REPOST: Zombies (a level of cute that I’m not ready to attain)

Dave and Leanna just had a baby!...so this week, we're revisiting our 2021 episode about zombies (not because those things are related but because Dave needs some time off).

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody. Dave here. As you know if you are
a regular listener, we often like to embrace October as
a month full of spooky Halloween themed episodes. But as
you may also know if you follow us on social media,
my wife and I recently had a baby, and that,
as you can imagine, has thrown a bit of a

(00:21):
monkey wrench and our October plans. But we will have
a new episode for you on October seventeenth, and in
the meantime we will be reposting a few of our
previous October episodes. And first up is our twenty twenty
one episode about zombies. And by the way, I want
to take a moment to thank all of you who
extended congratulations to my wife and I on the birth

(00:43):
of our daughter. I really appreciate it. Welcome to an
hour of our time. Our month of Halloween continues today
with an episode about zombies. We'll track the Horde through history, biology,
and pop culture.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm Dave, I'm Joe, I'm Mark.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Not dead? Are you mad? I saw her die. The
doctor's trying the certificate. I saw them very yet, So zombies.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
How about them? Zombies? Bab zomb.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
So let's uh, let me ask this favorite zombie movie.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Mm hmmm, see, I have not probably watched his nearly
zombi movies. This, you guys. I really really liked Donald Dead.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
I've never seen Donna the Dead either one. This has
been something Mark and I have talked about a lot.
I need to watch that movie Dona.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
And I will say I'm talking about the remake.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
I'm talking about either one, but I am I'm meaning
the original.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
Yeah, I have seen the original, but I just I
really remember being struck by I just went to see
I went to see that movie in the theater, and
it's like one of the movies I can distinctly remember
sitting in the theater watching I remember the experience of it.
It was like it was just it was a neat movie.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
One of my favorites. I have the same sort of
thing where I remember seeing in the theater. I hadn't
seen it in years, and I watched it and its
sequel over the last couple of weeks, and that is
twenty eight days later. I think twenty eight days later
is fanatastic. And I forgot or maybe I just didn't
realize this. I saw it when it came out in
two thousand and two, and I hadn't seen it since

(03:08):
how incredibly influential. It was like, you wouldn't have The
Walking Dead without that movie. And then I watched twenty
eight Weeks Later a couple of days ago, and it's
got Jeremy Renner and Andris Alba. He's in it as well.
Rose Byrne is into too. Yeah, it's like quite a
quite a cast. It is not nearly as good, but

(03:31):
it still works.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
It's still Yeah, it's still pretty good. Also, like the
idea of like Britain was decimated, so America takes over.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of that.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
I think that's probably what would happen, though we would
help out. Oh yeah, for better or worse. No, I
liked that movie a lot, and I think I remember
you maybe last time saying that you really liked that movie.
After we were done recording, when I was looking doing
my homework or compiling my notes for this episode, I

(04:08):
wanted to find the closest version of the twenty eight
Days Later zombies in the natural world, because there's diferent
kinds of zombies. There's different kinds of zombies in cinema and.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Oh oh yeah, so I will talk about this for sure.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Yeah, so I wanted to have a I wanted to
have a smattering of different kinds of zombies.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Well, Mark, I know you're a big fan of Donna
the Dead. Is that your your favorite?

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I'm gonna say Night of the Living Dead, but controversial
take the nineties remake. Oh okay, okay, I remember as
a kid watching that on the TNT Joe Bob Briggs
like monster movie thing that they used to have on
Saturday night and being real freaked out about it.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah. I haven't seen the remake, but I know it's people.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Like it, so it's it's pretty good. It's basically the
same story but like a little bit updated.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Mmm, I know. I My other favorite is I guess
kind of like loosely a zombie movie is Reanimator.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Okay, I've told you.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
I've heard you talk about Reanimator a lot.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
It's a good movie, but it's it's kind of more
of a Frankenstein monster movie. Like there's a zombie element
to that obviously, but it's not zombie is in the
same way really at all. It's just it's got the
re animation. It's more like, yeah, it's it's yeah, Frankenstein
is a lot better analogy for it, but I've seen

(05:46):
it lumped in with zombie movies.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
So well, Frankenstein plays a little bit into this pop
culture version of zombies.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
It's Frankenstein, I think.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I think what it is is that, like the modern
trope of vampires, or sorry, in the modern trope of zombies,
one thing that's kind of essential is like hordes, there's
like masses of them, whereas Reanimator doesn't really have that.
Just like a medical student fucking round and he brings
something back to life, it's a little bit more. I mean,

(06:19):
it's based on HB. Lovecraft story, so it's like Frankenstein
and anti semitic and there you go, because you know,
Lovecraft kind of sucks.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Anyways, Well, we started the last episode about vampires from
the science perspective. Do we want to maybe start from
more of a historical perspective this time? I'm thinking, Mark,
maybe you can start using Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
So I was thinking about this a little bit, and
to some extent, our conversation of zombies overlaps with what
we already talked about in regards to vampires, them both
being an undead revenant creature, a corpse possessed by a
spirit or some combination of those things. The depiction of

(07:08):
vampires and some historic lore as an animated, bloated body
with blood dripping out of the mouth, covered in a
burial shroud. You know, things like that sound more like
a zombie than they do a vampire from today's sure,
and much like vampires, there's a distinct pop culture version

(07:29):
of zombies that we are familiar with today, and in
these stories. There are different ways that someone could become
a zombie in different movies and stories and stuff like that.
So I'm sure that we'll talk more about that when
we get to your bit. But zombies as a cultural
element the folklore associated with it are rooted in West

(07:53):
African and more specifically Haitian folklore. I know that Haiti
is not in Africa, but African slaves brought some of
these beliefs and it developed in Haiti into something a
little bit more distinct.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Right, absolutely, Yeah, When Haiti was a French colony and
slaves are being brought over, that's the beginnings of this
lore sort of blossoming, I suppose.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Well.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
I found some interesting etymological explanations for zombie. The word
the English word zombie was first recorded in eighteen nineteen
in a History of Brazil by a poet named Robert Southey,
and it was spelled zo mbi. The Oxford English Dictionary

(08:42):
gives the words origin as West African and notes the
Congo language words no zombie which means god and zombie
or no zombie meaning fetish.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Some other off authors compare it to the Congo word
vuombi or muvumbi meaning ghosts, revenant corpse that still retains
the soul, or novumbi a body without a soul. There
are some some other language other languages. Kimbundu, it's a

(09:22):
different African language from around the turn of the century,
defines it as related to the word nazumbi, meaning soul,
while a later meaning is a spirit that is supposed
to wander the earth, tormenting the living. So there are
some different variations, but these all have to do with

(09:43):
a soul or a body without a soul, or some
combination of those things.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
That kind of feels like there's sub a like overlap
between that and some of the vampire lore. The Attacktail
last week.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Oh definitely, yeah, absolutely, one of the first books that
brought zombies to Western culture. Was WBC Brooks The Magic
Island nineteen twenty nine. Was this the book that you
were talking about.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
Dave, Yeah, And I actually have a quote from the
book of What a Zombie Is, which I think sets
a good baseline for how a zombie is looked at
at the time. So William sebrook was an occultist. I
was talking to Mark before we started about how he
he somewhat knew Aleister Crowley. If you the listener does

(10:31):
not know Alistair Crowley will get into that. But at
some point later another episode. But he traveled to a
lot of different I guess you would say third world
countries to study their mysticism, and in going to Haiti
and going to Haiti, he became really fascinated with voodoo.

