Do zombies really exist?

abandoned ship. They must have thought somebody was in there. We heard him making all kinds of noise. We came over and beat them off, blasted them down. Chief. If I were surrounded by sixth raight of these things, would I stand a chance with him? Well, there's no problem. If you had a gun, shoot him in the head. That's a sure way to kill him. If you don't get yourself a club, retorch beat him or burn them,

they go up pretty easy. Well, Chief McLelland how long do you think it will take you until you get the situation under control? Well that's pretty hard to say. We don't know how many of them are. Are we know when we find them we can kill them. Are they slow moving? Chief? Yeah? They're dead up and with that, Mr George A. Romero pretty much set the scene for all zombie movies to follow. Thanks for tuning in. This is stuff you should know. I'm Josh Clark. This is

Charles W. Brain Eater, brilliant, Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks, Chuck. Somebody had to say it, right, yes, So how are you doing? Try to get one of the zombies to say it, that'd be pretty cool. I'm still wet. It's still raining in Atlanta. Good lord, I feel like we have remember that picture of the super cell I printed out for the webcast, I feel like one of those hovering picture in your wallet with you and show it

to people like kid, did you know that? In I believe Ecuador, um once a year there's a heavy storm and after about two hours of storm subsides and everybody goes out and there's fish, dead fish laying everywhere, well some still alive. The rain of fishes. The weird thing is that they aren't found in any surrounding body of water, nor are they saltwater fish. They are blind, underground dwellers zombie fish. Well, yeah, let's use that as their segue. Cool, Chuck,

let's talk zombies. Alrighty, let's let's go with the real stuff first. Did you know that there maybe such a thing as real zombie? Yeah? I didn't know till I read this. And where are you gonna go? If you want to find a real zombie? You go to the source, man, you go to the horse's mouth, you go to Haiti? Yes? Is that that was Serpent the Rainbow? Right? Yeah? It was West Craven Flick mid High School for me, very

scary Bill Pullman. Yeah. And the weird thing is is you know Wes Craven is not known for making um movies based on true stories, but that one was. So it's one of my heroes. The ethnobotanist and anthropologist Dr Wade Davis, who is Harvard grad. I think he has a doctorate and two uh bachelor's from Harvard to more than me. Yeah, and um he went down to Haiti in the early nineteen eighties for what was called the Zombie Project. Yes, because of a certain certain man drew

his attention. Right, how do you pronounce that, Claire Clarvius Narcies, Yeah, that's how I pronounced it. Yeah. He started poking his head around in nineteen eighty in a Haitian village and said, hey, I died eighteen years ago. Yep, and uh. Apparently his the similarity to UM his his original self. Uh, and the facts that he knew about his former life passed a battery of test questions. Yeah, that was enough to

make the make his friends family. I guess the estimates about two people who saw him say that guy's a zombie and I claimed a bocor brought him back to life or brought him back to the undead state. Right, Chuck so Clarvie shows up in night he had been. The thing that makes him significant is that he had been pronounced dead by American doctors, who apparently carry more weight in the field of medicine and science. It was

documented that yeah, they documented his death. Um. So when he showed up in nineteen eighty, he presented a substantial case for the existence of zombies UM and a guy named Dr Lamarck du Wan, who's a Haitian psychiatrist, interviewed him, started interviewing boucour Um and got his hands on some zombie powders right, and then entered Dr Wade Davis. Right. Now, he wasn't the guy the originally said to go get

these powders, right now, That was Nathan Klein, right. He wanted some of these powders to see if they could be used as anesthetics and surgery. Yeah, which I don't get that. Why not just use anesthetic unless I guess he found some like cheaper, safer maybe anesthetics. Well, I mean, if you come up with your own anesthetic, can imagine there's some dollar amount attached to that. So let's talk

about this. He sends Dr Davis down to Haiti, and Dr Davis kind of takes up where Dr do wan Um left off, or maybe kind of takes over his research. And uh, he himself interviews Boucore, which are again those voodoo priests, and uh, interviews some of the zombies, some of these undead people, right, so they said yeah, um, and he uh, he comes to find that he concludes that there is in fact such a thing as zombies. They're specific to Haiti though as far as he can tell.

