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Do zombies really exist? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com? Chief, Chief McLellan, how's
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Speaker 1: everything going? Things aren't going to bad? Men are taking
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Speaker 1: them pretty good. Chief. Do you think we'll be able
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Speaker 1: to defeat these things? Well, we killed nineteen of them
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Speaker 1: today right in this area. And it was the last
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Speaker 1: three we caught trying to claw their way into an
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Speaker 1: abandoned ship. They must have thought somebody was in there.
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Speaker 1: We heard him making all kinds of noise. We came
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Speaker 1: over and beat them off, blasted them down. Chief. If
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Speaker 1: I were surrounded by sixth raight of these things, would
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Speaker 1: I stand a chance with him? Well, there's no problem.
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Speaker 1: If you had a gun, shoot him in the head.
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Speaker 1: That's a sure way to kill him. If you don't
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Speaker 1: get yourself a club, retorch beat him or burn them,
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Speaker 1: they go up pretty easy. Well, Chief McLelland how long
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Speaker 1: do you think it will take you until you get
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Speaker 1: the situation under control? Well that's pretty hard to say.
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Speaker 1: We don't know how many of them are. Are we
0:55
Speaker 1: know when we find them we can kill them. Are
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Speaker 1: they slow moving? Chief? Yeah? They're dead up and with that,
1:08
Speaker 1: Mr George A. Romero pretty much set the scene for
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Speaker 1: all zombie movies to follow. Thanks for tuning in. This
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Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. I'm Josh Clark. This is
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Brain Eater, brilliant, Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks, Chuck.
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Speaker 1: Somebody had to say it, right, yes, So how are
1:26
Speaker 1: you doing? Try to get one of the zombies to
1:28
Speaker 1: say it, that'd be pretty cool. I'm still wet. It's
1:31
Speaker 1: still raining in Atlanta. Good lord, I feel like we
1:34
Speaker 1: have remember that picture of the super cell I printed
1:36
Speaker 1: out for the webcast, I feel like one of those
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Speaker 1: hovering picture in your wallet with you and show it
1:42
Speaker 1: to people like kid, did you know that? In I
1:45
Speaker 1: believe Ecuador, um once a year there's a heavy storm
1:50
Speaker 1: and after about two hours of storm subsides and everybody
1:53
Speaker 1: goes out and there's fish, dead fish laying everywhere, well
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Speaker 1: some still alive. The rain of fishes. The weird thing
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Speaker 1: is that they aren't found in any surrounding body of water,
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Speaker 1: nor are they saltwater fish. They are blind, underground dwellers
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Speaker 1: zombie fish. Well, yeah, let's use that as their segue. Cool, Chuck,
2:14
Speaker 1: let's talk zombies. Alrighty, let's let's go with the real
2:18
Speaker 1: stuff first. Did you know that there maybe such a
2:22
Speaker 1: thing as real zombie? Yeah? I didn't know till I
2:25
Speaker 1: read this. And where are you gonna go? If you
2:27
Speaker 1: want to find a real zombie? You go to the source, man,
2:29
Speaker 1: you go to the horse's mouth, you go to Haiti? Yes?
2:32
Speaker 1: Is that that was Serpent the Rainbow? Right? Yeah? It
2:35
Speaker 1: was West Craven Flick mid High School for me, very
2:39
Speaker 1: scary Bill Pullman. Yeah. And the weird thing is is
2:42
Speaker 1: you know Wes Craven is not known for making um
2:44
Speaker 1: movies based on true stories, but that one was. So
2:48
Speaker 1: it's one of my heroes. The ethnobotanist and anthropologist Dr
2:52
Speaker 1: Wade Davis, who is Harvard grad. I think he has
2:56
Speaker 1: a doctorate and two uh bachelor's from Harvard to more
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Speaker 1: than me. Yeah, and um he went down to Haiti
3:05
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties for what was called the
3:07
Speaker 1: Zombie Project. Yes, because of a certain certain man drew
3:13
Speaker 1: his attention. Right, how do you pronounce that, Claire Clarvius Narcies, Yeah,
3:18
Speaker 1: that's how I pronounced it. Yeah. He started poking his
3:21
Speaker 1: head around in nineteen eighty in a Haitian village and said, hey,
3:25
Speaker 1: I died eighteen years ago. Yep, and uh. Apparently his
3:30
Speaker 1: the similarity to UM his his original self. Uh, and
3:37
Speaker 1: the facts that he knew about his former life passed
3:40
Speaker 1: a battery of test questions. Yeah, that was enough to
3:44
Speaker 1: make the make his friends family. I guess the estimates
3:47
Speaker 1: about two people who saw him say that guy's a
3:51
Speaker 1: zombie and I claimed a bocor brought him back to
3:55
Speaker 1: life or brought him back to the undead state. Right,
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Speaker 1: Chuck so Clarvie shows up in night he had been.
4:02
Speaker 1: The thing that makes him significant is that he had
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Speaker 1: been pronounced dead by American doctors, who apparently carry more
4:09
Speaker 1: weight in the field of medicine and science. It was
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Speaker 1: documented that yeah, they documented his death. Um. So when
4:16
Speaker 1: he showed up in nineteen eighty, he presented a substantial
4:19
Speaker 1: case for the existence of zombies UM and a guy
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Speaker 1: named Dr Lamarck du Wan, who's a Haitian psychiatrist, interviewed him,
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Speaker 1: started interviewing boucour Um and got his hands on some
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Speaker 1: zombie powders right, and then entered Dr Wade Davis. Right. Now,
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Speaker 1: he wasn't the guy the originally said to go get
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Speaker 1: these powders, right now, That was Nathan Klein, right. He
4:46
Speaker 1: wanted some of these powders to see if they could
4:48
Speaker 1: be used as anesthetics and surgery. Yeah, which I don't
4:50
Speaker 1: get that. Why not just use anesthetic unless I guess
4:54
Speaker 1: he found some like cheaper, safer maybe anesthetics. Well, I mean,
4:58
Speaker 1: if you come up with your own anesthetic, can imagine
5:00
Speaker 1: there's some dollar amount attached to that. So let's talk
5:04
Speaker 1: about this. He sends Dr Davis down to Haiti, and
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Speaker 1: Dr Davis kind of takes up where Dr do wan
5:11
Speaker 1: Um left off, or maybe kind of takes over his research.
