This week's episode of the Wild Card Podcast is brought to you by Jeff's long-boring stories about his- Hey! Long-boring stories about- You have to be a smurfs ma, honest sir. I demand satisfaction. Satisfaction for what?
Choose your weapon. Come on, Ron, just apologize. Apologize for what? I don't see how I do anything wrong.
Guns? No! Swords. No!
Long guys. I haven't do it more than any man should ever have to endure. My reputation and honor are in catters. I will invite this abuse no longer.
Nice! No! None chucks. No!
That lacks. No. Epic rap battle? Mm.
Coward. I know. Jeff, put your glove back on. Duck!
You shouldn't have done that. Jared, I'm in the- Oh no! Ugh! Jeff?
Are you okay? He never does me. Oh, I'm so sorry, Jeff. Wait, but if you're here, then who did I- Is that Drake?
You slapped Drake to death again? Yes, I don't know. Maybe? I'm sorry, Jeff.
You're not boring. I can't stay mad at you, boo-boo. Okay. I did not see that coming.
Welcome to the Wild Card Podcast. I'm your host, Jared Eaton, and my co-pilot on this journey to wherever are my good friends, Jeff Curtis. Hello! And the man who invented a new kind of stupid.
A damnit that can never be undone kind of stupid, and open all the cages at the zoo kind of stupid. Clearly, you didn't think this through Rond Blair kind of stupid. I'm not sorry at all. I will let the animals out of the zoo, and I will ride that fucking rhino into Glory down third street.
I swear to Christ. You know what that's wrong, but I just said it's Rond Bailton. Oh, that's an animal's equivalent. Oh, that's lovely.
Was it during one of their epic rap battle things? Actually, this was Angelica. Oh, okay. Yep.
The Family Sisters. I was thinking it was hot. I've never even seen a pick that animal, but I'm like, yeah. Yeah, beautiful.
They're absolutely good. Except the youngest one. Mmm. What's this podcast all about?
This podcast is about Halloween celebrating it, embracing the changes in weather, the falling of the leaves, the death and decay of summer into the cold dark beautiful grave of winter, and caramel apples, cow chocolate, popcorn balls, and pumpkin spice, every fucking thing. Happy Halloween, motherfucker. All right. That was stronger than I expected.
Yeah. Yeah, I came on stronger. I like fall. I feel really strong about autumn and Halloween.
I completely agree. The weather is glorious right now. That's beautiful. Apparently you are really into Halloween.
I don't know. I think they'd be disappointed if I weren't. I think you're probably. No, that's really true.
I love how do we... I'm going to tell a quick story here. Please. I did something yesterday at school and I wanted to talk about the podcast.
Okay. So I was going to divide the favorites question to fit this. Oh, well, let's do that. Well, funny story.
I've been doing favorites questions for 65 episodes now, and then when I was going to ask, we've already used. Yeah, yeah. I'll just tell the story then. All right, great.
I was at school and I was telling a story about something I did last school year. And you know, it's when you are trying to keep the attention of 30 plus high school students, it can be a little challenging. Sure. But there are occasions when I'm successful and I actually have the attention of 30 teenagers.
And it is wonderful. I'll be teaching and they'll be engaged and listening and asking questions. And then the damn phone will ring in the classroom. Now I'll have to walk back to my desk on behind all the kids and I will instantly lose all their focus.
Dude, you know, we're on with my own. Do the fact that someone needs to remember to go get something after class. Whatever. I will lose all their attention.
Yeah. I have to walk back in the front of the room. I'll be like, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, focus, focus. Get their attention again.
So this was how that happened. Now, whatever I got their attention, I gave them assignment and I was walking around the classroom making sure I was doing well in the assignment and focusing. And then the phone rang. So I walked back there, danced to the phone, did the thing.
So I had to go to the office, whatever. I go back and I'm helping a student with something. I get to them and I'm down there with them. I'm talking through this thing.
I'm like, all right, so here's what happens. I love about phone rings. And I just already explained this. I had to go back into the stupid phone.
Go back to the same student. The phone rang. So I got this giant column in the room, a giant post in the middle of the classroom, which already makes classrooms difficult. The phone rings and I just full on punched the post.
Oh my God. And I grunted. I'm like, are you kidding me? And the kids never see me angry.
I don't get angry from class. But it's like little frustrations like that gets me more than a kid disrespecting my face. So small things. And I punched the post again and I bruised my knuckles.
