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Athena, thanks for coming on. I'm really excited to talk to you about your latest book.
雅典娜，感谢你的到来。我非常高兴能和你谈谈你的新书。
Yeah, so my book is called A Field Guide to the Apocalypse: A Mostly Serious Guide to Surviving Our Wild Times.
嗯，我的新书名叫《世界末日生存指南：在动荡时代生存的严肃指南》。
And it is, in a nutshell, a fun book about how to survive the apocalypse.
简而言之，这是一本关于如何在世界末日中生存的有趣书籍。
Listeners might be surprised to learn that a funny book about the apocalypse is like a pretty natural progression of your research on cooperation, which you've managed to apply to everything from cells to zombie outbreaks.
听众可能会觉得惊讶，一本关于世界末日的有趣书籍，就像是你对合作研究的一个相当自然的进展，你已经设法将其应用到从细胞到僵尸爆发的所有东西上。
How did you get into such interdisciplinary and zombified work?
你是怎么进入这种跨学科和僵尸领域的工作的？
Well, okay, to be perfectly honest, all of this started when I was an extremely nerdy teenager because I would go and hang out in my local bookstore and just like read all the books, and I was like, "I want to understand how everything works."
好吧，老实说，这一切都得从我还具有书呆子气质的少年时候说起，那时候我会去当地的书店闲逛，读所有的书，我当时想的是，“我想了解一切是如何运作的。”
And then also I was like, "Things in the world don't seem quite right."
我当时还想，“世上的事情好像不太对劲。”
So I was kind of coming of age in the 1990s, in the late 1990s, and I was like, "Maybe this isn't sustainable.
在20世纪90年代末，也就是90年代后期，我慢慢成年，那时候开始想，“也许这是不可持续的。
Maybe we can't keep doing things the way we have been forever."
也许我们不能永远按照一直以来的方式去做事。”
And I very much became an environmentalist as a teen.
而我在十几岁的时候就成为了一名环保主义者。
But I was also just fascinated by human nature and trying to, like, just really understand how it is that we are the way we are and especially using evolutionary biology as a tool to understand human nature.
但我那时也只是对人性着迷，试着想要搞明白我们为什么会是现在这个样子，特别是利用进化生物学作为工具去理解人性。
And actually, I know this sounds kind of crazy, but, like, I made a conscious decision when I went into college that I would go all academic to learn as much as I could about all the things that are relevant to human nature for dealing with the problems in the world.
实际上，我知道这听起来有点疯狂，但是，我在进入大学时做出了一个有意识的决定，那就是我将全力以赴地学习，尽可能多地了解与人类本性相关的所有东西，以应对世界上的问题。
And then I was like, "And then at some point in my life, I'll turn to pulling it all together to try to, like, do something about all of this."
然后我就想，“在我生命中的某个时刻，我会转而把所有这些都整合起来，去做点什么。”
And lo and behold, here I am now, two decades later, and I have this book that probably my 17-year-old self would be really, really happy that I wrote.
你瞧，20年后的今天，我写出了这本书，也许17岁的我会非常非常高兴我写了这本书。
Awesome-well, and you mentioned this is, like, a pretty lighthearted book about the apocalypse.
太棒了——嗯，你提到这是一本关于世界末日的相当轻松的书。
What informed your approach? Because this is definitely unique in the world of apocalyptic nonfiction.
是什么影响了你的方法？毕竟这在世界末日非虚构作品中绝对是独一无二的。
Well, it's a weird book in that, on one hand, it's, like, lighthearted and funny; I had somebody call it a beach read the other day.
嗯，这本书很奇怪，一方面，它是轻松有趣的，前几天有人把它叫做海滩读物。
But it's also just chock-full of information about how our brains work, about how we process information when we're under stress, about how humans deal with strategic situations when there's conflict and how we solve, like, collective-action dilemmas.
但它里面也有很多信息，比如我们的大脑是如何工作的，我们在压力下是如何处理信息的，人类在有冲突时是如何处理战略情况的，以及我们是如何解决集体行动困境的。
There just isn't another book like that.
这本书绝对是绝无仅有的。
Like, most books that are about existential risk are boring and terrifying at the same time.
大多数关于存在风险的书都很无聊，同时也很可怕。
And so I didn't want to write a book like that-definitely not.
所以我不想写那样的书，完全不想。
Yeah, I don't think anyone could accuse you of being boring-I mean, you literally run a conference about zombies.
对，我觉得没有人会说你这本书无聊——我的意思是，你就像是召开了一场关于僵尸的会议。
So why do you think it is that playfulness can help us prepare for hard times?
那么，你为什么认为嬉戏玩乐可以帮助我们为艰难时期做好准备呢？
I think one of the big challenges now for a lot of people is that there are a lot of things that are scary, not fun, that we know we have to deal with.
我认为现在对很多人来说，一大挑战在于有很多事情既可怕又无趣，而我们知道自己必须要去应对。
But it can be really hard to engage with them when we have all these other things going on.
但是当我们还有其他事情要做的时候，真的很难解决它们。
And so these sort of, like, cycles of anxiety and fear and doom-scrolling and-you know, you're just, like, getting all this information, and then you're just like, "Oh, my brain's gonna explode, and I need a nap."
所以就像，焦虑、恐惧和末日来回循环，你得到的全是这种信息，然后你就会想，“哦，我的大脑要爆炸了，我需要小睡一会儿。”
But the thing is, we have a lot of other emotions that we can leverage for dealing with crises.
但是，问题是，我们有很多其他情绪，可以用来应对危机。
And this is something that humans do around the world when there are crises: there are all of these positive sides of human nature and positive aspects of human experience that come out.
这是世界各地的人类在危机来临时都会做的事情：人性的所有这些积极方面和人类经验的积极方面都会显现出来。
So, you know, cooperation-for one thing, like, during times of need people help each other.
所以，你知道，合作——一方面，在需要的时候人们互相帮助。
It's actually a huge focus of the book.
这实际上是这本书的一个重点。
But also using storytelling, using humor, creating sort of shared attention around the threats, but in a way that invites imagination, creativity, playfulness-that puts us in a mindset where we deal more effectively with problems because our brains are more open; we're not, like, shut down in fear mode.
而且还要利用讲故事、利用幽默，去围绕威胁创造某种共同关注，但要以一种激发想象力、创造力和趣味性的方式去做——这会让我们进入一种思维模式，在这种模式下，我们能更有效地处理问题，因为我们的大脑更加开放；我们不会因为陷入恐惧而宕机。
And so a lot of what I've tried to do with the book is not just make the book itself fun but also describe how we do need to leverage these positive sides of human nature and how we experience the world to engage with the things in, you know, our future and our present that are most scary.
所以，我在这本书中试图做的很多事情，不仅是让这本书本身变得有趣，更是描述了我们如何需要利用人类本性中这些积极的方面，以及我们如何体验这个世界，来应对未来和现在最可怕的事情。
And people like to do it-I mean, people, like, for fun, watch horror movies.
而且人们喜欢这样做——我的意思是，为了好玩，人们喜欢看恐怖电影。
It's part of our nature to be morbidly curious, and it's just a matter of connecting all the dots to get us somewhere productive in terms of dealing with the challenges in the world.
这是我们本性的一部分，是一种病态的好奇，我们只需要把所有的点串联起来，让我们在应对世界挑战方面取得富有成效的成果。
