Computer virus is just a malicious bit of code that runs on your own hardware.

And that's really the same thing that a real virus, a biological virus is.

It's a malicious bit of code, in this case RNA that runs on your own hardware.

Hello and welcome to Wise is happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

Well, it's week two here in the podcast closet.

And we're getting some kinks worked out.

I hope the sound quality is good.

We were psyched with last week.

And I've been thinking a lot about the term something going viral, which is a term I think

Malcolm Gladwell basically is the person who coined that, right?

And it's one of those metaphors that reaches past being a metaphor to the point where it

just becomes what it's meaning is.

It's a metaphor that adopts another meaning.

So when we say like, oh, that went viral now, we don't think like, oh, that's actually

an embedded metaphor for the exponential transmissibility of viruses.

We just think like, oh, that blew up.

But of course, like it is a metaphor for the transmissibility of viruses and the fact

that they propagate at exponential rates.

And that idea, something going viral of an idea exploding through the world and through

the internet in this incredible exponential way, you know, traces back to a Malcolm Gladwell

article that's included in the tipping point book and has now become commonplace.

And I've been thinking about it a lot because a, it's one of those moments where you have

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