Oh, Jerry. And I punch a hole in the post because it's, it's, it's, it's, but I dented it. Oh my God. It's like the story.
And I'm like, oh, I guess I shouldn't have, but the kids had new powers back for me. You'll get far less lit now. Yeah. Watch out for him.
So that was going to be my stupid injury story. But turns out that was, that was our favorite question back in like episode 30 something. Yeah. We did that one.
So I came up with a different favorite question tying into another story from this week. Okay. Here's the actual favorite question today. What is your favorite movie going experience?
It's a movie, but actually time at the movie circumstances. What theater have you been in cool places? So like just what is our ideal movie going experience? We're going to have a story connected to that from what you've done before.
Feel free to go first. I have to think about this question. I don't have any experience, but my, my trip to the movie theater is routine. Yeah.
I have a routine where we'll, we'll go in and we'll go to the concession stand. And here I have no problem sharing the things in my life with my family and friends. I'm very generous with the people I love. With the exception of.
With the exception of my popcorn. I don't want you fucking with my popcorn. I don't want you fingers in it. This is my popcorn.
It's my large popcorn, my large soda. Fuck off. This is my thing since I was a child. So leave the one with it.
You want me waiting to see a movie. I'm committing, I'm going to be spending money on a concession. Right. Absolutely.
Absolutely. I will, I have to have my large popcorn. They can get whatever they want, spend whatever they want, wear the movies, wear a good time. And then I'll get a second bag and then I'll go over to the butter and salt and then I will pour part of the popcorn into the bottom of the other bag, butter and salt that and then I will layer it.
Lasagna style. Lasagna style. Yeah. And butter, salt, butter, salt, butter, salt.
And so during the film I never run out of butter and salt in my bag. Because I can live with popcorn without butter. Yeah. But popcorn without salt is cardboard.
Yeah, it's horrible. And so I over salt my popcorn. I'm not as intelligent as Ron. And so what I do is I just do the salt on top, shaky, shaky, shaky, try to get to settle down in there and then I can usually get like the top half.
And I get to buy a metal like well we're done. Yeah, so you used to do that and that's not good. I have to layer it. Mackenzie puts a straw into the bag and then pours the butter in through that so that it gets layers that way.
But she's only getting the center is the bottom. I guess she can shake it around a little bit. But I want the salt coating as well all through the bag. So I have to do it in this manual way.
Well, it has to be done. I love it. I don't like the idea of every time I sit down and watch a movie feeling like I should be eating. But mostly I don't have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie.
That's absolutely fair. I can still hold it for days and days. Depending on the movie. So I'm going to go to movie where I'm going to take a leak.
The sucks. You know I don't want to do that. Movies are too valuable. However, the new movie theater which my wife works at by the way.
She's been employed like three weeks. three weeks. So now yeah she got an orientation Tuesday. It's it's Carrie Ray.
We've talked about it. Yeah, theater person. I can't wait until I'm talking about the movie. I want to see.
Right. I thought about seem a venom there, which I was like, I got to see venom at the movie, but she gets I get perks. So I'm going to the movies. Yeah.
You know, and it looks magnificent. My concern is that the the concessions won't be what I require for my movie going experience. It sounds like a more fancy place. I'm sure they have but in song.
I know what they have. I can't tell you, but I know what they have. And you'll be very excited. Can you say they have a bar?
Yes. They will serve you. They will say that. They will serve you.
So here the reason this came about was I had to move to go and experience this. Yeah. Oh, I'll get back to it too. I'll go back to it too.
I'll go back to it for you. One of my favorite times ever seen movie. I show up for myself. I do that.
Yeah. I went and saw Guardians of the Galaxy one by myself. Because none of my friends knew the characters. So they didn't care.
It's Marvel movie. I don't know the characters. Well, either. But I saw myself and you could say it's a detriment.
But I went open at night and the audience was amazing. Yeah. Like they were it was telling myself that there's one. I don't know.
I saw the audience. But here's a good idea. They were laughing at everything. They got every joke.
Sometimes they were laughing so long. You missed another joke. But that didn't bother me because it was just such a fun experience. Yeah.
It's a communal joy kind of thing. Yeah. So what was that when you were going to say? Well, where is this audience during theater?
When we were laughing. Right. Right. Right.
We joke. We had to be honest. We had to get this audience for a moment. Oh, that's a high thought.