5:15
Speaker 1: And uh, he himself interviews Boucore, which are again those
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Speaker 1: voodoo priests, and uh, interviews some of the zombies, some
5:22
Speaker 1: of these undead people, right, so they said yeah, um,
5:28
Speaker 1: and he uh, he comes to find that he concludes
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Speaker 1: that there is in fact such a thing as zombies.
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Speaker 1: They're specific to Haiti though as far as he can tell.
5:41
Speaker 1: And it's it's a two step process, chuck. Uh. And
5:44
Speaker 1: how to make someone a zombie, Well, first to have
5:47
Speaker 1: to die, I would think, no, or is that a
5:49
Speaker 1: three step process? I thought zombies had to be dead. First,
5:53
Speaker 1: we're talking Haitian zombies. We'll get to the Hollywood zombie soon. Okay, Well,
5:58
Speaker 1: the bocar has to capture their their soul with that
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Speaker 1: tibon age. Is that I suppose it's French? Right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's apparently part of the soul directly connected to the individual,
6:10
Speaker 1: and once he steal captures that, they are a zombie. Right.
6:15
Speaker 1: That's that's Haitian folklore. Dr Davis, being a scientist, tried
6:19
Speaker 1: to get beyond that. He found that most Haitians, most
6:23
Speaker 1: educated Haitians, we should say, uh in those who live
6:27
Speaker 1: in the city don't tend to believe in zombieism, even
6:30
Speaker 1: those part of law it is. There's interesting what back
6:33
Speaker 1: to eight thirty five, right yeah, Audicle two full six
6:37
Speaker 1: of the Haitian Penal Code basically says that you can't
6:40
Speaker 1: make someone a zombie, right that you'll be charged with
6:44
Speaker 1: attempted murder or murder if the person actually manages to
6:48
Speaker 1: get buried, even if they're not dead yet. For all
6:50
Speaker 1: intents and purposes, it's still considered murder under Haitian law,
6:53
Speaker 1: thank god. So okay, so Dr Davis gets past this
6:57
Speaker 1: um this belief that's mainly held by rural, uneducated, poor
7:02
Speaker 1: Haitians that the Bocore are um capable of sorcery and
7:08
Speaker 1: can steal your soul. What do they get out of this?
7:11
Speaker 1: That's what I could never pay because it is there
7:13
Speaker 1: some money on the back end or something. No, no,
7:15
Speaker 1: there's precisely no money involved, and it's not for any
7:19
Speaker 1: personal gain their status. No. What it is is there
7:22
Speaker 1: is a secret Haitian society called Bizango the Freemasons. No,
7:26
Speaker 1: they're not the Freemasons, but they might as well be. Basically,
7:29
Speaker 1: this is the group that de facto runs the country.
7:34
Speaker 1: Um supposedly, but I mean this is this is a
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Speaker 1: documented this is from Davis's research. Um so the Bizango, Uh,
7:42
Speaker 1: there are are not necessarily voodoo priests, but there are
7:45
Speaker 1: voodoo priests who are part of the Bizango. And zombification
7:49
Speaker 1: is only used in cases of punishment where a member
7:53
Speaker 1: of the Bizango, say a family member, has gone against
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Speaker 1: the will of his or her family or the will
8:01
Speaker 1: of the Bizango community as a whole. It's just a
8:04
Speaker 1: severe punishment. So you would have been zombified in our house, stuff,
8:08
Speaker 1: work works culture over and over and over again. And
8:12
Speaker 1: actually um uh Clarius. Clarius Narcis said that he was
8:18
Speaker 1: zombified because he at the behest of his brothers because
8:24
Speaker 1: he wouldn't go along and selling uh the family land
8:28
Speaker 1: with them. Another documented zombie named TM she's a woman.
8:33
Speaker 1: She said that she was zombified by her at the
8:36
Speaker 1: by the will of her family because she refused to
8:39
Speaker 1: marry the man they wanted her to marry and she
8:41
Speaker 1: had a baby by another man. So generally it's retaliation.
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Speaker 1: It's punishment for transgressions against Bizango Society or a person's
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Speaker 1: family who is a member that is a member of
8:52
Speaker 1: Bizango Society. It's gotta be a little money on the
8:54
Speaker 1: back end for the you would think so, But Davis
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Speaker 1: was adamant and his research that that's not the case,
9:00
Speaker 1: right right, So okay, so let's get to how you
9:02
Speaker 1: make somebody a zombie. Well, you've got the powder, right,
9:05
Speaker 1: you have the powder and magic powder. What what Davis
9:09
Speaker 1: found was that this powder he took I think eight
9:12
Speaker 1: samples and found that seven of them had some ingredients
9:17
Speaker 1: in common, right chuck, Yeah, I let me go with those. Yeah.
