True Crime & Forensic Pathology with Patricia Cornwell & Dr. Jonathan Hayes

Summary

StarTalk Radio: True Crime & Forensic Pathology

With Patricia Cornwell & Dr. Jonathan Hayes

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-host: Chuck Nice
Guests: Patricia Cornwell (bestselling crime novelist), Dr. Jonathan Hayes (forensic pathologist, novelist)
Date: March 13, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the science, realities, and cultural fascinations of forensic pathology—the study of death, autopsy, and crime scene investigation, both as practiced in the real world and as dramatized in fiction. Neil deGrasse Tyson leads a thoughtful and lively discussion with forensic pathologist/novelist Dr. Jonathan Hayes and bestselling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell. Topics range from the technical and emotional demands of dealing with death, to the evolution of crime fiction, to the emerging intersections between forensics and space exploration, and the future impact of artificial intelligence in the field.

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Key Discussions and Insights

1. The Science and Realities of Forensic Pathology

[04:30] Dr. Jonathan Hayes describes the role:

• A forensic pathologist diagnoses causes of death by examining bodies and samples, performing autopsies especially in violent, unnatural, or suspicious deaths.
• Distinguishes between general pathology and forensic subspecialty; latter focuses on legal medicine and investigation.

On commonality and variety in death:

• "A stab wound in 2021 looks like a stab wound in 1921 or 1821." — Dr. Hayes [09:03]
• Despite the similarities, he notes that every week he sees something he's “never seen before” due to odd circumstances or unique cases. [10:04]

Death investigations:

• Importance of pinpointing the exact cause of death, especially with multiple injuries, for both legal and medical clarity. [07:07]
• Autopsies are not filmed—tradition, privacy, complexity, and duration of procedures are factors. [07:37-08:00]

Emotional resilience:

• Hayes discusses balancing exposure to tragic cases with an optimistic belief in general human decency. "Human beings do terrible things...but also...people do the right thing." [13:19]

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2. From Reality to Novel: The Transformation of Forensic Pathology into Fiction

Patricia Cornwell's Approach

[14:15] Cornwell on authenticity and exploration:

• The best storytelling stems from personal physical exploration and real experiences.
• Memorable metaphor: “Just show up. Never know what you might find.”
• Recounts the emotional impact of being present in the morgue, from the physical details (the coldness of bodies) to powerful moments (like finding a fortune cookie slip in a victim’s wallet) [15:39].

“If I don’t go and see those things, I have no right to write about them.” — Patricia Cornwell [17:06]

Dr. Hayes’ Perspective

• His novels are rooted in personal experience, especially post-9/11 work identifying victims in New York. [12:05]
• Forensic fiction depicts the romance and glamour of science, which attracts many new minds to the field, even if liberties are taken with technical details ([17:32-18:47]).

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3. The Influence of Pop Culture on Science and Careers

[23:48] CSI and the “sexy” scientist:

• Crime shows transform forensics from a nerdy domain to pop culture “supermodel” status, making it aspirational—Dr. Hayes [26:00].
• CSI increases female participation in forensic sciences; real-world offices reflect this gender shift [24:42].
• Tyson draws a parallel to astrophysics—pop-culture depictions spark real scientific curiosity [23:34-24:42].

Impact of representation:

• When media depicts scientists as “fully fleshed out characters,” people see science as relatable and cool, not just nerdy or cold. [25:09]

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4. Forensic Pathology in Outer Space

Patricia Cornwell: Fictionalizing crime in microgravity
[27:00-29:10]

• Cornwell discusses being possibly the first author to portray believable crime and forensic investigation in low Earth orbit, focusing on real physical consequences of violence (e.g., blood behavior in microgravity).
• Consulted with NASA and astronauts for realism.

“Wherever we go, we will export what we do...even in orbiting laboratories, we’re going to have things that we don’t like to think about. For me, I’m always wondering, what are you going to do about that?” — Patricia Cornwell [28:04]

Challenges and changes:

• Blood spatter, decomposition, and cues like rigor mortis would act differently in low or zero gravity. [29:10-32:17]
• Dr. Hayes: “Crime scene in zero gravity...the blood droplet spatter dynamic...is going to be different.” [30:27]

Forensic techniques in extraterrestrial environments:

• The need to adapt forensic science to new conditions—e.g., thawing frozen bodies in space, absence of decomposition on the Moon due to lack of microbes. [32:23, 59:03-59:54]

Teaching forensics remotely:

• Possibility of coaching a novice through an autopsy via communication, but nothing replaces firsthand expertise—“Autopsy means own eyes.” [37:01-37:30]

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5. Process, Details, and Culture of Death Investigation

Rigor mortis explained [33:32]:

• “Rigor mortis is the stiffening of muscles that occurs after death...first in small joints, detected by testing finger joints, then jaw, then arms, etc.” [33:39-34:19]
• Timeline for rigor: sets in after ~6 hours, peaks by 12, fades by 36. [35:19]
• Fun fact: Forensic pathologists don’t typically use terms like “cadaver” or “stiff”—just “bodies” [35:47, 36:12].

Body storage logistics and myths:

• Modern morgues use walk-in coolers, not “sliding drawers”; old systems posed sanitation challenges. [37:45-38:16]
• During Miami’s 1980’s homicide surge, bodies were kept in Burger King refrigerator trucks—local outrage led to better forensic infrastructure [40:26].
• Bodies are stored on shelving systems, not meat hooks. [41:54]

Putrefaction and “leaking through the ceiling”:

• As bodies decompose, gases build and fluids (‘purge fluid’) can leak, which in apartments can seep through floors/ceilings. [43:09-43:59]
• Tyson: “So the bloating…makes the body much less dense…that would then cause the body to float if it was dead and at the bottom of [the river]. So that’s why you need cement boots, right?” — Dr. Hayes confirms. [44:07-45:09]

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6. The Perfect Murder? Crime, Evidence & The CSI Effect

“Perfect murder” myth
[45:52-47:14]

• Chuck Nice: “Could you commit the perfect murder—leave no trace?”
• Hayes: “It would be possible...It’s very hard to dispose of a dead body. It’s not killing people, it’s getting rid of the body.” [47:07, 47:14]

The downside of crime fiction’s influence

• CSI effect: juries expect "higher levels of visual proof, glamorous animations, cutting-edge science" — unrealistic standards in actual courtrooms [47:42].
• Crime shows have had positive outreach (exhibits for kids, education), but sometimes blur fact and fiction [48:03].