(10:56):
And when he returned he wrote a book called The
Magic Island. And this is what is considered the thing
that brings zombies into Western folklore. In the book, they're
described as soulless human corpses, still dead but taken from
the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance

(11:19):
of life. So there is like a sorcery a control
element to zombies from the Haitian perspective, and this is
going to play into you know, the movie White Zombie
in nineteen thirty two, which is loosely based on this book.
That's how they are seen. Actually, White Zombie is a
great example of maybe one of the only ones where

(11:41):
the zombie is perceived as portrayed as the victim and
not the villain, because they are like under control. Interesting
of like a sorcerer.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, that's a more purely Haitian rendition of this story.
That absolutely the concept of zombies has been associated with
the religion of voodoo, but it doesn't play a role
in its formal practice. It is kind of like a
I guess, in a cult aspect of it. Linguistically, how

(12:18):
zombies have become zombies in popular film is not clear.
Nida Living Dead is credited as one of the first
zombie movies in a more contemporary aspect, but in the if.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
You want mark, I have decades thirties through now, I'm
kind of breaking down how this development.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Let's save that for later. I just wanted to mention
that in these movies, early movies, they don't call zombies zombies.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
Let's put a pin in that.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
No, Yeah, A Knight of the Living Dead never uses the
word zombie.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
They use the word gohoule little gringles, little goingles, although
Georgia Mera does end up calling them zombies later and
some of the other movies and stuff that he made. Yeah,
I wanted to give a little bit of background to
voodoo as well, since this is such an intertwined subject.

(13:12):
In Haitian folklore, a zombie is a dead person brought
back to life through necromancy magic by a sorcerer or
a witch called a bokhor. The zombie remains under the
influence of the bokhor as a personal slave. The bokhor
is a witch for hire that practices both light and

(13:35):
dark magic. The opposite of it would be a hoongan
or a mambo, a male or female priestess, respectively. Voodoo
is a religion that originates in Africa, in the Americas
and Caribbean, it is thought to be a combination of
traditional African religions as well as Catholicism and some Native

(14:00):
American beliefs. Voodoo has no official scripture or world authority.
It is a community centered belief and supports individual experience, empowerment,
and responsibility. It's different in different parts of the world
and varies from community to community. Those who practice voodoo

(14:23):
believe that there is a visible and an invisible world,
and that these worlds are intertwined. Death is a transition
to the invisible world, so the predecessors are still alive
in spirit.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
To build off of that a little bit, Voodoo also
incorporates what are called ill was or low was I'm
not sure how to pronounce this word las, which are
spirits of archetypal forces and are sometimes discussed as spirits
of gods of traditional African beliefs. In Voodoo beliefs, there

(15:07):
is a particular character, I'm gonna call it a character
and I don't know what else to call it, called
Baron Samadi, and it is a spirit involved in voodoo
zombie lord, and is usually depicted with a top hat,
a black tailcoat, dark glasses, and has cotton plugs in
his nose as if to resemble a corpse dressed and

(15:29):
prepared for burial in the Haitian style.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
So they plug orifices with cotton.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that there is a James Bond villain. Yes,
that is based on this guy.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
The I think that's the first Roger Moore film Livan
Let Die. Thank you. Yeah, and oh gosh it.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Is they go down losing in a way.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah. The voodoo stuff in it's very like black exploitation.
That movie is like his aged like milk.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
So they don't handle it well, oh oh.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
God, no, it's I mean, I think I'm not gonna
tell you not to watch it. Uh, it's it's kind
of funny to watch. How like it's cringe as the
kids would say. Put it that way.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
I can imagine. There's a lot of stuff in James
Bond movies that is that way.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
That one in particular, though, was like, oh what they
thought they were doing something like really good and it's just.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Not I understand.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Jane Seymour is in that movie. She is solid and
inexplicably plays some sort of voodoo priestess.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yes Seymour, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:52):
Yeah, I think her name is Solitaire, right. She's like
a car dealer kind of person.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
She's a tarot tarot reader.

Speaker 4 (16:59):
Thank you. Yeah. Sorry, these are like like filtered through
the haze of my memories as belong that movie.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Anyway. This character is frequently depicted as a skeleton or
someone painted to look like a skeleton, okay, and he
is noted for disruption, obscenity, debauchery, and having a particular
fondness for tobacco and rum.

Speaker 1 (17:24):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Additionally, additionally, he is the spirit of resurrection, and that's
why he's involved in this zombification ritual. He's called upon
for healing by those approaching death. And it is only
the baron that can accept an individual into the realm
of the dead, unless the dead person has offended him

(17:48):
in some way, in which case they would be forever
a slave after death as a zombie.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Harsh.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Apparently, a zombie could be saved from this face by
feeding them salt, which I did not know why salt,
I don't know. That's just part of the folklore. It's
like with all of the weird vampire stuff, like spilling
grain on the ground, knots, tie knots and stuff. This
is just one of those elements. I also read a

(18:19):
little bit about how the modern concept of zombies was
influenced by Haitian slavery, and that this whole thing about
becoming a zombie could have been made up by slave
drivers on plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes
involved in voodoo and use the fear of zombification to
discourage slaves from committing suicide.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Ah. Interesting, well that makes kind of a lot of sense.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
In this Haitian tradition, there are two different types of
two different types of zombies actually, so there's the more
mindless automaton slave worker that we're familiar with, but there's
also a zon what they call a zombie astral, which

(19:11):
is part of the human soul. A bokore can capture
a zombie astral basically some body's soul to enhance his
own spiritual power. A zombie astrokh sung Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A zombie astral can also be sealed inside of a

(19:32):
specially decorated bottle or case by a bocorp and sold
to a client to bring luck, healing, or business success.
This is called an unaga. In one of our past episodes,
we talked about an anganga. It's also a traditional African thing.

(19:56):
It's like a cauldron that you fill with all kind
of weird stuff and like blood and guts and metal,
and it could like imprison a soul, right, and it's
believed that God eventually will reclaim the zombie's soul so
that the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity. In voodool or,

(20:17):
a person is made up of two parts, there's the
physical and the spiritual, so that these two types of
Haitian zombies astral and physical to the book, or is
missing their other half. So it's either a body without
a spirit or a spirit without a body. I've never
really thought about zombies in that way, but that's kind
of an interesting element to this mythology.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
M Yeah, because we yeah, that's very different than how
we think of a zombie.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Now, Yeah, going back a minute, we were talking about
this guy, William Sebrook. Yeah, in his book, he he
cited part of Haitian constitutional law that knowledges zombies. There's

(21:06):
a clause that says, also shall be qualified as attempted
murder the employment which may be made by any person
of substance which, without causing actual death, produce a lethargic
coma more less prolonged. This doesn't make any sense because

(21:26):
it's translated anyway. It brings up in here that if
somebody tries to create a zombie out of another person,
it's also considered murder no matter what follows.

