Science Friday; 1036; Hour 2

From NPR News in New York, I'm Ira Flato with Science Friday. Having dinner with a cannibal may sound like you are on the menu, but the book, dinner with a cannibal, documents the long and hidden history of cannibalism. From eating loved ones out of respect to eating enemies out of disdain, the author is here to tell us why cannibalism wasn't always taboo. Plus, Halloween is the time to geek out and go all out doing it. From LEDs to windshield wiper motors to computers, some tips on how to geek your Halloween. Then zombies, they're not real, but that doesn't mean they can't be studied. When scientists think he's discovered what motivates them, could the undead be experiencing some extreme neurological disorders? Stay with us and find out. From NPR News in Washington, I'm Craig Wyndham.

The White House says loans and grants from the government's economic stimulus program have surged or created more than 140 ,000 jobs a year, Vice President Joe Biden says the new figures do out today, Jay. I have a cell phone which is off and it's over across the road. Yes. Yes. The Biden says the administration is on track to need this goal. Peter Piper picked a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick

a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a

pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick a pick pick in a pick cup so then in a pick cucumber can enter the Congress votes to reinstate him. This announcement comes after a high -level delegation from the U .S. State Department arrived in Tagusagalpa this week

to urge both sides back to the table. Jason Bobian and PR News, Mexico City. At public meetings in Pakistan today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was peppered with pointed questions and comments about U .S. predator drone attacks against militants. Clinton refused to discuss the matter, saying only that in her words there's a war going on, and that the U .S. is committed to helping Pakistan defeat terrorists. And PR's Jackie Northam says Clinton is headed to the United Arab Emirates and then on to Israel for meetings. Just to try to just get some forward motion on the stalled peace negotiations there, she's going to be meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and also with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while she's on that visit. From there she goes to Morocco where she'll meet with Arab foreign ministers to help work on the Israel -Palestine question. And PR is Jackie Northam who's traveling with Secretary Clinton. Rechecking Wall Street, the Dow is now down 253 points at 9 ,709. The S &P 500 is off 27. I'm Craig Wyndham, NPR News.

You're listening to Science Friday from NPR News. I'm Ayra Fledo, this hour Halloween science, some suggestions, and had to geek up your holiday and analysis of the zombie mind, you don't want to miss that one. But first, what would Halloween be without a cannibal costume or a movie like this year's zombie land? Surely when you hear the word cannibal, Jeffrey Dahmer type criminals who killed and ate their victims come to

mind, and in that context and in Hollywood cannibalism is grotesque and in this horrifying. But in other contexts and other places in history, cannibalism was a culturally acceptable ritual. It was a way to honor the dead or to spite your enemies, and at its very base, it's a way to make the worst, to make the most of a scarce resource, protein. In her book, Carol Travis Hennecoff documents the long, fascinating and very interesting history of this taboo subject. She's joining me here to talk about it. She's the author of Dinner with a Cannibal, the complete history of mankind's oldest taboo. She's joining us from WBEZ in Chicago. Thanks for being with us today, Carol. Now it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. You have 18 chapters, and in each one has a different point about cannibalism. Well, it's seven years of research. You know, many of us have never thought much about it, but you've obviously done a lot of thinking about it. What got you started? Your cookbooks, didn't you? At one time, yes, my father cooked for the King of Denmark and cooked for everybody in

Hollywood for 48 years, but so I'm well versed in the food department. But my main field of study is paleoanthropology, and I was working on a hypothesis concerning the demise of the Neanderthals who we know practice cannibalism, and I went to bed one night and said, I really don't know enough about cannibalism, and seven years later, I had a book. Wow. And you go through, let's go through some of those reasons that people do with cannibalism. One is it's survival, eating someone else's stay alive, or that's the plane crash survivor, right? Right. But that's probably also how most organisms in most societies first took it up. They were dying of starvation, and someone died, or there was a body, or they may have killed someone. But starvation is pretty much the obvious stimulant to start into other things. For instance, there's endocannibalism, which is tied in with funerary cannibalism because you're eating of your dead, and

that's usually your family members, and sometimes that turns into religious cannibalism, because some people believe that if the body isn't consumed, the person can't travel on. And then there's exocannibalism where you annihilate your enemy, then that can relate to token cannibalism in that you may only eat the heart or something. Other tribes, who probably have less protein around in their surrounding area than others, will consume the entire body, and they will tell you, though, because you always put a belief system around something, and you do that something inside of you says, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. And so the belief is that if you consume the body, you annihilate the soul, then therefore you have completely ridden yourself of that enemy, and his ghosts can't come back to haunt you. There's a lot of religious, which goes into ritual token.