9:20
Speaker 1: You found the puffer fish, which contains a deadly neurotoxin
9:24
Speaker 1: called tetro dotoxin found a marine toad, which also has
9:29
Speaker 1: a bunch of toxins, numerous toxins. You don't want to
9:31
Speaker 1: lick this, I don't want to look that one. A
9:33
Speaker 1: highla tree frog, which secretes an irritating but not deadly substance. Uh,
9:39
Speaker 1: some human remains. We're in all of these. Those are
9:43
Speaker 1: the common ingredients. And then things like skin irritants. They
9:47
Speaker 1: figured like spiders and lizards ground up in there would
9:50
Speaker 1: irritate your skin, same with the highlight tree frog. So
9:54
Speaker 1: basically the reason you would want to have a skin
9:55
Speaker 1: irritant is because the zombie powder is traditionally apply on
10:00
Speaker 1: the skin, right exactly. So, so what happens is it's
10:05
Speaker 1: applied to the skin and it creates cracks and and
10:07
Speaker 1: breaks in the skin, and then it seeps in through
10:10
Speaker 1: there right um, and then it produces this zombified person. Basically,
10:17
Speaker 1: you you start to have trouble breathing, UM, don't respond
10:20
Speaker 1: to stimuli. Know, you become paralyzed. You have a glassy
10:23
Speaker 1: eyed stare, but you're you're you're still maintaining your normal
10:29
Speaker 1: mental state. You're still aware of what's going on. You
10:31
Speaker 1: just can't do anything right you start put in the
10:33
Speaker 1: rainbow exactly. You know, you're getting buried alive and having
10:35
Speaker 1: the sheet pulled over you. Right, That's actually what Narcis said.
10:39
Speaker 1: He said that he remembered um and saw the doctors
10:42
Speaker 1: pulling the sheet over his head after they pronounced him dead.
10:45
Speaker 1: That's what that felt like. How was that for you? He?
10:47
Speaker 1: I imagine it probably wasn't very good? Right, right? So yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: so you you know what's going on, you just can't
10:55
Speaker 1: you can't do anything about it. And this struck Davis
10:59
Speaker 1: um as particular, really interested because what is it? Check
11:02
Speaker 1: the tetro to toxin. Davis started researching and he found
11:06
Speaker 1: that in Japan, there's this stuff called fugu, right, which
11:09
Speaker 1: is a kind of sushi delicacy that's made from the
11:12
Speaker 1: puffer fish. It's very dangerous, but it apparently tastes like
11:16
Speaker 1: a twinkie, right yeah, um, a raw twinkie. Um. But
11:22
Speaker 1: if you if you make the cut wrong and too
11:24
Speaker 1: much of this tetro to toxin ends up in it,
11:27
Speaker 1: you get your poison. And the symptoms were virtually the
11:30
Speaker 1: same as what people who are zombified reported. Right, that's awesome.
11:36
Speaker 1: Should we trust our sushi chef? And I guess I
11:40
Speaker 1: imagine that with Fugu you get what you pay for.
11:42
Speaker 1: You don't want to cheap out with fo you want
11:44
Speaker 1: to go dollar sushi on the food. So that's step one.
11:46
Speaker 1: You administer the zombie powder and then the person uh
11:50
Speaker 1: is pronounced dead to bury them, then you go get them. Well,
11:54
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the the revelation moment. That's what makes
11:58
Speaker 1: the bokor look like they done their thing. Nice reference
12:02
Speaker 1: to our brainwatching podcast, thank you Yeah, and I love
12:06
Speaker 1: the back door there for the boc or if it
12:08
Speaker 1: doesn't work, there's a little loophole where he says that, um,
12:12
Speaker 1: if the procedure doesn't work, that divine intervention can always
12:16
Speaker 1: prevent this from happening, right, So anytime it doesn't work,
12:19
Speaker 1: that's his go to. Or if um, if the powder
12:22
Speaker 1: is prepared to kill too strongly. Right, so you've got
12:26
Speaker 1: somebody right exactly, it's like, well, hey, it didn't work
12:29
Speaker 1: this time. Uh. And Plus anyway, if once you've administering
12:32
Speaker 1: the zombie powder, I guess under a Haitian law, you're
12:35
Speaker 1: in for a penny, in for a pound anyway, right, Um,
12:38
Speaker 1: So that's step one, right, Chuck, You've zombified the person.
12:42
Speaker 1: Step two is to get to their grave within about
12:44
Speaker 1: eight hours and you exhume them. And when you do,
12:47
Speaker 1: you feed them something called a zombie cucumber. Was that
12:51
Speaker 1: the salt, No, you don't want to feed them salt
12:53
Speaker 1: that restores their senses. Right. The zombie cucumber is a
12:57
Speaker 1: combination of sweet potato and uma. That sounds nice, jimsum weed,
13:03
Speaker 1: which is one of the more hallucinogenic plants available to man.
13:07
Speaker 1: That sounds real nice. Yeah. So when you've got somebody
13:10
Speaker 1: who's already like half paralyzed and has been buried, that's
13:13
Speaker 1: a pretty traumatic experience, right, Chuck, I would imagine. Yeah,
13:16
Speaker 1: So the next step is to feed them a highly
13:19
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic concoction and watch them go. So that's step two
13:25
Speaker 1: of creating a zombie. What Davis came up with was
13:29
Speaker 1: that none of this would work, Chuck, unless you were
13:33
Speaker 1: in Haiti, because all of it had the social support
13:38
Speaker 1: for a belief that zombies can exist. So once once
13:41
Speaker 1: you've gone through this process, you're you're you know, you're
13:44
Speaker 1: not an American thinking about I'm a zombie. As Tracy
13:48
Speaker 1: Wilson put it in her how zombies work article that
13:51
Speaker 1: we're basing this on. She said, Um, you know, in
13:54
Speaker 1: another culture, if you have tetrated tetra to doxin, tetra
13:59
Speaker 1: to toxin poisoning, you're just a toxin poisoning victim. But
14:04
Speaker 1: in Haiti, because of this uh belief among some people
14:09
Speaker 1: that there is such things as zombies that supports the experience,
14:11
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, this person is spending X
14:14
Speaker 1: number of years is basically a zombie slave like snake handlers.
14:18
Speaker 1: Most people would think you're just a redneck that got
14:20
Speaker 1: picked by snake and they think that, you know, it
14:23
Speaker 1: was all divine, right. Yeah, that's actually very much the same.
