Skeptic Check: Zombies Aren't Real

Published: Jan. 13, 2014, 8 a.m.

b'Zombies are making a killing in popular culture. But where did the idea behind these mythical, cerebrum-supping nasties come from? Discover why they may be a hard-wired inheritance from our Pleistocene past.\\nAlso, how a whimsical mathematical model of a Zombie apocalypse can help us withstand earthquakes and disease outbreaks, and how the rabies virus contributed to zombie mythology.\\nPlus, new ideas for how doctors should respond when humans are in a limbo state between life and death: no pulse, but their brains continue to hum.\\nMeet the songwriter who has zombies on the brain \\u2026. and we chase spaced-out animated corpses in the annual Run-For-Your-Lives foot race.\\nGuests:\\n\\n\\nGuy P. Harrison \\u2013 Science writer and author of 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True\\n\\n\\n\\nJonathan Coulton \\u2013 Singer and songwriter\\n\\n\\nRobert Smith? \\u2013 Mathematician and epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa, in Canada\\n\\n\\nDick Teresi \\u2013 Science writer and author of The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers\\u2014How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death\\n\\n\\n\\nBill Wasik and Monica Murphy \\u2013 - Respectively Senior Editor at Wired Magazine and veterinarian, and the co-authors of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World\\u2019s Most Diabolical Virus\\n\\n\\nDescripci\\xf3n en espa\\xf1ol\\nFirst released November 12, 2012\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'