September 30, 2025 • 50 mins
As summer turns and fall begins, Ridiculous History officially enters the most wonderful time of the year. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the legend of a specific kind of 'living dead' -- the zombie. According to the stories, a zombie is a cadaver reanimated through evil magic, and cursed to obey the commands of a powerful bokor (sorceror). Yet is this only a tall tale? Or, just maybe... is there a grain of truth to this grisly lore?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
mister Max.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Zohobe zomb Oh Williams. With their tanks and their guns
and their guns and their guns and their zombies.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
The cranberries absolutely nailed that tiny desk.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Also a great juice, an underrated juice even I like,
I have to.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I have to drink cranberry juice because I used to
have kidney stones. That's little to t m. I uh so,
I'm a bit of a bit of a connoiseur the cranberry.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, what's your favorite.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I particularly like getting the straight up cranberry juice and
then get a little bit yeah yeah, diluting it, mixing
it down a little bit. I'm Ben Bullen, that is
mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Hello, hello, uh Noel.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
We are getting into as we said earlier, we are
getting into the fall season, the most wonderful time of
the year.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Which is today passed the equinox. Right, oh yeah, look
at you man. You know you know I know how
because because I do yoga now every day and they
they they love the equinox special affirmation based around the equinox,
the seasons of our of our bodies shifting along with
that of nature.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
What's your favorite yoga position or process? Donkey butt? Oh yeah,
how what is that? Can you describe it?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'm just kidding at the rest, I don't know, man, Like,
I think the thing that I like the most is
that I can just hanging downward dog like indefinitely ever. Yeah,
And that's it's the most transitional pose and like.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
The more you do it, the better you get at it.
And I've just been absolutely loving it.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So I don't know. I like, oh, man, I'm like
Trump and the Bible. I just love all. I love
the whole thing. I love the whole thing. There we go,
There we go.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
We are, of course, huge fans of Halloween. As as
we said in the past, it's arguably always Halloween in America,
and so we reached out to our crew of research
associates and we said, what's some halloweeny stuff? And lo
and behold, our good pal Red had Renfest I believe
(02:49):
we're calling her, got back to us and said, what
do you guys know about zombies?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, there's the song. We got that one out of
the way. Yeah, there's a fellow named George Romero who
made some movies about them that I think were pretty
well received. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Uh. The term living dead was first used in the
nineteen sixty eight Romero film Night of the Living Dead,
which spawned an empire media.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And you know, well, we can't. We can't talk about
that without talking about Knight of the Dummy, Night of
the Goosebumps classic. We also can't talk or.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
The magnificent Carnival of Souls.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh boy, I know you think that, Ben, I don't think.
I told you. I watched that not long ago. Must
of the last season really ahead of his time. It's
a it's like you know, it's it's an older film.
It's a real artsy kind of cerebral horror, very dreamlike,
very linch. I liked a lot. Thank you, Oh you
made it. I just like that you like it.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I do like, Yeah, it's an interesting story. We did
an episode about HERK. Harvey for Ephemeral, and it's because
it's the only like film like that he made his career.
He did educational films.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, they bruci Ones. You know who else did that
some young you know, Joel Romera. Romero, that Romero.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
We talk about it, like in our episode, we kind
of draw the comparison between the two of them because
it's like they were not these traditional things and that's
kind of like, uh, the John Wick movie franchise. They're
done by like stunt people, and that's why they're so cool.
It's because they're looking at it from a different angle
than what we're used to people looking at the films.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
For I gotta say also ephemeral, just as just as
of mention. If you're a long time ridiculous historian, you've
heard us brag about this show before. Max and his brother,
our composer Alex really led the charge on this.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
And the venerable Trevor Young.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
And and young mister Young, venerable and ephemeral. There we go,
and we have all plays to part in this endeavor.
I think it really shows us what a podcast can do.
So if you haven't heard it yet, get THEE to
your platform of choice, dude.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I just something was like totally going off in my
nogin about these institutional films or educational films. George Romeiro recently,
this very rare and underseen Romero film called The Amusement
Park was unearthed and it is the only film he
ever made for hire, and it was commissioned by the
(05:32):
Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania educational film about elder
abuse and agism. But it's really whack and twisted and
clearly dude just took the ball and ran with it,
and the rest is zombie history.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Kind of like asking David Lynch to make a soap.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Opera or to make a Star Wars movie, which almost happened,
could have happened. What a bizarro timeline that would have been?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
What was that there were so many Salvador Dolly brushes
with greatness and film.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I really did have a brief dalliance with Disney, and
that's what I'm thinking. You can see clips of it.
I think there were just some animatics that were produced,
but the whole thing wasn't made. But it's really neat
and it's about what you would imagine maybe a Disney
Dolly copro might look like.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Bro true story, we were out in Spain and went
to a Dolly museum where we were watching I guess
you would call it the initial or test footage of
his work with Disney. I believe it was Disney. I'm gullible.
I get very in the moment and I wanted to
pick up some pieces of Dolly artwork. And my girlfriend,
(06:42):
who is by far the more intelligent, more responsible what
in the crew, she said, you can't just throw money
at stuff because you think it's cool in the moment,
and she was correct. I also threw money at the
screen every time a Zaba be filmed with twenty eight
in the title comes out.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I would argue that throwing money at a thing in
the moment is the only way to live. That's just
I'm sorry, that's just respectfully disagreeed. And you know my
girlfriends so and you know about her la booboo thing. Gosh,
everybody sent me well wishes this pop culture. No, I'm
just not I'm not prepared. You know what I bought recently?
(07:26):
What did you buy? A lafufu?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Ah?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I know what the lofufu is. It's just a bootleg
laboo boo. And you know, I was hanging behind the
counter at a gas station that I frequent around here,
and I just you know, it's sort of like those
like really cool like burned mixed CDs, the bootleg CDs
you'll see sometimes Atlanta gas stations had to have it
and eat in. My kid immediately decapitated it and hung
(07:48):
it on a cross.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That information what you will Classic eat A big fan
of the show, you can check out their appearance many
years ago on this very show, way back in the day.
We are huge fans of Halloween. We are huge fans
of spoopy doopy stuff and folklore, and the idea of
(08:11):
the living dead, often called zombies in the West, is
a huge thing. It's a prime character the pantheon of
Western monsters. And now, like, do you remember twenty eight
years later the newest sequel?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Do I remember it? Of course? Yeah, it was. It's
only months ago. I think I saw. I actually saw
it twice in the theaters. And did you see it, Ben? Yeah, yeah,
multiple times. How did you feel about the end? D true?
I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was
clock personified.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
It changed the tone and it was fun, upbeat after
quite a slog of a movie. I mean, I was good,
but like, also, I loved all the hanging dongs. Man,
I love hanging the zombie dongs. Yeah, yeah, and we
won't spoil that film, but do check the zombie hanging dongs.
You gonna see a lot of them, but that might
be more trigger warning than a spoil. They're dead, Do
(09:01):
they care about fashion? Sure are swinging. They sure look
lively to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the weather
was nice for those dogs.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Also, unless you worry too much or if it even matters,
they are apparently all prosthetic five much like the Dirk
Diggler dong and Boogie Knights.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, but there or William Dafoe Willem Dafoe had a
stunt double.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I think at Anti Christ. That's correct for those There
were some pretty seriously pornographic penetrative sex scenes in that film.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, and we are getting back to zombies.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
We are, We're getting there, energy man. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So, in modern pop culture and your favorite films or
works of fiction about the undead, zombies come from any
number of imagined circumstances, nuclear fallout, red yeah right right,
Nuclear fallout renders people uh somewhat zombie like, or of course,
(10:04):
a fungal pandemic like Last of Us, a phenomenal video game.
Maybe there's a virus.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Not the best of shows. First season was pretty solid.
Second season.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Boy, did aith is so mad at me because I
just keep telling her how awful good.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I mean, which you're like, no, yucking of youms. But
it took an odd tone, especially for a show where
the creator of the video game was involved and clearly
didn't quite get what made the game good. That's always odd.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It's like the whole entire purpose of the second game
gets blown in the second episode. It's like, Oh, we're
just gonna tell you the plot at the end of
developing it. And I say this as a guy tattoo, right, right?