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7. The Future: AI in Forensics

Cornwell’s outlook:

• “The line between what’s real and what isn’t...is getting blurrier and blurrier.” AI will be essential for managing the complexity of modern life (e.g., air traffic control, security). [48:55]

Hayes’ take on AI in pathology:
[50:05-52:48]

• “Assists in...would be closer.” He foresees AI aiding with information management (like identifying relevant blood drops in a crime scene), but not replacing human sensory evaluation or nuanced judgment anytime soon.
• Tools like “vertopsy” (virtual autopsy via CT scan) are used in places like Switzerland but not fully replacing autopsies, especially in legally rigorous regions like New York.
• AI excels at pattern recognition in analyzable datasets; may help analyze scenes for hidden patterns (e.g., blood, shell casing distribution) [54:01-55:29].
• Risks remain: computers are biased by data and depend on human oversight. [57:27]

Comic relief:
Chuck Nice skeptically riffs on the idea of “AI comedian” and the limits of AI in art and nuance [52:55], coining “Sherlock Watson” as a theoretical forensic AI [57:03].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Experience and Authenticity

• “Just show up. Never know what you might find.” — Patricia Cornwell [15:09]
• “If I don’t go and see those things, I have no right to write about them.” — Patricia Cornwell [17:06]

On Science Fiction Inspiring Careers

• “Forensics is an area where a nerd with a brain and some sharp insights is able to be even more powerful than [a muscular hero].” — Dr. Hayes [26:00]

On Human Nature and Hope

• “Human beings do terrible things to each other. But also, for the most part, when given the opportunity, people do the right thing.” — Dr. Hayes [13:19]

On the CSI Effect

• “CSI solved the crime, even though it also creates problems...juries demand higher levels of visual proof.” — Dr. Hayes [47:35-47:42]

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |:-------------- |:------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:30–07:34 | Explanation of forensic pathology and impact of wounds | | 10:04 | Novelty and oddity in death investigation | | 13:19 | Coping with morbidity and faith in humanity | | 14:15–17:21 | Patricia Cornwell's approach to hands-on research | | 23:48–25:47 | Pop culture’s influence on scientific careers | | 29:10–32:17 | Forensics and murder investigation in space | | 33:39–36:12 | Deep dive into rigor mortis | | 40:26–41:22 | The Burger King morgue trucks story | | 43:09–44:00 | Decomposition and “leaking through the ceiling” | | 45:52–47:14 | "Perfect murder" and problems with body disposal | | 48:55–52:48 | Perspectives on AI’s future in forensics | | 57:03–57:26 | "Sherlock Watson," the hypothetical AI detective | | 59:03–59:54 | Decomposition differences on the Moon |

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Tone and Style

The conversation is engaging, richly detailed, candid, and laced with humor (often dark or gallows humor, fitting the subject). Both guests balance factual insight with the human, even emotional, realities behind their professions and storytelling. Tyson and Chuck Nice inject curiosity and comic relief, keeping the subject both enlightening and accessible to listeners.

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Conclusion

This StarTalk episode provides a multidimensional look into the world of forensic pathology: its gritty reality, its translation into compelling fiction, its profound effect on popular culture, and its uncertain future amid new technology and the promise of space colonization. Both Patricia Cornwell and Dr. Jonathan Hayes offer first-hand wisdom on why truth, experience, and exploration matter—whether among the dead, in the imagination, or across the stars.

Transcript

[StarTalk Radio Announcer]

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[Rosetta Stone Advertiser]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey StarTalkians, Neil here. You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives to serve your cosmic curiosities. The archives run deep. If you enjoy this, take a peek at the full catalog on your favorite podcast platform. There's a lot there to tickle your geek underbelly. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today we're going to talk about forensic pathology. Not only the real thing, but what happens when it becomes novelized and becomes fictionalized storytelling. Chuck, always good to have you.

[Chuck Nice]

Always good to be here. Alive. Alive.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think on this topic, we're Gonna need some serious levity.

[Rosetta Stone Advertiser]

Nothing like.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. And what do you call it when it's already done? Now, gallows humor is when you're about to die. What do you call it? What do you call it when you're already dead?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if I want to know. So we have a fascinating pair of guests on this episode. First, we have Patricia Cornwell, and we've actually had her on before. And she has another novel she's going to tell us about. And she not only talked about dead people. Talks about dead people and the science behind the crimes that are involved, she also took that to space. Wow. And so that's why we've got her on this show. But she's a novelist, and she came to the subject as a journalist. But now we have a novelist who started writing novels because he was actually. A medical examiner. All right, this is his guy's Expertise. Jonathan Hayes. Dr. Jonathan Hayes. Welcome to StarTalk.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Thanks, Neil. Hey, Chuck.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, it's a pleasure. Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now, so you. You came to the writing profession having started as a sort of professional of dead people. What is your official sort of title other than sort of? You work in the medical examiner's office, but what does someone call you as a profession? As a scientific profession, my scientific title

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

is I'm a forensic pathologist. And a pathologist is a physician who makes diagnoses by examining samples taken from patients. And that may be a blood sample, or if you have a weird mole you biopsy. It's a pathologist who looks at it under the microscope. Pathologist is also the physicians who do autopsy. An autopsy is an examination of the body after death, and it's carried out in order to get as much information as possible about the cause and the circumstances of that death. That starts by looking at the outside of the body. The body's examined for scars or tattoos or identifying marks and for evidence of disease or injury. Then the body is opened and examined internally. We'll examine all the organs. We'll place the remains of the organs back in the body, and we may do some additional testing. For example, looking for drugs, or maybe this is DNA testing. If there are any injuries internally, we'll document those, too, and then we'll perform. We'll prepare an autopsy report. So that's basically what a pathologist does. Now, I'm a forensic pathologist, and that's a subspecialty of pathology. And for forensic pathologists, do autopsies on the victims of violent, unnatural or suspicious deaths. So on a daily basis I examine wounds and I interpret wounds. If you get shot or stabbed when you get to the er, the ER docs are going to just be examining you to try and try and save your life. They're not going to interpret the wounds. They may have guesses at what's an entrance window, what's an exit wound, but that's the area or expertise of the pathologist, the forensic pathologist. And so on a daily basis I'm looking at wounds and trying to interpret those wounds and what actually happened to the person.

