up on you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It's not just the physics, but the biology of monsters, the chemistry of monsters, all that coming up on Star Talk. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Today we're talking about the physics of monsters. I got with me, Matt Kirschen. Hey, how you doing? Professional comedian.

[Gabe Liedman]

Yeah, that's the. That's the job.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Tit.

[Gabe Liedman]

That's what says the tax return.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You're on tour now.

[Gabe Liedman]

I am on tour. I'm on a couple of tours at the same time. Two tours. Well, I'm opening for Sarah Milliken, who's a fantastic UK comedian, and we're doing some lovely theaters around the country. And then I'm doing kind of off the back of that, I'm doing some club headlining sets where I'm telling, you know her, many, many audience members, like, hey, if you enjoyed me for 15 minutes, I am shamelessly. I'm shamelessly siphoning off some of her success.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Oh, my God.

[Gabe Liedman]

So, yeah, mattkirchen.com for all of the dates. I'm gonn the country.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Plus you have a podcast sometimes.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Science, probably.

[Gabe Liedman]

Science, probably. I know you do this on purpose. I know you do this on purpose every time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I've only ever been on once. I'm waiting for my next.

[Gabe Liedman]

We got it. I think we're talking about. Because you've You've always got another book coming out and I think we're going to try again. Shamelessly piggyback off of your success on that one as well.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Call me Matt.

[Gabe Liedman]

So we'll get you on for, for the Definitely science episodes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So this monster subject, you know, I have some interest in the physics of mon but when we hit topics like that, we've got to call the geek in chief.

[Gabe Liedman]

I'll let you introduce him. But I've done one other episode with.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Our guest with the geek and chief.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's lovely to see. It's lovely to see you be you be topped on this subject. It's lovely to see someone out nerd you on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I'm not worthy. Charles Liu, welcome back to StarTalk.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Thanks for having me. Neil, what a pleasure. Hi, man. Oh, it's lovely to see you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You're a professor at cuny Staten Island. CUNY City University of New York. Yes. Many campus in the city.

[Gabe Liedman]

5.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Oh my gosh.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Quarter million full time students.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Wow.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Wow. Yeah, it's a great system.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Wow. And, and, and you, you have a podcast that started a few years ago.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The Looniverse.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

The Loonaverse.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I see what you did there.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It wasn't me. Okay. My family did. I, I, I would, I'm proud to have it as the name. But I always thought it was a little bit weird to put your name into the universe and claim that you had any real role.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Almost everybody's podcast has their own name in it.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So don't be afraid of that.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

O But when I heard you how clever this was li universe, I started thinking other like lunatic.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, I could fit that description.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

There's a lot of lewd, you know.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, yes. And then there is the loo. Yep, the loo. The British lewd behavior.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's all that.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, gee.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Lewd behavior. Yeah. So the physics of monsters.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Gosh, that topic has no end.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

No, it has no end whatsoever.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And monsters to maybe actual animals in our environment that we didn't know much about and only showed up at night, maybe had beady eyes and people, maybe they worked their way into legends as monsters.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And one of my favorite was is it the Triceratops skeleton that was coming out of some eroded cliff face? It was like, what animal is this?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Is this a dragon? Before anyone had any understanding of dinosaurs or extinction or anything.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah. There's a famous, I don't know, human nature makes us think about monsters because when we have something that's unknown and we fear it, we Want to explain it. We want to put it in a context. And so with me, as a professional scientist, I still am driven by the unknown and the creative and the strange.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Things, as you must be if you're going to be a good scientist.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah. I love comic books. I love, love science fiction and fantasy and everything like that. And what we did as a species centuries or millennia ago, anything we didn't know, didn't understand and feared, we tried to personify or put into this concept of a monster, make it more accessible to us. And then years later, as we have learned more about our natural world, we see that those monsters aren't monstrous at all. In fact, they're very natural and it's scientific. And that kind of connection and learning about these creative things makes us feel cool and makes us feel better about the whole universe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So do you have a favorite monster? We all do.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Presumably at the moment. My favorite monster is Godzilla.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's almost too easy.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It is Godzilla's classic. It is the longest running movie franchise of all time. Is it really? The first Godzilla movie came out in 1954. So it's been 70 years of Godzilla.

[Gabe Liedman]

So you're not counting train coming towards you as a monster. Oh, in the original silent movies, that's all slowly galloping.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Well, those are monsters of a different kind. Right. Those are the monsters in our imagination.

[Gabe Liedman]

Right.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Things that we think are frightened and scary, they must be a monster. But then, turns out it's just a train. Right. It can still smush you, but it's just a train.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

My niece, who grew up in Pennsylvania, all right. Came to New York for the first time. I think she was 7 or 8. And we're about to take the subway, and we start walking down the stairs, and this sound of a train comes in. And she doesn't know what it is, but it's coming from that direction. And she runs back up the steps.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And would not go down the stairs.