Speaker 4 (21:37):
Oh, oh, okay, not attempted murder.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
In the thirties, people in America particularly started to hear
about these zombie stories from Haiti. The American author and
anthropologists or A. Neil Hurston went to Haiti in nineteen
thirty seven and investigated a case of a woman known

(22:02):
as Felicia Felix Mentor who appeared in a village despite
reports from her family that she had died and been
buried in nineteen oh seven.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
Say what shit.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
They spoke with her, did some investigation. Apparently the original
woman that she claimed to be had a broken leg,
but the person who showed up later was X rayed
and didn't have evidence of a broken leg. So there's
some speculation on whether or not this is a valid
story to begin with. But Zorneil Hurston did is maybe

(22:40):
one of the first people to pursue rumors that kind
of insinuated that a person could be given a psychoactive
drug of some sort, but was unable to locate any
sort of information or substantial evidence to this claim.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah, idea being that you could give somebody something that
would slow their heart rate so much that it would
give the appearance of death.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah. So in the eighties we come across Harvard ethnobotanist
Wade Davis. He visited Haiti several times, beginning in nineteen
eighty two to find a pharmacological explanation for numerous rumors
of zombification due to a chemical source. In nineteen eighty three,
he had a journal an article in the Journal of

(23:32):
ethnop Pharmacology, and later wrote two books, The Serpent in
the Rainbow.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
We've seen the movie.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
We watched it. It's a weird Wes Craven movie.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Who stars in it? Bill Pullman?

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, somebody like that.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Ok, hold on, hold on, have you seen this.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
Joe, No, I have not. I've heard of it.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's a book. It's a good movie until the end
where it's like it's like it's like most superhero movies
now where it's like really good and then you know
you're gonna get like a unnecessary punch you real hard
fight at the end.

Speaker 4 (24:10):
I like the Puncher, real hard fights at the end
of those movies.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well, then you would love the crap at this end
of this movie? Is it is? It does star Bill
Pullman from nineteen eighty eight.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
Yeah, that's one of the main complaints I always hear
about those movies, Like at the end, there's like a
really big fight, like, oh no.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, I think my complain is that some superhero movies
seems like you could do more than just who punches
the other person hard enough in the face. Yes, and
this is one of those movies where a fist fight
seems really out of place.

Speaker 4 (24:43):
That's sure how that fits into that movie based on
what we've just been talking about, But.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah, yeah it doesn't.

Speaker 4 (24:49):
No, there you go.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
He published a second book in nineteen eighty eight called
Passage of Darkness, The ethno Biology of the Haitian Zombie.
So research took into folk practices and zombie legends and
pointed to an explanation of a living person being turned
into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into
the bloodstream, usually through a wound. There's one called the

(25:14):
powder strike, which is a tetroto toxin found in buffer
fish that has affect or make it look like you're
in a coma or have the appearance of death. And
then later there's a second drug called datura. It's derived

(25:37):
from a plant and it is a psychoactive hallucinogenic drug. Together,
these powders were said to introduce a death like state
in which the will of the victim would be entirely
subject to the beaucor which doctor Guy and through his
research quote unquote research wayde Davis said that he was

(26:00):
able to obtain samples of these powders used in zombie rituals,
but more in depth analytical studies and like chemistry analysis
failed to identify any of these powerful drugs in the
powders that he provided or in conjunction with any case
of voodoo zomblification, and really called into work, called into

(26:22):
question some of Davis's studies. I don't know, this seems
a little sensationalized to me, especially considering that Wes Craven
made a weird eighties movie about it.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Well, to be fair, I don't think the movie is.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
This is kind of a sensationalized thing anyway.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, I don't think it's all that connected to the
book anyways. I mean it is, but it's kind of
you know, it's a screenplay based on that.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
The zombification process described by Davis was an initial state
of deathlike suspended animation, followed by reawakening, typically after being buried,
a psychotic state introduced by psychoactive drugs and reinforced culturally

(27:14):
learned beliefs as a third element, causing the individual to
reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
So, in other words, like a important factor of this
is being within the culture, meaning that you are of
the belief that this is possible.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
So the zombie legends would be well known for anybody
living in Haiti. Sure there is a psychiatrist R. D.
Lang Lai n G who proposed a link between social
and cultural expectations and compulsion in the context of schizophrenia

(27:53):
and other mental illness, and he suggests that these types
of mental illness factors may account for some psychological aspects
of the zombification phenomenon. Particularly schizophrenia could manifest as catatonia

(28:14):
in certain circumstances, meaning that somebody would appear to be
in a coma. In zombie lore reinforces this belief to
people who are within that culture. There is another person,
So we talked about Zora Neil Hurston and she went
to investigate a particular case. The big case that Wade

(28:37):
Davis investigated was a man named Claivius Nurses who claimed
to be a former zombie. And this is a guy
who's been on unsolved mystery stories and stuff like that.
This is like the go to story. His story begins
in nineteen sixty two when he entered a hospital with

(28:58):
complaints to fatigue fever and was spitting up a bunch
of blood. His condition worsened and he died three days
later and was buried two days after that. But almost
twenty years later, a man claiming to be clarvious Nursees
approached a family member in the village of Lestaire and

(29:19):
convinced them of his identity by providing a bunch of
intimate family details that no other person supposedly would know,
and he claimed that he had been conscious but paralyzed
during his supposed death and burial, and had been later
removed from his grave and forced to work on a

(29:39):
sugar plantation. Okay, he said that his coffin was exhumed
and that he was given a paste probably this d'atura
drug at a certain dose as a hallucingenic effect and
causes memory loss as well, and the beaucoor who who

(30:00):
recovered him forced him to work alongside others on the
sugar plantation until the master of the plantation died two
years later and then the beaucort ended up dying. He
clarvious Narsees didn't get this hallucinogenic drug, and he eventually

(30:20):
regained his sanity and found his way back to his
family after sixteen years. Narses was immediately recognized by the
villagers and his family, and when he told the story
of how he was became a zombie and then escaped,

(30:43):
villagers were surprised but accepted his story because they believed
his experience resulted from voodoo magic. So something they bought into, Okay,
an explanation for his zomplification maybe that Narses had broken
one of the traditional behavioral codes of Haiti by abandoning
his children and that he was made into his zombie

(31:05):
as a punishment. And the throughout his story he points
to certain you know, aspects, and he said that the
possible instigator of the poisoning was possibly his own brother,
who he had had some sort of land and inheritance

(31:27):
dispute with.

