The Truth About "Zombies"

Summary

Ridiculous History
Episode: "The Truth About 'Zombies'"
Hosts: Ben Bowlin, Noel Brown
Air Date: September 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this Halloween-season episode, Ben, Noel, and special research contributor Ren Fair Jones embark on a deep dive into the history, myth, and cultural significance of "zombies." The hosts trace the concept from its Haitian and West African roots through its appropriation in American pop culture, dissecting fact, fiction, and enduring misunderstandings about this most persistent folklore figure. Treading from brutal colonial histories to Hollywood schlock, they examine how the undead became a modern monster—and what the real zombie myth has meant for those who lived it.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Pop Culture Zombies: From Romero to Modern Media

• Introduction to Zombies in Media (06:53–12:18)

  • George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) is credited with coining "living dead" and launching a media empire of zombie films and tropes.

    "The term living dead was first used in the 1968 Romero film Night of the Living Dead, which spawned an empire of media." — Ben Bowlin [07:03]

  • Discussion of "Carnival of Souls" and the influence of outsider and 'stunt' creators on horror.
  • Divergence of slow versus fast zombies, highlighting 28 Days Later's introduction of the "fast zombie."

• Zombies and the Fear of Contagion (14:03–16:51)

  • The evolution of the zombie from a gut-eating shambler to a virus carrier—mirroring societal fears, especially post-COVID.

    "Covid taught us a lot about the real life consequences of not telling folks when you're infected. The zombie films were right." — Ben Bowlin [16:20]

  • References to World War Z (book and film) and modern horror like The Last of Us, discussing pandemics as zombie origins.

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The True Origins: Haitian and African Roots

• Etymology & Historical Context (17:11–19:56)

  • The word "zombie" traces to West African language ("zonbi" in Haitian Creole):

    "Zombie as a term can be traced all the way back to the 1600s to Haitian folklore...it comes from or has alternate spellings like ZOMBI and JUMBIE." — Ben Bowlin [18:14]

  • U.S. fascination (and distortion) began during the American occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), as white observers exoticized and often demonized Vodou.

• Colonialism, Enslavement, and the Zombie Myth (26:12–29:10)

  • The zombie concept is entwined with the horrors of slavery in Haiti:

    "They made profit in human blood, and they were forcing these enslaved people into a very brutal life...If you did take your own life, you would be condemned to stay on that cursed sugar cane plantation for eternity." — Ben Bowlin [26:36, 28:30]

  • The myth provided a social mechanism discouraging suicide; the afterlife offered freedom, but suicide damned souls to remain as zombies—trapped laborers for eternity.

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Vodou, Syncretism, and Cultural Reframing

• Vodou's Complex Reality (29:10–34:01)

  • Under oppression, enslaved Africans hid and syncretized native beliefs with imposed Catholic rituals, creating Vodou.

    "They carried [their beliefs] with them back to their homelands. And over time, they did establish this system of beliefs known as voodoo, which took elements from Christianity and kind of blended them." — Noel Brown [29:39]

• The Haitian Zombie: Not an Undead Monster (31:15–35:05)

  • In actual Haitian beliefs, zombies are not flesh-eating corpses but living individuals robbed of free will and agency, often connected to sorcerous practices (by a "bokor").

    "Outside of Western film...in actual Haitian culture, a zombie is not considered undead. A zombie is instead considered a living human being whose mental faculties have been severely altered." — Ben Bowlin [31:15]

  • The folklore describes the bokor using ritual, drugs, and trickery to induce a coma-like state, leading families to believe the victim is dead.

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The Science & Ethnography of Zombification

• Pharmacology, Poison, and Misunderstanding (35:35–41:44)

  • Theories by ethnobotanist Wade Davis (Serpent and the Rainbow) pointed to pharmacological elements—tetrodotoxin from pufferfish and the hallucinogenic jimson weed—as possibly responsible for "zombification."

    "He believes that these self reporting sorcerers, these bokor, are actually using toxins from animals and paralytic herbs to create this cognitive state, especially pufferfish stuff, tetrodotoxin." — Ben Bowlin [37:15]

  • These scientific claims have been contested by other experts; no consistent evidence has supported a "zombie powder" recipe.

• Anthropological Encounters: Zora Neale Hurston (47:01–55:39)

  • Anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston documented a purported real zombie case (Felicia Felix Mentor) in 1930s Haiti.

    "She is frightened by all this attention. She can't really communicate. She's lost the faculty of language. She's making sounds, but not necessarily words...Life magazine published this photograph...and they said it's the first real evidence of a zombie. The trick of it is there's no real proof that Felicia Felix mentor was an actual zombie." — Ben Bowlin [50:39]

  • Hurston herself became ill—she later suspected poisoning for prying too deeply into spiritual secrets.

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Final Reflections on Zombies, Vodou, and Othering

• Hollywood and Colonial Tropes (55:39–58:33)

  • Western cinema routinely mishmashes and sensationalizes Afro-Caribbean spiritual traditions (e.g., Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom).

    "You see it all the time...the mishmash and the very kind of gross depictions...The mannered sort of white folks from the US...taken aback and aghast by eating baby snakes and monkey brains—really not good. Did not age well." — Noel Brown [56:20]

  • Real acts of "zombification," if they do exist, are extremely rare and misunderstood; Vodou practitioners often identify as Christian, reflecting religious syncretism.

• Belief, Empathy, and the Universality of Death (58:33–60:24)

  • Hurston, reflecting on her experiences:

    "Haitian ceremonies were both beautiful and terrifying. I did not find any of them any more invalid than any other religion." — Zora Neale Hurston (read by Noel Brown) [58:33]

  • The line between life and death, and the notion of agency, is central to why zombie myths persist globally.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I also threw money at the screen every time a zombie film with 28 in the title comes out." — Ben Bowlin [10:10]
• "The idea of the living dead, I think addresses one of the main questions of humanity, which is mortality. No one really knows what happens when you die." — Ben Bowlin [14:40]
• "It's normalized cannibalism...just because we're using that—you know, you're eating someone." — Noel Brown [58:53]
• "Is Jesus Christ not the world's most famous zombie?" — Ben Bowlin [59:04]
• "We want to establish here, as we go into our favorite time of year, the Halloween season, that there may be some grain of truth to the story of mysterious zombie powder. However, if it exists, it would be incredibly uncommon for priests to do it." — Ben Bowlin [57:29]

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Important Timestamps

• Pop culture zombies & Romero legacy: 06:53–12:18
• Zombie tropes: viruses, contagion: 14:03–16:51
• Haitian and West African roots: 17:11–19:56
• Zombie myth & slavery: 26:12–29:10
• Vodou, syncretism, and spiritual beliefs: 29:10–34:01
• Science of zombies (Wade Davis): 35:35–41:44
• Zora Neale Hurston & real 'zombie' case: 47:01–55:39
• Hollywood, tropes, and the persistence of myth: 55:39–59:04

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Tone & Style

The episode balances irreverent pop culture banter with serious, historically grounded discussion, maintaining a respectful and inquisitive approach, especially regarding the sensitive, often-misrepresented histories of Vodou and Haiti.