And it's it's a two step process, chuck. Uh. And how to make someone a zombie, Well, first to have to die, I would think, no, or is that a three step process? I thought zombies had to be dead. First, we're talking Haitian zombies. We'll get to the Hollywood zombie soon. Okay, Well, the bocar has to capture their their soul with that tibon age. Is that I suppose it's French? Right, Yeah, that's apparently part of the soul directly connected to the individual,

and once he steal captures that, they are a zombie. Right. That's that's Haitian folklore. Dr Davis, being a scientist, tried to get beyond that. He found that most Haitians, most educated Haitians, we should say, uh in those who live in the city don't tend to believe in zombieism, even

those part of law it is. There's interesting what back to eight thirty five, right yeah, Audicle two full six of the Haitian Penal Code basically says that you can't make someone a zombie, right that you'll be charged with attempted murder or murder if the person actually manages to get buried, even if they're not dead yet. For all intents and purposes, it's still considered murder under Haitian law,

thank god. So okay, so Dr Davis gets past this um this belief that's mainly held by rural, uneducated, poor Haitians that the Bocore are um capable of sorcery and can steal your soul. What do they get out of this? That's what I could never pay because it is there some money on the back end or something. No, no, there's precisely no money involved, and it's not for any personal gain their status. No. What it is is there is a secret Haitian society called Bizango the Freemasons. No,

they're not the Freemasons, but they might as well be. Basically, this is the group that de facto runs the country. Um supposedly, but I mean this is this is a documented this is from Davis's research. Um so the Bizango, Uh, there are are not necessarily voodoo priests, but there are voodoo priests who are part of the Bizango. And zombification is only used in cases of punishment where a member of the Bizango, say a family member, has gone against the will of his or her family or the will

of the Bizango community as a whole. It's just a severe punishment. So you would have been zombified in our house, stuff, work works culture over and over and over again. And actually um uh Clarius. Clarius Narcis said that he was zombified because he at the behest of his brothers because he wouldn't go along and selling uh the family land with them. Another documented zombie named TM she's a woman.

She said that she was zombified by her at the by the will of her family because she refused to marry the man they wanted her to marry and she had a baby by another man. So generally it's retaliation. It's punishment for transgressions against Bizango Society or a person's family who is a member that is a member of

Bizango Society. It's gotta be a little money on the back end for the you would think so, But Davis was adamant and his research that that's not the case, right right, So okay, so let's get to how you make somebody a zombie. Well, you've got the powder, right, you have the powder and magic powder. What what Davis found was that this powder he took I think eight samples and found that seven of them had some ingredients in common, right chuck, Yeah, I let me go with those. Yeah.

You found the puffer fish, which contains a deadly neurotoxin called tetro dotoxin found a marine toad, which also has a bunch of toxins, numerous toxins. You don't want to lick this, I don't want to look that one. A highla tree frog, which secretes an irritating but not deadly substance. Uh, some human remains. We're in all of these. Those are the common ingredients. And then things like skin irritants. They figured like spiders and lizards ground up in there would

irritate your skin, same with the highlight tree frog. So basically the reason you would want to have a skin irritant is because the zombie powder is traditionally apply on the skin, right exactly. So, so what happens is it's applied to the skin and it creates cracks and and breaks in the skin, and then it seeps in through there right um, and then it produces this zombified person. Basically, you you start to have trouble breathing, UM, don't respond

to stimuli. Know, you become paralyzed. You have a glassy eyed stare, but you're you're you're still maintaining your normal mental state. You're still aware of what's going on. You just can't do anything right you start put in the rainbow exactly. You know, you're getting buried alive and having the sheet pulled over you. Right, That's actually what Narcis said. He said that he remembered um and saw the doctors pulling the sheet over his head after they pronounced him dead.