Is I convinced my friend to buy a PlayStation instead
and just play the game?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah? Yeah, Well, you know, you meet people where they're at. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
The kind of the idea of the living dead I
think addresses uh, the one are the main questions of humanity,
which is mortality. No one really knows what happens when
you die, so death and anything involved with death can
be very scary. The fancy word for that is thanatology,
which means the study of death.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Oh, I guess that's where Thanos gets his neck. Yes,
he is a death deity. He is basically a god
of death. More or less, he's like a death fanboy. Okay,
got its death adjacent. He's death adjacent. There we go.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Uh, it's weird, no, because, however, depicted the undead zombies
in particular to be differentiated from you know, vampires, right,
which often still possess cognitive faculties. Zombies can be very fast, right,
they can be very slow, like a Knight of the
Living Dead. The main thing is they're unrelenting.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
For sure, and there's the horde of them. They they move,
they do move in herds. It's true. Also, I would argue,
and I think most pop cultury type writers that the
fast zombie really didn't come around until the first twenty
eight Days Later movie. That was kind of the advent
of the fast zombie, which is what made that movie
kind of stand apart. I'm fascinated by ben is the
(12:12):
evolution of the zombie from sort of a shambling walking
thing that might eat your guts to one that will
give you the bug if it scratches, bites, or you know,
viscerates you even and then you join the herd.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
And COVID taught us a lot about the real life
consequences of not telling folks when you're infected. The zombie
films were right. Every time someone hides the bite and
then later turns into a monster, it's kind of like
people lyeing about their COVID tests. So art does reflect reality.
(12:49):
And I got to shout out World War Z. The
book series amazing and the film adaptation also have very
fast zombies with a big old pile of them climbing
up a wall. A mistake, and that was sort of
the iconic imagery from that.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Well, why don't we jump.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
In the very cut budget at the very end, which
was very boring. The film ran out of money when
they were making it, okay, and it was very clear
while you watched it they blew.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
All the money on the zombie wall and then they
didn't know how to end it. You get in situations.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
You know, we know that Romero was or is rightly
credited with bringing the idea of the zombie to the
zeitgeist here in the West, but if you look at
the etymology, zombie as a term can be traced all
the way back to the sixteen hundreds to Haitian folklore
(13:44):
and allegedly, we don't want to other hear Vudu religious practices.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Do the do do you like? I'd like to think
I do. Some days I do, some days I don't.
With you there, Ben, because of course this is a
practice much like WICCA or any other sort of earth
based ritualistic belief system, and it often gets pegged in
(14:11):
this black magic kind of way and others. And I
think that's maybe where the ick comes from, in terms
of like the way it's demonized, which I think unfairly right,
is that what I agree with you? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I mean, concepts of necromancy in one version or another,
have always been around. They're as old as the first
time a human noticed another human died, right. It's it's
a very old human instinct, and we have to remember
there's historical context. So zombie spelled the way we spell
(14:45):
it now with an ie it comes from or it
has alternate spellings like zombi and j U M b
I E. A lot of the US focus on the
idea of this speci type of reanimated cadaver comes from
the other being comes from the United States occupation of
(15:07):
Haiti from nineteen fifteen to nineteen thirty four, and people
were obsessed with what they saw as exotic, unfamiliar customs,
very old customs. By the way, that you can trace
directly to empires in Africa, on the African continent, and
we know, for instance, we've all heard of like Layer
(15:31):
of the White Worm, if you remember that one.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, that's a good one. And another good one is
The Serpent and the Rainbow. I believe that's John Carpenter
or is it Wes Craven. I think it might be
Wes Craven. But it's about it's literally about this very
topic and more rooted in that that culture that we're
talking about here. I haven't seen it in a long
time and it may have not aged well, but it's
(15:55):
got Bill Paxton in it, and it's definitely got some
I'm good scarce it might be worth a check. There
are the White Worms? Weird as hell? Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
It's based on Bram Stoker. It's got a snake worshiping priestess. Honestly,
Serpent in the Rainbow was what I was thinking about originally,
because it is very loosely inspired by an extremely awesome book.
And if you saw the film and you didn't enjoy it,
(16:27):
please do check out the book. It's totally different. It's
much more factually based.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I may have said Bill Paxton, I met Bill Pullman,
and it was in fact directed by Wes Craven and
came out in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Nice we know that a guy named William C. Brook
went to Haiti to quote unquote learn about the culture,
and when he did, he wrote a book called The
Magic Island in nineteen twenty nine, and he had some
really turgid prose about zombies and about Haiti in general.
(17:06):
He was very much coming from an outsider, exploitative perspective.
Right now, fellow nerds believe that Seabrook may have been
the guy who introduced the word zombie into the American vernacular,
but his account of the folklore detracted from its origins,
(17:28):
which are slavery. This is where we have a disclaimer.
As we kind of noted at the top, this is
a spoopy Doupe episode, as Wren says, gravely serious. So
(17:48):
we do have to talk about the real life origins
of enslavement and colonialism that led to all these films
we enjoy so much today.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
So, before the Haitian Revolution, Haiti was a French colony
known as Sante Domingo Domingo. I believe Santa Domingo, as
I said anglicize it. The French relied on forced labor
of enslaved African people to create very lucrative sugar cane plantations.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Right they made profit in human blood, and they were
forcing these enslaved people into a very brutal life with
the life expectancy was quite short. You would be a
teenager and you would die in a few years, simply
due to the climate, the unbelievable cruelty of the folks
(18:46):
attempting to enslave you.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
We also know, it's so much danger involved in cutting
down sugar cane, Like people lose limbs, people lose hands.
You know, you literally have this massive blade and you're
holding the thing and chop down on it. All kinds
of ways. People could get infections, and you know, just
the lack of care. Certainly it would be minimal that
(19:08):
would just allow people to continue to work, probably with
injuries like that that would ultimately lead to their death.
And yeah, and painful.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Often no such thing as OSHA, no such thing as
an HR department. Let's go to Mike Maryanni who writes
about this in the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
He says that.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
A pretty big portion of people enslaved in Haiti at
the time thought that dying might release them back to Langhani,
to getting to Africa the continent in general, and this
would be an afterlife wherein one was free from the
atrocities of the waking world.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And of course we have to we have to.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Acknowledge that suicide was common among enslaved people, and one
social mechanism that occurred to prevent this was the argument,
similar to Christianity, that if you take your own life,
you do not get to go to Heaven, whatever version
there may be.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yes, it's just, you know, just work until you die.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Just work until you die, because there's a payoff in
the afterlife. And if you did take your own life,
you would be condemned to stay on that cursed sugarcane
plantation for internity.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
You would be insult to injury.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Right, you are denied your own agency as a person,
but you are trapped within your body. You have lost
your soul. You are a zombie. But the word itself
originates in West Africa zombie zo nb i in Haitian Creole.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
You start to see that near the end of the
peer of French colonial rule, when this myth had really
become part and parcel with the Voodoo culture. Simply explained
the French were Catholic and they forced the Africans that
they enslaved to adhere to their particular rigid beliefs. Heard
of that move before, but since those enslaved didn't want
(21:19):
to abandon their sacred beliefs, they of course had to
take them underground, which we also hear about.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
All the tigious syncretism mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And then they start to make their way into sort
of styling on the belief systems that were forced upon them.
So they carried them with them back to their homelands,
and over time they did establish this system of beliefs
known as Voodoo, which did take elements, as we're saying,
from Christianity and kind of blended them with the spirituality
(21:48):
of the West African culture.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Right, animism, ancestor worship, that kind of stuff. We talk
a lot about religious syncretism on our sister show. Stuff
they don't want you to know. We find it fascinating,
you know, nol. As you remember, I run into religious
syncretism or syncretic practices throughout Central America. It occurs in
(22:14):
a similar way in the Caribbean, wherein people will say
this patron Saint is actually this deity or this spirit right,
and the French colonialist they did some of the same things.
A lot of missionaries did this. Spanish missionaries as well.
They would say, Oh, your mountain God is actually our
(22:36):
thing and you just had the name wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It's the funniest clip you've probably seen it. It's a
Ricky Gervais talking about isn't it a coincidence that if
you're born in the United States you're probably going to
grow up Christian, if you were born in India, you're
probably going to grow up Hindu, And if you're born
in Asia you're probably going to grow up Buddhists. And
then he just points out this notion of each one
of these cultures being fully convinced against all odds that
(23:01):
they're the ones that got.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
It right one hundred percent. Yeah, And there's a fantastic
conversation Ricky Gervais has with Stephen Colbert and years back.
I was in the audience for it, and they talk
about atheism and they talk, you know, Stephen Colbert and
Ardent Catholic and there's nothing wrong with that, But Ricky
(23:23):
Gervais's banger line from there, which I think Steve appreciated
was he said, Okay, you're Catholic, you believe in one God. Really,
all that means is I believe in one less God
than you, which is a really interesting way to reframe
it and look at it. And speaking of reframing, we
(23:44):
have to recognize that outside of Western film and fiction,
in actual Haitian culture, a zombie is not considered undead.
A zombie is instead considered a living human being whose
mental faculties have been severely altered. And that's something we
see in that's something we see in the book Serpent
(24:07):
and the Rainbow. The original zombie folklore begins to take
a more literal, less metaphorical form with the emergence of voodoo.
As you describe.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
It, is there a sense that the person is in
some way under the sway of someone or something. Absolutely, yeah, yeah,
you nailed it.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And there are a few things that could wake that
person up and maybe return them to their original state.