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Conclusion

This episode of Ridiculous History offers a nuanced examination of the "zombie": a figure born of unimaginable suffering and spiritual resistance, recast again and again through the lens of pop culture, misrepresentation, and enduring fascination. It challenges listeners to look beyond Hollywood’s gory façade and consider the lived histories behind the myth, just in time for the spooky season.

Transcript

[Ben Bullen]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning. Tuning in. Let's hear it for Our super producer, Mr. Max Zahambe. Zahambe Williams.

[Noel Brown]

With their tanks and their guns and their guns and their guns and their zombies.

[Ben Bullen]

The Cranberries absolutely nailed that tiny desk.

[Noel Brown]

Also a great juice, an underrated juice, even if it's made from concentrate.

[Ben Bullen]

I have to drink cranberry juice because I used to have kidney stones. That's a little tmi. So I'm a bit of a. Bit of a. A connoisseur of the cranberry.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. What's your favorite?

[Ben Bullen]

I particularly like getting the straight up cranberry juice and then diluting it a little bit. Yeah, yeah, diluting it. Mixing it down a little bit. I'm Ben bullen. That is Mr. Noel Brown.

[Noel Brown]

Hello.

[Ben Bullen]

Hello, Noel. We are getting into, as we said earlier, we are getting into the fall season, the most wonderful time of the year.

[Noel Brown]

We're just a day past the equinox, right?

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, yeah. Look at you, man.

[Noel Brown]

You know how. You know, I know how? Because. Because I do yoga now every day. And they talk. They. They love the equinox, the special affirmation based around the equinox seasons of our. Of our bodies shifting along with that of nature.

[Ben Bullen]

What's your favorite yoga position or process?

[Noel Brown]

Donkey butt.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, yeah. How. What is that? Could you describe it?

[Noel Brown]

I'm just kidding. It's the rest. I don't know, man. Like, I think the thing that I like the most is that I can just hang dog, like, indefinitely ever. Yeah. And that's. It's the most transitional pose. And, like, the more you do it, the better you get at it. And I've just been absolutely loving it. So I don't know. I like them all, man. I'm like Trump in the Bible. I just love all. I love the whole thing. I love the whole thing.

[Ben Bullen]

There we go. There we go. We are, of course, huge fans of Halloween. As we've said in the past, it's arguably always Halloween in America. And so we reached out to our crew of Real Research Associates and we said, what's some Halloweeny stuff? And lo and behold, our good pal Ren had Renfest, I believe we're calling her, got back to us and said, what do you guys know about zombies?

[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

Well, there's the song. We got that one out of the way.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

There's a fellow named George Romero who made some movies about them that I think were pretty well received.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. The term living dead was first used in the 1968 Romero film Night of the Living Dead, which spawned an empire of media.

[Noel Brown]

And, you know, we can't talk about that without talking about Night of the Dummy, Night of the Goosebumps classic.

[Ren Fair Jones]

We Also Can't Talk or the Magnificent Carnival of Souls.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, boy. I know you did that one, Ben. I don't think I told you. I watched that not long ago. Must have been last season. Really ahead of its time. It's a. It's like, you know, it's. It's an older film. It's a real artsy, kind of cerebral horror. Very dreamlike, very lynching. I liked a lot.

[Ben Bullen]

Thank you, man.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, you made it.

[Ben Bullen]

I just like that. You like it.

[Noel Brown]

I do.

[Ben Bullen]

Like. Yeah.

[Ren Fair Jones]

It's an interesting story. We did an episode about her carvey for Ephemeral. And it's because it's the only, like, film like that. He made his career. He did educational films.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Yes.

[Ben Bullen]

They might be gruesome ones.

[Noel Brown]

You know who else did that?

[Ren Fair Jones]

Some.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

You know who else did that?

[Ben Bullen]

Joel Romero.

[Ren Fair Jones]

Romero. That Romero. We talk about it like in. In our episode, we kind of draw the comparison between the two of them because it's like they were not these traditional thing. And that's kind of like the John Wick movie franchise. They're done by, like, stunt people. And that's why they're so cool, is because they're looking at it from a different angle than what we're used to. People looking at films for us, I gotta say.

[Ben Bullen]

Also ephemeral. Just as mentioned. If you're a longtime ridiculous historian, you've heard us brag about this show. Before Max and his brother, our composer Alex, really led the charge on this.

[Ren Fair Jones]

And the venerable Trevor young, and young.

[Ben Bullen]

Mr. Young, the venerable and ephemeral. There we go. And we have all played a part in this endeavor. I think it really shows us what a podcast can do. So if you haven't heard it yet, get thee to your platform of choice.

[Noel Brown]

Dude, something was like totally going off in my noggin about these institutional films or educational films. And then George Romero. Recently, this very rare and underseen Romero film called the Amusement park was unearthed. And it is the only film he ever made for hire. And it was commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania. It's an educational film about elder abuse and age, but it's really whack and twisted and clearly dude just took the ball and ran with it. And the rest is zombie history.

[Ben Bullen]

Kind of like asking David lynch to make a soap opera or to make.

[Noel Brown]

A Star wars movie, which almost happened. Could have happened. What a bizarro timeline that would have been.

[Ben Bullen]

What was that? There were so many Salvador Dali brushes with greatness in film.

[Noel Brown]

Dali did have a brief dalliance with Disney that's out there. You can see clips of it. I think there were just some animatics that were produced, but the whole thing wasn't made. But it's really neat. And it's about what you would imagine maybe a Disney Dali co pro might look like, bro.