[Gabe Liedman]

It is a very. The New York subway, particularly, is an aggressively loud sound.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And it rumbles. And so that was her. That was a train, which she'd never seen before, a subway train. But that. Why fear it? Unless you think it will harm you.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's kind of monstrous. And it's coming out of the darkness. You don't see first. First there's the noise, then the lights.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Right, right. And there's a tunnel and it's a. Yeah, all of the above.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And so humans will do that. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Okay.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Now, the thing about Godzilla, which is extra special to me, is that it can be that kind of subway monster, loud, scary, and it burns you with its atomic breath and everything like that. Right. But culturally, when it came to the United States, it took on a different kind of life. You see, in Japan, monsters since time immemorial have not necessarily been these evil scary creatures. They are just non human creatures. And as a result, they can be different from humans in ways that you can find in literature, in stories, in mythology that allows you to tell things much like the gods of Olympus did say in ancient Greek times, about things that we don't understand and are trying to understand not just of nature, but.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Of human nature going back to Greece and Rome. Are you suggesting, for example, that in our 88 constellations of the sky there are non human creatures up there that you might think of as a monster? We have centaurs and.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes. We have Draco the dragon. Draco the dragon wrapped around the North Star.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yeah. And we have a minotaur, which is like half bull.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Half those that if one of those showed up at my front door, I'd be scared.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Those are pretty monstrous too. Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

They're not portrayed as scary, they're just non human things.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes. And that is precisely how I see monsters, based on that kind of cultural thing. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You have Asian heritage from Taiwan.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes, absolutely.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So our exposure to the Asian, if I may group it that way, dragon very different from the European dragon.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

100%.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The European dragon is a menace.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Whereas the Asian dragon is just a playful thing that.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Not only playful, but noble and very helpful and so forth. The constellations of the Chinese zodiac that you know. Right. The dragon is kind of in the middle. The story is very long. But to cut it short, the reason it's number six as opposed to number one, because it's such a powerful creature, is because it saw a rabbit in trouble crossing a river. And so he went back to help the rabbit cross the river and let the rabbit finish in the contest before he did. So the rabbit comes before the dragon. That is some kind behavior in real.

[Gabe Liedman]

Life, by the way, if any rabbits are listening to this. You shouldn't actually trust dragons because that is just a myth. That is public service announcement. I just need to get that in before you get into lawsuits from.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Well, but if I remember correctly, yes. From my Chinese zodiac, the dragon is the only non actual animal of the 12.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It is the one truly mythological creature. That's right. In the zodiac. And indeed, dragons are considered particularly successful, particularly smart, particularly potentially wealthy. So people will actually Change their birth dates of their children so that they are born in the year of the Dragon. They will delay C sections, they will wait and so forth, just to make sure. This is the kind of thing that I want people to think about when it comes to monsters, Right? They're not necessarily good or bad unless we project those facts in. In fact, aren't the true monsters we humans ourselves?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I think it was a deliberate act of naming that on Sesame Street. The puppets Muppets were all called monsters.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

C is for cookie. Not good enough.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So. But they're lovable and playful and colorful. And so I think it was an. Intended to de. Scarify.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

A monster in the eyes of small children.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

These are lovable monsters. And so now you're going to talk about a monster. I'm just going to laugh at you.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right, because monsters are monsters teach you the Alphabet. Yeah, absolutely.

[Gabe Liedman]

They save rabbits and they teach you how to count.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

100%.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

No, no, no. That was the Count who taught you how to count.

[Gabe Liedman]

That's good points.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Get your character straight, dude. You're from the uk. What do you know?

[Gabe Liedman]

Is a vampire not a monster?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I don't know. Right. Is a vampire a monster? Absolutely. It was right when the original Vlad, right, the Impaler, right. And was later on died. And then people in Transylvania area, not transplant itself, but that area of Eastern Europe wanted to scare their kids. They said, be careful because Vlad will come get you even though he's dead. Right? And the concept of the undead, which had been around for thousands of years in folk mythology, got embodied in this one guy, right? Count Dracula, which was then brought into modern times by Bram Stoker and then into the movies with Bela Lugosi. Right. And you kind of went.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And Tom Cruise. Yeah.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, yeah, that guy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Don't forget Tom Cruise.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Interview with the vampire. There you go, Lestad. Yes. So that kind of monstrosity, right, is literally a human being that has become something non natural. So the evil comes from not the fact that he's not human, but because he used to be a really bad human being.

[Gabe Liedman]

Right?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

The Count just Count. Right. He wasn't scary at all, but he was a vampire. He was a monster. Hi, I'm Jenny Slate and believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

[Gabe Liedman]

I'm Gabe Liedman.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I'm Max Silvestri and we've been friends for 20 years and we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's called I need you guys.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Should I give My baby fresh vegetables. Can I drink the water at the hospital?

[Gabe Liedman]

My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

[State Farm Announcer]

If your small business is booming, you might say cha Ching. But you should say, like a good.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Neighbor, State Farm is there.

[State Farm Announcer]

And we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Netcredit is here to say yes to a personal loan or line of credit. When other lenders say no, apply in minutes and get a decision as soon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

As the same day. Loans offered by NetCredit or lending partner.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Banks and serviced by NetCredit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Application subject to review and approval.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Learn more at netcredit.com partners NetCredit Credit to the people.