That's what that felt like. How was that for you? He? I imagine it probably wasn't very good? Right, right? So yeah, so you you know what's going on, you just can't you can't do anything about it. And this struck Davis um as particular, really interested because what is it? Check the tetro to toxin. Davis started researching and he found that in Japan, there's this stuff called fugu, right, which is a kind of sushi delicacy that's made from the

puffer fish. It's very dangerous, but it apparently tastes like a twinkie, right yeah, um, a raw twinkie. Um. But if you if you make the cut wrong and too much of this tetro to toxin ends up in it, you get your poison. And the symptoms were virtually the same as what people who are zombified reported. Right, that's awesome. Should we trust our sushi chef? And I guess I imagine that with Fugu you get what you pay for. You don't want to cheap out with fo you want

to go dollar sushi on the food. So that's step one. You administer the zombie powder and then the person uh is pronounced dead to bury them, then you go get them. Well, that's that's that's the the revelation moment. That's what makes

the bokor look like they done their thing. Nice reference to our brainwatching podcast, thank you Yeah, and I love the back door there for the boc or if it doesn't work, there's a little loophole where he says that, um, if the procedure doesn't work, that divine intervention can always prevent this from happening, right, So anytime it doesn't work, that's his go to. Or if um, if the powder

is prepared to kill too strongly. Right, so you've got somebody right exactly, it's like, well, hey, it didn't work this time. Uh. And Plus anyway, if once you've administering the zombie powder, I guess under a Haitian law, you're in for a penny, in for a pound anyway, right, Um, So that's step one, right, Chuck, You've zombified the person. Step two is to get to their grave within about eight hours and you exhume them. And when you do,

you feed them something called a zombie cucumber. Was that the salt, No, you don't want to feed them salt that restores their senses. Right. The zombie cucumber is a combination of sweet potato and uma. That sounds nice, jimsum weed, which is one of the more hallucinogenic plants available to man. That sounds real nice. Yeah. So when you've got somebody who's already like half paralyzed and has been buried, that's

a pretty traumatic experience, right, Chuck, I would imagine. Yeah, So the next step is to feed them a highly hallucinogenic concoction and watch them go. So that's step two of creating a zombie. What Davis came up with was that none of this would work, Chuck, unless you were in Haiti, because all of it had the social support for a belief that zombies can exist. So once once you've gone through this process, you're you're you know, you're

not an American thinking about I'm a zombie. As Tracy Wilson put it in her how zombies work article that we're basing this on. She said, Um, you know, in another culture, if you have tetrated tetra to doxin, tetra

to toxin poisoning, you're just a toxin poisoning victim. But in Haiti, because of this uh belief among some people that there is such things as zombies that supports the experience, and all of a sudden, this person is spending X number of years is basically a zombie slave like snake handlers. Most people would think you're just a redneck that got picked by snake and they think that, you know, it was all divine, right. Yeah, that's actually very much the same.

Nice one, Chuck, I just pulled that one out of my Ea. That was great, smells delicious. So a lot of people. Do you want to get to where people think Davis wasn't exactly on the level on all levels? Yeah, because it all sounded good until the article turned a little bit and said no, not quite. Well, yeah, it

definitely depends on where you're coming from. But there's a tremendous amount of criticism for somebody like Davis who's saying, yeah, zombies exist, right, because one thing he did what you mentioned was dig up bodies or supervised the digging up what he was there at least there, and um, a lot of scientists didn't like that. No, I thought that kind of goes against the code of ethics somewhere across

the boundary, and I think I might agree with that. Um. They also questioned the initial experiments with the powder and if they were scientific enough, because he practices on like monkeys and rats when he got back to the States, right, Yeah, he made zombie rats. Yeah, that's pretty cool. So they questioned the initial experiments. Um, they didn't know, like, you know, if he had added anything else to the powder. I guess he says he didn't, but they weren't there to

witness that, so they questioned that what else. Um, Oh yeah, this one I found odd. They found samples contained no tetradotoxin. Yeah, and he said that you guys, are you putting it in some sort of solvent to to carry out these tests or you may have destroyed it? Um if he though maybe the I think one of the big Um. The big points about this in Davis's defense is that his reputation academically still very much attacked years after this. Yeah,