[Ben Bullen]

True story. We were out in Spain and went to a Dali museum where we were watching, I guess you would call it, the initial or test footage of his work with Disney. I believe it was Disney. I'm gullible. I get very in the moment. And I wanted to pick up some pieces of Dali artwork. And my girlfriend, who is by far the more intelligent, more responsible one in the crew, she said you can't just throw money at stuff because you think it's cool in the moment. And she was correct. I also threw money at the screen every time a zombie film with 28 in the title comes out.

[Noel Brown]

I would argue that throwing money at a thing in the moment is the only way to live. That's just. I'm sorry, that's just respectfully disagree.

[Ben Bullen]

And you know my girlfriend, so. And you know about her labubu thing. Gosh, everybody send me well wishes. This pop culture. Noel. I'm just not. I'm not prepared.

[Noel Brown]

You know what I bought recently, Ben?

[Ben Bullen]

What'd you buy?

[Noel Brown]

A lefufu.

[Ben Bullen]

Ah, I know what the lefufuu is.

[Noel Brown]

It's just a bootleg Labubu and, you know, I was hanging behind the counter at a gas station that I frequent around here, and I just, you know, it's sort of like those, like, really cool, like, burned mix CDs, those bootleg CDs that you'll see sometimes at Atlanta gas stations. Had to have it. And Eden, my kid, immediately decapitated it and hung it on a cross. So do with that information what you will.

[Ben Bullen]

Classic Eden. Big fan of the show. You can check out their appearance many years ago on this very show way back in the day. We are huge fans of Halloween. We are huge fans of spoopy doopy stuff and folklore. And the idea of the living dead, often called zombies in the west, is a huge thing. It's a prime character in the pantheon of Western monsters. And now do you remember, 28 years later, the newest sequel?

[Noel Brown]

Do I remember it? Of course. Yeah. It's only mere months ago. I think I saw. I actually saw it twice in the theaters. Did you see it, Ben?

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah. Multiple times.

[Noel Brown]

How did you feel about the ending? I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was schlock personified. It changed the tone and it was fun, upbeat after quite a slog of a movie. I mean, I was good, but, like, also, I loved all the hanging dongs, man. I love hanging zombie dongs.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah. And we won't spoil that film, but.

[Noel Brown]

Do check zombie hanging dongs. You're going to see a lot of them, but that might be more a trigger warning than a spoiler.

[Ben Bullen]

They're dead. Do they care about fashion?

[Noel Brown]

Sure. Swinging. They sure look lively to me.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the weather was nice for those dogs.

[Noel Brown]

Also, lest you worry too much or if this even matters, they are apparently all prosthetic 5. Much like the Dirk Diggler dong in Boogie Nights.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, but they're. Or Willem Dafoe. Willem Dafoe had a stunt double, I think, in Antichrist.

[Noel Brown]

That's correct. For those. There were some pretty seriously pornographic penetrative sex scenes in that film.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes. And we are getting back to zombies. We are. We're getting there.

[Noel Brown]

Big Halloween energy, man.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. So in modern pop culture, in your favorite films or works of fiction about the undead, zombies come from any number of imagined circumstances. Nuclear fallout revenues who do. Yeah, right, right. Nuclear fallout renders people somewhat zombie like. Or, of course, a fungal pandemic like Last of Us. A phenomenal video game. Maybe there's a virus.

[Noel Brown]

Not the best of shows. First season was pretty solid. Second season, boy, did it. Did it go downhill.

[Ren Fair Jones]

Meredith is so mad at me, because I used to keep telling her how.

[Noel Brown]

Awful the second is. I mean, look like what you like. No yucking of yums. But it took an odd tone, especially for a show where the creator of the video game was involved and clearly didn't quite get what made the game good. That's always odd.

[Ren Fair Jones]

It's like the whole entire purpose of the second game gets blown in the second episode. It's like, oh, we're just gonna tell you the plot at the end. And I say this as a guy, someone with the last of his tattoo.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, Right, Yeah. What it is.

[Ren Fair Jones]

I convinced my friend to buy a PlayStation instead and just play the game.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, you meet people where they're at. Right. The idea of the living dead, I think addresses one of the main questions of humanity, which is mortality. No one really knows what happens when you die. So death and anything involved with death can be very scary. The fancy word for that is thanatology, which means study of death.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, I guess that's where Thanos gets his name. Yes, he is a death deity. He is basically a God of death, more or less.

[Ben Bullen]

He's like a death fanboy.

[Noel Brown]

Okay, got it. He's death adjacent.

[Ben Bullen]

He's death adjacent. There we go. It's weird, Noel, because, however, depicted the undead zombies in particular to be differentiated from, you know, vampires. Right. Which often still possess cognitive faculties. Zombies can be very fast, Right. They can be very slow, like in Night of the Living Dead. The main thing is they're unrelenting for sure.

[Noel Brown]

And there's a horde of them. They do move in herds. It's true. Also, I would argue, and I think most pop culture Y type writers, that the fast zombie really didn't come around until the first 28 days later movie. That was kind of the advent of the fast zombie, which is what made that movie kind of stand apart. I'm fascinated by Ben is the evolution of the zombie from sort of a shambling walking thing that might eat your guts to one that will give you the bug if it scratches, bites, or eviscerates you even. And then you join the herd.

[Ben Bullen]

And Covid taught us a lot.

[Noel Brown]

About.

[Ben Bullen]

The real life consequences of not telling folks when you're infected. The zombie films were right. Every time someone hides the bite and then later turns into a monster, it's kind of like people lying about their Covid tests. So art does reflect reality. And I gotta shout out World War Z the book series. Amazing. And the film adaptation also have very fast zombies with a big old pile.

[Noel Brown]

Of Them climbing up a wall, if I'm not mistaken, that was sort of the iconic imagery from that. Well, why don't we jump in a.

[Ren Fair Jones]

Very cut budget at the very end.

[Noel Brown]

Which was very boring.

[Ren Fair Jones]

The film ran out of money when they were making it and it was very clear while you watched it.

[Noel Brown]

So they blew all the money on the zombie wall and then they didn't know how to end it.

[Ben Bullen]

You get in situations. You know, we know that Romero was or is rightly credited with bringing the idea of the zombie to the zeitgeist here in the West. But if you look at the etymology, zombie as a term can be traced all the way back to the 1600s to Haitian folklore. And allegedly we don't want to other here voodoo religious practices. Vadu, Vadu. Do you?