Speaker 4 (31:30):
This just comes down to that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
The part that sort of gives this a little bit
more credence, I guess I don't know is that Narses's
death was documented and verified by two American doctors. The
hospital that he went to originally was an American run
hospital in Haiti, and the case of clarvious narseeses argued

(31:58):
to be the first verifiable exam sample of the transformation
of an individual into a zombie. But lack of reliable
evidence calls into a story and his connection with Wade Davis.
So you know, some of Wade Davis's information that he

(32:18):
presented about these drugs and what was in them wasn't
really backed up by anything. And then that he he
also put forth this clarvious nurse story, and this guy's
history didn't seem to be very reliable either.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
So it will shock you to know that I have
remained skeptical.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Oh yeah, of course I'd be skeptical too.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
But the.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Sort of voodoo background of this I think is super interesting.
It's more more story than anything. I mean, I didn't
really find a lot more information about like any kind
of verifiable case or situation other than these people who
showed up after like ten years and said, hey, I
was a zombie for a while, but I'm back now.

(33:07):
So yeah, going back a minute to this whole link
with schizogenic mental health issues, I read a little bit
I maybe I should try to find it. But they
were talking about how this link with zombies is something

(33:30):
that comes up every once in a while with like homeless,
disenfranchised people where because it's like a learned cultural thing
that they sort of like mentally develop into a zombie
like personality. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 (33:51):
I'm not quite sure.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, kind of not really.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Tell me. Like several years ago, when they were talking
about that drug bath salts that turns people into zombies
that will eat your face.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Didn't turn out that guy didn't have any bath salts
in his system.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Yeah, it was all like it was all like like
a panic.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
I mean, he did eat that dude's face.

Speaker 4 (34:21):
Yeah, that became like that was a very like short
lived moral panic.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
I would say, I think in this day and age,
most moral moral panics are pretty short lived.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Okay, I found it. So this is just from the
Wikipedia page and a professor of anthropology named Roland little Wood.
He's a psychiatrist who apparently calls zombies as a culture
bound syndrome. These are things specific to a culture. This

(34:54):
is like the whole disappearing dick thing that we talked about.
Little Wood a little wait, Yeah, and he says that
the social explanations he's observed cases of people identified as
zombies as a culture bound syndrome with a particular cultural
form of adoption practiced in Haiti that unites the homeless

(35:15):
and mentally ill with grieving families who see them as
their returned lost loved ones.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
Oh, I see. So these are people that are not
They're not who they claim to be.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
This is like the change thing the stories of like
people lose a child and then like this is there's
a couple famous stories about this and then like a
child shows up and they like everybody knows it's not
their child, and they know it's not their child, but
like they they choose to believe it because it ends
the pain.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
Yeah. Yeah, those kinds of emotions very powerful.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Here's a further quote by this guy, and I think
he's suggesting that the person who is mentally ill, they
ascribe them as being a zombie instead of men ill.
I see it came. I came to the conclusion that
although it is unlikely that there is a single explanation
for all cases where zombies are recognized by locals in Haiti,

(36:12):
the mistaken identification of a wandering mentally ill stranger by
bereaved relatives is the most likely explanation in many cases.
People with a chronic schizophrenic illness, brain damage, or learning
disability are not uncommon in roll Haiti, and they would
be particularly likely to be identified as zombies. Interesting I'm

(36:37):
reading here in terms of the modern archetype goes back
to ancient Mesopotamia.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Hey, hey, of course it does.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
There's a line in the epic of Gilgamesh. I shall smash, smash,
I shall set and overturn the doors. I shall raise
up the dead and they I'll eat the living and
the dead chill out number the living.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Mm hm.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Hm hmm.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
Well, uh, it wouldn't be an episode of an Hour
of Our Time if we didn't take it way way
back to ancient Persia.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, really ancient Mesopotamia in this case.

Speaker 4 (37:20):
Yeah, Gilgamesh is uh Sumerian?

Speaker 2 (37:25):
No, I think it is Sumerian, was right, Okay, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
Well there's Sumerians within the sort of superseded by the Akkadians.
But Mark, Yeah anyway, yeah, uh, well so there's some
So there's some interesting historical and cultural through lines here

(37:50):
with with zombies. I took a you know, as I
often want to do a different path, and tried to
find zombies and then natural world so I could talk
about those, and then Dave, I think what you're going
to talk about will kind of unite these two things.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
In some ways, I think.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
So. Yeah, So, so I found some examples. So there
are so many examples it kind of depines them how
you define a zombie. But there's so many examples in
the natural world of parasitic organisms that change the behavior
of their hosts. So do you think about, like what

(38:32):
Mark just talked about, and then what Dave will talk
about with you know, zombies in film popular culture, you
know what's the zombie like, it's a you know, a
sometimes it's the supernatural aspect, but in a lot of
modern zombie films not it's not supernatural. They're affected by
a virus excuse me, or something like that. So I

(38:52):
wanted to just talk about a few examples that were
just really, really gruesome, and then I once talked in
the animal world, and then I went talk about a
few that are in humans that some of the symptoms
of these diseases start to sound like kind of similar
to what you see in zombie films. Yeah, so The
first one I wanted to talk about was the emerald

(39:14):
cockroach wasp, or also known as the jewel wasp.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
So this is those wasp that are going around vaping. Yeah,
and then.

Speaker 4 (39:26):
Ju l jewel wasps. They're always like, this is wasps
just hanging out outside the vape shop.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Blown fat, fat clouds, flat fat clouds.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah, literally, the worst kind of wasp that you could
ever imagine. I'll take. I'll take a murder hornet over
anything that vapes.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
I think I would take a murder hornet over the
this emerald cockroach wasp. Well, it depends. If you're a human,
it's probably fine, but if you're a cockroach, you definitely
want to make sure that you don't run into one
of these. So the scientific name of this animal is
Ampulex kompressa. There are thousands and thousands of species of

(40:14):
what are called parisitoids, specifically wasps. They find an organism
like a spider or an insect, sting it in and
implant their eggs on it, and then eggs consume the
host organisms, sometimes while it's still alive, that feeds the larvae,

(40:37):
and then they grow in too adults and leave. This
one though, takes it just a few steps further. So
the emerald cockroach wasper or, like I said, also knows
the jewel wasp. It has two types of venom it
stings a cockroach. The first venom is a neurotoxin that
paralyzes the paralyzes the cockroach. This will sound familiar for

(40:59):
one mark, which you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:02):
Then it inserts its stinger with surgical position into the cockroaches.
They don't have a brain. They have a clump of
cells called a ganglia, but it's their brain, inserts the
stinger into their brain and ejects a different type of toxin.
The cockroach then gains motorf like it wakes up essentially
from the first toxin, but because of the effects of

(41:24):
the second one, it is now it can't enact movement
on its own. It is in control of the wasps.
The wasp bites off one of its antennae or a
part of its antennae, and then it uses the antenna
to steer it under its control. Because the cockroach is
too large for the wasps to pick up and carry

(41:46):
to its burrow, so it steers basically the cockroach into
its own grave, lays its eggs on the cockroach. The
eggs hatch into larvae, which consume the cock coroach and
then become adults in the life cycle continues.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
It's like good Ted Bundy tried to make a sex
slave out of people by dumping battery acid into their brains.
It didn't work.

