Tuesday 12 March 2013

Ep 148: Zombies Part 1



Zombies have been fodder for science fiction books and movies for years, but could we actually create one in the lab? And why indeed would you want to do this? Surely the whole "eating brains" concept would mean that making one is probably not in your best interests.

This week on the podcast, Dr Boob takes us on a journey through zombie science fiction, Haitian zombies and zombie-style animals in nature, including a fascinating scenario where ants are hijacked by a fungus. This episode is part 1 - next time we will tackle, among other things, brain parasites, eating brains (cultural, cooking and animals that do it), mad cow disease, the 'zombie' bath salts attacks (face eating), and a mathematical model of a zombie pandemic.

We have looked at zombies in the past. In the post Correlation of the Week: Zombies, Vampires, Democrats and Republicans we looked at how the political party of the US presidency seems to influence the style of science fiction movie made during their presidency. A recent upsurge in zombie films could augur well for the Republicans next time round, although there are still plenty of vampire films and TV shows around.

The song at the end of the podcast is by copperhead / CC BY-NC 3.0

Tune in to this episode here.

Ep 147: Time Travel and the movies part 2

Time travel is one of the more interesting plot devices in scifi movies. In this episode and the second in the series, Dr Boob takes us on a journey through parallel universes, causal loops and the nature of time-lines. We look at Back to the Future, the Terminator series, Futurama, Looper, Red Dwarf and Twelve Monkeys. By the end, it got a bit deep and my brain hurt! There are a few spoilers in this episode, if somehow you haven't seen these classic time travel movies. And please excuse my cold!

A good reference for attempting to explain the logic of time travel in the movies is Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies.

Tune in to this episode here.