>> explain what happened in his speech, you know, wh-- are people making too much of this? jon stewart even suggested you might have had a drink or two. >> yeah, well, i wasn't-- and it is not that i wouldn't love to sit down captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> stephen: tonight how do we save the greek economy? well, for starters they could stop doing this. (laughter) then an update on the herman cain sexual harassment scandal. sometimes the eyes say yes but the mouth says nine, nine, nine. plus my guest dr. nathan wolfe says we live in the age of pandemic. better than dying in the age of pandemics. a new report says new york city has shrunk more than

two square miles. hey, come on, it's cold outside. this is "the colbert report." (cheers and applause) captioning sponsored by comedy central ( theme song playing ) ( cheers and applause ) whooo! whooo! (cheers and applause) >> stephen: welcome to the report. thank you so much. thank you. stephen, stephen, stephen! stephen, stephen, stephen! stephen, stephen, stephen! (cheers and applause) welcome to the report. thank you for joining us. folks, i know when news breaks your first reaction is how is stephen going to

handle this one. (laughter) so let's get right to the story everyone's talking about. ghost sex. (laughter) a family in ohio claims that ghosts are having sex in their house. (laughter) and were captured on a cell phone camera. now i want to warn you, this photo is graphic. so if you have any ghost children in the room, please shield their eyes, jim. there it is. pretty sick stuff. that clearly looks like ghosts having sex. but when it comes to para normal activity i always maintain a healthy skepticism because i'm a taurus. and folks, i'm not the only one out there, so does the travel channel's premier ghostologist and host of the dead files, amy allen. as she told the huffington post, quotes, i have never seen two dead people who were conscious entities having intercourse. i have heard of people

having sex with ghosts, but not this. (laughter) yeah, of course, of course. ghosts have sex with people all the time. and there's plenty of photographic evidence. (laughter) >> stephen: so, para normals getting their parafreak on? yes. ghosts on werewolf, sure. chupacabra giving a leprechaun a reacharound, well-documented. a vampire tea bagging a yeti that is commonplace. but ghosts on ghosts? that's a little farfetched. they would just go through each other. up next, there is huge news from europe. at least i think it's huge. it's in metric so who can tell. now normally i do to the give a flying pfeffernusse

what happens in its old country as long as they keep the audies coming and the swiss miss flowingment but europe could drag us all down just like they did to david hasselhoff. you see-- in this new global economy, in the global economy we're all interconnected like a fiscal human centipede. and if you will notice, if you will notice america is not the head. unfortunately, china eats a lot of spicy food. so it was a huge relief when last week europe finally got their merde in a pile. >> european leaders finally announced something investors had been weightsing for. a deal to help recontain its massive debt crisis, a crisis that threatened to derail t economy and recovery here in the u.s. as well. >> stephen: the agreement was reached just before 4 a.m. last wednesday. impressive. the best plan i have ever come up with at 4 a.m. is telling the cops that the ca ron started it. (laughter)

now folks, this crisis was of course caused by greece's massive debt. evidently, their only liquid asset is tzaitki sauce. to you because germany has the largest economy, the responsibility for putting together this deal has fallen on the shoulders of chancellor angela merkel if only there was someone on the world stage who could relax those shoulders. (laughter) no way, obama would do that. by the way, that is what a german looks like relaxed. (laughter) and folks, i got to tell you, this deal-- (cheers and applause) germany-- germany, hey, folks, this deal forces european banks to take a 50% loss on all their investments in greek bonds. and there's a name for that. >> we're going do a 50% haircut on greek bond. >> a 50% haircut. >> basically they're being

forced to take this haircut. >> stephen: and we know how hard it is to give a greek a haircut. the hedge trimmers get dull halfway up the back. (laughter) now the plan includes an emergency bailout fund of $1.4 trillion. and european leaders have a simple way to raise those funds, a structured strategy to improve yield by writing down debt on a sliding percentage scale enabling the eu to use the proven fiscal model of begging china for $1.4 trillion. it worked for us. now europe. (applause) china, china, very international audience, tonight. (laughter) now europe, if i may, a little advice. when borrowing from the chinese it is polite to send them a thank you gift. perhaps all of your manufacturing jobs. but so far the chinese have not bitten on this turd