[Gabe Liedman]

I'm Joel Cherico and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I was simultaneously enlightened and disturbed when I came to this realization that Godzilla in Japan.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Within 10 years of the dropping of the atomic bombs, shows up as a radioactively influenced created. The radioactivity created him. I was thinking to myself, japan is the only country against whom atomic weapons have been used.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes. This is not a coincidence at all.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's why I want to affirm here that it became part of their storytelling culture. What are we gonna do with this? How are we gonna come to terms with it?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Gabe Liedman]

So again, it's a way of sort of embodying your fears and the worst things that have happened to you.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Gabe Liedman]

And personifying them.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Think about environmental degradation. Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yeah.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Godzilla was the result of, according to the mythology, atomic testing and the radioactivity that basically awoke a sleeping giant or transformed something that was large and powerful. But you didn't even have to give.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The specific details of that. Just that there was created this life form.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It turned it into this terrible thing that destroyed humans. In other words, what did we create? Cities. What have we done?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

They're city killers. Humans are collateral damage.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's a great point. Yeah, we are, but minor. But you see, what happened was other monsters like Gamera, okay. Big giant flying turtle, by the way, very cool. Very similar to Godzilla in size and shape, but different kind of things.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

This is also from.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, yes, from that Japanese tradition.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

What's the name of this one?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Gamera.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

How come I know I don't remember Gamera?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, I remember.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Mothra.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Mothra, yes. Who attacked Gamera, also would sprinkle little things onto Godzilla and confuse him.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

But my favorite. Can I say My favorite.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

But I want to keep telling me about Godzilla. I just have to get my favorite out there.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Get your favorite out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

My favorite was Rodan.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Rodan, Big flying guy, basically.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It was basically a pterodactyl.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Pterodactyl is because it was supersonic.

[Gabe Liedman]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It would, like, fly and trucks would tumble in its wake. In its wake, that's right. And I said, if I were a super monster, I want to be.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Well, before Mothra became a butterfly, Mothra was a caterpillar who flew snow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I thought Mothra was a moth.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Mothra became a moth after. But originally, Mothra was larval and like, nature. Right. Come from caterpillars or moths? Come from caterpillars.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Moth and a butterfly. Not the same thing.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

My bad, my bad. Mothra is a moth.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Thank you.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Butterfly is a butterfly. But, yes. Mothra, before achieving the flying state, was a caterpillar, a silkworm, literally, that blew out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Silkworm. Again, you get regional culture.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. And so there was actually one of the great monster movies of all time. It was a collab. They had Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan together to fight King Ghidorah, which had three heads and was very, very dangerous and was, like, brought in from Alien. King Ghidorah was not a product of Earth. It was an evil monster.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Wasn't there an episode. Wasn't there one of these movies where Mothra, as a caterpillar, spins a cocoon to trap the enemy monster?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, many episodes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Oh, many episodes.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Okay, Many things. Episodes. That wasn't just one.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I saw many things.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And in fact, there's episodes. We keep calling episodes, but they're just individual movies. But the franchises have become so huge that they're almost like individual episodes. But at least in one movie that I saw a long time ago, I don't remember the exact details of it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

When Charles says he doesn't remember the exact details, he doesn't remember every single.

[Gabe Liedman]

Detail to the syllable, but just has the kind of, like, broad structure.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Okay.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Just clarify.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Okay. And the eggs hatched, and there were two new Mothras. The scientist says knowingly, yes, Multiple births are common in the natural world or the insect world or whichever world it was talking about. But that kind of connection between these monsters being representations of nature, something like King Ghidorah, which is the representation of evil and conquest. Right. Wound up coming against each other. And monsters like Godzilla, which wiped out cities in early episodes or early movies, wound up saving humanity more than once, including, ironically, against humans creating a new monster. Because of environmental degradation. Not nuclear, but pollution. Famous movie, Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The Smog Monster.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

The Smog Monster. Why do you know these, Charles?

[Gabe Liedman]

There's also. Godzilla agrees to bike to work a couple of days a week. Godzilla cuts down on meat consumption. Godzilla goes does veganuary.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. Well, Godzilla's difference from just a big dinosaur is his atomic breath. Right. And the physics of the atomic breath have been retconned over and over again. How does he breathe fire? Right. How does he breathe. This terrorist.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Weren't dragons breathing, breathing fire before Godzilla did? Yes, but here this is a different account.

[Gabe Liedman]

And also, presumably, the myth of dragons, the breathing fire long predates any human knowledge of atomic energy.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. That's right. And so the idea that this fire comes from that is very important. And it's atomic in nature. But Gamera, that turtle guy I was referring to earlier.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

A flying turtle?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Actually, turtles must go to the drive ins all the time.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Turtles are great. Yeah, they love that stuff because they're.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The slowest moving thing.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. If you have a flying turtle, they go flying.

[Gabe Liedman]

They got ninjas.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda.

[Gabe Liedman]

They're doing. They're batting above their average. Is that also turtle panda?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Ukui is turtle in Mandarin Chinese and Master Oogway is the turtle, stupid. Did you know that?

[Gabe Liedman]

Yeah, I'm more of a Cantonese speaker. Are they different? Like, they're different, like, which is very.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I haven't screwed up. Holistically different. Even though they share the same written forms. Good. Yes.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's nice to have my joke fact checked in real time. I like that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's why turtles got some. Get some love.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Get some loving out there.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Gamra not only, like, catches a child that's falling like, he eats fire. It was figured out in the first Gamera movie that the reason he was destroying cities was because he was seeking fire and he wanted to eat it because he needs that. That's his nutrition. And so when he knocked over a structure where a little child was watching, and it was like the child was going to fall to its death. Gammera caught child, put it down. It then literally was willing to leave the world to save Earth. What happened was the humans said, you know, we want Gammara to survive. Gamma's obviously not evil, but he can't come around and knock down our cities and eat our oil refineries. And so they created something called plan.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You said he eats fires.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah, Like Plan Z. Okay. And they had him stalled at a train depot and just kept sending trucks and train cars full of gasoline onto him. So they would catch fire and so he could eat the fire. And then they cut that off when they got Plan Z ready. They had all these flares that would slowly get him up a mountain and they'd walk up the mountain, okay. But unfortunately, a hurricane came, a typhoon, and blew out all the flares. And so he was like, oh, blasted typhoon. He was gonna head back down to the city, but then the volcano erupted. So he kept going up toward the volcano.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Is this Fujiyama erupted?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I don't remember which mountain.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