Oh, great. But I'll have a great. But if you guys ever been to a movie tavern where you get you order your meal. I've seen it.
I've never known. Holy shit. Okay. I've done twice.
It's the movie. Tavern in Lexington. I had a full fish dinner while watching the dark night. Which was one of the best movie going experience ever.
That's amazing. Yeah. You push the little bunny like more Coke. More Coke.
More Coke. And just eat your fish and watch and keep by your do a shit. And then I'll do that today. I'll watch the dark night.
Right. If it showed at the movie tavern, I'd go today or anywhere. I've shown it back yard somewhere. I'd watch the dark night on the big screen again.
The other time we watched, we go to the theater Christmas, my immediate family. And we went to see the Force Awakens in Ohio near where Michelle's grandfather lives and we were staying with him. And this place, it didn't have, oh, you could have bought a meal, but I think they got a pizza. Here's what I like.
They have 699. All you can eat bowls of popcorn. Now they don't have the butter or anything. What they do is they bring you a bowl of popcorn.
And then I asked them for some salt and they brought some sea salt. And I swear to God, we made them regret the decision. All you can eat popcorn. You don't do that when my family's there because I was calling them every 10 minutes.
Come on. And it's like a 2 and a half hour movie. So for 2 and a half hours, we'll just come on. Refill it.
Refill it. And the pizza was fantastic. So any of those movie taverns, I would like to meal there. It's so good.
The waitstaff is lovely. I went up to Tencel Town Thursday. Yeah. I did not know this was happening.
But last Sunday at our mommy, like our mommy, we had to eat it. Buffalo Wings and Wings. Bart asked me. He said he and Allison were going to go see King Lear at Tencel Town Thursday.
And Allison couldn't go. I was going to go see an extra ticket. I didn't know anything about it. I've never seen King Lear before.
I don't know anything about the story until I saw it. But it was the National Tour live production. It was a live production. We had a clip on it.
Yeah. That was simulcast from London. And so the seats were recliners. With electric controls of how you want to be reclined, how far back you want to go.
You had a desk tray. You could put your snacks on. The great cup holder. Comfy seats.
Not a big theater in terms of the number of seats, but a big theater in the space. I was sitting between Blake and Bart and the dead who was in the set of Bart. And it was just a perfect venue to watch a perfect production. Like the talent on this was a live production.
It was a live production. It was like a six act show. It was a two act. So first three in the second three.
And so we had a 15 minute admission. It was a long four hours. I thought I saw that it had a runtime of like 330 minutes. Oh, that's for a video view.
I mean, I got home midnight when I got home. It was one of the most fun nights I've had a long time. I would do it once a month. I mean, I'm curious the thing at the beginning of the second act, I'm putting quotes because I was like, X4.
There was some sinking issues between the sound and the video, but it seemed like it got fixed pretty quickly. And I was fine. We exit the theater and there's a gentleman there apologizing giving us free rain checks. That's amazing.
We've done the entire movie. I only had one hiccup. Because we had one mistake. That's how you run a business, folks.
And here's the thing. They made much money on me because even though Bart paid for my ticket, I still bought large popcorn, large drink, and I can go back on the same thing because I would see a production there. I know one of the ones I advertise was Anthony and Cleopatra with Ray Fine's as an answer. I would see it again because the experience was so great.
I would recommend anyone look at that National Tour staff that goes through Tensilton because it's excellent. I think Crown Point really gets that because they're generous to the audience. Nobody makes money off of movies except for the studios and all that. The people who own these theaters only make money off of concessions.
And so their business outside giving you a great experience is their concessions. And so I think Crown Point's really going to win when it comes to let's give you the best experience possible. We're going to make it feel good. We're going to treat you well.
And for as big as their staff isn't everything, the guy who owns it could be raking a shit ton of money off of this and you can tell he's not. He's being generous with what he's made as people, what he's given as audience members. And that's how you do it. I could not, I'm not worried about having him now.
I could not say you should go see this more off. I could not get better endorsement I suppose. I will be back multiple times to see more shows there because every character is great. Bart and I were discussing a lot theatrically, like choice that made in this specific production.
But just the venue that the people that were there was one time like a phone off. I thought it might have been actually at the theater on the screen. Because everyone out there laughing at good times is like emotional. What about you Jeff?