[Noel Brown]

I'd like to think I do. Some days I do, some days I don't. I'm with you there, Ben. Because of course this is a practice much like Wicca or any other sort of earth based ritualistic belief system. And it often gets pegged in this black magic kind of way and othered. And I think that's maybe where the, the ick comes from in terms of like the way it's demonized, which I think unfairly. Right. Isn't that what we're doing?

[Ben Bullen]

I agree with you. Yeah. I mean concepts of necromancy in one version or another have always been around. They're as old as the first time a human noticed another human died. Right. It's a very old human instinct and we have to remember there's historical context. So zombie spelled the way we spell it now with an IE it comes from or it has alternate spellings like Z O M B I and J U M B I E. A lot of the US focus on the idea of, of this specific type of reanimated cadaver comes from the othering comes from the United States occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. And people were obsessed with what they saw as exotic, unfamiliar customs. Very old customs, by the way, that you can trace directly to empires in Africa, on the African continent. And, and we know, for instance, we've all heard of like Lair of the White Worm, if you remember that one.

[Noel Brown]

Yep, that's a good one. And another good one is the Serpent and the Rainbow by. I believe that's John Carpenter. Or is it Wes Craven? I think it might be Wes Craven, but it's literally about this very topic and more rooted in that culture that we're talking about here. I haven't seen it in a long time and it may have not aged well, but it's got Bill Paxton in it and it's definitely got some good scares. It might be worth a check. Lair of the White Worm is weird as hell.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah it is. It's based on Bram Stoker. It's got a snake worshiping priestess. Honestly, Serpent in the Rainbow was what I was thinking about originally because it is very loosely inspired by an extremely awesome book. And if you saw the film and you didn't enjoy it, please do check out the book. It's totally different. It's much more factually based.

[Noel Brown]

May have said Bill Paxton. I met Bill Pullman and it was in fact directed by Wes Craven. It came out in 1988.

[Ben Bullen]

Nice. We know that a guy named William Seabrook went to Haiti to, quote unquote learn about the culture and when he did, he wrote a book called the magic island in 1929 and he had some really turgid prose about zombies and about Haiti in general. He was very much coming from an outsider, exploitative perspective. Right now, fellow nerds believe that Seabrook may have been the guy who introduced the word zombie into the American vernacular, but his account of the folklore detracted from its origins, which are slavery.

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[Ben Bullen]

This is where we have a disclaimer. As we kind of noted at the top, this is a Spoopy Doop episode. This is, as Ren says, gravely serious. So we do have to talk about the real life origins of enslavement and colonialism that led to all these films we enjoy so much today.

[Noel Brown]

100%. So before the Haitian Revolution, Haiti was a French colony known as Sant Domingo. Domingo, I believe. Santo Domingo, as I said, you Anglicize it. The French relied on forced labor of enslaved African people to create very lucrative sugar cane plantations.

[Ben Bullen]

Right. They made profit in human blood, and they were forcing these enslaved people into a very brutal life. The life expectancy was quite short. You would be a teenager and you would die in a few years simply due to the climate change. The unbelievable cruelty of the folks attempting to enslave you.

[Noel Brown]

We also know there's so much danger involved in cutting down sugar cane. Like, people lose limbs, people lose hands. You know, you literally have this massive blade and you're holding the thing and chopping down on it all kinds of ways. People could get infections and, you know, just the lack of care. Certainly it would be minimal. That would just allow people to continue to work, probably with injuries like that that would ultimately lead to their death and slow and painful often.

[Ben Bullen]

No such thing as osha. No such thing as an HR department. Let's go to Mike Mariani, who writes about this in the Atlantic. He says that a pretty big portion of people enslaved in Haiti at the time thought that dying might release them back to Langeni, to Guinea, to Africa, the continent in general. And this would be an afterlife wherein one was free from the atrocities of the waking world. And of course, we have to acknowledge that suicide was common among enslaved people. And one social mechanism that occurred to prevent this was the argument, similar to Christianity, that if you take your own life, you do not get to go to heaven, whatever version there may be.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. So just, you know, just work until you die.

[Ben Bullen]

Just work until you die, because there's a payoff in the afterlife. And if you did take your own life, you would be condemned to stay on that cursed sugar cane plantation for eternity.

[Noel Brown]

You would be insult to injury.

[Ben Bullen]

Right. You are denied your own agency as a person, but you are trapped within your body. You have lost your Soul, you are a zombie. But the word itself originates in West Africa. Zonbi z O n B I in Haitian Creole, you start to see that.

[Noel Brown]

Near the end of the period of French colonial rule, when this myth had really become part and parcel with the voodoo culture. Simply explained, the French were Catholic, and they forced the Africans, they enslaved to adhere to their particular religious beliefs. Heard of that move before. But since those enslaved didn't want to abandon their sacred beliefs, they, of course, had to take them underground, which we.

[Ben Bullen]

Also hear about all the time, religious syncretism.

[Noel Brown]

And then they start to make their way into sort of styling on the belief systems that were forced upon them. So they carried them with them back to their homelands. And over time, they did establish this system of beliefs known as voodoo, which. Which did take elements, as we're saying, from Christianity and kind of blended them with the spirituality of the West African culture.

[Ben Bullen]

Right. Animism, ancestor worship, that kind of stuff. We talk a lot about religious syncretism on our sister show, stuff they don't want you to know. We find it fascinating. Noel, as you remember, I run into religious syncretism or syncretic practices throughout Central America. It occurs in a similar way in the Caribbean, wherein people will say, this patron saint is actually this deity or this spirit. Right? And the French colonialists, they did some of the same things. A lot of missionaries did this, Spanish missionaries as well. They would say, oh, you're mountain gods is actually our thing, and you just had the name wrong.

[Noel Brown]

So the funniest clip, you've probably seen it. It's a Ricky Gervais talking about. Isn't it a coincidence that if you were born in the United States, you're probably gonna grow up Christian? If you were born in India, you're probably gonna grow up Hindu, and if you're born in Asia, you're probably gonna grow up Buddhist. And then he just points out this notion of each one of these cultures being fully convinced, against all odds, that they're the ones that got it right.