If you're looking at Haitian folklore and you're trying to
find the puppeteer of the zombie, then you're looking at
something called a beaucoor or a sorcerer who can induce
a coma like state in their victims. So the victim's
(24:51):
family and they're loved ones, they bury the victim because
they think that person is dead. Speaking of morbid stuff,
we should absolutely do an episode about premature burial.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
That's funny, Ben. The tagline of the Serpent in the
Rainbow is don't bury me, I'm not dead. Exclamation marketing.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Oh man, there was like a baker's dozen of patents
here in the US for devices that would let you
alert people if you had been buried before you were
actually dead, like the things you pull for the yeah yeah, yeah.
So you wake up in the coffin and you you say, oh,
(25:32):
thank goodness, there's a string here, and it starts ringing
a bell by your jaw.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
I've seen that used in some fiction. I want to
say it was in the first the Nun movie. Oh
I held me on that, but I think it might
have been. I remember The Nun. That one's a period piece.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So this, this idea here is that after the person
is buried prematurely, the sorcerer of the Bocoor digs up
the victim revi through a combination of perhaps drugs and ritualism,
and then the person becomes a zombie. They are devoid
(26:10):
of free will. They do whatever the sorcerer tells them
to do. And we're pulling that straight from the US
Library of Congress. The work of these sorcerers, these buukor
could be considered evil if they were used for evil purposes.
But folks who were enslaved and escaped enslavement formed secret societies,
(26:31):
and they may have done a kind of underground railroad.
If you go to visit Haiti, you'll see that the
secret societies of people who achieved freedom may have also
helped other people achieve freedom by faking death. Pseudo side
(26:52):
sure like a Romeo and juliet Only Juliette didn't get
the memo.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
No, Romeo didn't get the memo? Which one was it?
Somebody didn't get the memo? One of them took a
drug that would make them seem as though they were
in a state like death, and then the other one
comes upon them, rome the memo, and then Juliette awakens
from her stupor and realizes that her dear Romeo has
a not gotten the memo and yeah, not a lives herself.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Let's get into the science with the yeah, yeah, I
always I bet you I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
In the text of Shakespeare it is described what remedy
or lack thereof that that Juliette is given because it's
by an old priest type figure. You know, it's like
a dude that would have like knowledge of these esoteric arts.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Right, you're right, it would be some kind of pharmacologist.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Oh, I'm a priest in my day job, but I'm
also super into alchemy. And it's a friar if I
remember that gives her the substance. There's an excellent article
from the BBC back in I want to say, twenty
fourteen that dives into the idea. Right, because Shakespeare is
(28:08):
writing about poison and the effects of drugs all the time,
and we're later historians literally found the guy may have
smoked some form of cannabis comes into it.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, sorry, my type of fellow.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Your type of Othello, don't touch the stuff. So let's
go to the science here. As we've been mentioning various
anthropological works, there's this ethnobotanist named Wade Davis. Wade has
his bona fides.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
He went to.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Harvard, which doesn't always make you an expert, but in
this case it is true. He is known for his
books on indigenous cultures biodiversity. He is indeed the author
of The Serpent and the Rain book. Yes, way cool,
I love that. So this is why I love this
(29:05):
book so much. So he looks into the rumors of
bringing back the dead in Haiti, this thing we would
call zombification, and he believes that these self reporting sorcerers,
these bokoor, are actually using toxins from animals and paralytic
(29:28):
herbs to create this cognitive state, especially pufferfish stuff tetro detoxin.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Right, But wasn't there a bit of a stink when
this book was published? Yes, in terms of the efficacy
of the things that he was reporting.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, he has had a lot of So it's nineteen
eighty three before he publishes his book. In nineteen eighty five,
that's when he first advances his hypothesis that this pufferfish
derives substance in particular or can explain zombies, and he
runs into he is honest in his work that he
(30:07):
runs into people claiming to be sorcerers and saying, hey,
I will sell you my secret create a zombie formula.
And then later he would find out that they were
just trying to rip them off. You know what I mean,
trying to make a buck, buddy. I just found something amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's not entirely confirmed, but one option for the deathlike
sleep inducing potion that Juliette takes is tetro totoxin.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Ahha, nice, nice, well, Doug Buckerou Oh man, do you
think Shakespeare knew about it? Or did he just say, like, ah,
we'll have to do a Shakespeare It's.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
A good question. Yeah, I mean, like this, this is
just like a thread about it on Reddit and people
are talking about, you know, some possibilities and that one
has come up a few times. But whether the knology
of it all makes sense or not.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I could not say no, I hear you, because it
becomes similar to the argument of ergot poisoning.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Well, obviously puffer fish existed in the time of Shakespeare,
but would you know, would that have been a thing
that people knew about? You know, it's one of those
things like who exact to your point, Ben, who figured
out that that would happen if certain crops were left
untended and developed these what do you call them blites?
I guess right? Or who the first person was that
figured out that?
Speaker 1 (31:28):
You know, if you ate this particular mushroom wouldn't kill you,
but it would make you see fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
I love the idea of Shakespeare saying, well, my day
job is being a playwright, but my real passion is
puffer fish.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, Shakespeare had had quite the aquarium, as I understand.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
There was another idea, another substance that Wade Davis proposes
as being part of the zombie formula torah stramonium. It's
a flower and its street name is Jimson weed. So
this tetrodotoxin causes paralysis and gymsen weed induces stupefication and
(32:14):
memory loss.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Love the idea of stupefication as a side effect. Maybe
it's not a side effect, it's like the desired effect.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I'd love to see it in the fine print and
fast pronunciation of a big pharma ad.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
You know what I mean? Absolutely? Can I just say,
ben in some of this Google rabbit hole, that this
is induced. I found an article from Scientific American called
Shakespeare on Drugs. I would love to see a breakdown
of all the different poisons and accestances in the works
of William Shakespeare, just like out there.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
The Romeo and Juliet drug is not named, but I
know he talks about Hamlet. In Hamlet, Hamlet's father gets
poison in by someone pouring stuff in his.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Ear something like that. I can't the method of delivery.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, and someone I think it was Titiana. I got
the juice of a flower put in her eyes and
she fell in love with a guy who had a
donkey head. Shakespeare was out there, you know what I mean. Uh,
this is way before the current editing and studio process. Davis,
(33:35):
his book Serpent in the Rainbow is what inspires Wes
Craven to make that film adaptation, and a lot of
researchers did not vibe with the research of Wade Davis.
Other ethnobotanists were saying, look, his methodology is unsound. We
can't find evidence of the hallucinogens upon testing his samples,
(33:59):
because the bo is all about him meeting or real
life sorcerer or meeting or trying to meet one, and
going through all these different con men and trying to
buy the make a zombie secret formulae and then bringing
it back for.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
To love the idea like make make your own zombie
at home, like you can get but outside of Haiti,
we really owe a lot of the early understanding of
the folklore surrounding the zombie to an anthropologist and acclaimed
Harlem Renaissance writer who you may have heard of, named
Zora Neil Hurston. In nineteen thirty six, she received a
(34:35):
fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation to fund anthropological research there
in Haiti. When she got there, she immediately got to
work making friends with the locals.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, networking, especially with the Voodoo community.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
That's what you do as an anthropologist, by the way,
I mean that is the vibe. You're not there studying
them like under a microscope. You're mixing in. You're taking
in the sounds and the sites and eating the food
and doing all those things. Right.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, you want to be of the people, you know, uh,
And you want to understand the folklore and the culture,
and you can't really do that just by reading a book. So,
in her quest to figure out how the practices and
the belief system of Voodoo fits in with the larger
(35:23):
African diaspora, Hirston meets Felicia Felix mentor and.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Immediately says by no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Like a by sign. Yeah, I got it. It's not
awesome song. So this character Felicia is a real person,
was believed to have been zombified. That it was believed
that a sorcerer Bokor had taken her, stolen her body,
and made her soullace one of the undead. Hirston first
(35:59):
hears about this from the government of Haiti, from the
Director General of the Ministry of Health, and they tell
her that this person and Felicia Felix Mentor, has been
brought to them like two medical facilities a month earlier.
(36:19):
She's now in town. So if you're Hurston as an anthropologist,
this is a tremendous and disturbing opportunity. The police found
her nude laying alongside the road or shambling along the road,
apparently twenty nine years after she had been officially buried
by her family.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Can we also just take a quick moment just to
acknowledge Zora Neil Hurston and her important contribution to literature
and to black culture or you may already be very
much aware, but this is a black woman who was
exploring this part of the world to understand her roots
and her culture and the anthropology of it all was
very important, and she was known for that. But she
(37:02):
was also a very well regarded fiction writer, and she
has a very beloved novel that is considered like a
centerpiece of the Harlem Renaissance called Their Eyes Were Watching God,
which I haven't read.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I would very much love to. It's great. I've got
a copy of it. If you're looking for a good book,
you can't go wrong. Zora Neil Hurston had four novels,
if I'm recalling correctly, and Their Eyes Were Watching God
as the one that really stayed with me.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
That's the one you read in school. She also has
books of folklore, including nineteen thirty five's Mules and Men,
which is another foundational text, spreading some of these sort
of colloquial folk tales from the rural South that she
experienced growing up. So fascinating human being.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, and a lot of her work that's happening in
Haiti at this time is going to be found in
her later book nineteen thirty eight's Tell My Horse, Voodoo
and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, So she's not just
focusing on Haiti. But for the purposes of our zombie episode,
you got to know some disturbing stuff, folks. She went
(38:15):
to meet Felicia Felix Mentor, who was under the care
of authorities. However, when she shows up to this hospital,
they're outside, they're in the hospital yard. The lady who
has been through what we can only imagine being horrific things,
she is frightened by all this attention. She can't really communicate.