What's your movie? I have nothing to share. Mike and I, so you're more sweet than the salt. I was like a bunch of times I've got nothing.
Madeline usually wants popcorn and drinks. I'll get her popcorn. See to me it's part of the experience. To me it's the movie.
Well since Madeline's been born I haven't seen very many movies that I actually have much about. But before I was married I used to go to the movies all the time. I'd go after work. When I worked in Queens there was a movie theater right across the street from my office.
And so Fridays, especially this time of the week I would go after work. I'd go in and pay for the first movie. Then I'd stay for the next five. Going from theater to theater.
I've never had the guts to do that. Well for the most part they don't care. They're not making money off. They're making money off of their concessions.
And so I'd finish a movie and I'd see well okay well what's starting now. Then I'd go into there not having any idea what I was going to see. Sometimes it was good. Sometimes it wasn't.
It was free to me. So why did I care? Which isn't technically legal. I guess I'm stealing the movie experience.
So I apologize but I'm not sorry. They're coming to get you. For the most part most of my movie going experiences until I had a child was just me going by myself. Occasionally I'd go with people but mostly most movies I'd go to by myself.
Growing up we had to drive 50 miles to go see a movie. So it wasn't something we'd do very often. My brother and I were old enough to drive. We'd go there more frequently.
My brother and my friends would go and sometimes they would go if I invited them to go with me. But most usually people didn't think invite me unless they had to. So I was happy when I moved to Boston and there was movie theaters I could walk to. I told the experience of me wanting to go see octopus.
No one wanted to go with me. Which was the last time I ever asked anyone to go to a movie with me. From that moment on if I want to see a movie I just went. I assumed no one else was going to go.
If someone invited me to go with them or suggested a movie I would go with them. But I was never the invited. I always just went to a movie. I'm excited about it.
My mom used to take me to a movie once a week. It seems it was once we got one that but good God she really fostered my love of cinema from as long as I can remember. From my youngest age she's been giving me the theater experience. Speaking of wonderful experiences.
Absolutely. They were on a soda. You're welcome. Let me ask you guys a question.
I'm going to ask you a question. Are we continuing the trip-ditch of Ron Halloween special? Absolutely. We're going to be doing this until Halloween comes.
We had our first episode a couple weeks ago. We talked about Ron Halloween. I'm going to be doing this at the right of Halloween. If you're going to watch a movie traditionally on Halloween it should be Halloween.
I just bought it. So you watch it all the time. Every 13 months. Absolutely.
So let me ask you what is your favorite cranberry song? It's obviously linger. What is your favorite drink that has rum, lime, bitters, grenadine and grapefruit juice? I'm a drinker.
What's your favorite band that's saying she's not there in time of the season? Dang I've only got one answer for this one. What do you call someone who's been dosed with Tetretta Toxin? I have no answer to any of these.
What is George Romero's last thing like a C? Movies. Zombies. Zombies.
I'm so much more prepared than I ever have been. So we're going to talk about how ancient cultures viewed death and the undead rising back. That's where we're going to start and run the gamut here. So often you just see the zombie culture.
Especially walking dead. If you think about what you think about that, that's where you go. That's where you go. It goes way back.
It's since the Stone Age. Now there was an article in the New Scientist magazine. It was entitled The Surprising History Behind Grape Stones. It was by Mika Matlak.
Mika Matlak. Mika Matlak. Mika Matlak. You want to call it?
We explored Stone Age together. Excellent. So the concept of zombie, as we think of it, not the modern zombie, but it's a corpse that has been reanimated and brought back to life. This dates back as far as the Stone Age when it was indicated that nomadic peoples after having buried their dead would place the stacks of rocks on top of their gravesites or cairns to keep the corpse from digging its way out.
Oh, it wasn't to keep the animals from digging it up and eating it? No. That's actually going to show the next report. Is it really?
Well, I'll be honest. But those stones are on the grave that have moved? No, it's thought that there was a... the fear, it's an inborn fear of the dead coming back to life.
And that's man's inherent terror. Is that happening? I've never feared that. You never feared that?
No. Even when you were a kid, walking through the grave, I feared being buried alive, but I haven't feared anything. I'm being dead, digging their way out of the grave. I fear that.
In Syria, there was a grave site, or there were several grave sites discovered dating back 10,000 years where the skulls had been bashed or removed altogether to keep them from coming back. What was the Birkin hair? Do they do it in ancient Syria? Birkin hair stole them.