[Ben Bullen]

100%. Yeah. And there's a fantastic conversation Ricky Gervais has with Stephen Colbert, and years back, I was in the audience for it. And they talk about atheism and they talk, you know, Stephen Colbert, an ardent Catholic, and there's nothing wrong with that. But Ricky Gervais's banger line from there, which I think Steve appreciated, was he said, okay, you're Catholic, you believe in one God. Really, all that means is, I believe in one less God than you. Which is a really interesting way to Reframe it and look at it. And speaking of reframing, we have to recognize that outside of Western film and fiction, in actual Haitian culture, a zombie is not considered undead. A zombie is instead considered a living human being whose mental faculties have been severely altered. And that's something we see in the book Serpent and the Rainbow. The original zombie folklore begins to take a more literal, less metaphorical form with the emergence of voodoo.

[Noel Brown]

As you describe it, is there a sense that the person is in some way under the sway of someone or something?

[Ben Bullen]

Absolutely. Yeah. Yep, you nailed it. And there are a few things that could wake that person up and maybe return them to their original state. If you're looking at Haitian folklore and you're trying to find the puppeteer of the zombie, then you're looking at something called a bokor or a sorcerer who can induce a coma like state in their victims. So the victim's family and their loved ones, they bury the victim because they think that person is dead. Speaking of morbid stuff, we should absolutely do an episode about premature burial.

[Noel Brown]

That's funny. Then the tagline of the serpent in the rainbow is don't bury me. I'm not dead. Exclamation mark.

[Ben Bullen]

Oh.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, man.

[Ben Bullen]

There was like a baker's dozen of patents here in the US for devices that would let you alert people if you had been buried before you were actually dead. Like things you pull a life alert kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you wake up in the coffin and you say, oh, thank goodness, there's a string here. And it starts ringing a bell by your tombstone.

[Noel Brown]

I've seen that used in some fiction. I want to say it was in the first the Nun movie. Oh, quote me on that. But I think it might have been.

[Ben Bullen]

I remember the Nun.

[Noel Brown]

That one's a period piece.

[Ben Bullen]

So this idea here is that after the person is buried prematurely, the sorcerer, the bokor, digs up, the victim revives them through a combination of perhaps drugs and ritualism. And then the person becomes a zombie. They are devoid of free will. They do whatever the sorcerer tells them to do. And we're pulling that straight from the US Library of Congress. The work of these sorcerers, these bokor, could be considered evil if they were used for evil purposes. But folks who were enslaved and escaped enslavement formed secret societies. And they may have done a. A kind of underground railroad. If you go to visit Haiti, you'll see that the secret societies of people who achieved freedom may have also helped other people achieve freedom by faking death. Pseudocide.

[Noel Brown]

Sure. Like Romeo and Juliet. Only Juliet didn't get the memo. No, Romeo didn't get the memo.

[Ben Bullen]

Which one was it?

[Noel Brown]

Somebody didn't get the memo. One of them took a drug that would make them seem as though they were. And it's state like death. And then the other one comes upon them.

[Ren Fair Jones]

Romeo didn't get the.

[Noel Brown]

Romeo didn't get the memo. And then Juliet awakens from her stupor and realizes that her dear Romeo has not gotten the memo. And then she, yeah. Unalives herself.

[Ben Bullen]

Let's get into the science with the.

[Noel Brown]

Would love to.

[Ben Bullen]

Right.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. I've always, I bet you I, I, I'm sure in the text of Shakespeare it is described what remedy or lack thereof that that Juliet is given because it's by an old priest type figure. You know, it's like a dude that would have like knowledge of these esoteric arts.

[Ben Bullen]

Right, right. He would be some kind of pharmacologist. Right. Oh, I'm a priest in my day job, but I'm also super into alchemy and it's a friar, if I remember, that gives her the substance. There's an excellent article from the BBC back in, I want to say 2014, which, that dives into the idea. Right. Cause Shakespeare is writing about poison and the effects of drugs all the time. And later historians literally found the guy may have smoked some form of cannabis. He was into it. Yeah, sorry.

[Noel Brown]

Tell me more. My type of fellow.

[Ben Bullen]

Your type of Othello.

[Noel Brown]

Don't touch the stuff.

[Ben Bullen]

So let's go to the science here. As we've been mentioning various anthropological works. There's this ethnobotanist named Wade Davis. Wade has his bona fides. He went to Harvard, which doesn't always make you an expert, but in this case it is true. He is known for his books on indigenous cultures, biodiversity. He is indeed the author of the Serpent and the Rainbow.

[Noel Brown]

No way.

[Ben Bullen]

Yes way, Ted.

[Noel Brown]

Okay, cool.

[Ben Bullen]

Love that. So this is why I love this book so much. So he looks into the rumors of bringing back the dead in Haiti, this thing we would call zombification. And he believes that these self reporting sorcerers, these bokor, are actually using toxins from animals and paralytic herbs to create this cognitive state, especially pufferfish stuff, tetrodotoxin.

[Noel Brown]

Right. But wasn't there a bit of a stink when this book was published in terms of the efficacy of the things that he was reporting?

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, he has had a lot of. So it's 1983 before he publishes his book in 1985. That's when he first advances his hypothesis that this pufferfish derived substance in particular can explain zombies. And he runs into, he is honest in his work that he runs into people claiming to be sorcerers and saying, hey, I will sell you by secret, create a zombie formula. And then later he would find out that they were just trying to rip him off. You know what I mean? Trying to make a buck, buddy.

[Noel Brown]

I just found something amazing. That's not entirely confirmed, but one option for the deathlike sleep inducing potion that Juliet takes is tetrodotoxin.

[Ben Bullen]

Ah, nice, nice. Well done, buckaroo. Oh, man. Do you think Shakespeare knew about it? It, or did he just say like, ah, we'll have to do a Shakespeare?

[Noel Brown]

It's a good question. Yeah, I mean, like this, this is just like a thread about it on Reddit and people are talking about, you know, some possibilities and that one has come up a few times. But whether the chronology of it all makes sense or not, I could not say.

[Ben Bullen]

No, I hear you. Because it becomes similar to the argument of urgot poisoning.

[Noel Brown]

Well, obviously pufferfish existed in the time of Shakespeare. But. But would, you know, would that have been a thing that people knew about? It's one of those things like who? Exactly your point, Ben. Who figured out that that would happen if certain crops were left untended and developed these. What do you call them? Blights, I guess, right? Or who the first person was that figured out that if you ate this particular mushroom, it wouldn't kill you, but it would make you see fun stuff.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the idea of Shakespeare saying, well, my day job is being a playwright, but my real passion is pufferfish.