(38:39):
She's lost the faculty of language. She's making sounds, but
not necessarily words. There is a very disturbing photograph that
Hirston takes of Felicia Felix Mentor, which you can find online,
but do be aware of folks, it's not appropriate for
all audiences. And the West loved it. Man Life magazine
(39:02):
published this photograph throughout the land and they said it's
the first real evidence of a zombie. The trick of
it is, there's no real proof that Felicia Felix Mentor
was an actual zombie. To a lot of people who
(39:22):
are more skeptical and don't believe in this idea. From
their perspective, Felicia Felix Mentor is a person who is
simply suffering from mental illness, not a curse, nothing supernatural,
no secret make a zombie formula.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, and speaking of you know, getting slipped a Mickey
Hurston herself believes to she had been poisoned for being
seen as an interloper meddling in some of these affairs
there in Haiti. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
We have to point out then, as now, there are
very few resources in this part the world for people
suffering with mental illness. You end up being cared for
by friends or loved ones at home, or you end
up being on the streets in the woods. And Hurston
sees disturbing things when she runs into the secret zombie
(40:19):
powder that's purportedly responsible for Felicia Felix Mentor's condition, she
is a ghast and like you were saying, The Guggenheim
offers her a second fellowship. They say, we like what
you're doing, we like your work. Do you want to continue?
And she says, no hard pass for me. I have
a gastric illness. I believe that I have been poisoned.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah. Wren points out in some of the accounts of
this sort of exit that she had really begun to
grow very superstitious, which I suppose being around some of
that kind of stuff for a long time. We'll do that,
and did believe that she had been poisoned for like
I was saying, getting too close to some of the
darker sides of voodoo. But it also has pointed out
(41:06):
that she could have very much just easily contracted some
kind of food born bacteria when you're a different part
of the world.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
I've certainly seen it happen. Doesn't even have to be
food that was prepared poorly.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
It could just very much be that your gut from
where you're from isn't up to the task of dealing
with this particular thing that folks who live around there
would be completely you know, stealed against.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
I guess right, like your gut bio, you're the biome
of bacteria, and all those helpful little things in your
innards are not used to the new information one hundred percent.
But words of the wise, maybe if you're traveling abroad,
don't eat like steak, tartar and raw eggs.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Just putting that out there.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
You know, microplastics are terrible, but bottled water is sometimes
the best band aid solution. In the book we mentioned earlier,
Tell My Horse, Hirston writes about encountering Felicia Felix Mentor,
and she concludes, what is the truth about zombies? I
do not know, but I know that I saw the
(42:07):
broken remnant relic or refuse of Felicia Felix mentor in
a hospital yard. It's chilling stuff. It's incredibly dark.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
I think. But it's also said with the I guess,
critical thinking and observant eye of like a scientist, you
know what I mean, Right, It doesn't seem wrapped up
at hyperbole or that, you know, there's this idea that
she was getting a little more paranoid. I don't necessarily
think that that superstition extended into like believing necessarily in
(42:40):
some of these more dark forces, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, in Hurston again just a superb writer and a
superb human being.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
She is not being exploitative, clearly not.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Instead, she is attempting to bring this story to the world.
I think we're going to have a second episode on
zombies because there are a few more cases of this.
We do want to we do want to end, as
Red encouraged us to do, with a little bit of
(43:13):
you know, some final words on the spiritual belief system
of voodoo. You see it all the time in Western fiction.
There's this white savior from a Western world and he's
got a yeah, yeah, Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom and the mismash of folklore there really bothers me.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
It's really right.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, that one's got a great opening sequence before they
get into the jungle, during that like disc that dance party,
where there's like this really elaborate, kind of heisty escape
at the very beginning, absolute peak cinema.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
But the rest of that movie is kind of trash,
likely partially, if not mostly, to blame by the fact
that they just other the hell out of these indigenous
people and they like cook you said, been the mishmash,
the very kind of gross depictions, I don't mean gross,
like icky gross, just of this sort of barbaric quality,
you know, to the people that live from that part
(44:09):
of the world. And this idea of the manner sort
of white folks from the US coming in and being
sort of taken aback and a gas by like eating
baby snakes and monkey brains really not good. Did not
age well.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
You see it all the time. Way before the creation
of the United States, you would see things like this
coming from the European diaspora. Do you remember when we
had the like lot of the human zoos with indigenous
people from Africa and from Oh my God, I mean yeah,
this yeah, dark, dark stuff. So we want to establish
(44:46):
here as we go into our favorite time of the year,
the Halloween season, that there may be some grain of
truth to the story of mysterious zombie powder. However, if
it exists, it would be incredibly uncommon for priests to
do it, for practitioners of voodoo to genuinely engage in this.
(45:12):
By genuinely, we mean people not doing it as a con.
We're saying people making zombie powder and they themselves believing
it works. That is, as far as we can tell,
exceedingly rare. And a lot of voodoo practitioners consider themselves
Christians as well. There's not a contradiction from their perspective
(45:36):
between being Catholic and being in a voodoo community, which
I agree with.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
You know, I get it. You got to find what
works for you one hundred percent. And as Herston wrote
in her memoir Dust Tracks on a Road, as direct quote,
Haitian ceremonies were both beautiful and terrifying. I did not
find any of them any more invalid than any other religion.
I mean, dude, like the transubstantiation, eating the you know
body of Christ and the blood of Christ. That's kind
(46:04):
of barbaric and wag if you think about it, it's.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Normal because we're using you know, you're eating someone. I mean,
that's the idea, which is a little zombie coated in
and of itself right there, Mande, Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ,
not the world's most famous zombie.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
There's a bit in the The Family Guy, the Great
American Family Guy Western said something like, and it's talking
about he's talking about Christmas being and that's when the
ghost of Jesus rises from the dead to feed on
the flesh of the living.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Something I have to I don't want to step it back.
I hope we haven't offended anybody. When we're talking about
this from an academic perspective, we're never denigrating religion. I
do think the Christ zombie joke is funny, but I
don't mean it to be offensive. And any way, we're
(47:00):
just giving you a little haha.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
And yeah, there's too many good bits here from Ren
for a tangent trivia. But I don't know if this
is by accident, but I think we I just want
to end with this footnote at the bottom of this
research brief as to what constitutes a poisoning. Right, Yeah,
it's so good and it feels almost like dropped in
their apropos of nothing. But maybe we can just round
(47:23):
robin this in the cold of the day. It's considered a
poisoning any attempt on the life of a person through
the use of substances which can cause death more or
less cleanly, regardless of the manner in which these substances
were used or administered, and regardless of the consequences.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
It continues, we're paraphrasing. You could also consider poisoning a
murder attempt if the use is made against a person
using substances that won't kill you, but will cause a
more or less prolonged state of lethargy, like Juliet, regardless
of the manner in which those substances were you stand,
(48:00):
regardless of the consequences.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Again, to wrap it up, this is I think full
circle here. If the person was buried as a consequence
of this state of lethargy, the attempt will be considered
a murder.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
So, folks, thank you for tuning in. Please stay tuned
for our upcoming episode on premature burials, because we are
fun at parties and it is Halloween. Very excited Nola,
Max for some Halloween shindiggs. I'm going to we are
actually contemplating Mothman costumes.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
We might do.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
We might do some wait Mathra or Mothman costumes. We
portmanteaud together, I believe also into moth thrum Man Mathra
g Man mathra.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
G man at suit to the to the equation. Now
you're a ma Threa g Man.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
As if I already don't look like a cop geez,
especially with your tom selekstash.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Thank you man, thank you feel like you're gonna pull
me over on the pch.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
So we would also we should do a history of
the Pacific Coast high Oh my god, that must have
been like a massive not a new deal maybe, but
of that ILK you know, construction project.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Let's do it, Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Let's also wrap here because I could Max, I can
feel you saying, guys, this is an hour so big
thanks to our super producer, mister Max Zombe Williams. Big
thanks to Alex Williams, his biological brother, who composed.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
This track, and of course he's thanks Chris Frosciotis and
heaves Jeff Coats here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, the quister
A J. Jacobs Yeah yeah, the Puzzler Yeah, but also
Yates both. They're both lovely dudes.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
And a huge thanks to Ren Fair Jones, who did
our research for this episode and has always been thanks
to you man.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Some fun zombie.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Talking and folks please likewise, old folks, please tune in
later this week. I've kept this mustache entirely because we're
doing it an episode on disco Balls, Ridiculous History does disco.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Let's hear it for our super producer,
mister Max.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Zohobe zomb Oh Williams. With their tanks and their guns
and their guns and their guns and their zombies.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
The cranberries absolutely nailed that tiny desk.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Also a great juice, an underrated juice even I like,
I have to.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I have to drink cranberry juice because I used to
have kidney stones. That's little to t m. I uh so,
I'm a bit of a bit of a connoiseur the cranberry.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, what's your favorite.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I particularly like getting the straight up cranberry juice and
then get a little bit yeah yeah, diluting it, mixing
it down a little bit. I'm Ben Bullen, that is
mister Noel Brown.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Hello, hello, uh Noel.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
We are getting into as we said earlier, we are
getting into the fall season, the most wonderful time of
the year.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Which is today passed the equinox. Right, oh yeah, look
at you man. You know you know I know how
because because I do yoga now every day and they
they they love the equinox special affirmation based around the equinox,
the seasons of our of our bodies shifting along with
that of nature.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
What's your favorite yoga position or process? Donkey butt? Oh yeah,
how what is that? Can you describe it?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I'm just kidding at the rest, I don't know, man, Like,
I think the thing that I like the most is
that I can just hanging downward dog like indefinitely ever. Yeah,
And that's it's the most transitional pose and like.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
The more you do it, the better you get at it.