[Chuck Nice]

Now, how often, doctor, do you examine someone who has been felled by gunshot and your determination is, oh, they didn't die of a gunshot wound?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

That is yet to happen. Gunshot wounds tend to be fairly lethal. Gunshot wounds are far more likely to be lethal than most other types of injury. For example, you're five times more likely to die if you're shot than if you're stabbed.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Wow,

[Chuck Nice]

look at that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, but so that, that, that brings to, that puts on the table the very question if, let's say it's not a gunshot wound with where you have that sort of the easy statistics on that, if two people just sort of got into a fight and then one person ultimately dies, is is it important that you find out the actual thing that killed the person? Or, or does that even matter if the person's dead and they have multiple injuries that sort of lead up to

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

it, it's critically important that we find out exactly why the person is dead. That's our raison d'. Etre. We have to know exactly why the person died because you would be surprised at the complexities of the questions that arise, the legal questions and the medical questions when someone dies, particularly in an altercation or a fight. So we spend a lot of time getting it right and we have endless debates about the exact wording of the death certificate.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And is what you do filmed?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

No, it's, it's. We document our findings photographically. I mean, occasionally you'll find video documentation of a crime scene. There'll be a video walk through. But what, the autopsy itself is not filmed.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Why not?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Because I really, I don't know. I'm sure there's be a lot of extreme tradition.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Tradition.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I'm sure there'd be a lot of extraneous information. An autopsy can be long. For example, a typical autopsy, say you have a 40 year old man who's jogging, on a treadmill at his gym and collapses. That autopsy, assuming he's got something Straightforward, like heart disease, which is the most likely cause of death. That autopsy will take about an hour. But if you have a complex case like a child abuse case, a fatal child abuse case, those can take a couple of days. So it's a long period of time. Also, I don't think anyone likes to be closely monitored while they're doing their work. Of course, we're sitting here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, no, here's why I ask. I mean, presumably forensic pathology has come a long way over the decades. There might be things in 10 years someone would know to look for that you don't yet know to look for because the field has not advanced to that point. Wouldn't it be good if we could reopen the videos and have a third party do the autopsy based on the video, as though they were your eyes looking at the same body?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I understand what you're saying, but the thing is, when you say that forensic pathology has come a long way, it really hasn't. I mean, a stab wound is a stab wound in 2021 looks like a stab wound in 1921 or a stab wound in 1821. And we do document things very thoroughly. We take a lot of photographs. I mean, I suppose you could put on some sort of virtual reality headset and video record and have some sort of three dimensional interactive thing going on there. But I don't think that sort of. Obviously you're now talking about unknown unknowns, so I don't really know the answer to that question, but I think it would be terribly common to try and have a video camera and documenting every single step of the audience.

[Chuck Nice]

So is what you're saying that for what you do, it really is the fact that we continue to kill each other kind of the same way. We don't really get that creative when it comes to killing each other.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Well, you'd be surprised. I mean, one of the things, I've been doing this work for over 30 years now and every week I see something I've never seen before. Oh, no, it's not so much in terms of the homicides, it's not so much the murders. Murder is murder. People have knives and guns and baseball bats and whatnot. It's more just the peculiar circumstance, the peculiar things that people get, positions that people get themselves into. There'll always be something at a death scene that you can't explain.

[Chuck Nice]

Ooh, that's fascinating actually.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now, I don't know that you can major in forensic pathology in college. So what does one major in? Is it pre med? What are some of the Trackings that get to where you are.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

It's to become a forensic pathologist. You go to college, you do pre med, you go to medical school. Then after graduating medical school, you do three years of. At least three years, three to five years of pathology residency. Then you do a one year forensic training, which I did in Miami.

[StarTalk Radio Announcer]

Wow.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

And then all of a sudden, 12 years after you began, you're a forensic pathologist Now I work in a medical examiner system. A medical examiner is a physician who's specialized in forensic pathology. It's not an elected position. And we investigate deaths, violent, unnatural and suspicious deaths for a city or jurisdiction. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

You're Quincy.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I've actually never watched that show.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh man, I used to watch that show when I was a kid. Man, Quincy was the best. Jack Klugman, man, he used to walk around, he had. He would eat sandwiches. He would eat sandwiches during the autopsy. The guy was great, man,

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I enjoy a good sandwich. But you know, no one eats in the autopsy room. It's not the sort of place you sit down and go, oh, this is an appetizing place to enjoy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what of this training and your life experience did you feel compelled to put into your novel Do I have Precious Blood? A Hard Death?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Precious Blood was the first one and A Hard Death was the second. And the first. The first is like, I think in most novelists, it's very semi autobiographical, I should say. It's set in New York City after 9 11. It's a serial killer story. But I used a lot of my day to day experiences. We don't really talk about our cases, it's a matter of medical privacy. But I wanted to talk about the things I'd seen and the things that disturbed and upset me. So I put a lot of that into the book. And 911 was one of the things that disturbed and upset me, my work. After that, I worked in this office for eight solid months just trying to identify people. That was the hardest part of my life, I think. Absolutely. But I tried to make the description of what forensics is and what it feels like to be in a morgue and the smell and the sights of death. I tried to make them realistic and I think I did a pretty good job.

[Chuck Nice]

So let me ask you this, since you just brought this up, I don't want to get super personal, but you kind of broach the subject here. How do you deal with all this kind of morose, just depressing information that you're absorbing almost daily?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Well, the last few years have been. Have made it pretty Hard to stay positive about anything. But I think, you know, it's been my experience that human beings do do terrible things to each other. But also, for the most part, when given the opportunity, people do the right thing. And I recognize that the murders I see, they're the exceptions. I mean, though there may be horrible crimes, indeed, on a daily basis, most people are trying to do the right thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow. Okay. All right. It's hope prevails, I think, is how we think about that. So what's interesting, if we contrast, Jonathan, your pathway into writing novels with that of Patricia Cornwall, who is shared with us some of what inspires her when she approaches a novel that needs a bit of forensic pathology to make it run. Let's check it out.

[Patricia Cornwell]

What we're really talking about is exploration. We're exploring, which is exactly why we want to go to the moon and do all those cool things. If you're going to be an artist and you need to explore and go out and let it tell you what the story is, let it tell you what the painting is like. You know, James McNeill Whistler, he would have this boat, when he would take him out in this flat bottom boat and the Thames at dusk, and he would look, he'd stand there on the filthy Thames in the Victorian era and look at what the light was doing. He'd remember that. And then he would go back and he would paint something evocative because he was there and you feel he was there. You feel Hemingway was in the places that he's talking about. And I very much encourage to people, here's my. I have three words for everybody. Just show up. Never know what you might find.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that I. So I like that, because what. What you're saying is that to really. Not to put words in your mouth, but to infuse a story with a certain authenticity. It can't be just things you've read about or heard about. If you experience them firsthand, they manifest differently, even in your sentences and in the words you choose. And your emotional investment becomes that much deeper. Is that a fair accounting of what you just told me?