[Noel Brown]

100%.

[Ben Bullen]

I've cracked it.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, Shakespeare had quite the aquarium, as my understanding.

[Ben Bullen]

There is another idea, another substance that Wade Davis proposes as being part of the zombie formula. Datura stramonium. It's a flower and its street name is jimson weed. So this tetrodotoxin causes paralysis and jimson weed induces stupefaction and memory loss.

[Noel Brown]

Love the idea of stupefication as a side effect. Or maybe it's not a side effect, it's like the desired effect.

[Ben Bullen]

I'd love to see it in the fine print and fast pronunciation of a big pharma ad. You know what I mean?

[Noel Brown]

Absolutely. Can I just say, Ben, and some of this Google rabbit hole that this has induced, I found an article from Scientific American called Shakespeare on Drugs. I would love to see a breakdown of all the different poisons and hallucinogenic substances in the works of William Shakespeare just out there.

[Ben Bullen]

The Romeo and Juliet drug is not named, but I know he talks about Hamlets in Hamlet, Hamlet's father gets poisoned by someone pouring stuff in his ear.

[Noel Brown]

While he's hemlock maybe, or something like that. I can't remember. But you're 100% right. The method of delivery.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, and someone, I think it was Tatiana, got the juice of a flower put in her eyes and she fell in love with a guy who had a donkey head. Shakespeare was out there, you know what I mean? This is way before the current editing and studio process.

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

Malcolm Gladwell here. I recently recorded the first episode of Smart Talks with IBM where I learned how AI Agents Agents are joining AI Assistants as a major productivity tool. Let's start with AI Agents. AI agents can reason, plan and collaborate with other AI tools to autonomously perform tasks for a user. Brian Bitzel, an expert from IBM, gave me an example of how a college freshman might use an AI agent As a new student.

[Brian Bitzel]

You may not know how do I deal with my health and wellness issues. How many credits am I going to get for this given class? You could talk to someone and find out some of that, but maybe it's a little bit sensitive and you don't.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Want to do that, bissell told me. You could build an AI agent, a resource for new students that helps them navigate a new campus, register for classes, access the services they need, and even schedule appointments on their behalf, which in turn buys them more time to focus on their actual schoolwork.

[Brian Bitzel]

We can see patterns of how agents and assistants can help employees and customers and end users be more productive automate workflows so they're not doing certain types of repetitive work over and over again and streamlining their lives and making data more accessible to them 24 hours a day.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

To learn more about IBM's AI agents and how they can help your business, visit IBM.com.

[Ben Bullen]

Doesn'T matter the time of day. You can always look for new parts to upgrade your car. And if you're a serial eBay scroller, you know that rush when you finally spot the part you've been hunting for. Maybe you're restoring a classic and you track down the right seat covers, but you're not sure the color will match. Or you find a steering wheel you love, but maybe it's a a little too modern for the rest of the ride. Or you're just starting out, swapping your wipers and you can't be sure which set is the right set. Here's where eBay's free returns change the game. If it doesn't fit or it isn't what you expected, you can send it back. No stress. Just print a label, drop it off, and get your refund fast. So whether you're wrenching through a weekend project or just keeping your daily driver on the road, buy with confidence millions of parts. Free returns eBay Things people love Eligible items only exclusions apply.

[Noel Brown]

You can make a difference in someone's.

[Ben Bullen]

Life, including your own, with a job in home care.

[Noel Brown]

These jobs offer flexible schedules, health care, retirement options, and free training. They also provide paid time off and opportunities for overtime. Visit oregonhomecarejobs.com to learn more and apply. That's oregonhomecarejobs.com.

[Ben Bullen]

Stop settling for weak sound.

[Noel Brown]

It's time to level up your game.

[Ben Bullen]

And bring the boom. Hit the town with the ultra durable LG XBoom portable speaker and enjoy vibrant sound wherever you go.

[Noel Brown]

Elevate your listening experience to new heights because, let's be real, your music deserves it. The future of sound is now with LG XBoom and for a limited time.

[Ben Bullen]

Save [e-mail] with code Fall25 Bring the.

[Noel Brown]

Boom XBoom.

[Ben Bullen]

Davis his book Serpent in the Rainbow is what inspires Wes Craven to make that film adaptation. And a lot of researchers did not vibe with the research of Wade Davis. Other ethnobotanists were saying, look, his methodology is unsound. We can't find evidence of the hallucinogens upon testing his samples because the book is all about him meeting a real life sorcerer or meeting or trying to meet one and going through all these different conmen and trying to buy the make a zombie secret formula and then bringing it back for testing.

[Noel Brown]

I love the idea of, like, make your own zombie at home. Like, it's like a kit you can get. But outside of Haiti, we really owe a lot of the early understanding of the folklore surrounding the zombie to an anthropologist and acclaimed Harlem Renaissance writer who you may have heard of, named Zora neale Hurston. In 1936, she received a fellowship from the Guggenheim foundation to fund anthropological research there in Haiti. When she got there, she immediately got to work making friends with the locals.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, networking especially with the voodoo community.

[Noel Brown]

That's what you do as an anthropologist, by the way. I mean, that is the vibe. You're not there studying them, like, under a microscope. You're mixing in. You're taking in the sounds and the sights and eating the food and doing all those things, right?

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, you want to be of the people, you know, and you want to understand the folklore and the culture, and you can't really do that just by reading a book, so. In her quest to figure out how the practices and the belief system of voodoo fits in with the larger African diaspora, Hurston meets Felicia Felix mentor, and immediately says, bye.

[Noel Brown]

No, I'm sorry.

[Ben Bullen]

Like a bifi design. Yeah, I got it.

[Noel Brown]

That was not awesome. Soft.

[Ben Bullen]

So this character Felicia is a real person. Was believed to have been zombified. It was believed that a sorcerer, bokor, had taken her, stolen her body, and made her soulless, one of the undead. Hurston first hears about this from the government of Haiti, from the director general of the ministry of Health, and they tell her that this person, Felicia Felix mentor, has been brought to them, like, two medical facilities a month earlier. She's now in town. So if you're Hurston as an anthropologist, this is a tremendous and disturbing opportunity. The police found her nude, laying alongside the road, or shambling along the road, apparently 29 years after she had been officially buried by her family.