Ancient Birkin hair stole them and sold them to the Middle Kingdom. That's going to be an episode of One Damure. Oh, I hope so. In the 1980s, archaeologists discovered a necropolis near Sicily dating back as far as...
That means what a croplist means? Yes, it's an enormous graveyard city. City of the Dead, yeah. Around the day back to 800 BC where the tombs were discovered containing bodies having been pinned down by rocks in their graves.
Or other objects, but it was due to fear of remnants, which is a corporeal spirit that left its grave each night to bring harm upon the living, not necessarily to eat them or anything like that. These bodies are not going to get us. Right, as long as we pin them down, why not just burn them? Well, if you're afraid they're going to let them get you...
Well, both of them doesn't burn very well. They believe remnants could be contained by incinerating the body, dismembering the body, or placing the body face down. I don't know. So, a burn would get rid of a lot of the connected tissue, but again, bone requires a very high temperature of burn.
And actually, what it does is it shatters more than burning. Yeah, well, adjacent to the Argonauts, they've got those skeletons. The skeleton? Yeah, you've got to watch out for them.
I also heard the goblins will get you if you don't watch out. If you don't watch out, that's the best poem. So in Norse mythology, if you've played Elder Scrolls Skyrim, I absolutely have, they have reanimated corpses known as druggers, and that is based on Norse mythology. They would escape from their tombs, blackened and swollen, rotted, and were thought to either crush their victims or eat them alive.
Okay, very different things. So, why are the dead escaping to kill other people? Because they're dead. Evil spirits, they're mad.
They're upset about being dead. But if it'll give sense later, I promise you that later. I'll give it a little bit more. But if people are so afraid of dead bodies rising from their grave, why do the Egyptians then give people their dead pharaohs and other people that they give them food and other things from the afterlife?
They were very different from the afterlife. As well as the afterlife, what's something you went to, as opposed to something to escape from, which is kind of what this reanimation is. So other than the weird lingering that can incorporate. Other than eating their victims, it was also thought that the draugrs had supernatural powers, like they could be shapeshifters, or they could enter someone's dreams and fuck with them that way.
Pretty cool, though. Exactly. This is the first instance, though, where it's thought that if a person was bitten by a draugr, they would be coming. That's where that whole mythology came from.
The whole zombie thing going on right there. Yeah, it just takes a little bit from that. And most civilizations have superstition about zombies. The Chinese have the xiang she, which means a stiff corpse.
They're thought to hop like bunnies, but they're like zombie. They're like zombie bunnies. These are often victims of murder or someone who is committed suicide. The streetwa is a Romanian zombie that also has vampire-like traits where they drink blood and they transform the animals, which just sounds like a vampire, don't it?
Well, the Romanian vampire makes sense of their connections. Well, they've got all kinds of shit over there, don't they? Spooky. It's spooky, and rained.
They've got the werewolves and the frankincides and the dracula. Wait a second. They got it all. So it was thought that a person who lived a troubled or unfinished life or died before becoming baptized would become a streetwa.
They believed if someone died before they married, that they had a strong chance of returning as a streetwa. So they're actually records of marriages between a corpse and a living person just to prevent that person from becoming a streetwa. Wow. That's not the strongest of marriages.
But you can talk about the kind of divorce this person after you've been married to this corpse. No, if you don't want him coming back from the dead. Sarah can't come out today. She's just dead.
She's dead on her back. But you can marry someone else or you're like, oh, no, you're married to the corpse. You're the honeymoon father. Well, I would.
I certainly would. What are they going to do to get pissed at you? I'm going to talk about that. Is God going to get mad at me because I cheated on my corpse?
I don't know. That's between me and God. Nobody else's business. So the Bible's a little murky on that one.
Yeah, it doesn't really clarify. I don't know what the moral ruling is. I'll just call it a podcast. Right.
Shitting on your corpse is a great area. It's a great area. We don't know. It doesn't say one way or the other.
God didn't talk to anybody about that. Whenever I write the third Testament, the Ron Testament, it's going to include the Testament of Ron, the book of Ron, that's what it is. And it'll include, I'll fix it. I will fix other of your men before me.
You have gone and failed. Yeah. Now, in my hands. Go back to talking about defiling.
Let's talk about defiling. Now, we're going to move on to the voodoo zombies. Here we go. Here'smyris, that's what I think about what I got.