I mean he he published two books on it. Uh. The Serpent in the Rainbow came out and he survived that. I can't imagine that made him look you know, really good among his academic peers. And this guy is still, you know, um doing more and more research. Is a National Geographic Explorer and residence, which, as you know, I think is one of the coolest things ever. Um. So his reputation still intact, and he's still a respected ethnobotanist

and anthropologist. Um. Another point that people made their chuck was that a lot of these people, um, who were supposedly zombies, uh, were chalked up to mistaken identity cases of mental illness, kind of like Jerusalem syndrome. If you live in Jerusalem, you're gonna have a much higher tendency of believing that you're, you know, a reincarnated saint or profit in Detroit? Exactly, what are you gonna say, Denver? Okay, yeah, I'm glad you said Detroit. Though, are we moving on

to Denver now? Maybe A yeah? Um Man, So, Chuck, that's the Haitian zombie, the real quote unquote real zombie. We should say, as far as I could turn up, there's no one who um satisfactorily debunked uh Clervius Narces' story. And also I should also say that, um, at no point did Davis say that these people were dead in any way, shape or form, or they were strictly poisoned by the specific toxin that brought them that lowered their

vital signs. They were pronounced dead and then they were revived by uter and then believed that they were zombies, but that they were not dead and brought back to life. So those are real zombies. Let's do fake zombies. That started, not started, but very much kick started with George Romero's classic that we played earlier, Night of the Living Dead. Oh did you hear that? That was our That was our colleague Chris Palette. Did you the brains? I was

going to do that, but I didn't. Apparently Jerry said Christ and nails it. So yeah, he does brains right, That's that's pretty good too, Chuck. Uh. Yeah, So Romero starts the whole thing off. Basically, he comes up with all the rules of the game, like we heard at the beginning of this podcast, right, Actually, Tracy did say that movies as early as nineteen nineteen had zombies, So save your fingers on the keyboard from typing in. No no, no. He wasn't the first, but he definitely brought it into

the mainstream. Like and zombie movies forever after. We're based on, like you said, his world and his rules. Like for example, he was the one that said if you can get if you can destroy a zombie's brain or detach its brain from the rest of its body, that's it for the zombie. Everybody knows if you want to kill the zombie, you got to cut their head off basically, that's rome or blow their head off with you know, a gun.

I should tell you that our colleague and sometimes standing producer Matt Frederick, got really excited when he found out we were doing a podcast on zomb He thinks that a Remington pump action shotgun is the best weapon to have against a zombie. I would say that in one hand in a Samurai sword and another would be pretty cool. You'd be doing well for yourself. I'm more a battle axe man myself. Although that we're gonna talk about the

Canadian mathematician study. Eventually, we don't stand a chance if there's a real zombie attack. Dude, Well, it depends on what we do. Let's talk about that someone with Robert Smith. Oh, yeah, with a question mark name. That's right, Yeah, guy has a question mark at the end of his name. Robert Smith and one of his colleagues, both mathematicians at the University of Ottawa. They used um contagious disease models, yeah, pandemic models to study out the math of whether or

not we could actually survive a zombie attack. Slow moving Yes. They specifically picked the classic slow moving zombie and they still found that unless humans strike fast, strike off, and and strike increasingly escalatingly. Um, we're in big trouble, right, so that you can't do the Oh geez, we gotta learn a humanitarian way to put these zombies down, Like District nine. You can't do it. You gotta go in. Don't even bother trying to figure out how to how

to cure it. You just have to kill everybody you find. Um. And that that was another thing that Romero established with Nine of the Living Dead was that zombies beget zombies. Right. In his version, what happened was the zombie was somebody who was killed by zombie was brought back because of this radiation UH from a satellite that it returned to Earth that was causing the dead to rise in the

first place. So if you were killed while that radiation was still around, you were inevitably going to come back. And also, did you know that George Romero got his start shooting segments for Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I think I didn't know that. Yeah, he also established some other rules about their strength. They're very strong, but typically slow moving, although there have been a movie off shoots with the fast moving zombie. Of course it depends well for their

faster slow well, it's like twenty eight days later. It's technically not a zombie movie because no one who is zombie is a zombie is actually dead. Now they're infected by that whatever that was, that disease. The infection. Yeah, I don't remember what it's called. But there were some other fast moving zombies I've seen in other movies. Resident Evil the game, they had some herky jerky, fast moving zombies. Right again, Matt Frederick thinks is the perfect zombie um motion.