[Noel Brown]

Can we also just take a quick moment just to acknowledge Zora Neale Hurston and her important contribution to literature and to black culture? Or you may already be very much aware, but this was a black woman who was exploring this part of the world to understand her roots and her culture. And the anthropology of it all was very important, and she was known for that. But she was also a very well regarded fiction writer. And she has a very beloved novel that is considered, like, a centerpiece of the Harlem Renaissance called Their Eyes were Watching God, which I haven't read. I would very Much love to.

[Ben Bullen]

It's great. I've got a copy of it. If you're looking for a good book, you can't go wrong. Zora Neale Hurston had four novels, if I'm recalling correctly, and Their Eyes Were Watching God as the one that really stayed with me. That's the one you read in school.

[Noel Brown]

And she also has books of folklore, including 1935's Mules and Men, which is another foundational text spreading some of these sort of colloquial folk tales from the rural south that she experienced growing up. So fascinating human being.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And a lot of her work that's happening in Haiti at this time is going to be found in her later book, 1938's Tell My Voodoo and Life in Haiti in Jamaica. So she's not just focusing on Haiti, but for the purposes of our zombie episode. Episode. You gotta know some disturbing stuff, folks. She went to meet Felicia Felix mentor, who was under the care of authorities. However, when she shows up to this hospital, they're outside. They're in the hospital yard. The lady who has been through what we can only imagine be horrific things. She is frightened by all this attention. She can't really communicate. She's lost the faculty of language. She's making sounds, but not necessarily words. There is a very disturbing photograph that Hurston takes of Felicia Felix mentor, which you can find online. But do be aware, folks, it's not appropriate for all audiences. And the west loved it, man. Life magazine published this photograph throughout the land, and they said it's the first real evidence of a zombie. The trick of it is there's no real proof that Felicia Felix mentor was an actual zombie. To a lot of people who are more skeptical and don't believe in this idea, from their perspective, Felicia Felix mentor is a person who is simply suffering from mental illness. Not a curse, nothing supernatural, no secret. Make a zombie formula.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. And speaking of, you know, getting slipped to. Mickey Hurston herself believes to she had been poisoned for being seen as an interloper meddling in some of these affairs there in Haiti.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have to point out then, as now, there are very few resources in this part of the world for people suffering with mental illness. You end up being cared for by friends or loved ones at home, or you end up being on the streets in the woods. And Hurston sees disturbing things. When she runs into the secret zombie powder that is purportedly responsible for Felicia Felix mentor's condition, she is aghast. And like you were saying, the Guggenheim offers her a second Fellowship. They say, we like what you're doing. We like your work. Do you want to continue? And she says, no hard pass for me. I have a gastric illness. I believe that I have been poisoned.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Ren points out that in some of the accounts of this sort of exit that she had really begun to grow very superstitious, which I suppose being around some of that kind of stuff for a long time will do that. And did believe that she had been poisoned for, like I was saying, getting too close to some of the darker sides of voodoo. But it also has pointed out that she could have very much just easily contracted some kind of foodborne bacteria. When you're in a different part of the world, I've certainly seen it happen. Doesn't even have to be food that was prepared poorly. It could just very much be that your gut from where you're from isn't up to the task of dealing with this particular thing that folks who live around there would be completely, you know, steeled against, I guess.

[Ben Bullen]

Right. Like your gut biome, the biome of bacteria and all those helpful little things in your innards. Are not used to the new information 100%.

[Noel Brown]

But word to the wise, maybe if you're traveling abroad, God, don't eat, like, steak tartare and raw eggs. Just putting that out there, you know.

[Ben Bullen]

Microplastics are terrible, but bottled water is sometimes the best band aid solution. In the book we mentioned earlier, Tell My Horse, Hurston writes about encountering Felicia Felix Mentor, and she concludes, what is the truth about zombies? I do not know. But I know that I saw the broken remnant relic or refuse of Felicia Felix mentor in a hospital yard. It's chilling stuff. It's incredibly dark, I think.

[Noel Brown]

But it's also said with the, I guess, critical thinking and observant eye of like, a scientist. You know what I mean?

[Ben Bullen]

Right.

[Noel Brown]

It doesn't seem wrapped up in hyperbole or that there's this idea that she was getting a little more paranoid. I don't necessarily think that that superstition extended into, like, believing necessarily in some of these more dark forces, you know?

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. And Hurston, again, just a superb writer and a superb human being. She is not being exploitative.

[Noel Brown]

Clearly not.

[Ben Bullen]

Instead, she is attempting to bring this story to the world. I think we're gonna have a second episode on zombies because there are a few more cases of this. We do. We do want to end, as Ren encouraged us to do, with a little bit of some final words on the spiritual belief system of voodoo. You see it all the Time in western fiction, there's this white savior from a western world and he's got a Temple of doom. Yeah, yep. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the mishmash of folklore there really bothers me.

[Noel Brown]

It's really rough. That one's got a great opening sequence before they get into the jungle during that, like, disk that dance party where there's like this really elaborate kind of heisty escape at the very beginning. Absolute peak cinema. But the rest of that movie is kind of trash, likely partially if not mostly to blame by the fact that they just other the hell out of these indigenous people and they, like you said, Ben, the mishmash and the very kind of gross depictions. And I don't mean gross like icky gross, just of this sort of barbaric quality, you know, to the people that live from that part of the world. And this idea of the mannered sort of white folks from the US coming in and being sort of taken aback and aghast by like eating baby snakes and monkey brains, really not. Not good. Did not age well.

[Ben Bullen]

You see it all the time. Way before the creation of the United States. You would see things like this coming from the European diaspora.

[Noel Brown]

Dude, remember when we had the, like the. The human zoos with indigenous people from Africa and from other. Oh my God. I mean. Yeah, this.

[Ben Bullen]

Yeah. Dark, dark stuff. So we want to establish here, as we go into our favorite time of year, the Halloween season, that there may be some grain of truth to the story of mysterious zombie powder. However, if it exists, it would be incredibly uncommon for priests to do it, for practitioners of voodoo to genuinely engage in this. By genuinely, we mean people not doing it as a con. We're saying people making zombie powder and they themselves believing it works. That is, as far as we can tell, exceedingly rare. And a lot of voodoo practitioners consider themselves Christians as well. There's not a contradiction from their perspective between being Catholic and being in a voodoo community, which I agree with. I get it. You gotta find what works for you 100%.