How many volcanoes are there in Japan?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

But, you know, this is just amazing coincidence. You have a typhoon coming and a volcano erupting at the same time. And then he slowly went up to the top, and then he got into an area which had a lot of fire, and then the area closed up and turned into the top part of a rocket, which then sent him to Mars.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Wow. Okay.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah. Isn't that cool? The whole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So in terms of the science of monsters, many of these are derived from actual life forms that. That are important to us, what we.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Think about dinosaurs, for example. In the case of Godzilla, one thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I've always had an issue with was to be that large, yet that nimble.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Can't do it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You can't do that.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Can't do it. No. It's physically impossible. Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yeah. So talk about that.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Well, the scaling of volume and surface area and height goes at different powers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Mathematical powers.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Not physical powers.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Well, that kind of too. Right. So if I double in height, I'll actually increase by a factor of eight in volume. Right. Two times two times two. Length and width and height. So I would be eight times larger in volume. And thus, presumably, all of the stuff inside me is made of the same material. I'm eight times heavier. That means my legs have to support eight times the weight. Right.

[Gabe Liedman]

Right.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Now if I get bigger, it gets worse. If I'm 10 times taller and wider and thicker, then I'm a thousand times more massive. My legs are increasing in surface area in cross sectional area only by a factor of 100 in that case.

[Gabe Liedman]

Right.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

So my bones have to be 10 times stronger to support my weight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Because your strength goes not as the volume, but as the area. Cross sectional area of the muscle.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Right.

[Gabe Liedman]

And your muscles have to be 10 times stronger to propel them.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And so that's absolutely right. So if Godzilla being 400ft tall or so in the first movie, all right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It will weigh a billion Tons.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah. So much that all known bone would shatter. Right. All known muscles would tear. He would just be a blob of protoplasmic stuff. Because he couldn't support himself, never mind walking with that cheerful little gait that he has.

[Gabe Liedman]

Right.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yes, he's nimble.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gabe Liedman]

Same way, like, actually with real things that, like, a cricket can jump many times its own height, whereas humans can.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. And so, yeah, the cricket, we're outside.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It would just collapse under its own. Yeah.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Because that's always a spindly little leg.

[Gabe Liedman]

Because when you read about it as a kid, they'll say, like, oh, a flea can jump however many times his own height. And if that were a human size, then it'd be able to jump over your. Over the Empire State Building or whatever it is. And that's actually. No, it wouldn't. It would just kind of lie flat on the floor, like, kill me.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Kill me now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

These are people who don't know physics who are giving those answers.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

This is where that creation of monsters like Godzilla get exciting to us. Because we do see animals, insects, things like that that are smaller than us do amazing superhuman things if they were scaled up to size. So we imagine that if they're even bigger than we are, they'd be even more amazing and powerful. But the physics prevents that. That doesn't make them any the less cool. And so modern monsters are looking more and more friendly and cuddly. Right. Less and less evil and scary.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You're very helpful there. And so I just realized we had a monster earlier than our version of a monster earlier than Godzilla. That would be King Kong.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes, king Kong.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's 20 years earlier, 1930s, and a.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Giant monkey, ape, chimp type creature who was benign and perfectly friendly and was living on Skull island and doing great until humans decided to take him to New York and show him off as the eighth wonder of the world. And only then did he become bad and unharmed people.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The movie, now that I'd forgotten this was quite sympathetic.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It was very much so. It was. Some people think that it was a way that the movie makers were trying to say, hey, don't hurt the environment, guys. You know, take good care of nature. It comes back and bites you or bite you in half. Which was one of the scary scenes of King Kong where he actually had a human being in his teeth dangling. And while he, like, bit down on it and he was like, oh, yeah, that's. That's scary. Right? But that was sort of nature unfettered. If humans Messed it up, Right. And he wound up being in love with Fay Wray. The girl climbed up the Empire State Building. And then airplanes came and shot him and killed him. And he fell down to earth.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And the last line of the movie, Twas Beauty, killed the beast.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

As he's laid there dead on the.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Street as he lays their dead on the street.

[Gabe Liedman]

It wasn't. It was the airplanes, right?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. Or it was humans that killed the beast. This beast was actually a very friendly guy. I mean, he treated the humans with perfect kindness and normal behavior until he was put in this environment. And, you know, one of the things also was the humans losing control of nature. Right. Because when another repeating theme. That's right. When the reveal of Kong happened in New York City and the flashbulbs were popping and he was getting upset, and he was pulling against his restraints. Right. Well, the impresario said, don't worry, ladies and gentlemen, those shackles are made of chrome steel. There's no way he can break out of those. Right. And then he breaks out of them. Because humans underestimated the power of nature.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

In our hubris, and we overestimated the power of our chrome steel, which back.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Then in the 1930s, was like, oh, wow, chrome steel.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's why they made car bumpers out of chrome steel.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Before your day.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I've seen chrome before my day. Okay. I don't know about your day, but yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So another sympathetic monster.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

But you have to remember that you were sympathetic to him as Frankenstein's monster.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes, absolutely.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I felt sad for the thing.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes. Considered by many to be the first true science fiction novel in the European tradition. Percy Bysshe Shelley's wife, Mary Shelley, wrote this book, Frankenstein. It went through several editions in the early 1800s, but the monster was the creation of Dr. Frankenstein, who was trying to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Frankenstein.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's the Gene Wilder version, which I liked very much as well. Yes. And Igor instead of Igor. But it was an allegory about what happens when you try to violate nature. Because here was a man trying to reproduce, trying to create life, trying to be God. That's right. Trying to be a woman, trying to give birth to life. And so the combination of just defying nature and defying God caused Mr. Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein, to lose control of the monster, and the monster winds up becoming this bad thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So comment on the details of how he accomplished this. So the idea. So he went to graveyards and got body parts that are long dead.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. Which at that time, was Also social taboo.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Of course.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You weren't supposed to mess with people.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Since Da Vinci's day.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Where else is he going to know where all the muscles are? He digs up cadavers.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

In the dark of night.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You're not supposed to do that.