[Patricia Cornwell]

That's absolutely right. You want to invoke your senses. I mean, why go into a morgue if you can just see a video of an autopsy? Because when your senses are assaulted by everything in there, it is a totally different thing. It's as different as reality from virtual reality, probably even more so. And for example, I can remember. I can remember how shocked I would feel when I would go down there to scribe for the medical Examiners and I would put on the gloves and, you know, this was back in the day, we didn't get in spacesuits like they do today with Hazmat and all, all that. And I would put my hands on the body on the table, or I'd lean on it while I'm jotting down whatever they're telling me. And I'd. It's like as cold as marble because. And you would be amazed over and over again about things that, that you would not have emotional reactions to it if you didn't feel it and you weren't there or you didn't see it, or you weren't, you weren't standing there when the state trooper is looking through the woman's wallet. And she was hit by a car on her way home from the bar about 3 o' clock in the morning. And, you know, nobody really knew what she'd gone there for or why. And she was by herself. Such a bad hour. And he's going through her wallet and he finds a little fortune from a fortune cookie that she had saved. And it said, you will soon have an encounter that will change the course of your life. So she's going off to a bar to meet her encounter, not thinking it's going to be a car. And you look at these things and you don't know whether to laugh or to cry. But you do know I feel this. If I don't go and see those things, I have no right to write about them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Mm. Mm. So, Jonathan, you probably feel the same way, right? Because your writing emanates from your firsthand experiences, good and bad.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Yeah, I think that in terms of the sensual aspects, the smells, the sounds, the sights. Yeah, there's no substitute for first hand experience. Then again, I mean, look at speculative fiction. In science fiction, people use their imaginations and think, what would it be like to see this or to experience that? And I think that's really rich too, in some ways. Knowing what the truth is kind of at some level deadens the fantasy. You know, I don't take any, in my own writing, I don't take any liberties with the science because I can't. I, I wouldn't lie about it. And that limits what you can do with the set of facts in front of you. And so that's one of the reasons I really enjoy a show like csi where we said before, it's not so much forensic science as forensic science fiction. I think they take the principles of forensic science and they make it more glamorous and they speed it up, they put sexy lighting on it. And the end result, I think it may not get the technical accuracy of the forensic science, but it gets the romance of the science. And I really do like that. And it's for that reason I think CSI has been great because it's attracted a lot of people into forensics. And this is a field that really needs good people, good, smart young people.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what you're saying is when you're exploring the fiction of your storytelling, it's in the, whatever relationships led to the crime. You're not in a position to sort of stretch any other science. I say that only because we look at a Stephen King novel often. He touches on supernatural forces and leaves them a little bit cloaked. But something manifests and that adds another dimension that people seem to like to watch and even read about. But you're sticking to the facts on this one.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Well, that's just for my writing. And I wouldn't rule out writing fantasy or horror novel or something like that. But even if I do, if, like the werewolf cuts someone's throat, I want to make, you know, to accurately depict the spray of blood or what have you. And so when I watch, when I watch a lot of, like, crime stuff, sometimes it's at a procedural level. Like the cops wouldn't do that or wouldn't say that. For example, when I'm watching a horror movie or a crime movie and like, they visit a crime scene three days later and all the blood is still bright red, that's upsetting to me because blood goes brown and then it goes black. It just looks so fake. Right? But, but, but I, I mean, I, I, I understand, I mean, since I've written, you know, fiction myself, I understand the challenges of creating something interesting and riveting and I understand people taking liberties with the facts. I don't think Patty Cornwell does that because she, she too knows what it's like.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, guys, we got to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to find out how Patricia ends up putting her cr. Apparently Earth wasn't good enough. Let's put people in space and have them commit crimes there. Where you then need some more forensic pathology to figure out what the hell is going on when StarTalk returns.

[StarTalk Radio Announcer]

Startalk Radio is supported by Claude from Anthropic. Science isn't about rushing to conclusions. It's about sitting with the uncertainty until it seems starts to make sense. Claude is the AI built for that kind of thinking and anthropic committed to not running ads in Claude So when you're chasing down an idea, there's nothing pulling you towards someone else's agenda. Try Claude for free at Claude AI StarTalk and see why problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[StarTalk Radio Announcer]

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[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I'm Alikan Hemraj and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're back. StarTalk, we're talking about forensic pathology with bestselling author Patricia Cornwell. And we have an authentic medical examiner in the house. In the house we've got Dr. Jonathan. Dr. Jonathan Hayes, who's not only medical examiner for New York City, of all places, but also a novelist in his own right. Chuck, right before the end of the second segment, look like you want to slip in a question. What was that?

[Chuck Nice]

Well, because he talked about how when you write forensic science fiction, that it makes it kind of sexy and it draws people into the field.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He didn't say sexy. Said romantic. That's different.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Well, I think sexy is right too. I may have sexy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, all right.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, I'm sorry, Neil.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Excuse me.

[Chuck Nice]

Unfortunately for me, my romance leads to sexy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

But what I'm interested to know is do you find the same thing in your field of astrophysics? Do you think science fiction causes people to now, like, pursue the science of the cosmos?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it does. So that's why, even though just like Jonathan, I'll call out things that are not real or wouldn't have happened that way, but I say the overall impact is positive. That because what people can do now is they can get interested and then they say, I like that, let me read some more about it. And then the reading some more about it actually brings them into an anchored state of understanding, whereas the fantasy sort of tickled their interest up front. And Jonathan, I heard anecdotally that biology and chemistry professors in college found an increase in women taking courses that were sort of pre forensic, inspired by the actors, who you want to be like them in this series, Crime Scene Investigation in csi. Did you find this as well coming up?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Well, I think that increasingly forensics is becoming a matriarchy. A lot of women going into the field, and certainly in my field, my office, I would estimate, is probably more than 50% female when it comes to the medical exam and stuff. And I think that's common in other areas too. But I don't think it's just that they're impressed by the actors. I think they have minds that are interested in problem solving and figuring out how to bury a body.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but I mean, I grew up at a time when no scientist was portrayed as anything you'd want to be. Like, if you were cool and you saw a movie that had scientists in it, the scientists were not cool. And so there was no draw, there was no pop culture force operating on how you might align your life's ambitions and csi. All the actors are beautiful. The men, the women, the storytelling, what they're wearing. Plus they're shown with real life problems. Right? They're boyfriends, girlfriends, relationship problems. So they're fully fleshed out characters. So, Jonathan, are you a fully fleshed out character?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Oh, dear God. That's a difficult question to ask.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey, how does that work? At the bar, someone say, hey, what do you do? I study dead bodies. It's like, that's a short conversation, it might seem to me.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

