The Zombies That Walk Among Us

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NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The idea of human zombies probably seems pretty far-fetched. But there are real zombies out there in the animal kingdom. Ed Yong of The Atlantic creeps us out with a couple of examples. Hint: they involve fungus. Follow Maddie on Twitter - she's @maddie_sofia. Email the show at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0	Here's what we could do.
0:04.1	Happy Halloween everybody.
0:14.2	Get excited because today we are getting creepy, we're getting crawly, and we're talking
0:19.7	zombies.
0:23.1	Humans have been fixated on zombies for a long time.
0:27.9	It's the night of the living dead.
0:32.5	The walking dead.
0:33.5	You know about the dead people, right?
0:36.0	The walkers.
0:38.8	Now clearly we've never had a big zombie human situation, but there are zombies in the
0:44.7	animal kingdom.
0:46.0	For example, zombie fungus, a parasite that takes over the bodies of insects to do their
0:52.6	bidding, which is why we brought in Ed Young, science reporter at the Atlantic, and Halloween
0:57.9	superfan.
0:59.5	What's your favourite Halloween candy?
1:01.6	I don't have any.
1:03.0	What?
1:04.0	I don't do Halloween, I'm British.
1:06.0	We hate fun.
1:07.8	Ed's written all about the fungus that walk amongst.
1:13.0	I'm Maddie Sapphire, so today.
1:15.2	We're going to talk about parasites that take over and control the brains of their hosts.
	...

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