[Gabe Liedman]

Yeah. And would presume and. Yeah, they were. They were grave diggers. Grave robbers. Who. They would.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Well, they would take on the sly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Well, no, they wouldn't care about your body. They wanted.

[Gabe Liedman]

Right. And they're also. But there were people who would then brave, rob and steal for the medical. For the cadavers. Right. For the artists or for the.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

For the eventual.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yeah, they got a third party to steal.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Well, that, that came later, sort of in the late, mid, late 1800s.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So what I'm getting at is the idea that the body is absent some life force.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Okay. And you can't have electricity in your novel until electricity has been discovered as a thing that you can harness. And so do you remember the exact year of the.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

1817. 1818, I think is the first edition.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Okay. So Ben Franklin was active with electricity by then.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Ben Franklin had already figured out plenty of electric. Yeah. And at that time, guys like Galvani. Right. Alessandro Volta, these guys had started attaching electrical connections to like frogs legs and things like that and made them twitch. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yes, yes.

[Gabe Liedman]

And therefore realized that there was a connection between human or animal movement and electricity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Correct. And so now you have Frankenstein with these body parts that no longer have a life force, whatever that was understood to be in the early 19th century.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Animated by lightning.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

When he stitches it all together now you take the best source of energy you have available.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's going to be a lightning bolt.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And it goes into the electrodes and he becomes animated.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Even at that time in the 1800s, although folks like Benjamin Franklin had already figured out that lightning was electricity, you still had most of the people in Europe and America thinking that lightning was an act of God, that it was the divine something. And you can go back to the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks who thought that Zeus or Jupiter was throwing thunderbolts down at us. But now that we know that it's lightning and so forth, you kind of remove that monstrosity of Frankenstein. Being unnatural was perfectly natural for that to happen. Another idea of physics eventually informing monstrosity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Right. So what I like about it is, given the other experiments, like you said, with the frog leg, this is not such a far out idea.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Not at all. Not at all.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

At the time.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And today, what do we do? Your heart stops. I throw electricity into it.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. To bring it back to get it started. Mary Shelley was actually very.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Percy Shelley was the author.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an author. A poet, actually.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's what I.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes, but Mary Shelley was actually, perhaps in. In sort of retrospect, the more talented of the two. And Mary Shell, aside from writing Frankenstein, also wrote an apocalyptic novel about a pandemic that actually killed everybody except a few people. I think it was called the Last Man. I have to check that. I'm sorry, I don't remember exactly the name at that point. She was speculating about science fiction, about how people could travel from London to Cambridge in a matter of days by balloons that had wings attached to them that were flapping like birds. You know, really neat ideas. But then.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Wait a minute. A horse gets you from London to Cambridge.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Maybe it was to Glasgow. Maybe it was, you know, like somewhere.

[Gabe Liedman]

It was about 60 miles.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah, yeah. So it was airships. You know, the idea of airships.

[Gabe Liedman]

So she's. I mean, really. Because I knew her for. As being considered the sort of formation of science fiction just from Frankenstein. I didn't know that all these other.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Many of these other books.

[Gabe Liedman]

Strings to her bones.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. That's right. So she has really good stuff. And she did this all before Julia. Jules Verne started doing things like Journey to the center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and, you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Know, Journey to the Moon.

[Gabe Liedman]

But he did it louder and in a deeper voice so that would help.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That would have helped back then.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Unfortunately, Frankenstein comes back from the dead.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The undead is a. There is no end.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

A rich, rich area.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Why is it so rich? I was never as enchanted by the undead as so many other people have done.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. And nowadays, just to sort of contextualize your question, zombies and undead things are indeed the monster du jour. Right. On our. Whether it's the walking dead from past years, now there's the last of us, zombified by fungus. Zombified by fungus. 28 days, 28 years later. And that kind of thing, whether the.

[Gabe Liedman]

Cause is a virus or a fungus or whatever.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Things that are not alive fascinate us simply because we're not dead. Right. Think about this. Things that are not alive fascinate us because we are alive and we don't understand them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

We have no idea. Unless you're religious and you have a strong belief.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Ethic in that.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

We have no idea what happens after death.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Nothing can be spookier.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. And even those belief systems cannot be confirmed in any sort of experimental strategy. People have tried, as you know. They're even expressed in fiction, like Dan Brown's novel Angels and Demons. There supposedly was an experiment where they had somebody who was about to die and weighed him, and then he died and they weighed him again and it was a little lighter, you know, some sort of physical thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Right. And you got to give them credit for doing the experiment.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You should try.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yeah, yeah. So if everyone thinks you have a soul and there's science that can test things, why not test your soul? So right after Ronchin, Wilhelm Rongjin discovered X rays. X rays can see through your body. No one else ever saw through your body.