And I've just been absolutely loving it.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So I don't know. I like, oh, man, I'm like
Trump and the Bible. I just love all. I love
the whole thing. I love the whole thing. There we go,
There we go.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
We are, of course, huge fans of Halloween. As as
we said in the past, it's arguably always Halloween in America,
and so we reached out to our crew of research
associates and we said, what's some halloweeny stuff? And lo
and behold, our good pal Red had Renfest I believe
(02:49):
we're calling her, got back to us and said, what
do you guys know about zombies?
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, there's the song. We got that one out of
the way. Yeah, there's a fellow named George Romero who
made some movies about them that I think were pretty
well received. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Uh. The term living dead was first used in the
nineteen sixty eight Romero film Night of the Living Dead,
which spawned an empire media.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And you know, well, we can't. We can't talk about
that without talking about Knight of the Dummy, Night of
the Goosebumps classic. We also can't talk or.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
The magnificent Carnival of Souls.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh boy, I know you think that, Ben, I don't think.
I told you. I watched that not long ago. Must
of the last season really ahead of his time. It's
a it's like you know, it's it's an older film.
It's a real artsy kind of cerebral horror, very dreamlike,
very linch. I liked a lot. Thank you, Oh you
made it. I just like that you like it.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I do like, Yeah, it's an interesting story. We did
an episode about HERK. Harvey for Ephemeral, and it's because
it's the only like film like that he made his career.
He did educational films.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, they bruci Ones. You know who else did that
some young you know, Joel Romera. Romero, that Romero.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
We talk about it, like in our episode, we kind
of draw the comparison between the two of them because
it's like they were not these traditional things and that's
kind of like, uh, the John Wick movie franchise. They're
done by like stunt people, and that's why they're so cool.
It's because they're looking at it from a different angle
than what we're used to people looking at the films.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
For I gotta say also ephemeral, just as just as
of mention. If you're a long time ridiculous historian, you've
heard us brag about this show before. Max and his brother,
our composer Alex really led the charge on this.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
And the venerable Trevor Young.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
And and young mister Young, venerable and ephemeral. There we go,
and we have all plays to part in this endeavor.
I think it really shows us what a podcast can do.
So if you haven't heard it yet, get THEE to
your platform of choice, dude.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I just something was like totally going off in my
nogin about these institutional films or educational films. George Romeiro recently,
this very rare and underseen Romero film called The Amusement
Park was unearthed and it is the only film he
ever made for hire, and it was commissioned by the
(05:32):
Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania educational film about elder
abuse and agism. But it's really whack and twisted and
clearly dude just took the ball and ran with it,
and the rest is zombie history.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Kind of like asking David Lynch to make a soap.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Opera or to make a Star Wars movie, which almost happened,
could have happened. What a bizarro timeline that would have been?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
What was that there were so many Salvador Dolly brushes
with greatness and film.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
I really did have a brief dalliance with Disney, and
that's what I'm thinking. You can see clips of it.
I think there were just some animatics that were produced,
but the whole thing wasn't made. But it's really neat
and it's about what you would imagine maybe a Disney
Dolly copro might look like.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Bro true story, we were out in Spain and went
to a Dolly museum where we were watching I guess
you would call it the initial or test footage of
his work with Disney. I believe it was Disney. I'm gullible.
I get very in the moment and I wanted to
pick up some pieces of Dolly artwork. And my girlfriend,
(06:42):
who is by far the more intelligent, more responsible what
in the crew, she said, you can't just throw money
at stuff because you think it's cool in the moment,
and she was correct. I also threw money at the
screen every time a Zaba be filmed with twenty eight
in the title comes out.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
I would argue that throwing money at a thing in
the moment is the only way to live. That's just
I'm sorry, that's just respectfully disagreeed. And you know my
girlfriends so and you know about her la booboo thing. Gosh,
everybody sent me well wishes this pop culture. No, I'm
just not I'm not prepared. You know what I bought recently?
(07:26):
What did you buy? A lafufu?
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Ah?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
I know what the lofufu is. It's just a bootleg
laboo boo. And you know, I was hanging behind the
counter at a gas station that I frequent around here,
and I just you know, it's sort of like those
like really cool like burned mixed CDs, the bootleg CDs
you'll see sometimes Atlanta gas stations had to have it
and eat in. My kid immediately decapitated it and hung
(07:48):
it on a cross.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
That information what you will Classic eat A big fan
of the show, you can check out their appearance many
years ago on this very show, way back in the day.
We are huge fans of Halloween. We are huge fans
of spoopy doopy stuff and folklore, and the idea of
(08:11):
the living dead, often called zombies in the West, is
a huge thing. It's a prime character the pantheon of
Western monsters. And now, like, do you remember twenty eight
years later the newest sequel?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Do I remember it? Of course? Yeah, it was. It's
only months ago. I think I saw. I actually saw
it twice in the theaters. And did you see it, Ben? Yeah, yeah,
multiple times. How did you feel about the end? D true?
I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was
clock personified.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
It changed the tone and it was fun, upbeat after
quite a slog of a movie. I mean, I was good,
but like, also, I loved all the hanging dongs. Man,
I love hanging the zombie dongs. Yeah, yeah, and we
won't spoil that film, but do check the zombie hanging dongs.
You gonna see a lot of them, but that might
be more trigger warning than a spoil. They're dead, Do
(09:01):
they care about fashion? Sure are swinging. They sure look
lively to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the weather
was nice for those dogs.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Also, unless you worry too much or if it even matters,
they are apparently all prosthetic five much like the Dirk
Diggler dong and Boogie Knights.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, but there or William Dafoe Willem Dafoe had a
stunt double.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I think at Anti Christ. That's correct for those There
were some pretty seriously pornographic penetrative sex scenes in that film.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, and we are getting back to zombies.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
We are, We're getting there, energy man. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So, in modern pop culture and your favorite films or
works of fiction about the undead, zombies come from any
number of imagined circumstances, nuclear fallout, red yeah right right,
Nuclear fallout renders people uh somewhat zombie like, or of course,
(10:04):
a fungal pandemic like Last of Us, a phenomenal video game.
Maybe there's a virus.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Not the best of shows. First season was pretty solid.
Second season.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Boy, did aith is so mad at me because I
just keep telling her how awful good.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I mean, which you're like, no, yucking of youms. But
it took an odd tone, especially for a show where
the creator of the video game was involved and clearly
didn't quite get what made the game good. That's always odd.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
It's like the whole entire purpose of the second game
gets blown in the second episode. It's like, Oh, we're
just gonna tell you the plot at the end of
developing it. And I say this as a guy tattoo, right, right?
Is I convinced my friend to buy a PlayStation instead
and just play the game?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah? Yeah, Well, you know, you meet people where they're at. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
The kind of the idea of the living dead I
think addresses uh, the one are the main questions of humanity,
which is mortality. No one really knows what happens when
you die, so death and anything involved with death can
be very scary. The fancy word for that is thanatology,
which means the study of death.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Oh, I guess that's where Thanos gets his neck. Yes,
he is a death deity. He is basically a god
of death. More or less, he's like a death fanboy. Okay,
got its death adjacent. He's death adjacent. There we go.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Uh, it's weird, no, because, however, depicted the undead zombies
in particular to be differentiated from you know, vampires, right,
which often still possess cognitive faculties. Zombies can be very fast, right,
they can be very slow, like a Knight of the
Living Dead. The main thing is they're unrelenting.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
For sure, and there's the horde of them. They they move,
they do move in herds. It's true. Also, I would argue,
and I think most pop cultury type writers that the
fast zombie really didn't come around until the first twenty
eight Days Later movie. That was kind of the advent
of the fast zombie, which is what made that movie
kind of stand apart. I'm fascinated by ben is the
(12:12):
evolution of the zombie from sort of a shambling walking
thing that might eat your guts to one that will
give you the bug if it scratches, bites, or you know,
viscerates you even and then you join the herd.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
And COVID taught us a lot about the real life
consequences of not telling folks when you're infected. The zombie
films were right. Every time someone hides the bite and
then later turns into a monster, it's kind of like
people lyeing about their COVID tests. So art does reflect reality.