That's what I got. Before 1968, this is what zombies were. Was this the first use of term? No.
But I will get to that as well. I'm going to say modern because we're going to, this dates back to the early 1600s, this modern and that, in what was going on in Europe, and Africa, around the 1600s, the slave track was going into really taking off. It's slaves everywhere. We're having a Geod on prices.
I'm sorry my Muslim friends. Everything must go. I'm saluting. So specifically we're going to talk about, well not for long, but we're going to talk about Haiti, the West Indies because that's where the, I want to say pre-modern concept of zombies game.
It was during this period that the modern concept of zombies began to develop in North American folklore. I already said that without reading it and then I read it. So these zombies are rooted in the religious beliefs that the slaves brought back to the Americas from Western and Southern Africa. Now we call it voodoo, what they brought back.
And then there's another one, this isn't really my report, but I've always found Santa Ria to be fascinating because it's the blending of voodoo, the African voodoo with Catholicism. It's got the right for the Santerias. What was that version of the believer? That's right, Santerias.
I read that no damn good. It was good. I read the book before I saw the movie. The book's much better than the movie.
I need to read the book. I love the movie. The movie was fantastic. But yes, was there zombies?
There were no zombies over there. No, but it was still tribal in voodoo. It's already creepy. Yeah, it's spooky.
It's very creepy because you're talking about the Latin chopping off the chicken's heads and blood being sprayed everywhere and a spider crawling out of a woman's face, which was spiders crawling out of... Yeah, they do. They do. They do.
They love the images of spiders crawling in and out of people as much as they love the word moist. Moist spiders crawling out of moist faces. Moist spiders. Moist spiders.
Moist spiders. So now the followers of voodoo believe that they were natural deaths from disease or old age or unnatural deaths like murder or suicide. The spirits of those people who died either by murder or suicide were, they were thought to hover over grave while waiting for the approval of the gods to let them into the kingdom. And a priest would manipulate these spirits.
That's what it is. They were called a boogor or a voodoo sorcerer. They would trap their soul in a jar. And as long as they're in possession of this jar, it was thought that they could control the bodies of the sirens.
It was like a good servant. It was like a good version that wouldn't go in as dark magic. Well, no, boogors are bad. Boogors can go either way.
And I'm not sure what the term is for the good guy boogor, but you're probably right. I'll speak in a minute. Let me stop myself right there. Why don't you do that?
I was listening to last week's episode and I said so many things and I sounded certain about them. I wouldn't fucking certain about them. So just take, unless I've said I've done research on this, if I sound like I know what I'm talking about, you should question it. Well, we've stopped talking about last week's episode.
Yeah. When I was listening to it, I realized that I kept saying Wilkerson and it's Wilkinson. And for who? For the general who has the general.
The general Wilkinson. The general Wilkinson. And I kept saying Warren when I was talking about the Chief Justice, it was Marshall. Not Jim Warren.
I'm here. Oh, Warren. I kept talking about Earl Warren, but I get John Marshall. It was the Marshall.
It was Marshall. I want to take this opportunity to retract almost all of the information I've given out in the past 65 episodes and presented as fact. Oh, okay. Some of it was fact, but a lot of times I was just talking about it on my ass.
Really? I know. I never knew. I know.
It probably didn't even need to be said, but for you guys, it was the Mel Brooks thing. That bothered me because I liked Mel Brooks. I've studied up on Mel Brooks and then I would go, oh, you're so full of shit. Like I said, 12 chairs was made before the producers.
I don't know if that's true. But the way I said it sounded like, oh, yeah, I totally believe it. That's, I didn't like that. So I have to say.
You still believe that it was made before, but you don't know that. I think it may have been. I think it may have been. Let's just say, unless I say I got this from a legitimate source like this in the entire zombie thing, I may not know.
I may not absolutely know. That's what I think. I don't think that all 20 of our listeners are coming here because they think that we know everything that comes out of our mouth. I really don't know.
I think I'm hoping that they're here mostly to be entertained by our, our answer. Rude, I can't. Yeah. And they might pick up some knowledge on the way.
Actually, going on. Absolutely. Okay. But I would say take anything else except maybe Jared says with a grain of salt.
I feel like an enormous weight has been put into the way. An enormous weight has been lifted off of my corpse chest. Okay. And I can now rise again to tell my story.