Speaker 4 (42:12):
Oh yes, I mean it is kind of like that.
I mean does kind of sound like you the the
Two Man. Possibly that story is apocryphal, but the two
compounds that Mark E were just talking about, the one
that paralyzes and mimics death and then the other one
that gives you control over the over the host.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
And I think we can all agree that if Dahmer
were alive today, he would definitely be the kind of
guy that would use a vape.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Keep it going, Dave, yep, some emerald jewel. You need
to photoshop a picture of this wasp like this sucking avape.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
Sucking a vape and then having like a Damer, dump
battery acid into its brain at the same time, smash
this whole conversation into one image.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
It'll be great. No one will make it an NFT
that'll fund the podcast. Here's another really terrifying one again,
like These are like organisms that like really like change
the behavior of their hosts. Although this one, I think, uh, well,
what I want you it kind of sounds like a
zombie to me. Comes up a lot of lists of

(43:27):
like zombie parasites. I want you, guys to tell me
what movie monster this sounds more like to you because
I have one in mind. This is called Sacculina. That's
the genus. And so Sacculina is a barnacle. Do you
guys know what barnacles are like seem on boats?

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yeah, they get on a boat.

Speaker 4 (43:46):
Yeah, So barnacles, like what you're seeing is the shell,
but barnacles are they are the organism that lives inside
is I think people might assume that it's like a
warm or something like that. Actually crustaceans they're related to
like craps, lobsters and things like that, So they're like
segmented bodies and what they're sticking out to filter feed
is modified arms essentially. Anyway, this this kind of barnacle though,

(44:13):
and there's many different species and they all infect like
specific species of crabs. They don't have the like the hardshell.
So what they do is they latch onto a crab
they find a gap in the plates of the crab's exoskeleton.
Then they they turn into they turn into a It

(44:39):
molts and becomes a new form called the kentragon, which
just like, yeah, sounds like a band kenra gone. And
then if you wrote a death metal song about what's
I'm about to talk about, it would be a pretty
fucking brutal So the kentragon. Then the the barnacle enters

(45:05):
the crab and leaves behind its shell. So now inside
the crab, it forms like a tomb.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
So it molds so that it's like soft enough to
get in there, to get in.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
Then it forms like a tumor like structure on the crab,
on the underside of the crab, but it extends tendrils
throughout the crab's body which start to alter not only
its behavior but it's uh but it's like actual morphology.
So male crab.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
So we talked about this. What episodes did we talk
about this this crab? Yeah, I remember looking this up
and talking.

Speaker 4 (45:41):
About I think you briefly mentioned it as like kind
of like a bonus thing in the Animal Reproduction one. Yeah,
So the the the succulent seculine, it destroys the crabs
will to live genitals, so it cannot reput it. So
now the crab essentially exists to serve this creature that

(46:04):
is extended tendrils throughout its body. The males, it destroys
their genitals, but it also turns them into resembling females
in both behavior and morphology.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
I feel like there's like a take my wife please
joke in here.

Speaker 4 (46:20):
Somewhere cuts hob as genitals, it destroys females crabs genitals too.
But essentially what happens is that like it becomes like
the crab is like exists to serve it. The crab
can't molt, so it really can't get any bigger. But
then eventually, here's the most terrifying thing. It opens up
a hole in the crab shell and it invites more
of these things to come into the crab to mate

(46:42):
with it, until eventually it fertilizes its eggs, and then
the eggs hatch and the crab finally dies. It's granted
sweet release of death.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
So it basically makes the crab a venue for its orgies. Yes,
exactly why does it go for the genital.

Speaker 4 (47:00):
Because it has something to do with the crab won't
try to complete its own life cycle, so it's purely existing.
Two reproduce the offspring of this organism.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Huh yeah, Okay.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
So I think that sounds more like the the xenomorph
from Alien, by the way, because you have the face
hugger and then it goes inside you and then it
has another form that comes out. But I digress.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
Yeah, Dave knows this, But the Xenomwarph is partly based
off of the creature. Design is partly based off of
this marine parasitoid called Fromana, which kills this other kind
of marine organism called a copapot and uses its husk

(47:50):
as its new home.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Damn.

Speaker 4 (47:53):
They're really tiny, but if you look at them, they
look like you'll like tiny xenomorph. Yeah yeah, And Geiger
was inspired by this creature when he created the art
for his unomorphs.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Mark, would you do a hr Giger impression for us?

Speaker 2 (48:11):
Dephallus is perfect?

Speaker 4 (48:18):
That is everything that I wanted it to be. A
thank you work, Yes, all right, So one that I
definitely wanted to talk about. I'll give you like kind
of one. A few more examples. One is one, you know,
the most famous I think, uh, you know, parasite that

(48:38):
does these kinds of things is Ohio Corcepts Fungi. This
guy really famous back in like the early two thousands
with Plane Earth nature documentaries. You go on YouTube and
look like typing like zombie ant fungus, and you'll find
the day of Appborough like narration of this.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah, it's like a perfectly pleasant episode, and then this
shit happens.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
It's terrifying.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
So this horrible.

Speaker 4 (49:00):
The spores of this fun fungus in fact ants and
also other insects, but fame most famously ants. The fungus
then sends its high field tendrils into the ant's nervous
system and hijacks it so the ant will crawl to
the correct height specific height for in humidity. For the fungus,

(49:25):
it also will, so it crawls up basically. Then the
fungus kills the amp, but it's not done. Then fruiting
body sprouts from the back of the ant and spreads
its spores out into the air to start the life
cycle again. The ants know about this thing, and if

(49:46):
they think that, they will attempt to clean each other
as they're entering the nest. So they have they have
epidemiology practices that seem to be more efficient than our
own in human societies. So you know that the ants

(50:06):
would be wearing their damn mask if they had to,
so they but they'll they'll also if they find it,
then an ant is infected with this, they will throw
it out of the colony and get it as far
away as possible and dump its body so that it
won't infect the colony. Because this thing can like take
out entire colonies of ants. It seems like it's actually
acts as a check on certain ant species in the

(50:27):
rainforests of South America so that they their colonies can't
get too large and you know, wreck the ecosystem, right,
it's population control. Yeah, so that has gotten into popular culture.
There's a book called The Girl with All the Gifts

(50:51):
that I recommend. I think it's I think that's getting
made into a movie or a series.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
I think it already was.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
Oh was it already? Okay, maybe that's right. I just
never watched it. But I read the book and it
is like it's very explicitly based on Opio cortus ups
fungi and it takes a really cool angle. But then
also more more famously is the video game and soon
to be a TV show, The Last of Us. In
that game, some of the creatures, the zombies, are meant

(51:18):
to have fungal bodies sprouting from their heads. Those are
the really scary ones that you can't kill easily that
make the clicking sound. Dave's play this game, right.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
I am. I am still playing it. I still I
still have your your copy.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
You're slowly making your way through it. Yeah, okay. And
then the last thing. I have a few things I
wanted to talk about are these that infect humans. So
this one's not like I guess, exotic sounding, but rabies,
because I mean, let's talk about what rabies does. So,
first of all, rabies infects mammals, including humans, and it

(52:01):
can't be it is deadly if untreated in humans. Now, luckily,
if you get you can actually get the rabies vaccine
after being exposed, and it has essentially a one success
rate in keeping you alive.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
But if you go untreated, that's rare, right, that's rare
that you can that the vaccine is effective after the.