No, because there is this interest. There was an article in New York magazine a few years back that said that forensic pathologists are the new supermodels. Because, I mean, you turn on your TV set any hour of the day or night, you're going to see a forensic show. Whether it's like true crime or whether it's some sort of thriller, whether someone's burying a body in the basement or whatnot. And the way my career and forensics in general is portrayed in popular culture really catches the imagination of people. And I think it's because at some level, in the old days, a hero was a guy with muscles. He knew how to handle a gun. And forensics is an area where a nerd with A brain and some sharp insights is able to be even more powerful than that. And that's why the forensic science, I think, become. It makes a forensic scientist, becomes a good hero.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, so let's pick up with my interview with Patricia Cornwell, who in her next book, there's like Crime in Space. Let's see what she says about that.

[Patricia Cornwell]

I think that I might be the first author that has written about a case of violence in low Earth orbit, in microgravity in space. In other words, to do it in the credible way that it's not science fiction. I mean, everything that I have in that scene that Scarpetta has to remotely work from the Situation Room in the White House to get. I mean, it's all within the realm of possibility and the physics of it. What would happen when there's blood or the type of projectiles somebody might use if you were going to do that? And look, you know as well as I do the Russians have carried guns up there to the space station. They don't, you know, NASA doesn't advertise that, but it's true. And the whole point is my little mantra these days is from Earth from space to ground to six feet under, because wherever we go, we will export what we do, whether it's in orbiting laboratories down the road or when people actually go to the moon and try to set up habitats for Mars, or it's going to happen and we're also going to have death. You know, we're going to have things that we don't like to think about. And for me, I'm always wondering, what are you going to do about that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So people will be people, whether they're on Earth or in space, and you're there to tell that kind of story.

[Patricia Cornwell]

Well, you know, the thing that's kind of fun about it, because I talk to the real people, I talked to NASA people about this. You know, I talked to Jack Fisher, the astronaut who was up there for a while, and we talked about what blood would do and fluids.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And just to be clear, blood that's not in your body, that's true.

[Patricia Cornwell]

Blood that's not in your body, blood

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

that has spilled out of your body, what will it do?

[Patricia Cornwell]

And then what happens, you know, if where you've got a scene where something like this has occurred and some astronauts, you know, come and we use the dream chaser. I know it's not crude yet, but it probably will be. And they, you know, they get to this, this orbiter that's in peril. Well, if you've had anything where you have death inside and a violent death, what's that going to be like? And how does a medical examiner work that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, Jonathan, this brings up an interesting question. You are completely trained for Earth based crimes, that is crimes operating under sort of laws of physics as they manifest in one G here on Earth. Can you imagine a future where if we have colonies on the moon or Mars or beyond, or hotels in space, can you imagine a branch, a sub branch of your field that then has to sort of learn space physics to do your job?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Neil, I don't know how much space physics there's going to be involved. I think the periods of time that man is going to spend in zero gravity are going to be fairly limited. And perhaps not when it comes to things like the space station, but when you're looking at actually larger colonies where people would actually live, which is where I think violence is mostly likely to play out, I think they'll be at normal gravity and the traditional medical examiner role is going to be pretty much the same. I think it'll be fairly specialized. The cases like Patty was talking about, I'm assuming some sort of violent blood spilling murder takes place in microgravity or zero gravity. And I don't know if that's going to be a frequent enough occurrence that it's going to develop into its own full fledged specialty, but it's going to,

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

it's going to be. You'd hope not. That will be a challenge.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

And when I was thinking about that too, what it could mean, a crime scene in zero gravity, the first thing that struck me was what the Patty was talking about was the blood droplet spatter dynamics going to be different. Because, you know, you've probably seen when you walk along after you've cut yourself, you can see that the shape of the blood spatter on your floor or whatever, and you can interpret the way you're moving or if you're standing still. If you're standing still or the person is standing still and dripping blood from, say, a weapon onto the floor, it tends to have a round appearance, whereas when you're moving, it tends to have a teardrop appearance. But that's going to be different in microgravity or zero gravity. And so I think there's going to be some interesting science that's probably going to evolve because of that. But I have to say, I mean, this question for you, just how realistic are these. We talk about, you know, colonizing distant planets, but on a large scale, how realistic is it? I mean, we had the Concorde in what, 1965 or something like that, we had supersonic travel available to, again, the very wealthy man. But it's gone now. And so how realistic are these dreams of colonizing far planets?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I think if I tend to be a little on the skeptical side, that any of that is going to happen anytime soon, but that shouldn't prevent people from getting ready for it, either legally or medically or the like little things. For example, as I understand it from movies I've seen, if you die while you're seated, then blood collects in your butt and in your feet or something. Right. Because you don't have this sort of action, this vascular action to keep blood circulating. And if you're in zero G, the blood doesn't collect anywhere. So a lot of your cues you would use to judge how long a body's been dead are not available to you.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Yeah, it's a fascinating thought. You're absolutely right. And how quickly will people bleed from an open wound if there's zero gravity?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right, right, right. All of that. And so.

[Chuck Nice]

So let me ask you this from a. I was just going to ask from a forensic standpoint, because one of the things that happens in space is like a common death is like suit malfunction or something, and the person freezes solid because they're in space. Now, would you be able to do an autopsy on, like, if the person died, would you be able to do an autopsy on a solidly frozen body?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

It's like, you know, when you have a frozen body, it's like trying to chip into an iceberg. You're not going to get very far. So what you have to do is thaw the body. And of course, as you thaw the body, the body begins to break down fairly rapidly. Of course, in space, I think there may also be issues of desiccation, the body drying out very quickly. And there are questions of barotrauma. And Neil knows far more about this than I do, where the body is subjected to tremendous pressures out in the vacuum of space, or when they removed from the vacuum of space. So when we do start to see it, it'll be interesting. But I think I may have retired before that happens. I want your time relevant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I have to ask, how often am I hanging out with a forensic pathologist? Could you explain exactly what rigor mortis is?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Rigor mortis is stiffening of the muscles that occurs after death. The muscle proteins gradually kind of coagulate, and as they coagulate, they stiffen up, the muscles stiffen, and you first detect it in? Well, the first place you can detect it is with goose flesh because you have tiny little muscles that raise and lower the hairs on your body to trap air and keep you warm or not. So in the early stages, when rigor first comes in, you'll start to see a little bit of goose flesh developing, and you see these tiny little muscles pulling.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, just to be clear, you're on a first name basis with rigor mortis. Okay. You call it rigor sets in. Rigor.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Yeah, Rigor mortis. It's a bit longer. Rigor.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I'm not on a first name basis. I'm sorry. Maybe I'll warm up to that, but go on.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