[Gabe Liedman]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Now, X rays. So they get somebody dying on the bench, and they waited for him to die to see if they saw something leaving his body with the X. And they didn't.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

They did not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's right.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

So there have been continuous experiments to try to understand what it is that makes something alive versus not alive. Right. Because a living person and a dead person seconds apart, for example. Right. One moment they're talking, they're breathing, they're whatever, they're holding your hand. Next moment they're not. And we can't get into their brain to figure out how that works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

An important feature of the walking dead, in my judgment, was if you were dead for a long time so your body was putrefied, you're not gonna come back to life.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So they recognized that your organs are.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

To be mostly dead.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You have to be not so dead that your organs would not be harvestable.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

By the card that you signed on your driving license. And that's where the transition comes when you become a zombie.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And one other thing about the walking dead was that everybody was infected whether they were dead or alive. The moment you died, you became a zombie. So what's the point of even trying to stay alive when you know you're gonna become a zombie anyway? But that's sort of the existential question of what makes a monster and what makes a human. Right. If you've died, you automatically become a monster, or do you become inanimate? Are you different from a rock or a stake?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Did you see the key and Peele skit with the zombies are taking over this suburban town?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And there's like a Saturday afternoon. People are barbecuing and there's a black family over on the side.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And the zombies avoid the black people. These are racist zombies.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah, yeah. And of course you can do something like what happened in World War Z where the author said, we actually don't know why these zombies violate the laws of physics so completely. And yet they do.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I didn't like World War Z because the zombies ran.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You can't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You can't if you're a zombie. Come on, you gotta drag a foot. Drag something. Don't be chasing me down the street.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

In the movie, they ran and they were very fast. In the book, they were actually quite slow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You read the book?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Of course. The Battle of Yonkers. Did you not see that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

No.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, oh, incredible story. Without ruining. Spoiling the story for everybody. Basically, the army wants to make a big show of force to stop these zombies. And so they bring the soldiers over and they have all this firepower. Turns out that they're routed by the zombies because the army has not thought through how to stop them. And so again, humans in our hubris, thinking that we can control force of nature, when in fact nature comes back and tells us, nuh, it's not gonna happen.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So one feature of sci fi, which is, I think its finest feature, when well done, is it's taking place in another place. And yeah, there are aliens and there's rockets and it's in the future, but. But there's some story element that's a reflection of the time in which you live.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Absolutely.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So that there's a lesson in there, either a moral lesson or a philosophical lesson. So in the zombie storytelling, the zombie genre, I'm almost fatigued, wondering, is there more lessons that they can teach? And what lesson was there?

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

To start with, let's use the Last of Us, which was built originally as a video game, but now has been turned into a very successful television series. That's right. Remind me to tell you about Monster Hunter. Okay. That is a great game franchise. But that's. In a moment right now, we would say that the reason that the Last of Us happens and humans are threatened, Global warming is the culprit in the Last of Us.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I did not remember that fact.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Mushrooms or fungi. Okay. Particular group of fungi, Cordyceps is. There are hundreds of species of this particular fungus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Let me remind people, fungus is an entire branch in the tree of life.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It's a kingdom.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It's a kingdom. Yeah. The animal kingdom. When I grew up, there were only two kingdoms.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. Animal and plant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And plant. The fungus is its Own kingdom. That's how badass they are.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

We now understand that's the case. Right. But see, fungi, they can't survive parasitically in humans. Because we are warm blooded, we have a higher body temperature than most fungi can tolerate. So fungal parasitism or infection happens all the time in the cold blooded world. Okay. Ants, wasps, they are parasitized by fungus all the time. There's a famous zombie ant fungus that causes the ants to go up and then their fruiting bodies grow out of their, their antennae and then they pop and then the fungi continue to reproduce.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's nasty.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It is nasty stuff. But it is actually, we believe I.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Would say that better. That's nah.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Right. But it's natural. Right? And we consider that to be very scary because that doesn't happen to humans. When we get diseases, it's from viruses and bacteria most of the time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Not from fungus.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

But not from fungus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

We got skin to skin.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah, yeah, we get little things, things. But what happens in the last of us mythology is that because of global warming, funguses or fungi start to evolve to be able to live in warmer temperatures. And eventually one of those parasitic fungi, the cordyceps, whatever, whatever. Jump species, Jump species and is able to live in humans even though our body temperatures are 98%.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Not just on the skin.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Where it's not inside, body temperature inside.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And so we basically become parasitized by this fungus. And the fungus is not evil, the fungus is just a fungus. Right? There are fungus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It's trying to make more fungi.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It's a fungus among us there is nothing of evil stuff. But what happens when humans are now threatened as a species by the fungus? You find out. We humans do monstrous things like kill and oppress and push away and isolate and so forth because we are afraid of what we have created from the global warming and from the natural reaction of nature. Fungus evolving to thrive in what we create.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

For whom the bell tolls.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It tolls the bell. That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Monster bell tolls for us.

[Gabe Liedman]

Stop ringing that monster bell. We've told you so many times. I don't even know why we have a monster bell, to be honest. But the fact that. Just stop it.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Stop Monster. Hi, I'm Jenny Slate and believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

[Gabe Liedman]

I'm Gabe Liedman.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I'm Max Silvestri and we've been friends for 20 years and we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's called I need you guys Should.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I give my baby fresh vegetables? Can I drink the water at the hospital?

[Gabe Liedman]

My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

[Gabe Liedman]

I need you guys.