panini so again it falls to me to avert a global crisis. to tempt possible investors i have created the following multimedia prospectus with the german delegation's hands beinholtz. so get out your checkbooks, world. >> do you-- indoors, painting on the ceilings, perhaps you like the ladies with some hair in the armpits? i am german director general of finance hans beinholtz. these are dark financial times. and you want a secure place to put your money. that is why i am pleased to offer you an amazing investment opportunity europe, haven't you always wanted to own a continent? my people have. europe has germany, france, italy, yes, europe, or the

old country, will never lose its value because leading economic indicator project that europe is increased in age over time. fake a nap 592, meet your lover at 4, meet your mistress at 5, meet your lover's mistress at 6, chee chee, a thousand of the strangest -- >> act now and we will throw in greece. even if you do not act now we will throw in greece. please, just take greece. all this can be yours for just one easy payment of $1.4 trillion. won't you let us continue to exist? invest in europe, the culture, history and fun are

-- -- (cheers and applause) >> stephen: thank you very much welcome back. folks, i don't know about you but i am sick to death of the media hounding herman cain over his sexual harassment settlement with two or three of his former employees. and now one of the settles might go public just because her lawyer claims that herman cain broke the

confidentiality terms of the agreement by commenting on its specifics. hey, cain didn't comment on it he went on tv and gestured on it, and held a press conference, and sang on it ♪ amazing grace ♪ will always be ♪ my thought of praise ♪. >> stephen: yes, amazing grace will always be his song of praise, except when he's singing this song which is about the song amazing grace but appears to be sung to the tune of danny boy. just like i sing about loving danny boy to the tune of stairway to heaven. ♪ there's a song that i love ♪ ♪ and it's called danny boy ♪ ♪ and i only sing that song not this one ♪ ♪ that makes me wonder

♪ anyway, that's the song. (cheers and applause) >> stephen: i await your lawsuit. the fact is, we all know these accusations are only about one thing. >> do you think that herman cain should be prepared for more of this because he is a black conservative? >> herman cain represents a threat to liberal-- a liberal narrative that suggests that conservatives are racist. >> the mainstream media have launched an unconscionable racially stereotypical attack on an independent, self-reliant conservative black. >> stephen: yes, it is a stereotype, not all black presidential candidates sexually harass. just like not all old fat men are jolly. and-- (applause) >> stephen: folks, when it comes to racial stereotypes, rush knows what he's talking about it.

>> let me put it to you this way, the nfl all too ten looks like a game between the bloods and the crips without any weapons. >> day, day mark and the standard. who data. who data say they mocking the standard, al sharpton say day mocking the standard. how many people really think of obama as black. he's not from the hood. he's not from the movement. when i hear chinese or japanese t sounds like all the same word. >> stephen: khie ba ba indeed. little known fact rush was also the voice of jar jar pinks. but folks, this is not going to derail the cain train. >> none of this appears to be hurting mr. cain in terms of fund-raising. his campaign manager mark blount made all this controversy. the campaign managed to raise about $250,000.

>> stephen: 250,000 dollars, wow. in that case, nation, colbert superpac needs your help now more than ever. folks, we are so close to reaching our goal of more money. and folks, it has come to my attention that i am about to be accused of sexual harassment. i do don't know why, maybe because i'm irish. let's find out the details. jay, get out here. jay the intern, everybody. good to see you, how are you, buddy. >> good. >> stephen: now jay, i'm unaware of ever sexually harassing you. are you unaware of that also. >> i'm not supposed to talk about that because of the agreement. >> stephen: right, right that is one of the things that i am unaware of. you can't talk about it with that pretty little mouth of yours. >> i got to go on a coffee run. >> stephen: you stay right there, jay. not that i don't enjoy watching you walk away. remember, folks, colbert

superpac.com is now taking donations. (cheers and applause) okay, jay, as per our agreement, you have to maintain your an on imity, okay so, let's get that an on imity mask on you. just put that on. okay. (laughter) there you go. looks good. all right, jay, now i certainly hope are you not allergic to strawberries. there we go. (cheers and applause) all right. and this is just boilerplate don't touch me stuff, right. >> yeah. >> stephen: okay, great, jay the intern, everybody. thank you very much. (cheers and applause) >> stephen: all right.

folks, once again that's colbert superpac.com. and just to sweeten the deal, i am also unaware of ever sexually harassing herman cain. please, give generously. we'll be right back

>> stephen: thank you very much, welcome back, everybody. my guest tonight, has spent a career investigating the world's most deadly virus.