But you test for rigor by trying to bend joints, and fairly small joints, like finger joints, become stiff first because it takes a lot of muscles to stiffen the hip joint or the knee joint. So we test in the fingers first, then we test in the jaw and then the arms, et cetera. And so from the amount of rigor that's present in the body, you get some soft sense of how long the person has been dead to get that degree of stiffness. Now, if someone. A lot of it relates to the body temperature at the time of death. And if someone has a seizure at the time they die, if they have a violent seizure, say they're doing cocaine or something like that, they have a seizure and they die. That will raise the body temperature and the person will go into rigor mortis faster. So you have to be very careful interpreting the time. Since death is one of the hardest things we do. It's part of the science that's closest to an art, really.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so then I heard that rigor mortis eventually goes away. So what happens there?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

It does. The muscle proteins begin to break down again and the rigor sort of slackens. But now you're starting to get onto the body, it's about to begin to break down. Typically, you can feel rigor mortis by about six hours after death. It's generally there by about 12 hours and goes off by about 36 hours.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So that whole expression where someone. You refer to a dead body as a stiff, that's a temporary condition.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Yeah, but I think stiff sounds better than temporary. Is stiff, temporary stiff. We don't use that expression. You'd actually be surprised. I mean, it's because we see death the whole time. We're not alarmed or surprised. There's not an intense emotional reaction. There's not an intense emotional reaction to it unless it's the death of a child or some particularly tragic circumstance there. So we don't say the word cadaver. We don't say cloud. We just call them bodies.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's very politically correct. I'm just gonna say, Jonathan, I don't think they'll be offended. And if they are, who they gonna tell?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So how about this just before we go to break. If a crime is committed in a distant place. Again, I'm thinking space here, because Patricia's novel was in space. If crime happens in space, are you able to talk someone through an investigation of a scene? If, let's say they're just generally scientifically literate, but they have no medical background, such as what you have, can you talk them through it and then have them submit a report on your behalf for having done so?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I think I could. I could tell them what to look for. I could tell them how to turn the body and what to check for. I think I could do that. I mean, obviously I'd want them to document as far as they could. Whether, you know, with photographs or videos. So I could see for myself.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, exactly. So you could do this from the beach while they're up there doing.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

In theory, but there's no real substitute for seeing with your own eyes. And that's actually what autopsy means. Autopsy means own eyes. It says having your own eyes looking at the body and seeing what's going on inside it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow, I hadn't thought about that. Look at that. All right, all right. And another thing.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, now one last question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I got one. What is the temperature of the. Of the. The slidy things that you put the body in down in the morgue? I always wonder what that is.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

We don't use those anymore. There's. There's. I'm sorry about.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, come on. No, no, bring them back. We need them.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

The old superstitions have to be disposed of. No, I mean, it's like. It's like you couldn't clean the floors of those rooms. Refrigerators, you know, because of the. Because of the, you know, slide in and out things. So eventually they begin to wreak and. And build up fluid. So it's a horrible thing. It's just walk in refrigerators like you have at your local restaurant. And a system of gurneys for transporting the bodies on. The only time we see those draw type.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He means meat locker, Chuck. Did I hear him say meatlocker? That's exactly what he said.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I was going to say I hope to God it's not like my local restaurant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, we got a slab of steer right here. And we got Ernie. Yeah, Ernie didn't make it through last night. We're gonna take a quick break, but more on forensic pathology with our two guests, Patricia Cornwell and Jonathan Hayes from StarTalk Returns.

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Uh, yeah.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're back with Jonathan Hayes, medical examiner of New York City. Jonathan? What? Right before we took a break, you were about to tell a story because we were talking about meat lockers. Yes, because we think that's what you were describing.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Well, no, we do. Modern storage of bodies is in walking coolers, which are just very efficient way to handle the space. And they're easy to clean. But you know, in terms of meat lockers, during the cocaine wars of the 1980s into about 1990 in Miami, there were so many homicides that they weren't able to hold all the bodies in the mall refrigerators. And so what they were forced to do was to rent trucks. And they rented some refrigerator trucks and some of them had the Burger King logo on the outside of those. And when word got out. When word got out that bodies were being stored in Burger King refrigerator trailers. Apparently there was such an outcry amongst the population that these. The agency got a large amount of money to build this beautiful new state of the art facility with appropriate body storage. So that was a really upside of that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That sounded tactical, actually.

[Chuck Nice]

Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce. And the dead guy. Thanks.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Well, I think the thing is, medical examiners offices really only sort of rapidly improve when there's been a scandal. I mean, it's one of the sad truths. They tend to be fairly neglected politically. No one wants to talk about them, but no one wants to fund them. So we tend to jump forward when something terrible like that happens.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, so I have to ask, in these meat lockers and in refrigerator trucks, how are the dead humans stored? Are they on meat hooks like slabs of beef?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

No, actually, Neil, they're not on meat hooks like slabs of beef. I am.

[Chuck Nice]

I am so disappointed.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Now, this has really been disillusioning for you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I know. It really is. Look, I'm sorry we interviewed you. We'd rather just imagine this stuff.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

That's what I was saying. My old boss, Dr. Charles there, she used to have an expression. To slay an ugly theory with a beautiful fact. The other way around. To slay a beautiful theory with an ugly fact.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Sorry to have made this such a sad thing. I mean, no more bodies hanging on meat hooks, but you have to at

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

least store them horizontally. Right. Otherwise it won't work.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Yeah, well, I mean, I suppose you could restore them vertically, but the blood would pool. As you were talking about earlier. Yeah. No, the bodies are stored in a shelving system with it. It's all very modular and very efficient.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

There are all sorts of systems for mass storage of bodies. And, you know, all agencies are prepared for mass fatality events.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. So, can I ask you this? A long time ago, I interviewed a police officer and he talked about a person who was murdered and they found him in his apartment in New York City. The way they found him is he leaked through the ceiling. Ew. So what would that be?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Your fucking.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. My question is, what happened, if that's the case? Or was this guy messing with me?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

No, I'm sure he was telling you the truth. What happens is after death, the body begins to break down. There's no immune system anymore. The white cells die off. The bacteria now rage throughout the body and the bacteria produce gas and they cause the body to bloat and they break down. The Blood and cause it to go red and green and create a lot of discoloration. And as the pressure in the tissues builds from the gas, as the body swells, the body will exude fluids. As its tissues break down, that fluid we call purge fluid. And that will spill out around the body, and sometimes it'll soak through the ceiling.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh.

