StarTalk Radio · Neil deGrasse Tyson

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

March 13, 2026·55 min·5 clips

Patricia Cornwell describes finding a fortune cookie slip in a dead woman's wallet that read 'you will soon have an encounter that will change the course of your life.'

Forensics starts with a bar-room problem. If someone says they study dead bodies, Chuck figures the conversation could die right there, but the guest pushes back. People are clearly hooked. TV made forensics oddly glamorous, and a New York Magazine line about forensic pathologists as the new supermodels gets a laugh before the point settles in. The episode treats forensic science as patient looking, careful thinking, and evidence that can beat the older fantasy of force and firepower. Neil and Chuck keep it loose because the topic keeps moving between real pathology, pop-culture crime shows, and fictional cases that still have to obey physics. Patricia Cornwell raises the stakes with a Scarpetta story about violence in low Earth orbit, without letting space become an excuse for nonsense. Microgravity changes the crime scene. Blood, projectiles, remote work, and what people have actually carried into space become practical questions instead of shiny science-fiction furniture. The Situation Room in the White House enters the setup. Cornwell's mantra stretches the forensic map from space to ground to six feet under, and the joke carries a serious point: death changes with its environment. By the end, the conversation turns to decomposition, microbes, cold, water, and why a body on the moon would not follow the usual earthly script. Neil adds the unsettling math from the transcript. Human bodies carry more bacterial cells than body cells, so decomposition has its own engine even when the surroundings get strange. The limiting factors are basic. Warmth and water decide how fast most bacteria can move. Grim, yes, but not ghoulish. The jokes give the episode handrails while the science stays on evidence, physics, and what investigators can actually infer.

As heard by us

StarTalk links true crime, forensic science, and space-age murder scenarios without losing sight of the body itself.

StarTalk takes forensic pathology as both a science and a storytelling engine, with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice using true crime's pull to ask why death investigation has become such durable pop culture material.

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Why you'd press play

Patricia Cornwell put a murder in microgravity -- then a real forensic pathologist walked through what that crime scene would actually look like.

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