(12:49):
And I got to shout out World War Z. The
book series amazing and the film adaptation also have very
fast zombies with a big old pile of them climbing
up a wall. A mistake, and that was sort of
the iconic imagery from that.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Well, why don't we jump.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
In the very cut budget at the very end, which
was very boring. The film ran out of money when
they were making it, okay, and it was very clear
while you watched it they blew.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
All the money on the zombie wall and then they
didn't know how to end it. You get in situations.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
You know, we know that Romero was or is rightly
credited with bringing the idea of the zombie to the
zeitgeist here in the West, but if you look at
the etymology, zombie as a term can be traced all
the way back to the sixteen hundreds to Haitian folklore
(13:44):
and allegedly, we don't want to other hear Vudu religious practices.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Do the do do you like? I'd like to think
I do. Some days I do, some days I don't.
With you there, Ben, because of course this is a
practice much like WICCA or any other sort of earth
based ritualistic belief system, and it often gets pegged in
(14:11):
this black magic kind of way and others. And I
think that's maybe where the ick comes from, in terms
of like the way it's demonized, which I think unfairly right,
is that what I agree with you? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I mean, concepts of necromancy in one version or another,
have always been around. They're as old as the first
time a human noticed another human died, right. It's it's
a very old human instinct, and we have to remember
there's historical context. So zombie spelled the way we spell
(14:45):
it now with an ie it comes from or it
has alternate spellings like zombi and j U M b
I E. A lot of the US focus on the
idea of this speci type of reanimated cadaver comes from
the other being comes from the United States occupation of
(15:07):
Haiti from nineteen fifteen to nineteen thirty four, and people
were obsessed with what they saw as exotic, unfamiliar customs,
very old customs. By the way, that you can trace
directly to empires in Africa, on the African continent, and
we know, for instance, we've all heard of like Layer
(15:31):
of the White Worm, if you remember that one.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, that's a good one. And another good one is
The Serpent and the Rainbow. I believe that's John Carpenter
or is it Wes Craven. I think it might be
Wes Craven. But it's about it's literally about this very
topic and more rooted in that that culture that we're
talking about here. I haven't seen it in a long
time and it may have not aged well, but it's
(15:55):
got Bill Paxton in it, and it's definitely got some
I'm good scarce it might be worth a check. There
are the White Worms? Weird as hell? Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
It's based on Bram Stoker. It's got a snake worshiping priestess. Honestly,
Serpent in the Rainbow was what I was thinking about originally,
because it is very loosely inspired by an extremely awesome book.
And if you saw the film and you didn't enjoy it,
(16:27):
please do check out the book. It's totally different. It's
much more factually based.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
I may have said Bill Paxton, I met Bill Pullman,
and it was in fact directed by Wes Craven and
came out in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Nice we know that a guy named William C. Brook
went to Haiti to quote unquote learn about the culture,
and when he did, he wrote a book called The
Magic Island in nineteen twenty nine, and he had some
really turgid prose about zombies and about Haiti in general.
(17:06):
He was very much coming from an outsider, exploitative perspective.
Right now, fellow nerds believe that Seabrook may have been
the guy who introduced the word zombie into the American vernacular,
but his account of the folklore detracted from its origins,
(17:28):
which are slavery. This is where we have a disclaimer.
As we kind of noted at the top, this is
a spoopy Doupe episode, as Wren says, gravely serious. So
(17:48):
we do have to talk about the real life origins
of enslavement and colonialism that led to all these films
we enjoy so much today.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
So, before the Haitian Revolution, Haiti was a French colony
known as Sante Domingo Domingo. I believe Santa Domingo, as
I said anglicize it. The French relied on forced labor
of enslaved African people to create very lucrative sugar cane plantations.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Right they made profit in human blood, and they were
forcing these enslaved people into a very brutal life with
the life expectancy was quite short. You would be a
teenager and you would die in a few years, simply
due to the climate, the unbelievable cruelty of the folks
(18:46):
attempting to enslave you.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
We also know, it's so much danger involved in cutting
down sugar cane, Like people lose limbs, people lose hands.
You know, you literally have this massive blade and you're
holding the thing and chop down on it. All kinds
of ways. People could get infections, and you know, just
the lack of care. Certainly it would be minimal that
(19:08):
would just allow people to continue to work, probably with
injuries like that that would ultimately lead to their death.
And yeah, and painful.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Often no such thing as OSHA, no such thing as
an HR department. Let's go to Mike Maryanni who writes
about this in the Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
He says that.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
A pretty big portion of people enslaved in Haiti at
the time thought that dying might release them back to Langhani,
to getting to Africa the continent in general, and this
would be an afterlife wherein one was free from the
atrocities of the waking world.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And of course we have to we have to.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Acknowledge that suicide was common among enslaved people, and one
social mechanism that occurred to prevent this was the argument,
similar to Christianity, that if you take your own life,
you do not get to go to Heaven, whatever version
there may be.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yes, it's just, you know, just work until you die.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Just work until you die, because there's a payoff in
the afterlife. And if you did take your own life,
you would be condemned to stay on that cursed sugarcane
plantation for internity.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
You would be insult to injury.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Right, you are denied your own agency as a person,
but you are trapped within your body. You have lost
your soul. You are a zombie. But the word itself
originates in West Africa zombie zo nb i in Haitian Creole.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
You start to see that near the end of the
peer of French colonial rule, when this myth had really
become part and parcel with the Voodoo culture. Simply explained
the French were Catholic and they forced the Africans that
they enslaved to adhere to their particular rigid beliefs. Heard
of that move before, but since those enslaved didn't want
(21:19):
to abandon their sacred beliefs, they of course had to
take them underground, which we also hear about.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
All the tigious syncretism mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And then they start to make their way into sort
of styling on the belief systems that were forced upon them.
So they carried them with them back to their homelands,
and over time they did establish this system of beliefs
known as Voodoo, which did take elements, as we're saying,
from Christianity and kind of blended them with the spirituality
(21:48):
of the West African culture.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Right, animism, ancestor worship, that kind of stuff. We talk
a lot about religious syncretism on our sister show. Stuff
they don't want you to know. We find it fascinating,
you know, nol. As you remember, I run into religious
syncretism or syncretic practices throughout Central America. It occurs in
(22:14):
a similar way in the Caribbean, wherein people will say
this patron Saint is actually this deity or this spirit right,
and the French colonialist they did some of the same things.
A lot of missionaries did this. Spanish missionaries as well.
They would say, Oh, your mountain God is actually our
(22:36):
thing and you just had the name wrong.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
It's the funniest clip you've probably seen it. It's a
Ricky Gervais talking about isn't it a coincidence that if
you're born in the United States you're probably going to
grow up Christian, if you were born in India, you're
probably going to grow up Hindu, And if you're born
in Asia you're probably going to grow up Buddhists. And
then he just points out this notion of each one
of these cultures being fully convinced against all odds that
(23:01):
they're the ones that got.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
It right one hundred percent. Yeah, And there's a fantastic
conversation Ricky Gervais has with Stephen Colbert and years back.
I was in the audience for it, and they talk
about atheism and they talk, you know, Stephen Colbert and
Ardent Catholic and there's nothing wrong with that, But Ricky
(23:23):
Gervais's banger line from there, which I think Steve appreciated
was he said, Okay, you're Catholic, you believe in one God. Really,
all that means is I believe in one less God
than you, which is a really interesting way to reframe
it and look at it. And speaking of reframing, we
(23:44):
have to recognize that outside of Western film and fiction,
in actual Haitian culture, a zombie is not considered undead.
A zombie is instead considered a living human being whose
mental faculties have been severely altered. And that's something we
see in that's something we see in the book Serpent
(24:07):
and the Rainbow. The original zombie folklore begins to take
a more literal, less metaphorical form with the emergence of voodoo.
As you describe.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
It, is there a sense that the person is in
some way under the sway of someone or something. Absolutely, yeah, yeah,
you nailed it.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And there are a few things that could wake that
person up and maybe return them to their original state.
If you're looking at Haitian folklore and you're trying to
find the puppeteer of the zombie, then you're looking at
something called a beaucoor or a sorcerer who can induce
a coma like state in their victims. So the victim's
(24:51):
family and they're loved ones, they bury the victim because
they think that person is dead. Speaking of morbid stuff,
we should absolutely do an episode about premature burial.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
That's funny, Ben. The tagline of the Serpent in the
Rainbow is don't bury me, I'm not dead. Exclamation marketing.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Oh man, there was like a baker's dozen of patents
here in the US for devices that would let you
alert people if you had been buried before you were
actually dead, like the things you pull for the yeah yeah, yeah.