[Chuck Nice]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I know. It's not an attractive thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's terrible.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So the bloating that makes the body much less dense than it once was because it's the same mass now occupying a bigger volume. This would then cause the body to. To float if it was dead and at the bottom of any. Any in the river. So that's why you need cement boots. Right?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

That's exactly why you need cement boots. But it's also why if someone goes into the water, into the east river, or into the Hudson during the winter, it may be a few months before the body develops enough gas from bacterial overgrowth that it actually start to float up to the top. So there may be delay between someone drowning and us actually finding the bodies. There's this popular notion that when spring comes and the weather warms up and the water temperature warms up, then you get a harvest of bodies bobbing up to the surface. It's not quite that extreme, but, yeah, we don't. Bodies that are floating tend to putrefy. Sometimes they. You know, they get clothing traps some air, or they may have swallowed some air, and they can float because of that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so just. Just to be very precise, this. Because you're. You're breaking down this whole. The whole evolution of a dead body. So the rigor mortis, that gives us the language. Where's the stiff? Right. So we got that. Then you bloat, and then that makes you buoyant. So that gets us the cement boots part of crime. Right. And. Okay, I'm just fleshing out the full picture here, so this is highly illuminating for me. Thank you.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Good. No, I mean, clearly you're on top of this stuff. You should have gone into forensic medicine rather than astrophysics. You could have used people like you.

[Chuck Nice]

So, dovetailing on what Neil just said,

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[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

You mean in terms of killing someone and getting away with it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yes, Chuck. Oh, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Leaving behind no evidence or no discernible cause of death or. No way. I mean, forget alibis and all that kind of police work stuff. Just like they would never be able to trace it back to you. Could you do that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So we put Jonathan together with the TV series. How to. What's it called? How to Commit a Perpetual.

[Chuck Nice]

How to Get Away with Murder.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How to Get Away with Murder.

[Chuck Nice]

How to Get Away with Murder.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There it is. So the two of them, because they know what everybody's looking for. Yeah. So, Jonathan, right? Jonathan.

[Chuck Nice]

I better never see you having lunch with Viola Davis.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're plotting. Viola Davis, the star.

[Chuck Nice]

Somebody's going. Somebody's going down.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Viola Davis, the star of how to Get Away with Murder. So wouldn't that make you a prime suspect in a murder where there's otherwise no evidence?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I hope not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Good answer. You should just stop there. Don't say anything else.

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I should?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

No, I think it is possible. It would be possible to kill someone without leaving any clues or trace. Let's not go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay? All right. But it is true. It is true. It's very hard to dispose of a dead body.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

That's the problem. It's not killing people, it's getting rid of the body. We had a case where a man murdered his wife and then he buried her in the basement. And then for the next couple of weeks, he sat there watching endless repeats of csi. And then finally he went to the police station, says, look, you're going to get me sooner or later. I got to tell you, I murdered my wife and I buried her in the basement.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, wow, wow, wow. So CSI solved the crime, even though it did.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Also creates problems because now, for a while, at least, when the show was, you know, on the air all the time and everyone loved it, there's six different variations. I think CBS is actually bringing it back. But the juries began to demand higher levels of visual proof. They wanted more sort of glamorous animations and like incredible cutting edge science, which, as I said, was on the border of science fiction.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right. And by the way, CSI wasn't just medical. There was also some physics involved in thermodynamics. I mean, not in every episode, but they would bring in, you know, some of the physical sciences when they related to the crime and the murder so that there were some scientifically literate people there. CSI had a traveling museum exhibit where you would then solve your own crime. Kids, a kid exhibit where you go step by step and they give you clues and you'd have to figure it out. So it was a big force on the television landscape. So I was very impressed to watch that unfold. Well, how about the future of AI? AI is going to touch all of us in every way. It already has in some professions. But Patricia thought about that and she was very Impressed with what the future of AI might bring. So let's find out what she tells us.

[Patricia Cornwell]

What's happening today is so amazing in the line between what's real and what isn't, assuming we even know the difference between the two. The line is getting blurrier and blurrier. And so basically, when you think of an Alexa or these devices that we have, ultimately everybody is. You're going to have artificial intelligence assistance, even if you don't know you've got it. And that's the thing that's both good and bad about it, is that we can't be without it. I mean, we can't manage this world, in my opinion, without artificial intelligence. Especially think of air traffic control when you have drones buzzing around and things like that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, wait. You just said something very important. You're suggesting that the complexity of the world we are building for ourselves may one day require AI just to navigate it.

[Patricia Cornwell]

Well, look at what's happened with, with your mobile phones. I mean, we've created many computers that people really almost can't function without.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, so, so Jonathan, is there. Can you picture a day where AI conducts the investigation and not you?

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

I think this assists in. Would be, would be closer. I, I don't think a AI will ever be, for example, things like an autopsy. Not all bodies are the same. Everybody has numerous different idiosyncrasies. They're very subtle little anatomic differences in structure. And actually examining the body is a very complex thing. It's visually sometimes olfactory, and then it's the touch and the feeling of actually putting your hands in and examining the length of the wound, et cetera. I think it'll be a long time before there's robots or whatever that are sensitive enough to be able to do that with the discrimination a human can do. That said, when they do, I expect they may have a slightly higher degree of accuracy. I think there's less room for observer bias then. But for a long time, those robots will have to be overseen by someone human to see if they haven't gone hopelessly off the rails. I think where AI will be useful, things like in a crime scene, there is a thousand. There's a million things going on in a crime scene. I think the big problem is trying to decide what's relevant to the crime and what's not. For example, if you have a dead body lying on the floor, there's blood spatter over the place. There could be a thousand blood spatter droplets distributed about the floor and the walls. Even the ceiling of the apartment sometimes. And if you think at some point the killer stood with his knife over the victim or was carrying the knife and may have left his own blood on the scene, how do you figure out which of all those drops of blood is significant and which relates to the killer and is not actually the victim's blood? And I think with pattern recognition, and that's the sort of thing that I think that AI down the road might be able to look at, like a dense information field, look for patterns and find out the subtle exception that would escape the human eye. But I do think it's a long time and I do think it's a long time before we'll be able to rely on AI. For example, at the moment, there's not a discussion in forensic pathology about stopping doing autopsies and just doing it all virtual. A vertopsy is an examination of the body using a CT scanner. And the Swiss are very keen on this and they feel that it can completely replace doing the autopsy itself. They don't. They still do autopsies, but I think increasing. They're moving towards virtual autopsies. In New York, in the legal system, New York lawyers are not going to say, you know, are not going to just sit back and accept that the, virtually the CT scan is accurate, that it's a subdural hematoma rather than say meningitis that you're looking at. So I think there's going to be, it's going to be a while before that sort of technology comes in and plays specifically a guiding or controlling part.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, you sound like Chuck, because I said this of Chuck. He said, no, comedy is too complicated for AI to take it over.