Speaker 4 (52:26):
Fact, and normally vaccines are a prophylactic. Yeah, but there's
this is partly the reason why we don't like all
get vaccinated against rabies. Only people that maybe like reasonably
likely to get exposed to rabies would get this beforehand.
But but yeah, but if you don't get treated, you
will die. But but animals are infected with rabies, they

(52:48):
hyper salivate, they have trouble breathing and swallowing, and they
act aggressively and sometimes even mutilate themselves. Yeah. Also, so
it's it's hydrophobia, extremely afraid of water. I think the

(53:08):
reason is that the virus is transmitted via saliva and
water will dilute it.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
So it's afraid. Like it keeps you from wanting to
drink water.

Speaker 4 (53:20):
Yes, so the dryer your mouth is or even be
near water.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Oh, does it change your opinion on vaping at all?
Very much into vaping.

Speaker 4 (53:31):
More and more likely to vape. Yes, yes, but I
mean but so like but I think twenty eight days later, like,
I believe the zombie virus in that movie is like
explicitly based on rabies.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
It's well kind of, it bears.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
A lot of resemblance to rabies.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
It's it's it's they call it the rage virus. The
whole thing about it is that it is it makes
you incredibly aggressive, like rabbit, but chew a point that
is a little different.

Speaker 4 (54:03):
Well so does well. The idea of rabies is that
the animals are more aggressive because they had to bite
another animal to spread the virus.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Is rabies only spread through salivas or spread through blood.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
As well, mostly through saliva.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
M okay, but but it's but it's the saliva getting
into your bloodstream.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
Yes, well, but it doesn't have to just get into
your bloodstream. You could have an open wound, but it
can also get you know, ice mouth nose.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah, so like if a raccoon like got pissed at
you and spit into your open mouth, that would do it. Yes,
got it.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
And speaking of which the animals, I think, like most
people think, the rabies is spread by like domesticated dogs.
Dogs are not really the main vector for rabies. It's
a raccoons or one of the main vectors skunks, foxes, coyotes,
and some bats. But yes, dogs can get it and
it is also fatal to dogs. So dogs do get

(55:01):
vaccinated for rabies. Your your dog has to get a
rabies vaccine every year legally.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
I found an article here I actually saw this yesterday
of a guy in Illinois.

Speaker 1 (55:15):
Who died of I saw that too. Yeah, very rare.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, there was a bat in his house and it
bit him. It says here that he was in his
eighties and declined the rabies vaccine and then died a
month later.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
I was going to ask if you declined the vaccine.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Yeah, it's the first case denied.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Why he I don't know science, can't trust science. But
it says that it's the first known case of a
human contracting rabies in Illinois since nineteen fifty four.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
It's extremely rare.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Yeah, and I want to point out again that his
death entirely preventable.

Speaker 4 (55:52):
Entirely prevoible. Another one that's kind of similar to that
is toxo plasmosis caused by an organism, a single celled
organism called toxic plasma gandhi eye. So toxic plasma is
interested because Dave has it. Cool, I'm gonna make Dave
lose his goddamn mine on air.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
I assume we all have it, maybe not.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
It infects uh, probably probably fifty percent of the global population.
But specifically I know you because you have cats.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Oh, well I probably have it too, then.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
So does Mark. Yes, that's right, you both do.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Face or well, you used to let Henry lick inside
your mouth.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
He chose to do that, but well we.

Speaker 1 (56:43):
Uh we shared a lollipop with him once. Oh no,
well you did. I was just there.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
That's really cute.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
It wasn't all three of us looking the same lollipop
be aggressive. That's all my style.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
That that delves into the less cute. But you know,
what's your phrase? Safety yu you'r gum.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
It's a level of cute that I'm not ready to attain.

Speaker 4 (57:04):
Yeah, yeah, Well, just really quickly with this.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
It's it doesn't like pregnant women aren't supposed to like
clean litter boxes.

Speaker 4 (57:10):
Yes, it's it is dangerous for UH, for pregnant women
because it can affect the developing fetus in UH. It
is also dangerous for people with HIV or other like
IMMUNO or other immunocompromised individuals. But for most people, it's
you know, innocuous and as well as in cats, but

(57:34):
in because humans and cats are not we're not the
terminal host for it. We're not like the thing it's
like trying to be in essentially well, Cactually cats are,
but mice. When mice and rats are affected by toxoplasmosis,
it affects. It affects their brains, so they change their behavior.
They are no longer afraid of cats, so they will

(57:56):
no longer stray away from cat the odor of cat urine.
And they also do things like take more risks. They'll
move larger, longer distances, they move more quickly. This is
hand like twenty eight days later, quite a bit of
movement speed has increased. Essentially, it's like putting them at
risk so that cats will eat them and then get

(58:18):
affected with the toxic plasma Gandhi eye parasite. The very
last one that I wanted to talk about, This is
by far the most terrifying because it does affect humans.
I wanted to talk about, just really quickly, a few
kinds of what you call transmissivele sponge of form and

(58:46):
cephalopathies or t ses. So you have heard of these
Mad cow disease. Do you remember the Yeah, the terror
surrounding mad cow disease. I think to this day, if
you've spent time in England during a certain range of time,
like from nineteen eighty to nineteen ninety six, a certain

(59:08):
amount of time, I don't think you're allowed to donate blood.
They'll only end up being a few hundred cases of bad.
This is a problem in the UK and the US,
but more so the UK. This is part of a
range of diseases. Other ones are called chronic wasting disease,
which is also known as zombie deer disease, which is
becoming an increasing problem in the United States, to the

(59:31):
point where in twenty nineteen, when we thought that this
was the biggest problem we had Michael Osterhome, the director
of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at
the University of Minnesota, who is a major figure currently,
as we might guess, warned that it could infect humans

(59:51):
and that we needed to develop better diagnostic tools to
detect this because it's in deer in nineteen sixty But
these are and Crutzfeld Jacob syndrome is another one. That
one is interesting because you can acquire it. You can
also get it spontaneously as a mutation. But these are

(01:00:15):
caused by or called prions. Prions are not an organism.
They're not a living organism. They're abnormally folded proteins. These
abnormally folded proteins, when they get inside your body, can
cause some of the proteins in your body to fold abnormally,
and then what happens is they pierce holes in your