14:27
Speaker 1: Nice one, Chuck, I just pulled that one out of
14:29
Speaker 1: my Ea. That was great, smells delicious. So a lot
14:33
Speaker 1: of people. Do you want to get to where people
14:35
Speaker 1: think Davis wasn't exactly on the level on all levels? Yeah,
14:38
Speaker 1: because it all sounded good until the article turned a
14:42
Speaker 1: little bit and said no, not quite. Well, yeah, it
14:44
Speaker 1: definitely depends on where you're coming from. But there's a
14:47
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of criticism for somebody like Davis who's saying, yeah,
14:51
Speaker 1: zombies exist, right, because one thing he did what you
14:54
Speaker 1: mentioned was dig up bodies or supervised the digging up
14:58
Speaker 1: what he was there at least there, and um, a
15:01
Speaker 1: lot of scientists didn't like that. No, I thought that
15:04
Speaker 1: kind of goes against the code of ethics somewhere across
15:06
Speaker 1: the boundary, and I think I might agree with that. Um.
15:10
Speaker 1: They also questioned the initial experiments with the powder and
15:13
Speaker 1: if they were scientific enough, because he practices on like
15:17
Speaker 1: monkeys and rats when he got back to the States, right, Yeah,
15:19
Speaker 1: he made zombie rats. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So they
15:22
Speaker 1: questioned the initial experiments. Um, they didn't know, like, you know,
15:26
Speaker 1: if he had added anything else to the powder. I
15:28
Speaker 1: guess he says he didn't, but they weren't there to
15:31
Speaker 1: witness that, so they questioned that what else. Um, Oh yeah,
15:36
Speaker 1: this one I found odd. They found samples contained no tetradotoxin. Yeah,
15:41
Speaker 1: and he said that you guys, are you putting it
15:43
Speaker 1: in some sort of solvent to to carry out these
15:46
Speaker 1: tests or you may have destroyed it? Um if he
15:49
Speaker 1: though maybe the I think one of the big Um.
15:53
Speaker 1: The big points about this in Davis's defense is that
15:56
Speaker 1: his reputation academically still very much attacked years after this. Yeah,
16:02
Speaker 1: I mean he he published two books on it. Uh.
16:05
Speaker 1: The Serpent in the Rainbow came out and he survived that.
16:08
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that made him look you know, really
16:11
Speaker 1: good among his academic peers. And this guy is still,
16:13
Speaker 1: you know, um doing more and more research. Is a
16:15
Speaker 1: National Geographic Explorer and residence, which, as you know, I
16:19
Speaker 1: think is one of the coolest things ever. Um. So
16:22
Speaker 1: his reputation still intact, and he's still a respected ethnobotanist
16:26
Speaker 1: and anthropologist. Um. Another point that people made their chuck
16:30
Speaker 1: was that a lot of these people, um, who were
16:33
Speaker 1: supposedly zombies, uh, were chalked up to mistaken identity cases
16:38
Speaker 1: of mental illness, kind of like Jerusalem syndrome. If you
16:41
Speaker 1: live in Jerusalem, you're gonna have a much higher tendency
16:44
Speaker 1: of believing that you're, you know, a reincarnated saint or
16:48
Speaker 1: profit in Detroit? Exactly, what are you gonna say, Denver? Okay, yeah,
16:54
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said Detroit. Though, are we moving on
16:56
Speaker 1: to Denver now? Maybe A yeah? Um Man, So, Chuck,
17:01
Speaker 1: that's the Haitian zombie, the real quote unquote real zombie.
17:04
Speaker 1: We should say, as far as I could turn up,
17:07
Speaker 1: there's no one who um satisfactorily debunked uh Clervius Narces' story.
17:15
Speaker 1: And also I should also say that, um, at no
17:18
Speaker 1: point did Davis say that these people were dead in
17:21
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form, or they were strictly poisoned
17:25
Speaker 1: by the specific toxin that brought them that lowered their
17:28
Speaker 1: vital signs. They were pronounced dead and then they were
17:30
Speaker 1: revived by uter and then believed that they were zombies,
17:36
Speaker 1: but that they were not dead and brought back to life.
17:38
Speaker 1: So those are real zombies. Let's do fake zombies. That started,
17:43
Speaker 1: not started, but very much kick started with George Romero's
17:47
Speaker 1: classic that we played earlier, Night of the Living Dead.
17:54
Speaker 1: Oh did you hear that? That was our That was
17:57
Speaker 1: our colleague Chris Palette. Did you the brains? I was
18:02
Speaker 1: going to do that, but I didn't. Apparently Jerry said
18:04
Speaker 1: Christ and nails it. So yeah, he does brains right,
18:08
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty good too, Chuck. Uh. Yeah, So Romero
18:12
Speaker 1: starts the whole thing off. Basically, he comes up with
18:16
Speaker 1: all the rules of the game, like we heard at
18:17
Speaker 1: the beginning of this podcast, right, Actually, Tracy did say
18:20
Speaker 1: that movies as early as nineteen nineteen had zombies, So
18:24
Speaker 1: save your fingers on the keyboard from typing in. No no, no.
18:28
Speaker 1: He wasn't the first, but he definitely brought it into
18:30
Speaker 1: the mainstream. Like and zombie movies forever after. We're based on,
18:35
Speaker 1: like you said, his world and his rules. Like for example,
18:38
Speaker 1: he was the one that said if you can get
18:42
Speaker 1: if you can destroy a zombie's brain or detach its
18:45
Speaker 1: brain from the rest of its body, that's it for
18:48
Speaker 1: the zombie. Everybody knows if you want to kill the zombie,
18:51
Speaker 1: you got to cut their head off basically, that's rome
18:53
Speaker 1: or blow their head off with you know, a gun.
