Extended Classic: Zombie Apocalypse (Part 1)

About This Episode

Now extended with 13 minutes of Neil, Bill Nye and Steven Soter discussing Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, Eratosthenes, Flatland, Ibn al-Haytham, and both “Cosmos” television series in the “Cosmic Crib.”

There’s no escaping the Zombie Apocalypse when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Max Brooks, the world’s leading “authority” on these nonexistent killers. The author of World War Z discusses fast and slow zombies and the latest in “zombie science” – mathematical models of how a zombie virus would spread and a Harvard doctor’s book about zombie brain patterns. You’ll find out why a cemetery is the safest place to be in a zombie apocalypse, and what’s inside Eugene Mirman’s “evil beef jerky.” But it’s not all fun and games: Dr. Ian Lipkin, Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia, is on hand to warn us about the really scary stuff: viruses like HIV, SARS, Ebola, Cholera, Influenza and a million others yet to be discovered. Are we all doomed? Perhaps, but it’s far more likely to come from the real viruses we can’t see than the fictional zombies we see every week on television.

NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen commercial-free to Extended Classic: Zombie Apocalypse (Part 1) here and to Neil’s extended interview with Max Brooks here