to prepare for this interview i put on a condom. please welcome nathan wolfe. (cheers and applause) dr. wolfe, you don't have to get up for me. thank you very much. very nice. all right, sir, you are a microbiologist, a professor of human biology at standford. so you are a smarty pants, also the founder and c.e.o. of global viral forecasting. an independent research institute devoted to early detection of like pandemic, right. >> exactly. >> stephen: okay, you've got a book here. it's called the viral storm, the dawn of a new pandemic age. why don't you flame it something a little more alarmist. like disease kill zone. a virus will turn your blood to dust before the end of this sentence. so where do you get where dow research these viruses. how do you collect them? >> yeah, i mean so, one of the ways to think about what we do is creating museums of

virus and blood. >> stephen: kids, we're going to the virus museum. okay, yes. you are a museum of germs and blood. >> yeah. that's us. >> stephen: but how do you get them. >> so we are positioned in, along with colleagues in 20 countries around the world. >> stephen: what countries what are the big disease countries. >> well, it's interesting. we tend to work in places that are sort of hot spots of diversity because those most of these viruses come from animals. so the more diversity of animals you v the more diversity of viruses that can jump into us as people. >> stephen: why don't we get rid of the animals. attack this at the root. >> well, here's the other thing. we understand so little about the world of microbes and many of these things are very useful. for example a virus that came from cow, cow pox ended up being the virus that allowed us to he rad cat small pox so there are viruses out there that are likely to be useful. >> stephen: we have live viruses in our yogurt. >> there you go. >> stephen: do we? >> we absolutely do, yeah.

>> stephen: i pulled that out of my ass. (laughter) >> talk about the someones that scare its hell out of me. >> ebola. >> for a while back there we heard about ebola jumping from monkeys to humans, okay. and then a human was going to get on a plane, come to america and we're all going to be dead in like 72 hours. i've seen those movies. >> if i had ebola, you know, what, how would i know? >> yeah, i mean ebola is a virus that leads to very, very specific clinical symptoms. >> stephen: such as. >> you have blood in your vomit, you have blood in your diarrhea. this is something that really has an incredibly profound clinical presentation. and-- . >> stephen: it's always kind of a bad sign when you have blood in your vomit though, right? >> yeah. >> stephen: no need to tell me about ebola for that. >> yeah, no, that's very true. and one of the interesting thing iss we just reported on identifying some completely novell variants of ebola that we found in an outbreak that we

investigated with colleagues in congo. >> stephen: novell does that mean good or bad. >> it means completely new and what it really means is there are things out there that we are still unaware of. and there will be other things that will be effectively ebola 2.0, new viruses that will affect news ways that we haven't been affected in the past and will really have the potential to disrupt things massively, potentially due huge harm to humans like hiv, like influenza viruses have done in the past. >> stephen: when my mom was a kid, she is 91. when my mom was a kid every summer at the end of the summer, they would kind of wait for the news as to whether polio was around again. and sometime these would go to school late because they didn't want to be with other kids. is there something like that, could that happen again where every year for 50 years we're not sure whether the thing is going to spring up and just start killing people left and right? >> we live in a profoundly different world than we have lived in. even if you go back 30, 50 years ago. we lived in towns, villages. we weren't connected to each other. now if you look at airplane routes and the way we move

boats and animals around, we're this sort of large mixing vessel of microorganisms and it means that a virus that pops out of central africa or southeast asia has ot potential to get to here in new york or tokyo in a matter of days. and that's something that we should all be very, very concerned about and take seriously. >> stephen: if you discover the next deadly virus, can you name it after yourself? because wolfe flu, that's not bad. >> i mean look,. >> stephen: yes or no, senator. (laughter) >> well, we do need-- . >> stephen: yes or no. >> we do, we absolutely do. we name them. >> stephen: dow. could i, could someone die of wolfe fever. >> very possibly. but we're not going name it after me. we're going to name it after usually sort of a location that we work in or something that's meaningful about the virus, that gives us information about it. >> stephen: when you first came out here i shook your hand. (laughter)

is this-- is this does this help me in any way. did i just do anything or is this just sort of wishful thinking. >> oh, no, you absolutely did. using alcohol based hand sanityizers will definitely like destroy bacteria and a number of different viruses, so absolutely. >> stephen: then i'm willing to shake your hand again. thank you so much. >> there you go. >> stephen: nathan wolfe, the book is the viral storm. we'll be right back. (cheers and applause)

>> stephen: that's it for the report, everybody. good night.