[Noel Brown]

And as Hurston wrote in her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, direct quote, Haitian ceremonies were both beautiful and terrifying. I did not find any of them any more invalid than any other religion. Religion. I mean, dude, like the transubstantiation, eating the, you know, body of Christ and the blood of Christ. That's kind of barbaric and whack if you think about it.

[Ben Bullen]

It's normalized cannibals.

[Noel Brown]

Just because we're using that, you know, you're eating someone. I mean, that's the idea. Which is a little zombie coded in and of itself right there, man.

[Ben Bullen]

Dude, Jesus Christ. Is Jesus Christ not the world's most famous zombie?

[Noel Brown]

There's a bit in the. The Family Guy, the Great American Family Guy, something like. And it's talking about. He's talking about Christmas being. And that's when the ghost of Jesus rises from the dead to feed on the flesh of the living or something like that.

[Ben Bullen]

I don't want to step it back. I hope we haven't offended anybody when we're talking about this from an academic perspective. We're never denigrating religion. I do think the Christ zombie joke is funny, but I don't mean it to be offensive in any way. We're just giving you a little ha ha.

[Noel Brown]

And y', all. There's too many good bits here from Ren for tangent trivia. But I don't know if this is by accident, but I think we. I just want to end with this footnote at the bottom of this research brief as to what constitutes a poisoning.

[Ben Bullen]

Right. Yeah.

[Noel Brown]

This is so good. And it feels almost like dropped in there. Apropos of nothing. But maybe we can just round it robin this. In the call of the day, it's considered a poisoning. Any attempt on the life of a person through the use of substances which can cause death more or less cleanly, regardless of the manner in which these substances were used or administered and regardless of the consequences.

[Ben Bullen]

It continues. We're paraphrasing. You could also consider poisoning a murder attempt if the use is made against a person using substances that won't kill you, but will cause a more or less prolonged state of lethargy, like Juliet, regardless of the manner in which those substances were used and regardless of the consequences.

[Noel Brown]

Again, and to wrap it up, this is, I think, full circle here. If the person was buried as a consequence of the state of lethargy, the attempt will be considered a murder.

[Ben Bullen]

So, folks, thank you for tuning in. Please stay tuned. Tuned for our upcoming episode on Premature Burials because we are fun at parties and it is Halloween. Very excited, Nola. Max, for some Halloween shindigs. I'm going to. We are actually contemplating Mothman costumes. We might do some. Wait, Mothra or Mothman costumes?

[Noel Brown]

We portmanteaued it together, I believe, also in To Mothra Man. Mothra G Man.

[Ben Bullen]

Mothra G Man.

[Noel Brown]

Where you add a suit to the. To the equation. Now you're a Mothra G Man.

[Ben Bullen]

As if I already don't look like a cop.

[Noel Brown]

Especially with your Tom Selleck Stache.

[Ben Bullen]

Thank you man. Thank you.

[Noel Brown]

Feel like you're gonna pull me over on the pch.

[Ben Bullen]

So we would also we should do a history of the Pacific Coast Highway.

[Noel Brown]

Oh my God, that must have been like a massive. Not new deal maybe, but of that ilk construction project. Let's do it.

[Ben Bullen]

Let's do it. Let's also wrap here because Max, I can feel you saying, guys, this is an hour. So big thanks to our super producer, Mr. Max Zahambe Williams. Big thanks to Alex Williams, his biological brother who composed this track.

[Noel Brown]

And of course huge thanks Christ and Eve Jeffcoats here in spirit, Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzer, AJ Jacobs. Yeah yeah, the puzzler. Yay. But also yay to yay to both. They're both lovely dudes. And a huge thanks to Ren Ren Fair Jones who did our research for this episode. And as always, Ben, thanks to you man. Some fun zombie talk.

[Ben Bullen]

And folks please. Likewise Noel. Folks, please tune in later this week. I've kept this mustache entirely because we're doing an episode on disco balls.

[Noel Brown]

Ridiculous. History does disco. We'll see you next time folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bullen]

Visit a store@t mobile.com or call 1-800-T-Mobile-1-800-T Mobile.

[Noel Brown]

See details@t mobile.com this is Boyang from Las Culturistas and I'm Matt Rogers, also a host of Las Culturistas. Big news to share do you know what the perfect thing to bring to any party is?

[Commercial Announcer 3]

Bowen, we talked about this.

[Noel Brown]

I'm a person, not a thing. Oh, I didn't mean you. I meant Casamigos. Okay, chic and honestly, the only other correct answer the Casamigos Margarita that's a sleigh. Ah, Casamigos. Anything is a sleigh because anything goes with my Casamigos.

[Ben Bullen]

Anything goes with my Casamigos.

[Noel Brown]

Bo you're a P.O. please drink responsibly. Imported by Casamigos Spirits Co. White Plains, NY Casamigos Tequila 40% alcohol by volume I have type 2 diabetes, but I manage it well.

[Commercial Announcer 1]

It's a little pill with a big story to tell.

[Ben Bullen]

I take one stay leed Jardiance at each day's start.

[Commercial Announcer 3]

And for adults with type 2 diabetes and known heart disease. Jardiance can lower the risk of cardiovascular death too. Prescription Jardians are used to lower blood sugar along with diet and exercise in adults with type 2 diabetes. Jardiance is not for use to lower blood sugar in people with type 1 diabetes and not for people with type 2 diabetes who have severe kidney disease. Serious side effects include increased ketones in blood or urine, which can be fatal. Stop Jardiance and call your doctor right away if you have nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, tiredness, trouble breathing or increased ketones. Jardians may cause dehydration that can suddenly worsen kidney function and make you feel dizzy, lightheaded or weak upon standing. Genital yeast infections in men and women, urinary tract infections, low blood sugar or a rare, life threatening bacterial infection between and around the anus and genitals can occur. Call your doctor right away if you have fever or feel weak or tired and pain, tenderness, swelling or redness in the genital area. Don't use if allergic to jardians. Stop use if you have a serious allergic reaction. Call your doctor if you have rash, swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing. You may have increased risk for lower limb loss. Call your doctor right away if you have new pain or tenderness, sores, ulcers or infection in your legs or feet. To learn more about Jardiance 10 or 25 milligram tablets, ask your doctor. Visit jardiance.com or call 1-888-968-6648.

[Ben Bullen]

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[Noel Brown]

Visit Avis.com to learn more. This is an iHeart podcast.