18:56
Speaker 1: I should tell you that our colleague and sometimes standing
19:00
Speaker 1: producer Matt Frederick, got really excited when he found out
19:04
Speaker 1: we were doing a podcast on zomb He thinks that
19:07
Speaker 1: a Remington pump action shotgun is the best weapon to
19:11
Speaker 1: have against a zombie. I would say that in one
19:14
Speaker 1: hand in a Samurai sword and another would be pretty cool.
19:19
Speaker 1: You'd be doing well for yourself. I'm more a battle
19:21
Speaker 1: axe man myself. Although that we're gonna talk about the
19:24
Speaker 1: Canadian mathematician study. Eventually, we don't stand a chance if
19:28
Speaker 1: there's a real zombie attack. Dude, Well, it depends on
19:31
Speaker 1: what we do. Let's talk about that someone with Robert Smith. Oh, yeah,
19:36
Speaker 1: with a question mark name. That's right, Yeah, guy has
19:39
Speaker 1: a question mark at the end of his name. Robert
19:41
Speaker 1: Smith and one of his colleagues, both mathematicians at the
19:45
Speaker 1: University of Ottawa. They used um contagious disease models, yeah,
19:50
Speaker 1: pandemic models to study out the math of whether or
19:53
Speaker 1: not we could actually survive a zombie attack. Slow moving Yes.
19:56
Speaker 1: They specifically picked the classic slow moving zombie and they
20:00
Speaker 1: still found that unless humans strike fast, strike off, and
20:06
Speaker 1: and strike increasingly escalatingly. Um, we're in big trouble, right,
20:11
Speaker 1: so that you can't do the Oh geez, we gotta
20:14
Speaker 1: learn a humanitarian way to put these zombies down, Like
20:17
Speaker 1: District nine. You can't do it. You gotta go in.
20:19
Speaker 1: Don't even bother trying to figure out how to how
20:23
Speaker 1: to cure it. You just have to kill everybody you find. Um.
20:26
Speaker 1: And that that was another thing that Romero established with
20:29
Speaker 1: Nine of the Living Dead was that zombies beget zombies. Right.
20:33
Speaker 1: In his version, what happened was the zombie was somebody
20:36
Speaker 1: who was killed by zombie was brought back because of
20:39
Speaker 1: this radiation UH from a satellite that it returned to
20:42
Speaker 1: Earth that was causing the dead to rise in the
20:44
Speaker 1: first place. So if you were killed while that radiation
20:47
Speaker 1: was still around, you were inevitably going to come back.
20:51
Speaker 1: And also, did you know that George Romero got his
20:54
Speaker 1: start shooting segments for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I think I
20:58
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, he also established some other rules
21:02
Speaker 1: about their strength. They're very strong, but typically slow moving,
21:07
Speaker 1: although there have been a movie off shoots with the
21:09
Speaker 1: fast moving zombie. Of course it depends well for their
21:13
Speaker 1: faster slow well, it's like twenty eight days later. It's
21:16
Speaker 1: technically not a zombie movie because no one who is
21:20
Speaker 1: zombie is a zombie is actually dead. Now they're infected
21:23
Speaker 1: by that whatever that was, that disease. The infection. Yeah,
21:28
Speaker 1: I don't remember what it's called. But there were some
21:29
Speaker 1: other fast moving zombies I've seen in other movies. Resident
21:32
Speaker 1: Evil the game, they had some herky jerky, fast moving zombies.
21:36
Speaker 1: Right again, Matt Frederick thinks is the perfect zombie um motion.
21:42
Speaker 1: What herky jerky herky jerky whatever is in Resident Evil
21:45
Speaker 1: He's hip with because he said, that's where uh, the
21:48
Speaker 1: pump shotgun is the slow movers. Yeah, there are a
21:53
Speaker 1: lot more. They're more comforting. Yeah, but it was always
21:56
Speaker 1: funny to me to watch those movies and I think
21:59
Speaker 1: you're all faster than the zombies. How can you ever
22:02
Speaker 1: get criss but you get surrounded. That's what happened. Surrounded
22:06
Speaker 1: is the big problem. Are we going to get into that.
22:08
Speaker 1: How to avoid getting eaten by a zombie? Yeah? Okay,
22:13
Speaker 1: well we should. We should wrap up the rules first.
22:14
Speaker 1: They're not they're in pervious to pain. Yeah, Like you
22:17
Speaker 1: can hit him in the face of the baseball bat
22:19
Speaker 1: and they'll just keep lumbering forward. Um, so you really
22:23
Speaker 1: have to um cut their head off. You can cut
22:26
Speaker 1: their arm off and they'll walk with two one arm.
22:28
Speaker 1: They'll cut a leg off and they'll hop at you.
22:30
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, their arm will come at you all. Um.
22:34
Speaker 1: Return to the living dead, yeah or evil dead? Yes,
22:38
Speaker 1: to dead by dawn by dawn, will be by dawn,
22:42
Speaker 1: and they are driven to eat, relentlessly driven to eat.
22:45
Speaker 1: They're afraid of fire and light, so they'll come out
22:48
Speaker 1: at night. They want to eat your brain. That actually
22:52
Speaker 1: came later that largely Return to the Living Dead from
22:57
Speaker 1: where they actually have a zombie pinned down and it's
23:00
Speaker 1: just this woman's torso and arms and head and um
23:04
Speaker 1: this medical examiner, doctor um says, why do you eat humans?
23:08
Speaker 1: She goes, not humans brains. That's a clip you sent
23:12
Speaker 1: me today. Let's hear Pullett do it again. Nice? Thank
23:18
Speaker 1: you Pullette, so good. Um? Yeah, that was that clip
23:22
Speaker 1: I sent you. That isn't it? Yeah? Um? And what else, Chuck?