So you wake up in the coffin and you you say, oh,
(25:32):
thank goodness, there's a string here, and it starts ringing
a bell by your jaw.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
I've seen that used in some fiction. I want to
say it was in the first the Nun movie. Oh
I held me on that, but I think it might
have been. I remember The Nun. That one's a period piece.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So this, this idea here is that after the person
is buried prematurely, the sorcerer of the Bocoor digs up
the victim revi through a combination of perhaps drugs and ritualism,
and then the person becomes a zombie. They are devoid
(26:10):
of free will. They do whatever the sorcerer tells them
to do. And we're pulling that straight from the US
Library of Congress. The work of these sorcerers, these buukor
could be considered evil if they were used for evil purposes.
But folks who were enslaved and escaped enslavement formed secret societies,
(26:31):
and they may have done a kind of underground railroad.
If you go to visit Haiti, you'll see that the
secret societies of people who achieved freedom may have also
helped other people achieve freedom by faking death. Pseudo side
(26:52):
sure like a Romeo and juliet Only Juliette didn't get
the memo.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
No, Romeo didn't get the memo? Which one was it?
Somebody didn't get the memo? One of them took a
drug that would make them seem as though they were
in a state like death, and then the other one
comes upon them, rome the memo, and then Juliette awakens
from her stupor and realizes that her dear Romeo has
a not gotten the memo and yeah, not a lives herself.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Let's get into the science with the yeah, yeah, I
always I bet you I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
In the text of Shakespeare it is described what remedy
or lack thereof that that Juliette is given because it's
by an old priest type figure. You know, it's like
a dude that would have like knowledge of these esoteric arts.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Right, you're right, it would be some kind of pharmacologist.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Oh, I'm a priest in my day job, but I'm
also super into alchemy. And it's a friar if I
remember that gives her the substance. There's an excellent article
from the BBC back in I want to say, twenty
fourteen that dives into the idea. Right, because Shakespeare is
(28:08):
writing about poison and the effects of drugs all the time,
and we're later historians literally found the guy may have
smoked some form of cannabis comes into it.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, sorry, my type of fellow.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Your type of Othello, don't touch the stuff. So let's
go to the science here. As we've been mentioning various
anthropological works, there's this ethnobotanist named Wade Davis. Wade has
his bona fides.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
He went to.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Harvard, which doesn't always make you an expert, but in
this case it is true. He is known for his
books on indigenous cultures biodiversity. He is indeed the author
of The Serpent and the Rain book. Yes, way cool,
I love that. So this is why I love this
(29:05):
book so much. So he looks into the rumors of
bringing back the dead in Haiti, this thing we would
call zombification, and he believes that these self reporting sorcerers,
these bokoor, are actually using toxins from animals and paralytic
(29:28):
herbs to create this cognitive state, especially pufferfish stuff tetro detoxin.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Right, But wasn't there a bit of a stink when
this book was published? Yes, in terms of the efficacy
of the things that he was reporting.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, he has had a lot of So it's nineteen
eighty three before he publishes his book. In nineteen eighty five,
that's when he first advances his hypothesis that this pufferfish
derives substance in particular or can explain zombies, and he
runs into he is honest in his work that he
(30:07):
runs into people claiming to be sorcerers and saying, hey,
I will sell you my secret create a zombie formula.
And then later he would find out that they were
just trying to rip them off. You know what I mean,
trying to make a buck, buddy. I just found something amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's not entirely confirmed, but one option for the deathlike
sleep inducing potion that Juliette takes is tetro totoxin.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Ahha, nice, nice, well, Doug Buckerou Oh man, do you
think Shakespeare knew about it? Or did he just say, like, ah,
we'll have to do a Shakespeare It's.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
A good question. Yeah, I mean, like this, this is
just like a thread about it on Reddit and people
are talking about, you know, some possibilities and that one
has come up a few times. But whether the knology
of it all makes sense or not.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I could not say no, I hear you, because it
becomes similar to the argument of ergot poisoning.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Well, obviously puffer fish existed in the time of Shakespeare,
but would you know, would that have been a thing
that people knew about? You know, it's one of those
things like who exact to your point, Ben, who figured
out that that would happen if certain crops were left
untended and developed these what do you call them blites?
I guess right? Or who the first person was that
figured out that?
Speaker 1 (31:28):
You know, if you ate this particular mushroom wouldn't kill you,
but it would make you see fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
I love the idea of Shakespeare saying, well, my day
job is being a playwright, but my real passion is
puffer fish.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah, Shakespeare had had quite the aquarium, as I understand.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
There was another idea, another substance that Wade Davis proposes
as being part of the zombie formula torah stramonium. It's
a flower and its street name is Jimson weed. So
this tetrodotoxin causes paralysis and gymsen weed induces stupefication and
(32:14):
memory loss.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Love the idea of stupefication as a side effect. Maybe
it's not a side effect, it's like the desired effect.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I'd love to see it in the fine print and
fast pronunciation of a big pharma ad.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
You know what I mean? Absolutely? Can I just say,
ben in some of this Google rabbit hole, that this
is induced. I found an article from Scientific American called
Shakespeare on Drugs. I would love to see a breakdown
of all the different poisons and accestances in the works
of William Shakespeare, just like out there.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
The Romeo and Juliet drug is not named, but I
know he talks about Hamlet. In Hamlet, Hamlet's father gets
poison in by someone pouring stuff in his.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Ear something like that. I can't the method of delivery.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, and someone I think it was Titiana. I got
the juice of a flower put in her eyes and
she fell in love with a guy who had a
donkey head. Shakespeare was out there, you know what I mean. Uh,
this is way before the current editing and studio process. Davis,
(33:35):
his book Serpent in the Rainbow is what inspires Wes
Craven to make that film adaptation, and a lot of
researchers did not vibe with the research of Wade Davis.
Other ethnobotanists were saying, look, his methodology is unsound. We
can't find evidence of the hallucinogens upon testing his samples,
(33:59):
because the bo is all about him meeting or real
life sorcerer or meeting or trying to meet one, and
going through all these different con men and trying to
buy the make a zombie secret formulae and then bringing
it back for.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
To love the idea like make make your own zombie
at home, like you can get but outside of Haiti,
we really owe a lot of the early understanding of
the folklore surrounding the zombie to an anthropologist and acclaimed
Harlem Renaissance writer who you may have heard of, named
Zora Neil Hurston. In nineteen thirty six, she received a
(34:35):
fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation to fund anthropological research there
in Haiti. When she got there, she immediately got to
work making friends with the locals.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, networking, especially with the Voodoo community.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
That's what you do as an anthropologist, by the way,
I mean that is the vibe. You're not there studying
them like under a microscope. You're mixing in. You're taking
in the sounds and the sites and eating the food
and doing all those things. Right.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, you want to be of the people, you know, uh,
And you want to understand the folklore and the culture,
and you can't really do that just by reading a book. So,
in her quest to figure out how the practices and
the belief system of Voodoo fits in with the larger
(35:23):
African diaspora, Hirston meets Felicia Felix mentor and.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Immediately says by no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Like a by sign. Yeah, I got it. It's not
awesome song. So this character Felicia is a real person,
was believed to have been zombified. That it was believed
that a sorcerer Bokor had taken her, stolen her body,
and made her soullace one of the undead. Hirston first
(35:59):
hears about this from the government of Haiti, from the
Director General of the Ministry of Health, and they tell
her that this person and Felicia Felix Mentor, has been
brought to them like two medical facilities a month earlier.
(36:19):
She's now in town. So if you're Hurston as an anthropologist,
this is a tremendous and disturbing opportunity. The police found
her nude laying alongside the road or shambling along the road,
apparently twenty nine years after she had been officially buried
by her family.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Can we also just take a quick moment just to
acknowledge Zora Neil Hurston and her important contribution to literature
and to black culture or you may already be very
much aware, but this is a black woman who was
exploring this part of the world to understand her roots
and her culture and the anthropology of it all was
very important, and she was known for that. But she
(37:02):
was also a very well regarded fiction writer, and she
has a very beloved novel that is considered like a
centerpiece of the Harlem Renaissance called Their Eyes Were Watching God,
which I haven't read.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I would very much love to. It's great. I've got
a copy of it. If you're looking for a good book,
you can't go wrong. Zora Neil Hurston had four novels,
if I'm recalling correctly, and Their Eyes Were Watching God
as the one that really stayed with me.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
That's the one you read in school. She also has
books of folklore, including nineteen thirty five's Mules and Men,
which is another foundational text, spreading some of these sort
of colloquial folk tales from the rural South that she
experienced growing up. So fascinating human being.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Yeah, and a lot of her work that's happening in
Haiti at this time is going to be found in
her later book nineteen thirty eight's Tell My Horse, Voodoo
and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, So she's not just
focusing on Haiti. But for the purposes of our zombie episode,
you got to know some disturbing stuff, folks. She went
(38:15):
to meet Felicia Felix Mentor, who was under the care
of authorities. However, when she shows up to this hospital,
they're outside, they're in the hospital yard. The lady who
has been through what we can only imagine being horrific things,
she is frightened by all this attention. She can't really communicate.