What herky jerky herky jerky whatever is in Resident Evil He's hip with because he said, that's where uh, the pump shotgun is the slow movers. Yeah, there are a lot more. They're more comforting. Yeah, but it was always funny to me to watch those movies and I think you're all faster than the zombies. How can you ever get criss but you get surrounded. That's what happened. Surrounded is the big problem. Are we going to get into that. How to avoid getting eaten by a zombie? Yeah? Okay,

well we should. We should wrap up the rules first. They're not they're in pervious to pain. Yeah, Like you can hit him in the face of the baseball bat and they'll just keep lumbering forward. Um, so you really have to um cut their head off. You can cut their arm off and they'll walk with two one arm. They'll cut a leg off and they'll hop at you. Oh yeah, their arm will come at you all. Um.

Return to the living dead, yeah or evil dead? Yes, to dead by dawn by dawn, will be by dawn, and they are driven to eat, relentlessly driven to eat. They're afraid of fire and light, so they'll come out at night. They want to eat your brain. That actually came later that largely Return to the Living Dead from where they actually have a zombie pinned down and it's just this woman's torso and arms and head and um this medical examiner, doctor um says, why do you eat humans?

She goes, not humans brains. That's a clip you sent me today. Let's hear Pullett do it again. Nice? Thank you Pullette, so good. Um? Yeah, that was that clip I sent you. That isn't it? Yeah? Um? And what else, Chuck? Are there anymore? How are zombies created? In uh Romero's version, it was radiation from a sad over returning satellite and night of the comment It was a comment uh in twenty eight days later. If you want to consider that zombie movie and Resident Evil, it was a virus that

was passed around. I love Night of a comment. By the way, I just want to go on record, yeah I love that movie. That was a good movie. Well it's it's off. It's very dated and kind of very awful eighties movie. But it was dated the second it came out. It was It was really for a thirteen year old, you know, watching be on a Saturday afternoon. It was pretty perfect. Did you have a crush on the younger sister too? I had a crush on both. A couple of hot cheerleader chicks it was nice. I learned.

I learned a lot by watching that thing. But you did, Chuck, came of age to none of the comment they did. Alright, so find them, Yeah, I mean, Chuck. Let's say that, Um, Robert Smith, his prediction comes true. And by the way, we should say, their paper is called when Zombies Attack And there was an exclamation point. And Smith, he's big on punctuation. You now include an exclamation point at the end of your name and your email signature. I don't

think that. So right, let's say we were getting attacked. Let's say Robert Smith's uh is right on the money. What what do we do? Well, first of all, you want to go to a place. If you're going to retreat, you want to retreat to a place that has plenty of supplies. Preferably one of those walmarts I don't know if they're still around or not that also sells guns and ammunition and groceries. She the superstore, supercenter, super death center. Um, you want one of those because you want to hold

up in there. You can last as long as you need to. There's probably communications equipment in there. And again you've got guns, hose, machetes, anything, blood your favorite weapon. I told you a battle acts. Oh that was yours. Yeah, you don't have changed mind. What crossbow with those uh rambo exploding arrows. That would be sweet, That would be awesome. Wow. I would like to kill them before they even get close to me. Yeah, I think you'd be unsettling to

to be face to face. So where are we were? We're in the Walmart or Costco or Target or wherever, and the zombies are attacking. Uh, you want to stay away from where there's people, So that would be a good place. Yeah. That was a really good point that Tracy made. That the the if you're in the minutes of a zombie epidemic, just like any other epidemic, it's going to spread more quickly and and have more casualties in a populated area. If you live in Manhattan, you

probably want to get the heck to Long Island. I would say, I'm sure too sweet, But as anyone who's seen twenty days later knows, you still want to be on your guard, even out in the sticks. Yeah, the old cottage in the in the marsh, that's not a good place to go either, because they're gonna be waiting for you in the movie version. You want to barricade everything so Michael Jackson and his cohorts can't get in you like that? Um, you never, Actually, that's that's more