23:27
Speaker 1: Are there anymore? How are zombies created? In uh Romero's version,
23:33
Speaker 1: it was radiation from a sad over returning satellite and
23:36
Speaker 1: night of the comment It was a comment uh in
23:39
Speaker 1: twenty eight days later. If you want to consider that
23:41
Speaker 1: zombie movie and Resident Evil, it was a virus that
23:44
Speaker 1: was passed around. I love Night of a comment. By
23:46
Speaker 1: the way, I just want to go on record, yeah
23:48
Speaker 1: I love that movie. That was a good movie. Well
23:50
Speaker 1: it's it's off. It's very dated and kind of very
23:52
Speaker 1: awful eighties movie. But it was dated the second it
23:55
Speaker 1: came out. It was It was really for a thirteen
23:58
Speaker 1: year old, you know, watching be on a Saturday afternoon.
24:01
Speaker 1: It was pretty perfect. Did you have a crush on
24:02
Speaker 1: the younger sister too? I had a crush on both.
24:04
Speaker 1: A couple of hot cheerleader chicks it was nice. I learned.
24:09
Speaker 1: I learned a lot by watching that thing. But you did, Chuck,
24:12
Speaker 1: came of age to none of the comment they did. Alright,
24:15
Speaker 1: so find them, Yeah, I mean, Chuck. Let's say that, Um,
24:19
Speaker 1: Robert Smith, his prediction comes true. And by the way,
24:22
Speaker 1: we should say, their paper is called when Zombies Attack
24:25
Speaker 1: And there was an exclamation point. And Smith, he's big
24:28
Speaker 1: on punctuation. You now include an exclamation point at the
24:31
Speaker 1: end of your name and your email signature. I don't
24:33
Speaker 1: think that. So right, let's say we were getting attacked.
24:38
Speaker 1: Let's say Robert Smith's uh is right on the money.
24:43
Speaker 1: What what do we do? Well, first of all, you
24:46
Speaker 1: want to go to a place. If you're going to retreat,
24:49
Speaker 1: you want to retreat to a place that has plenty
24:51
Speaker 1: of supplies. Preferably one of those walmarts I don't know
24:55
Speaker 1: if they're still around or not that also sells guns
24:57
Speaker 1: and ammunition and groceries. She the superstore, supercenter, super death center. Um,
25:04
Speaker 1: you want one of those because you want to hold
25:06
Speaker 1: up in there. You can last as long as you
25:08
Speaker 1: need to. There's probably communications equipment in there. And again
25:13
Speaker 1: you've got guns, hose, machetes, anything, blood your favorite weapon.
25:19
Speaker 1: I told you a battle acts. Oh that was yours. Yeah,
25:22
Speaker 1: you don't have changed mind. What crossbow with those uh
25:26
Speaker 1: rambo exploding arrows. That would be sweet, That would be awesome. Wow.
25:30
Speaker 1: I would like to kill them before they even get
25:32
Speaker 1: close to me. Yeah, I think you'd be unsettling to
25:36
Speaker 1: to be face to face. So where are we were?
25:39
Speaker 1: We're in the Walmart or Costco or Target or wherever,
25:46
Speaker 1: and the zombies are attacking. Uh, you want to stay
25:50
Speaker 1: away from where there's people, So that would be a
25:52
Speaker 1: good place. Yeah. That was a really good point that
25:55
Speaker 1: Tracy made. That the the if you're in the minutes
25:57
Speaker 1: of a zombie epidemic, just like any other epidemic, it's
26:01
Speaker 1: going to spread more quickly and and have more casualties
26:05
Speaker 1: in a populated area. If you live in Manhattan, you
26:08
Speaker 1: probably want to get the heck to Long Island. I
26:10
Speaker 1: would say, I'm sure too sweet, But as anyone who's
26:13
Speaker 1: seen twenty days later knows, you still want to be
26:16
Speaker 1: on your guard, even out in the sticks. Yeah, the
26:19
Speaker 1: old cottage in the in the marsh, that's not a
26:22
Speaker 1: good place to go either, because they're gonna be waiting
26:24
Speaker 1: for you in the movie version. You want to barricade
26:28
Speaker 1: everything so Michael Jackson and his cohorts can't get in
26:32
Speaker 1: you like that? Um, you never, Actually, that's that's more
26:36
Speaker 1: applicable than ever, chuck. Uh. You want to not back
26:42
Speaker 1: yourself into a corner, because that's what we talked about.
26:44
Speaker 1: You always end up getting surrounded and just like a thriller,
26:47
Speaker 1: I believe she backed herself into a corner. Literally, yes,
26:50
Speaker 1: she did in that house, and then like walls came
26:53
Speaker 1: or hands came out of the wall. She is in trouble.
26:55
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd want to be inside at all,
26:57
Speaker 1: to come to think of it, I'd want to get
26:59
Speaker 1: my supplies and like go to the mountains. That's what
27:01
Speaker 1: i'd do, Like getting a tent. I don't know if
27:06
Speaker 1: a tent offers that much protection. You want to be
27:07
Speaker 1: able to barricade, well, I would just want to be
27:10
Speaker 1: in the open so I could run. I would never
27:12
Speaker 1: want a wall around me anywhere. That's just how I
27:15
Speaker 1: do it. That's how I party. Give us some worm,
27:18
Speaker 1: that's how you party with zombie death. Well, Tracy said,
27:21
Speaker 1: wait for rescue and make long term preparations for your survival.
27:25
Speaker 1: I guess so but what if you want to fight
27:27
Speaker 1: the zombies. I think you can do both at the
27:29
Speaker 1: same time. Hers just kind of a run and hide mentality.
27:32
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, I think Tracy would be good to
27:35
Speaker 1: have on your team. It would be good to have
27:37
Speaker 1: somebody like us arm with battle axes, crossbows, pump action shotguns.