(01:00:38):
brain tissue. So it's called sponge of form and cephalopathy
because when you dissect the brains of these cattle, for instance,
their brains look like sponges or like Swiss cheese because
they're full of holes. So yes, so it starts to

(01:00:58):
it's so they're neurodegenerated. If these deer will like shake,
it's called chronic wasting disease because they like can't feed themselves.
They're not really it's not really very zombie like because
they don't get aggressive or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
They just lose their faculties.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
Yeah. But the one of the most famous and last
one I have for you is another one of these
neuros are these transmissible sponge of form and cephalopathies caused
by prions. It's called kuru. Have you heard of kuru
before we talked about different I think you did at

(01:01:37):
a different point. Kuru was a disease. It was incurable. Oh,
also like, yeah, chronic wasting syndrome and these other things
kill you. Kuru was a disease of the four eight
people of Papua New Guinea. It was also called sometimes

(01:01:57):
called laughing sickness because of the pathologic bursts of laughter
that this would cause. Okay, do you remember what caused it?
I don't, uh, funerary cannibalism. The four A people thought
that they needed to eat the body of their deceased

(01:02:21):
relatives in order to free their spirits. And it was
the women and children that ate the brain, and the
brain and spinal core tissue are where these prions, these
abnormal proteins are most concentrated, so they would develop it.

(01:02:41):
It was probably and this is probably how it started.
At some point a villager developed what's called sporadic Cruxville
Jacob syndrome. So these proteins, admiramal proteins develop spontaneously, and
then when their body and brain were eaten by their relatives,

(01:03:03):
it started to spread. These prions from all these different
things like chronic wasting syndrome. They're not killed by heat,
so you cannot cook your deer that you cook or
that you caught and get rid of this like E
coli or something like that, and they will persist in
the environment for possibly decades, binding to the soil, waiting

(01:03:25):
for an unsuspecting deer or something to eat something and
become infected. So for my bet for the zombie plague,
it's a prion disease, and in fact, in popular media,
in the video game A Daisy, the zombie plays caused

(01:03:48):
by a kuru like pathogen. And in the movie just
remember the movie The Book of Eli.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Yes, I didn't see it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
There's a thing where he says at one point where
you can always tell someone is a cannibal because their
hands are shaking. It's implying that they have kooru.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Correct me if I'm wrong. In the context of mad
cow disease, wasn't that usually transmissible only if someone ate
the brain tissue that's.

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
Where it's most transcensfable. But I think you could get
it from like guining a hamburger, although it's pretty rare,
and it does seem like you have to have some
sort of genetic predisposition because lots of people ate infected
beef and didn't get it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
There's also curious about this stuff. I know where we
talked about this to Halloween seasons ago, we did an
episode about cannibalism.

Speaker 4 (01:04:41):
Oh there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Yep, that was a pretty metal episode.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
It was a very metal episode.

Speaker 4 (01:04:46):
There's an X Files episode about Kuru and then the
other video game I was thinking of as Dead Island.
So it's so these have gotten into zombie fiction. So
that's how you'd find zombies in the real world.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Yeah, well, let me let me kind of bring up
the rear here, finishing with some fiction. Heye, when we
think of zombies, mostly we think of them in the
realm of film. And we talked about how the idea
of a zombie sort of came to the Western world
via William C. Brooks book The Magic Island and His

(01:05:27):
Travels to Haiti. I mentioned that nineteen thirty two, the
movie White Zombie was a loose adaptation of The Magic
Island and was, yeah, sort of the first zombie film,
although it's a bit odd of what we think of
zombie films now because the zombies are the victims. But
it also is, right off the bat, a commentary. So

(01:05:49):
we'll find throughout time, throughout you know, the last like
one hundred years of zombie films. Almost now, they're frequently
used as commentary, and this one is right off the
bat the same thing. It's a commentary on colonialization, slave labor, xenophobia.
And in the thirties you started to see you know
more zombie films like that. It's a lot of like

(01:06:12):
this magical mind control element. That's how zombies are portrayed
in film at that time. In the forties, the zombies
genre got sort of saturated, like a lot of the
other universal monster movies got sort of saturated and turned
to self parody. You had movies like nineteen forty five's

(01:06:34):
Zombies on Broadway. It starred Bella Lagosi and two guys
named Alan Carney and Wally Brown. I saw them described
as the poor Man's Abbot and Costello.

Speaker 4 (01:06:48):
Ouch.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
They were the same style, but they worked for I
think it was RKO Studio. It's about a pair of
men who are tasked with finding a real zombie for
a zombie themed nightclub. Okay, but but something else does
come out of the forties with zombie movies, and that
is the fear of fascism. There are movies like nineteen
forty ones King of the Zombies and nineteen forty three's

(01:07:10):
Revenge of the Zombies that focuses on the Nazis using
zombies as a way of well usually mind control to
create Nazi zombies.

Speaker 4 (01:07:21):
Essentially, I wish they one hundred percent would have done.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
Yeah, absolutely, But there is a kind of a return
to that classic style from the thirties, the Haitian zombie story.
In nineteen forty threes, I walked with the Zombie, which
kind of gives the zombie genre new life again. I've
heard about two its roots. Yeah, I talked about that

(01:07:46):
one during our comic CON's that's yes, that's so. What
you're going to start to see is that in every decade,
zombies become a commentary for like the hot buttoned thing.
So in the fifties it's the atomic age, so zombies
are no longer like mind control through magic or voodoo.
It's zombies being created through like science gone wrong. So

(01:08:09):
the creature with the Adam brain radiation is used to
bring people back from the dead and control them. Plan
nine from outer space aliens resurrect to dead bodies with electrodes.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
Such an amazing movie. I would It's not gonna say
a good.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Movie, but it's the definition of so bad it's good.

Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
And that's like the archetypal cult classic.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
In the nineteen sixties, you get zombie movies that start
to be more gory, one just because of style, but
two because you start to see movies in color and
more like psychedelic and surreal. A good example is in
just the name of This will kind of give you
a sense for the surreal nature of the movies in
the sixties. Nineteen sixty one has the Incredibly Strange Creatures

(01:08:58):
Who Stripped. I got to bring it up bigger so
I can read it. It's a full sentence. It's like
a Fiona Apple album. It's called the Incredibly Strange Creatures
who stopped living and became mixed up zombies.