[State Farm Announcer]

If your small business is booming and ready to expand, you might something like it's happening.

[Gabe Liedman]

Crushed it.

[State Farm Announcer]

But if you need someone who can actually help protect your growing business, just say, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And just like that, your State Farm agent can help you get the coverage you need for your new space for your small business insurance needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Netcredit is here to say yes to a personal loan or line of credit when other lenders say no, apply in minutes and get a decision as soon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

As the same day. If approved applications are typically funded the.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Next business day or sooner.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Loans offered by NetCredit or lending partner.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Banks and serviced by NetCredit application subject.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

To review and approval.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Learn more at netcredit.com partners NetCredit credit to the people.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You would give zombie storytelling high grades for continuing this tradition of science fiction. To hold up a mirror to what.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

We are absolutely nowadays, right, we can't see these things, these biological monsters. They're microscopic, unlike the macroscopic, smaller than.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

We are rather than bigger.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

So they sneak in and they are as unknown and as unknowable as ghosts and spirits and so forth. Right? So it's the frightening part of it is that what we don't understand and what we don't know, this has been true for all monsters throughout all of history.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Okay, what about Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Yes, that was interesting because the monster was just another. But it was a complete other human being. They didn't look weird, they didn't look scary, but they were.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

They had been co opted by interstellar or non human spores. So instead of a fungus that had evolved from our Earth, they had dropped in from somewhere in space.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

But you would come out of a pod. Some have said. Those are some of the most terrifying scenes ever.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes, because we have the closeness to humans and recognizable things, but just a little bit off and we can imagine ourselves in that prediction.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

That's where it is.

[Gabe Liedman]

Well, that also kind of reminds me a bit of the uncanny Valley and that effect with humans. If you certain animations or certain models of humans or realistic human.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Why are we afraid of dolls?

[Gabe Liedman]

They make us.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Why are we afraid of clowns?

[Gabe Liedman]

Something that looks.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yeah.

[Gabe Liedman]

And it is that thing of something that if it's a long way from Human. If it's very cartoony, we're fine with it. If it's completely human, fine. But if it's just a little bit off, then we find that uneasy. If an animation of a human is just a bit too real, but not perfectly real, that's.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You know what I was told.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I haven't verified this, but I was told this, that in the humans that are portrayed in Finding Nemo are a little bit sort of clunky.

[Gabe Liedman]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

But they did that on purpose. Because if they were too real, it would just be weird and we wouldn't.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Be able to sympathize with the fish. You could, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Cause that's the goal.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. And so the irony is, again, who are the monsters in Finding Nemo? Not the fish, not the shark, the humans.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

One of the most, I'd say top five famous episodes of the Twilight Zone has the word monsters in it. So this episode, I forgot the exact name. The monsters are due on Maple Street.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes, that's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

In one of the homes, the lights start flashing. Their car automatically turns on. And the neighbors wonder what's wrong with the Joneses over there? Why are they. Why is their house doing this? And you know, are they. You know, they're monsters or they're. They start to fear them because things are happening to them. We're your neighbors where you're this and then. And then it doesn't happen that it goes to another home and weird things happening. The garage door opens and closes and then they start turning on each other. And this continues. And oh my gosh. And then it ends. I have to do it because it shows. 60 years old.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I'm allowed to give a flashes out to the aliens.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It comes out to the aliens and the two aliens observing Elm Street. And they said, does this happen every place we do these experiments? They said, yes. The humans will turn on themselves just by the way he says. So they will be easy to conquer.

[Gabe Liedman]

Yes.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

We don't have to 100%.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

We are the monsters.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Period.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

We are the monsters. The monsters in space. In Monsters by Godzilla. The monsters that infect us with their fungal mycelium spores and stuff. Stop saying that. I know, right? They're just forces of nature. The thing that makes them bad is wheat is us. And this is the commentary about monsters. Once we become familiar with monsters, they're not so evil anymore. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Right. They. Angel, they have monsters now that are friendly or the Twilight books. Right. The vampires are just love struck teenagers. And Stuff and they're friendly and they glisten a little bit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And they're handsome. That's right.

[Gabe Liedman]

The real monster is unrequited love.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You gotta watch out for those things. That's right. Bella will come for you if you're not careful with the Monster Hunter video game. It's so popular that when it was coming out, other video game makers kept their new products off the shelf until there was enough. Until there was enough time for Monster Hunter to penetrate the market. Right. The monsters coexist with the humans. They're just part of the ecosystem. And that the monster hunters are just the people who have to keep the balance. Like, the monsters go a little wild, They're a little too violent, They're a little too many of them. You have to take care of them, you have to control them. But then you have to figure out why those monsters went out of control. And in almost all cases, it's because somebody who was not one of those monsters tried to do something unwise and lost control.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

So I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's one of his several famous books, the Demon Haunted World. When I saw that title, I was.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Like, oh, my gosh, yes, tremendously important.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It's the fears. The monsters embody our fears.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes, very much so. And also what Karl did in that book was to make very clear the difference between a scientific and a non scientific monster. Right. Something that you could actually touch and feel and confirm and explain as opposed to when they experiment on. That's right. Do you remember in that book the. The Parable of the Dragon in my Garage?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

No. Ah, tell me real quick.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

The idea is that I tell you I have a dragon in my garage and so you say, oh, let me see it. It's like, oh, no, it's invisible. Like, well, okay, so I might be able to hear it, right? Oh no, it's completely quiet. It's like, oh, well, it flies, right? So I can hear wind. It's like, oh, no, it flies so quietly. You can't tell. And you can keep telling you that there is a thing that exists there, but I keep telling you why you can't prove that it's there there. Is it actually there? In that case, this is an attempt to obfuscate or to prevent you from actually learning reality.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

I felt the same way about the guys testifying that they have aliens in a locked box. If you're not going to show us the alien in your locked box, that's the same thing as not having an alien in your locked box. It's the same thing.