One more interesting fact about the Bocores is there was obviously suspicion when a couple of zombies were about that these Bocores were murdering people specifically to get their bodies and use them as their servants, their slaves. And of course, from the Haitian point of view, the people who practice voodoo are going to have an inherent fear of being slaves forever and ever and ever and ever and ever death. That had to have entered into it where they go, oh, fuck. You know, not only are we going to be slaves all through our life and live this horrible, miserable life, we get no relief afterwards when a voodoo guy comes and takes our souls forever.
So there was that fear and they did explore that cinematically, which we'll talk later on about. But I do want to get to this side note before I go on about another guy. The first recorded use of the word zombie is credited to author Robert Southey in his 1819 book, The History of Brazil. He used it to describe an Afro-Brazilian rebel with the name Zumbi, which is rooted in the word in zombie, which means God in Congenese and Zumbi which means fetish in the same language.
That's just an attachment or a token of something that you use to enable. So it makes sense that if you believe people are bringing these spirits back from the dead, you would use that same term that you're almost like an actualist now that you're controlling that so a token of fetish makes sense. Right. So that's where zombie came from.
That's the first use of the word as we know it. Wow. Now I'm going to jump on before I get to any of the more modern stuff. I want to talk about Wade Davis.
You guys know who Wade Davis is? No, I never heard the name. Wade Boggs. Wade Boggs, you know.
Yeah. It matches his music. How are you going to say that in the name of the word? I said Geneedavis.
Oh, did you say Geneedavis? Oh, yeah. Oh, she is my auntie's love. She was a foot taller than me, but that face.
Oh. Yes. Geneedavis. Where was I?
Okay. So Wade Davis, he was doing his work long after remar- not long, but he did his work in the late 70s, early 80s. This was after the modern concept of zombies like we have, had already been created, but Wade Davis is a Harvard ethnobotanist. Wow.
That is odd. Well, it sounds- it is weird. It's like being a cryptosologist for a living. No, because he's a real scientist.
He worked in pharmacology. He worked in pharmacology. Yeah, yeah. Which is, I mean, that's homie a patent going around to other cultures and seeing what- what- What?
Yeah. What if plants are like? Yeah. It was really a pharmacology.
Exactly. It would be looking like we're using these medicines that all derive from plants, so what plants are cultures using? How can we use those in our pharmacology? Right, exactly.
The pharmaceuticals I should say. So even though the Romero zombies had been born at this point, Wade Davis was looking into the Haitian version of zombies that we had known in the last century, or that viewers had seen in the last century. He tried his research papers into two books. The second one he wrote was passage of the ethnobiology of the Haitian zombie in 1988, but it never reached the same acclaim as 1985's The Circuit in the Rainbow, which was Craven turned into a film in 1988 starring Bill Pullman and Paul Davis, who's brave.
They're both spectacular in this movie. And it's creepy. I will- I will recommend The Circuit in the Rainbow to anybody. It's one of those forgotten horror treasures from the 1980s.
It's not really exploitative. I mean, it's an intense scary- we were talking about the believers. It's that same kind of thing, that same vein of scariest- except this one's a little more out there because it's about Wade Davis going to discover more about this. So is it really- it's about his book and it follows him as a character in his discoveries?
What it does is it takes a fictionalized version- well, yeah. They based it on his trip and his study into the chemicals that they use to make zombies in Haiti, where what a voodoo pretty- you know, there was scientific basis on all of this, but Craven added the voodoo aspects to it and made it a supernatural, as if voodoo were a real supernatural religion that could fuck with you. So Wade Davis's work was specifically just about pharmacology, even though it's a spooky story that he came up with, Wes Craven really embellished that with the film and made it supernatural. I'm sure Wade Davis's story on its own might make a fairly compelling drama, but I thought that'd be an really interesting movie.
The biologist going to study- Boy, that was pretty much it. No one cares about biologists. But when he was in Haiti, he learned the story of Clervius Narcissa. He was thought to have died in 1962.
Clervius? Yeah. Thought to have died in 1962, or Narcissa? Long story short, it was discovered through Davis's research that after an argument over a land settlement with Clervius's brother, he was given a substance that gave him the appearance of having passed away, so they buried him.
And it's what is the name of it? I'll get to it here in a second. Oh, yeah. That's the chemical that's used as either a powder or paste.
It comes from pufferfish. It does. It absolutely does. I don't think about killer chemicals.