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