applicable than ever, chuck. Uh. You want to not back yourself into a corner, because that's what we talked about. You always end up getting surrounded and just like a thriller, I believe she backed herself into a corner. Literally, yes, she did in that house, and then like walls came or hands came out of the wall. She is in trouble. I don't know if i'd want to be inside at all, to come to think of it, I'd want to get my supplies and like go to the mountains. That's what

i'd do, Like getting a tent. I don't know if a tent offers that much protection. You want to be able to barricade, well, I would just want to be in the open so I could run. I would never want a wall around me anywhere. That's just how I do it. That's how I party. Give us some worm, that's how you party with zombie death. Well, Tracy said, wait for rescue and make long term preparations for your survival. I guess so but what if you want to fight the zombies. I think you can do both at the

same time. Hers just kind of a run and hide mentality. Yeah yeah, um, I think Tracy would be good to have on your team. It would be good to have somebody like us arm with battle axes, crossbows, pump action shotguns. But then have Tracy, you know, maybe behind the semicircle thinking about what we need to be doing a year from now. Maybe mix it all together, because you don't want just you know, bone headed, you know thick mc

rock skulls, you know you're hie. Yeah. During the making of Zombie Land when he blamed remember he attacked those photographers, He got all in trouble because he attacked some photographers and his excuse was that he was playing a zombie hunter in this movie that I think it was actually shot in Atlanta called Zombie Land, And he told the judge that he was so caught up in that character and so in characters a zombie hunter, that he reacted

to aggressively to the photographers who followed them around like zombies. I guess that man is a pro yeah joint and got off scot free. Probably probably at least he didn't play Bongo s naked or anything like that. Yeah. Who was at McConaughey. Yeah, nice, didn't you hang out with him? Yeah? It's actually speaking of a zombie land. I just saw today where um, the director of that film was gonna have Patrick Swayze play a Swazi zombie like as himself

come back from the dead Swayze zombie. Originally it was written into this script and this was before he got sick or anything. Okay, so obviously no, no, no, I mean the movie is just coming out, so this is a while ago. And then he got sick. He contacted him and everything, and he had fallen ill and couldn't do it. And I think he got some other big star to do it, and they're trying to keep that a secret or something. Who is it? I don't know this.

I tried to find out. I couldn't. When's it come out? I don't know. Soon. I saw the preview the other day, so soon, okay, um, chuck. Basically, there's some pretty common sense things you want to avoid an a zombie attack, like don't lock yourself in a car that you don't have keys to. Um, we'll call these movie things. This is what always happens movie things. Yeah, and the movie they get in they don't have the key, and then you're thinking, why did you get in the car if

you didn't have a key? Right? You don't want to leave any any implements that a zombie could use as a weapon out for them to find and pick up. Yeah, because they can use basic weapons only. Do not give a weapon to an hysterical person. You have no idea what they're going to do. At the very least, they're not going to use it properly, and you'll end up really regretting that. Um. There's other stuff, you know, like

getting into an elevator and a building infestive with zombies. Um, you don't want to go on a retreat to like a seller or something without taking supplies with you. God knows how long you're gonna be down there. I got one. How about you fight the sudden urge to make out with a zombie? Yeah, that's probably a good thing to do. Sure that happened in a Night of Living Dead, wasn't it really? Yeah? The girl was like jihnny oh yeah yeah,

and he was like yeah, so that happens sometimes. Um, chuck, let me talk about one of my favorite zombies re Animator. Did you see it? You know that was a Lovecraft story based on clas classic film. Yeah. Um, and you remember the guy decapitates uh, either as mentor or the dean of the school, I can't remember, Herbert Weston. He decapitates him with a shovel and he's like, awesome, I've

got another specimen to work on. And he uses the serum to reanimate both the head and the body, which is highly unusual because in most zombie films, once the heads attached from the body, that's it. But he was reanimating it after it was detached. So hence that's how you break the rules. Okay, you know there were sequels to that too, I think there were. But do you know what's particularly unsettling about Reanimator that there's actual research into that very stuff going on right now into human