[Chuck Nice]

So Chuck, absolutely.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Chuck just wants to make sure he's still employed going into the future. Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

There's no way, there's no way they could tell a joke. Not, not, not with all the nuance that a comedian does. That's. And by the way, if they ever do, you can rest assure a glass of water inside their circuitry is waiting. Coming. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's called murder, Chuck.

[Chuck Nice]

Robotic, yes, but it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Roboticide. There's a word for it. Roboticide. Oh, roboticide.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

But that's a philosophical discussion for another forum, I think. But I think you're right, I think that gets it. Because if someone. Can you imagine a robot comedian trying to handle a heckler, you know, the complexities involved in that, the analysis of what was being said, which will have probably obscure cultural references if you're a silicon based machine.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

And then actually determines how to find, formulate a response. That's a really good example, I think. And even just the Turing test, if the computer to pass the Turing test is still. Oh, that's a lot less challenging than it was before.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It reminds me there's a brief moment in the movie Terminator where he's repairing his injured arm in a hotel room and someone knocks on the door and he has to figure out what response to give him. So you see this, you see through his mind's eye, I mean through his computer eye you see a multiple choice. Go away, I'm busy or come back later or you asshole.

[Chuck Nice]

He goes and chooses, chooses that response.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So it could be, if you have an AI comedian and there's a heckler, they can decide whether they're nice to the heckler or not. It's a knob that you turn. But Jonathan, you said something very important, which I'm very sensitive to just in my own field, where pattern recognition, humans are good at it, but we can be very biased. If you take an unbiased pattern recognizing AI, it can for complex things, just like you said, the splatter pattern of blood or a pattern of casings, shell casings, where they landed and how they might be able to do a back extrapolation into where the gun was when it was fired. And there could be some interesting sort of three dimensional analysis that AI could perform that we couldn't.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Absolutely, that's how I think it'll unroll. I mean, when I first started, when I first came to New York and it was 1990, we had this nightmarish homicide rate. We were having six murders at day and they just had no time to investigate the cases. So we'd be working off for the scene investigation. I didn't go to the scenes, but we'd get the investigating detectives would show up with like six or seven polaroids of the crime scene. Poor resolution, not ideally photographed, not ideally lit. And it just wasn't great. And then, you know, fast forward, you know, whatever, 30 years and we've got, you know, video, we've got high resolution for even the photograph your iPhone takes is just amazing. And we have this really cool machine now that you put it in the center of a room and it just scans the entire room, very Blade Runner machine, scans the entire room and measures all the distances and can rebuild a model of that room. And that's fascinating technology. And I think that's where things are going. I mean, you see it in the real estate market now when people are selling the houses they can have a virtual walkthrough using this thing, but you can measure accurately down to the centimeter, discriminating between what's real and what is irrelevant. It's really a big problem in forensics, and it's one of the things that frustrates me. Like, CSI Gil Grissom will walk into the scene and then he'll pick up a single fragment of glass in a whole field filled with glasses. And. Well, this just doesn't fit. This is the problem. And that is the answer. And it just doesn't work like that, sadly.

[Chuck Nice]

But, but if. If that were Sherlock Watson, the AI Sherlock Watson, the AI would be able to do.

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Do that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, they would.

[Chuck Nice]

Sherlock Watson. Sherlock Watson would walk in and just be like, this man's been dead for 12 hours.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Like 12 hours and 36 minutes. Yes, okay, right.

[Chuck Nice]

They were like, yeah, but the rigor. Rigor mortise isn't right. And he'd be like, rigor, please. No. This man, I can tell you, has been dead.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Sherlock Watson. Okay, that's a good one.

[Chuck Nice]

Sherlock Watson, the. The AI.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very good.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

That's the direction we're going in. But I. You know, you know how fallible computers are. You know, they still depend on, I still think for a very long time, and maybe forever, they're going to need humans to sign off on them, that they haven't gotten the stick wrong. And of course, that reintroduces the whole question of bias, which is one of the big challenges.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, of course, of course.

[Chuck Nice]

Once again, Sherlock Watson sends another black man to jail. Damn. Damn.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Chuck, that means it's time to end right now. Jonathan, it's been great having you on. You're the first forensic pathologist I've ever had a conversation with. And maybe it showed, for better or for worse. But have you been delighted to see

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

other forensic pathologists or something?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, I just haven't. It's just a non overlapping Venn diagram, but it was delighted to have you on. I want to thank you for taking time away from your very important and busy schedule to join us in my interview with Patricia Cornwell. And delighted to hear that you have two novels out there, Precious Blood and A Hard Death. And we'll look for them wherever books are sold. Of course. So, Chuck, thanks for being here, as always.

[Chuck Nice]

Always a pleasure. Always.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And Jonathan, we're going to try to find you again because this topic has no end.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

Good. It doesn't. And I was really interested to hear your thoughts about the future of space colonies, because that's something I think about a lot over the last few months as we watch the private enterprises take people into space. I'm just curious as to how.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Here's a quick one for you. You ready? So if you bury someone on the moon, there are no microorganisms there to decompose the body. So the only organisms are the microbes that were in your body when you were buried. But there's nothing exterior to that. So the whole decomposition arc will be very different because of that, because it's not really soil.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

That's all you need though. We carry some sort of horrific statistic about what percentage of our body mass is bacteria and it's a significant portion. That'll be enough.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I just looked at it. We have more bacterial cells in our body than we have body cells. So that, that, that's pretty freaky.

[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

The rate limiting thing there is going to be cold and is also going to be water bacteria. Most bacteria like a little bit of warmth and water to germinate.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Jonathan, delight to have you on. Thanks for taking time out. Chuck. Chuck, always good to have you. This has been StarTalk Forensic Pathology Edition. Neil Degrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Dr. Jonathan Hayes]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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