27:42
Speaker 1: But then have Tracy, you know, maybe behind the semicircle
27:46
Speaker 1: thinking about what we need to be doing a year
27:48
Speaker 1: from now. Maybe mix it all together, because you don't
27:51
Speaker 1: want just you know, bone headed, you know thick mc
27:56
Speaker 1: rock skulls, you know you're hie. Yeah. During the making
28:01
Speaker 1: of Zombie Land when he blamed remember he attacked those photographers,
28:06
Speaker 1: He got all in trouble because he attacked some photographers
28:09
Speaker 1: and his excuse was that he was playing a zombie
28:12
Speaker 1: hunter in this movie that I think it was actually
28:15
Speaker 1: shot in Atlanta called Zombie Land, And he told the
28:18
Speaker 1: judge that he was so caught up in that character
28:20
Speaker 1: and so in characters a zombie hunter, that he reacted
28:23
Speaker 1: to aggressively to the photographers who followed them around like zombies.
28:27
Speaker 1: I guess that man is a pro yeah joint and
28:33
Speaker 1: got off scot free. Probably probably at least he didn't
28:36
Speaker 1: play Bongo s naked or anything like that. Yeah. Who
28:39
Speaker 1: was at McConaughey. Yeah, nice, didn't you hang out with him? Yeah?
28:42
Speaker 1: It's actually speaking of a zombie land. I just saw
28:47
Speaker 1: today where um, the director of that film was gonna
28:50
Speaker 1: have Patrick Swayze play a Swazi zombie like as himself
28:56
Speaker 1: come back from the dead Swayze zombie. Originally it was
28:59
Speaker 1: written into this script and this was before he got
29:01
Speaker 1: sick or anything. Okay, so obviously no, no, no, I
29:05
Speaker 1: mean the movie is just coming out, so this is
29:06
Speaker 1: a while ago. And then he got sick. He contacted
29:08
Speaker 1: him and everything, and he had fallen ill and couldn't
29:11
Speaker 1: do it. And I think he got some other big
29:14
Speaker 1: star to do it, and they're trying to keep that
29:15
Speaker 1: a secret or something. Who is it? I don't know this.
29:19
Speaker 1: I tried to find out. I couldn't. When's it come out?
29:21
Speaker 1: I don't know. Soon. I saw the preview the other day,
29:23
Speaker 1: so soon, okay, um, chuck. Basically, there's some pretty common
29:28
Speaker 1: sense things you want to avoid an a zombie attack,
29:30
Speaker 1: like don't lock yourself in a car that you don't
29:32
Speaker 1: have keys to. Um, we'll call these movie things. This
29:38
Speaker 1: is what always happens movie things. Yeah, and the movie
29:40
Speaker 1: they get in they don't have the key, and then
29:42
Speaker 1: you're thinking, why did you get in the car if
29:43
Speaker 1: you didn't have a key? Right? You don't want to
29:45
Speaker 1: leave any any implements that a zombie could use as
29:49
Speaker 1: a weapon out for them to find and pick up. Yeah,
29:52
Speaker 1: because they can use basic weapons only. Do not give
29:55
Speaker 1: a weapon to an hysterical person. You have no idea
29:59
Speaker 1: what they're going to do. At the very least, they're
30:01
Speaker 1: not going to use it properly, and you'll end up
30:04
Speaker 1: really regretting that. Um. There's other stuff, you know, like
30:07
Speaker 1: getting into an elevator and a building infestive with zombies. Um,
30:12
Speaker 1: you don't want to go on a retreat to like
30:14
Speaker 1: a seller or something without taking supplies with you. God
30:18
Speaker 1: knows how long you're gonna be down there. I got one.
30:20
Speaker 1: How about you fight the sudden urge to make out
30:22
Speaker 1: with a zombie? Yeah, that's probably a good thing to do.
30:25
Speaker 1: Sure that happened in a Night of Living Dead, wasn't
30:27
Speaker 1: it really? Yeah? The girl was like jihnny oh yeah yeah,
30:31
Speaker 1: and he was like yeah, so that happens sometimes. Um, chuck,
30:38
Speaker 1: let me talk about one of my favorite zombies re Animator.
30:42
Speaker 1: Did you see it? You know that was a Lovecraft
30:45
Speaker 1: story based on clas classic film. Yeah. Um, and you
30:49
Speaker 1: remember the guy decapitates uh, either as mentor or the
30:53
Speaker 1: dean of the school, I can't remember, Herbert Weston. He
30:56
Speaker 1: decapitates him with a shovel and he's like, awesome, I've
30:58
Speaker 1: got another specimen to work on. And he uses the
31:02
Speaker 1: serum to reanimate both the head and the body, which
31:05
Speaker 1: is highly unusual because in most zombie films, once the
31:09
Speaker 1: heads attached from the body, that's it. But he was
31:12
Speaker 1: reanimating it after it was detached. So hence that's how
31:16
Speaker 1: you break the rules. Okay, you know there were sequels
31:19
Speaker 1: to that too, I think there were. But do you
31:21
Speaker 1: know what's particularly unsettling about Reanimator that there's actual research
31:26
Speaker 1: into that very stuff going on right now into human
31:30
Speaker 1: reanimation Max Plank Institute. I was reading an article, um
31:34
Speaker 1: that was linked from a crack blog post. You love
31:38
Speaker 1: that website, I do. It's great, um, and it was
31:42
Speaker 1: it was I think from two thousand and they're like,
31:45
Speaker 1: we're getting close. Actually we found out that you know, um,
31:48
Speaker 1: it's not cardiac arrest your brain doesn't die as a
31:52
Speaker 1: result of cardiac arrest like we thought. Instead, we destroy
31:57
Speaker 1: it when we try to reanimate it. So now we're
31:59
Speaker 1: trying to be a little more anil And actually we've
32:01
Speaker 1: gotten a brain to kind of function after it's been
32:03
Speaker 1: dead for an hour. We didn't get the whole organism reanimated,
32:06
Speaker 1: but we're working on it. And I just went and
32:10
Speaker 1: that was what kind of makes sense? You know that,
32:13
Speaker 1: like the was it Futurama that had the different heads
32:15
Speaker 1: in the jars and they could actually still talking everything. Yeah,
32:19
Speaker 1: I mean from the neck down, it's really not a
32:22
Speaker 1: lot going on. Besides, you know, organ function and moving.