(38:39):
She's lost the faculty of language. She's making sounds, but
not necessarily words. There is a very disturbing photograph that
Hirston takes of Felicia Felix Mentor, which you can find online,
but do be aware of folks, it's not appropriate for
all audiences. And the West loved it. Man Life magazine
(39:02):
published this photograph throughout the land and they said it's
the first real evidence of a zombie. The trick of
it is, there's no real proof that Felicia Felix Mentor
was an actual zombie. To a lot of people who
(39:22):
are more skeptical and don't believe in this idea. From
their perspective, Felicia Felix Mentor is a person who is
simply suffering from mental illness, not a curse, nothing supernatural,
no secret make a zombie formula.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, and speaking of you know, getting slipped a Mickey
Hurston herself believes to she had been poisoned for being
seen as an interloper meddling in some of these affairs
there in Haiti. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
We have to point out then, as now, there are
very few resources in this part the world for people
suffering with mental illness. You end up being cared for
by friends or loved ones at home, or you end
up being on the streets in the woods. And Hurston
sees disturbing things when she runs into the secret zombie
(40:19):
powder that's purportedly responsible for Felicia Felix Mentor's condition, she
is a ghast and like you were saying, The Guggenheim
offers her a second fellowship. They say, we like what
you're doing, we like your work. Do you want to continue?
And she says, no hard pass for me. I have
a gastric illness. I believe that I have been poisoned.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah. Wren points out in some of the accounts of
this sort of exit that she had really begun to
grow very superstitious, which I suppose being around some of
that kind of stuff for a long time. We'll do that,
and did believe that she had been poisoned for like
I was saying, getting too close to some of the
darker sides of voodoo. But it also has pointed out
(41:06):
that she could have very much just easily contracted some
kind of food born bacteria when you're a different part
of the world.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
I've certainly seen it happen. Doesn't even have to be
food that was prepared poorly.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
It could just very much be that your gut from
where you're from isn't up to the task of dealing
with this particular thing that folks who live around there
would be completely you know, stealed against.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
I guess right, like your gut bio, you're the biome
of bacteria, and all those helpful little things in your
innards are not used to the new information one hundred percent.
But words of the wise, maybe if you're traveling abroad,
don't eat like steak, tartar and raw eggs.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
Just putting that out there.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
You know, microplastics are terrible, but bottled water is sometimes
the best band aid solution. In the book we mentioned earlier,
Tell My Horse, Hirston writes about encountering Felicia Felix Mentor,
and she concludes, what is the truth about zombies? I
do not know, but I know that I saw the
(42:07):
broken remnant relic or refuse of Felicia Felix mentor in
a hospital yard. It's chilling stuff. It's incredibly dark.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
I think. But it's also said with the I guess,
critical thinking and observant eye of like a scientist, you
know what I mean, Right, It doesn't seem wrapped up
at hyperbole or that, you know, there's this idea that
she was getting a little more paranoid. I don't necessarily
think that that superstition extended into like believing necessarily in
(42:40):
some of these more dark forces, you know.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, in Hurston again just a superb writer and a
superb human being.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
She is not being exploitative, clearly not.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Instead, she is attempting to bring this story to the world.
I think we're going to have a second episode on
zombies because there are a few more cases of this.
We do want to we do want to end, as
Red encouraged us to do, with a little bit of
(43:13):
you know, some final words on the spiritual belief system
of voodoo. You see it all the time in Western fiction.
There's this white savior from a Western world and he's
got a yeah, yeah, Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom and the mismash of folklore there really bothers me.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
It's really right.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, that one's got a great opening sequence before they
get into the jungle, during that like disc that dance party,
where there's like this really elaborate, kind of heisty escape
at the very beginning, absolute peak cinema.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
But the rest of that movie is kind of trash,
likely partially, if not mostly, to blame by the fact
that they just other the hell out of these indigenous
people and they like cook you said, been the mishmash,
the very kind of gross depictions, I don't mean gross,
like icky gross, just of this sort of barbaric quality,
you know, to the people that live from that part
(44:09):
of the world. And this idea of the manner sort
of white folks from the US coming in and being
sort of taken aback and a gas by like eating
baby snakes and monkey brains really not good. Did not
age well.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
You see it all the time. Way before the creation
of the United States, you would see things like this
coming from the European diaspora. Do you remember when we
had the like lot of the human zoos with indigenous
people from Africa and from Oh my God, I mean yeah,
this yeah, dark, dark stuff. So we want to establish
(44:46):
here as we go into our favorite time of the year,
the Halloween season, that there may be some grain of
truth to the story of mysterious zombie powder. However, if
it exists, it would be incredibly uncommon for priests to
do it, for practitioners of voodoo to genuinely engage in this.
(45:12):
By genuinely, we mean people not doing it as a con.
We're saying people making zombie powder and they themselves believing
it works. That is, as far as we can tell,
exceedingly rare. And a lot of voodoo practitioners consider themselves
Christians as well. There's not a contradiction from their perspective
(45:36):
between being Catholic and being in a voodoo community, which
I agree with.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
You know, I get it. You got to find what
works for you one hundred percent. And as Herston wrote
in her memoir Dust Tracks on a Road, as direct quote,
Haitian ceremonies were both beautiful and terrifying. I did not
find any of them any more invalid than any other religion.
I mean, dude, like the transubstantiation, eating the you know
body of Christ and the blood of Christ. That's kind
(46:04):
of barbaric and wag if you think about it, it's.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Normal because we're using you know, you're eating someone. I mean,
that's the idea, which is a little zombie coated in
and of itself right there, Mande, Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ,
not the world's most famous zombie.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
There's a bit in the The Family Guy, the Great
American Family Guy Western said something like, and it's talking
about he's talking about Christmas being and that's when the
ghost of Jesus rises from the dead to feed on
the flesh of the living.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Something I have to I don't want to step it back.
I hope we haven't offended anybody. When we're talking about
this from an academic perspective, we're never denigrating religion. I
do think the Christ zombie joke is funny, but I
don't mean it to be offensive. And any way, we're
(47:00):
just giving you a little haha.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
And yeah, there's too many good bits here from Ren
for a tangent trivia. But I don't know if this
is by accident, but I think we I just want
to end with this footnote at the bottom of this
research brief as to what constitutes a poisoning. Right, Yeah,
it's so good and it feels almost like dropped in
their apropos of nothing. But maybe we can just round
(47:23):
robin this in the cold of the day. It's considered a
poisoning any attempt on the life of a person through
the use of substances which can cause death more or
less cleanly, regardless of the manner in which these substances
were used or administered, and regardless of the consequences.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
It continues, we're paraphrasing. You could also consider poisoning a
murder attempt if the use is made against a person
using substances that won't kill you, but will cause a
more or less prolonged state of lethargy, like Juliet, regardless
of the manner in which those substances were you stand,
(48:00):
regardless of the consequences.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Again, to wrap it up, this is I think full
circle here. If the person was buried as a consequence
of this state of lethargy, the attempt will be considered
a murder.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
So, folks, thank you for tuning in. Please stay tuned
for our upcoming episode on premature burials, because we are
fun at parties and it is Halloween. Very excited Nola,
Max for some Halloween shindiggs. I'm going to we are
actually contemplating Mothman costumes.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
We might do.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
We might do some wait Mathra or Mothman costumes. We
portmanteaud together, I believe also into moth thrum Man Mathra
g Man mathra.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
G man at suit to the to the equation. Now
you're a ma Threa g Man.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
As if I already don't look like a cop geez,
especially with your tom selekstash.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Thank you man, thank you feel like you're gonna pull
me over on the pch.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
So we would also we should do a history of
the Pacific Coast high Oh my god, that must have
been like a massive not a new deal maybe, but
of that ILK you know, construction project.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Let's do it, Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Let's also wrap here because I could Max, I can
feel you saying, guys, this is an hour so big
thanks to our super producer, mister Max Zombe Williams. Big
thanks to Alex Williams, his biological brother, who composed.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
This track, and of course he's thanks Chris Frosciotis and
heaves Jeff Coats here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, the quister
A J. Jacobs Yeah yeah, the Puzzler Yeah, but also
Yates both. They're both lovely dudes.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
And a huge thanks to Ren Fair Jones, who did
our research for this episode and has always been thanks
to you man.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Some fun zombie.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Talking and folks please likewise, old folks, please tune in
later this week. I've kept this mustache entirely because we're
doing it an episode on disco Balls, Ridiculous History does disco.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.