[Gabe Liedman]

I'm feeling kind of embarrassed now about the amount of money I paid for a dragon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

What's on your shoulders right now?

[Gabe Liedman]

Yeah, well, I mean, and I feel comforted by that, but now I'm starting to feel maybe I've been had.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

When children have imaginary friends, adults laugh at them. No laugh. But they. They know, they still prove that, yes, they will outgrow this.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yet as adults, we have a suite of things that are just that again.

[Gabe Liedman]

Reflect our fears and desires, that things that you wish.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You're exactly right, Matt. And we laugh to some extent. Right. You can prey on them in your comedy shows. Right. And you make people laugh at themselves, at the kinds of things that we hold in our bodies that are not physics, that are not scientific, and yet they rule our lives. And so there is nothing wrong with something that's unscientific. Right. Like a ghost idea or a monster idea. It's only when you are trying to use that in a negative way or to control or to be otherwise. Whatever. Negative toward people that those monsters become truly monstrous.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And I find interesting that just as a physicist, there are fewer physics monsters than biological monsters.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

At the moment. That is true.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

At the moment. Right, right. And I don't know what a physics monster would even be when I think about it.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

A black hole, maybe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

But it would have to have agency.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

When we first thought of black holes, we thought that they were like, you know, ooh, scary. But now it's just like, oh, it's a monster. Like cooking cookie, right? Yeah, it's about that big degree.

[Gabe Liedman]

But as long as you keep your distance and give them the respect they deserve.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. And so.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And he lives in its own trash.

[Gabe Liedman]

Can, you know, it's self contained.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Don't lift the lid, you'll get eaten.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

But there's a litany of science fiction stories, movies, books, novels, et cetera, that had black holes as evil, scary places for a long, long time. And then now they're not so much anymore.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Because we fully understand.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Because we understand them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yes, yes. Because black holes really came in in the 60s.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And yeah, as long as you don't understand something, it's ripe for monsterizing.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

That's right. And so the best way, I think, to help us all deal with the monstrous ideas or fears in our lives is just to learn more about them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Best song ever. About monsters.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Which one?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

You tell me. Otherwise, I'll tell you. Monster mash. Come on, guys.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

They did the monster mash. You knew that one yes, that's true.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

The Monster Mash the Crypt.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Keep grafide.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yes.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Brilliantly.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Yes. Wolfman.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It was very one hit wonder. But all the rhyming was perfect for Halloween. So, Charles, thanks for bringing your expertise.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

What a pleasure, man. We have so much left to talk about now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Matt doesn't respect me anymore because I'm his geek friend.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

And now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

No, no. But here's the real story here is that however geeky you think you are, there's someone geeky.

[Gabe Liedman]

There's always another. There's an infinity of infinity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

It goes to infinity. Okay, so it's just. Charles is very far along that infinity scale.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

It's not linear. You got lots of dimensions.

[Gabe Liedman]

Like a Hilbert's Hotel of geeky.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

There you go. Infinite number of human funny things.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Let me see if I can reflect on this subject. I'm a fan of science fiction storytelling, of how inventive a next monster can be as portrayed in that storytelling. And I value anything that can bring insights to ourselves, brought to you by others, brought to you by your own introspection. And it's pretty clear that if all you do is tell stories about humans interacting with humans, it's going to miss an important dimension of how we might behave on the edges of ourselves. And a monster will take you there. And let me add a little bit of bias. If you've earned the psy in the sci fi label of your story and you put a little bit of biology, chemistry, physics, material science in your monster, take it wherever you want beyond that. And we're gonna be watching because in the end, the monster will teach us about ourselves. And that is a cosmic perspective. Matt, thanks for coming. Thank you so much visiting us from la.

[Gabe Liedman]

I really appreciate you having me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Charles.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

Hey, I want you more often. I want you every episode. I just like. I like it because I learn something every single time.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Oh, the same is true for me too.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

And I boost my geek. I can say I spent an hour with Charles today. Back off.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Thanks, Neil. Always happy to be here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson / Charles Liu / Matt Kirschen]

All right, this. This has been another installment of StarTalk Monsters Edition. Until next time.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Hi, I'm Jenny Slate, and believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

[Gabe Liedman]

I'm Gabe Wiedman.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

I'm Max Silvestri. And we've been friends for 20 years. And we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.

[Gabe Liedman]

It's called I need you guys.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Should I give my baby fresh vegetable? Can I drink the water at the hospital?

[Gabe Liedman]

My landlord plays the trombone, and I can't ask him to stop.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

[Gabe Liedman]

I need you guys.

[State Farm Announcer]

Let's say your small business has a problem. Like, maybe one of your doggie daycare customers had an accident. You might say something like, doggone it.

[Gabe Liedman]

Hi, Chihuahua. Holy schnauzers.

[State Farm Announcer]

But if you need someone who can actually help, just say, like a good.

[Jenny Slate / Max Silvestri]

Neighbor, State Farm is there.

[State Farm Announcer]

And get help filing a claim from your local State Farm agent for your small business insurance needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.