32:26
Speaker 1: If you could find a way to wire the brain
32:28
Speaker 1: up and keep it from decaying, you keep partying, man, Yeah,
32:33
Speaker 1: keep on trucking. Well, let's see. If you want to
32:36
Speaker 1: keep on trucking with zombies, you can go read the
32:39
Speaker 1: article written by or Steam colleague Tracy Wilson, who knows
32:43
Speaker 1: a lot about zombies, probably more than you should know.
32:45
Speaker 1: It's a good one. You can type in zombies in
32:48
Speaker 1: the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com,
32:50
Speaker 1: which means it's it's time for listener mail. Yes, the
32:57
Speaker 1: return of listener mail. Uh, Josh, I gonna all this
33:01
Speaker 1: listener mail from the dude in the band, okay that
33:05
Speaker 1: you know about? Hey there, Chuck and Josh and Jerry.
33:09
Speaker 1: I'm riding on behalf of my band. Were an indie
33:11
Speaker 1: rock and roll band from Eagle Rock, Glendale, California, which
33:14
Speaker 1: is where I used to live. We've been lucky enough
33:17
Speaker 1: on our tour for a good chunk of the year
33:19
Speaker 1: to be on tour for a good chunk of the
33:20
Speaker 1: year opening for bigger acts. While on tour, we constantly
33:24
Speaker 1: fight over who gets control. The CD player in the
33:26
Speaker 1: van gets nasty sometimes, and we frequently run in opposite
33:30
Speaker 1: directions to our trusty iPods. It's pathetic, five guys in
33:33
Speaker 1: a smelly van, each on our own little world, not talking,
33:36
Speaker 1: tired and cranky. I quickly learned to resent touring and
33:40
Speaker 1: the forty five minutes on stage wasn't worth the hours
33:42
Speaker 1: of driving and sleeping in dumpy motels and on couches.
33:46
Speaker 1: So they were not having a good run of it. Sadly,
33:49
Speaker 1: I like this Uh. I like this exposition right Uh. Well,
33:54
Speaker 1: as we were headed back on the road, our old
33:56
Speaker 1: bassis sent us off with a spindle of stuff you
33:58
Speaker 1: should know podcasts were into a CD. They were reluctant
34:01
Speaker 1: at first to throw it into the CD player, but
34:04
Speaker 1: find ourselves intrigued by how cannibalism works, that our body farms.
34:10
Speaker 1: That'd saould be a good name in for indie rockers.
34:13
Speaker 1: It was one of the first episodes we listened to.
34:15
Speaker 1: We were hooked. After that, the iPods went away, the
34:18
Speaker 1: band started talking more in the van. Uh. The podcast
34:21
Speaker 1: ignited debates. We joked about our favorite lucid dreams, cringed
34:25
Speaker 1: at the image of a dog eating its owner's face,
34:28
Speaker 1: drooled at the thought of a banana cream twinkie. I
34:30
Speaker 1: also panic because my girlfriend recently dyed her hair red.
34:34
Speaker 1: So he just wanted to say thanks for bringing the
34:36
Speaker 1: spark back in their touring. They listened to twenty hours
34:39
Speaker 1: of the show driving through Kansas in Montana and uh,
34:43
Speaker 1: we've been all around the country with them, And they
34:45
Speaker 1: burned another c D for the next upcoming tour. Did
34:48
Speaker 1: you just have a stroke a second again? So they're
34:52
Speaker 1: playing here in Atlanta actually soon. The Henry Clay people, right,
34:56
Speaker 1: the Henry Clay People's name of the band, and they
34:58
Speaker 1: are actually awesome. Yeah, and you have their in their music, right. Yeah,
35:03
Speaker 1: they're great. I like it a lot, and we get
35:05
Speaker 1: people a bit sending their band stuff sometimes and it's
35:07
Speaker 1: not very good. Are we gonna go? I'm gonna go.
35:09
Speaker 1: I wrote him back and he still has not responded,
35:12
Speaker 1: so maybe he's on tour and can't get to put
35:14
Speaker 1: me down for a plus one, Jerry, you're going, all right? Yeah,
35:17
Speaker 1: we're gonna be there at the Variety of Playhouse in
35:19
Speaker 1: Atlanta October seven, rocking out to the Henry Flay people.
35:22
Speaker 1: Nice opening up for Airborne Toxic event. Yeah, which is
35:25
Speaker 1: a big tour for Henry lay people. That's good for them. Yes,
35:28
Speaker 1: it's good rock and roll, raucous rock and roll. You
35:31
Speaker 1: know it's funny? Is That's exactly what Chuck said in
35:33
Speaker 1: the email to me and Jerry when he's like, I
35:35
Speaker 1: like these guys, raucous rock and roll. It's good. It's
35:37
Speaker 1: like good drinking music, like Early Stones or something. Right on,
35:41
Speaker 1: let's go October seven? All right, Well, if you want
35:45
Speaker 1: to see if you can entice Chuck, Jerry and I
35:47
Speaker 1: to come out to see whatever, or if we left
35:50
Speaker 1: out your favorite zombie movie, which we inevitably have, you
35:54
Speaker 1: can send an email inviting us and or chastising us
35:57
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast how stuff works dot Com. For more
36:08
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36:10
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36:14
Speaker 1: our blogs on the house stuff works dot Com home page.
36:17
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