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
I've heard of this one too. Yeah, is it crazy,
crazy mixed up kids.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Yeah, it's that kind of stuff. And you also start
to see some foreign films low budget films because the
zombie genre becomes it's an easy film to make on
a low budget. Enter George A. Romero nineteen sixty eight,
on a low budget makes the classic Night of the
Living Dead, which is the first film to show zombies
eating human flesh. So they might sneak in and kill

(01:09:38):
you in other movies, but like it would be flesh
eating zombies. That's sort of the origin of it. They're
excessively slow moving, as we know, and the movie sort
of starts out in the graveyard it does like the
camp be opening where they're sort of playing on a
lot of like existing tropes, and then it evolves into
a more modern feeling movie that is largely a civil
rights commentary. In the seventies, you get commentaries like nineteen

(01:10:03):
seventy four's sugar Hill, which is a blaxploitation movie. With
the zombie movies, well, I had never heard of that one.
Nineteen seventy five Shivers David Cronenberg, which is a commentary
on the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, and then George
Romero with Donna the Dead, which is a commentary on consumerism.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Donna the Dead is really great. It takes place inside
of a shopping mall and Pitts people, Yeah, it's the
Monroeville mall. Joe Joe s and I went in there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
I've been to the parking lot. I went to a
haunted house in the parking lot.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Well, they like renovated the whole thing so it doesn't
look anything like it anymore. But they talk in the
movie about like, well, why are the zombies coming back here?
People are hiding out in the mall because it's abandoned
and it has all this cool shit in it that
they can use, and the one guy says, like, well,
they're coming back to a place that was important in
their life. It's like going to the mall.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Refer to our shopping Mall episode.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
For weeks ago, the Shopping Mall about why you want
to go back to the mall if you're a zombie.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
I would argue that the seventies is kind of the
high water mark of zombie movies, but you can make
an argument that the early eighties can be lumped in
there too, because you've got movies like Reanimator Return to
the Living Dead. Return to the Living Dead is important
because it's like one of the first movies, Like there
were like parody movies back in the forties, but it's

(01:11:33):
like the first movie to like once the tropes are established,
to do a comedic parody based on the tropes. You
also have more movies from around the world, like nineteen
eighty one's Kung Fu Zombie and nineteen eighty two Kung
Fu from Beyond the Grave.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Ooh.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
But the big thing here in the eighties is you
get a lot of oversaturation. Just like with every other genre,
like slack movies, it starts to get overly saturated, it
starts to get watered down, and you get a lot
of copycats, and you have the boom of VHS tapes,
so low budget movies have a place to go, and
so that sort of kills the genre for a while,
especially throughout the nineties, but the early two thousands it

(01:12:17):
comes back. Two thousand and two's Resident Evil, which is
based on a video game. I'm sure you know that's
the one thing that kind of kept it alive in
the nineties was the resurgence of or the advent of
zombie based video games. Resident Evil, the first movie was
extremely popular, and the same year twenty two, twenty eight
days later, twenty eight days later, and Resident Evil brings

(01:12:40):
some new things to the forefront. Biggest one is zombies
caused by a virus. Yeah, lab created viruses in like
both cases. Twenty eight days later also brings up fast zombies,
so now they're sprinting, which is interesting. I read that.
I didn't realize this because I've never seen either Dawn
of the deads but I guess that. And when they

(01:13:00):
did the remake of DNA the Dead it was in
two thousand and four. They they kind of stayed with
Romero's style, except they made the zombies like twenty eight
days Later in that they could run, which is interesting.
Then you have two thousand and four's Sean of the Dead,
which is like the epitome, well at least to a point,
of the comedic tropes of of the zombie genre. It's

(01:13:28):
so good. But beyond that, two thousand and nine is
the highest grossing zombie film of all time. Anybody know
what it is?

Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
Two thousand and nine.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
It's comedic and it plays on all the tropes.

Speaker 4 (01:13:41):
Oh, zombie Land.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
Zombie Land. I didn't realize that's the highest grossing zombie
film ever made. And the next year, twenty ten, we
get The Walking Dead, which I think is now finishing
it's or starting its last season.

Speaker 4 (01:13:56):
Eight mind God, that shows the zombie it well, it
really is shambling, brainless for a while, shambling corpse.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
But you know my point here that for a long
time zombie movies have been used as commentary. These modern
ones I think like twenty eight days Later it kind
of becomes a commentary on the healthcare system. I don't
know that twenty eight days Later really does that, but
twenty eight weeks Later sort of starts to do that,

(01:14:26):
and I don't know. It also just sort of starts
to like, look at in all these other zombie movies,
it's like isolated, right, zombies are in them. All the
zombies are attacking a farm. But with twenty eight days later,
it's it's zombies on the scale of the end of
the world. I know it's like only England at that point,
but like it's it's like it seems like that's what's

(01:14:48):
happening with more modern zombie things. It's less about like
the commentary and more about the like this is a
means to an end.

Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
Yeah, I'll be interested to see uh out now that
we have a experienced an actual global pandemic. If well,
either I could either see it going that like we
will not see any like zombie plague movies for a
early long time, or we'll see like a lot of
them that are like about like somehow related to COVID,

(01:15:17):
you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Well, it seems like we're ripe for a movie where
like there's a zombie apocalypse and the world is ending
and there's like a scarce number of survivors and then
suddenly somebody develops a vaccine and there's like a small
number of the survivors that are like, yeah, I don't
know what's in it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
Yeah. I was gonna say, this is not my original thought,
but I somewhere I saw people saying like they used
to think that the most implausible part of zombie movies
was that the governments like just like, let the zombie
plague happen, like, didn't you know, control it in any way.

(01:15:54):
And now it's like, oh uh, never mind, that's actually
the most plausible part of.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
It, right. But I will say that watching twenty eight
days later and twenty eight weeks later recently, it felt
a little real. Yeah, it hit different, if you know
what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:16:11):
I'm sure, I'm sure it did.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:13):
I probably will not be watching those for a little while.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
I've decided to lean into it.

Speaker 4 (01:16:19):
Yeah that's yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:20):
Next on the list, outbreak, Yeah, and then contagion.

Speaker 4 (01:16:25):
Well, I think an outbreak they're like a competent and they.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Uh yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's not like watching Prometheus.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
Oh god, the movie makes me so as like a biologist.
That movie makes me so incredibly goddamn. So.

Speaker 1 (01:16:40):
I was just talking about the movie Venom because I
just watched it. I don't know if anybody's seen the
movie Venom, But in the very beginning, like the first
thing that happens, they bring the symbiotes back to Earth
and they're trying to like contain them because one of
them is escaping, and all these like medical personnel are
running out there without any protective gear at all. That's
like the first two Men. And I'm thinking, like you

(01:17:02):
kind of already lost me here.

Speaker 4 (01:17:04):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. There will be a zombie movie that's like, uh,
they can't get people to take the vaccine for the
zombie plague and so that's how it starts or whatever. Yeah,
or or someone will make a movie that's the opposite

(01:17:26):
of that, and I'll be extremely angry.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Well, you know, I think the movie stuff we sort
of covered very very quickly. If you're interested in learning
more about horror movies and zombie movies specifically, last Halloween,
we did a two part episode on the history of
horror movies, so you know, it kind of made this
very brief. You can go back and check that out

(01:17:51):
next week were Wolves our week of Halloween continues, or
our month of Halloween continues.

Speaker 4 (01:17:59):
You're ready for my warn Zyvonne impression, I'll save it
for next week though perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:18:08):
All right, well, I guess uh. Go watch your favorite
zombie movie and we will talk to you in a week.

Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
Pray.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Thank you for listening to an Hour of Our Time.

Speaker 4 (01:18:22):
If you like what you heard, explore our catalog of
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Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
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