reanimation Max Plank Institute. I was reading an article, um that was linked from a crack blog post. You love that website, I do. It's great, um, and it was it was I think from two thousand and they're like, we're getting close. Actually we found out that you know, um, it's not cardiac arrest your brain doesn't die as a result of cardiac arrest like we thought. Instead, we destroy

it when we try to reanimate it. So now we're trying to be a little more anil And actually we've gotten a brain to kind of function after it's been dead for an hour. We didn't get the whole organism reanimated, but we're working on it. And I just went and that was what kind of makes sense? You know that, like the was it Futurama that had the different heads in the jars and they could actually still talking everything. Yeah, I mean from the neck down, it's really not a

lot going on. Besides, you know, organ function and moving. If you could find a way to wire the brain up and keep it from decaying, you keep partying, man, Yeah, keep on trucking. Well, let's see. If you want to keep on trucking with zombies, you can go read the article written by or Steam colleague Tracy Wilson, who knows a lot about zombies, probably more than you should know. It's a good one. You can type in zombies in the handy search bar at how stuff works dot com,

which means it's it's time for listener mail. Yes, the return of listener mail. Uh, Josh, I gonna all this listener mail from the dude in the band, okay that you know about? Hey there, Chuck and Josh and Jerry. I'm riding on behalf of my band. Were an indie rock and roll band from Eagle Rock, Glendale, California, which is where I used to live. We've been lucky enough on our tour for a good chunk of the year to be on tour for a good chunk of the

year opening for bigger acts. While on tour, we constantly fight over who gets control. The CD player in the van gets nasty sometimes, and we frequently run in opposite directions to our trusty iPods. It's pathetic, five guys in a smelly van, each on our own little world, not talking, tired and cranky. I quickly learned to resent touring and the forty five minutes on stage wasn't worth the hours of driving and sleeping in dumpy motels and on couches.

So they were not having a good run of it. Sadly, I like this Uh. I like this exposition right Uh. Well, as we were headed back on the road, our old bassis sent us off with a spindle of stuff you should know podcasts were into a CD. They were reluctant at first to throw it into the CD player, but find ourselves intrigued by how cannibalism works, that our body farms. That'd saould be a good name in for indie rockers. It was one of the first episodes we listened to.

We were hooked. After that, the iPods went away, the band started talking more in the van. Uh. The podcast ignited debates. We joked about our favorite lucid dreams, cringed at the image of a dog eating its owner's face, drooled at the thought of a banana cream twinkie. I also panic because my girlfriend recently dyed her hair red. So he just wanted to say thanks for bringing the

spark back in their touring. They listened to twenty hours of the show driving through Kansas in Montana and uh, we've been all around the country with them, And they burned another c D for the next upcoming tour. Did you just have a stroke a second again? So they're playing here in Atlanta actually soon. The Henry Clay people, right, the Henry Clay People's name of the band, and they are actually awesome. Yeah, and you have their in their music, right. Yeah,

they're great. I like it a lot, and we get people a bit sending their band stuff sometimes and it's not very good. Are we gonna go? I'm gonna go. I wrote him back and he still has not responded, so maybe he's on tour and can't get to put me down for a plus one, Jerry, you're going, all right? Yeah, we're gonna be there at the Variety of Playhouse in Atlanta October seven, rocking out to the Henry Flay people. Nice opening up for Airborne Toxic event. Yeah, which is

a big tour for Henry lay people. That's good for them. Yes, it's good rock and roll, raucous rock and roll. You know it's funny? Is That's exactly what Chuck said in the email to me and Jerry when he's like, I like these guys, raucous rock and roll. It's good. It's like good drinking music, like Early Stones or something. Right on,

let's go October seven? All right, Well, if you want to see if you can entice Chuck, Jerry and I to come out to see whatever, or if we left out your favorite zombie movie, which we inevitably have, you can send an email inviting us and or chastising us to stuff podcast how stuff works dot Com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot Com home page.

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