For example. Well, a religious act would be connected with a funerary in that if you don't eat of the body, they don't go to heaven, all right? Communion in the book, I repeat Christ words, and what a lot of people don't read about what he originally said to a group, many of them left when he told them about his body and that they had to consume it. I don't think many people know that hundreds of years ago the Eucharist was laid out. It wasn't a bowl of wafers. It was a big piece of bread that was in the shape of a man, and you were consuming Christ's body. But one of the most fascinating is medicinal. It's referred to as aiatric cannibalism, and it is never, ever. In any medical writings or anything referred to as being an act of cannibalism, it's medicine.

And all through the inquisition years of almost 600 years, your pens went to their physicians and he prescribed mummy, which was a small cube of human ham. And they never referred to this as being cannibalism. And it started with hundreds of years before that mummy is coming from Egypt, and it came along with the myth that if you ate mummy, it would improve your health. And my husband's a physician, and I had a lot of wonderful help on this book from a lot of physicians and psychiatrists, everything else. But we all know the placebo effect does work, and since the majority of illnesses improve with time, and your body fights them, and they go away all by themselves. If you took the mummy and you got better, it's say, well, it was the mummy. It's like people who go and

they have a virus, and they demand penicillin from their doctor. Well, the penicillin won't touch the virus, but they take their penicillin and they feel better. So there's many kinds. I guess you must get asked all the time if you're an expert on cannibalism, what does human flesh taste like? I don't know. Other than that, oh, this is so gruesome, but when I was a little girl, I loved a roller skate, and I have to admit that I used to pick off my scabs and devour them. They kind of tasted like a good wafer. I'm very embarrassed about that, but I stopped by the age of 10. I never thought I'd say on the end that this is more information than I thought. I'm right. I know. But you know, it's - But people always talk about it taste like chicken or something else like that. No, no, no. They say chicken because that's what they always say. They don't know what it tastes like. Or pork, right? Pork was always big. Long pig that term, by the way, what I just told you,

that gross out statement is called autofagy. And there are many. I don't, in fact, it's so ugly. I didn't go into it in the book. But the cannibals usually say it's the best meat they've ever tasted, but you have to look at where they live. Many of these people who have made statements like that live where the only protein on four legs running around are wild boar and wild pigs. And being a chef, I can tell you that is a dry and stringy meat without that much flavor, okay? And the human body has far more fat on it, naturally, even in a thin person. The breast are mostly fat, the buttocks are mostly fat, and we need fat. And so a lot of cannibals, when they make those statements, I can't tell you what it would taste like, but I know what it looks like. And there is no reason on

earth that it wouldn't be good. We're only one to three percent different in genetics from chimpanzees. And in Africa today, a person will give up a whole year's wages for a carcass of a chimpanzee. So what does it taste like? I don't know, but it's a culinary expert. Yes, it would be good. It would be good. We're running out of time, but I wanted to know that. Are you saying basically that the taboo we have about cannibalism is a cultural one now that everybody? Totally, totally. If you were born in a group, a small group of people, and they ate of their dead, and you saw that from the time you were in your mother's arms, you would grow up to do the same, and you would never think a thing was wrong with it. It's because certain cultures tell other cultures, you can't do that. It's become a taboo as people have gone around the world. It was never a taboo years or hundreds of

years ago. And are there still cannibals around? Yes. There are three in jail in Texas. And there have been several trials recently where people have said in court that they were ordered to cannibalize victims in certain wars in order to frighten other people so that they would do, as the dictator said. There is a tribe in New Guinea who still kill and eat witches to annihilate them. It's still going on, and they just executed a cannibal in Japan not too long ago. And yes, it's still with us, and it happens in wars. It happens whenever people are forced into starvation. Do you find it as a topic that people have a hard time talking about? No, and the way I've written the book, well

one friend said since reading that, I have become the greatest dinner conversation on the planet. It's a much broader subject than you might think. And the book is really a story of our entire evolution, not just cannibalism. But no one today would ever admit to being one, even if they were. No, because our society shuns it, bans it. It's the worst. And yet, you know, we have Sweeney Todd and so forth. In fact, that's another kind of cannibalism. It's called benign cannibalism. And that's when the person has no idea what he just ate. There's got to be a difference between the criminal cannibal and the benign cannibal that you're talking about. Oh, you know, the Jeffrey Dahmer's are incredibly sick, mentally, emotionally, sociologically, certainly. But they make up a minute fraction of 1 % of

the cannibals that have ever lived. One thing you learn in the book is that if a tried chooses to practice cannibalism, they will always create a belief system around. It's not, it sounds like an excuse. And maybe it is. Maybe even the laws we write are excuses. Or they dictate our behavior. And so you'll find this no matter what kind of cannibalism there is. The people who are practicing it have a belief system. The Aztecs truly believe that if you and then everything would die. They felt that the sun was in its fifth life and they had to keep feeding it or would die in them. That's religious. That's several different times of cannibalism all over the world. I have to interrupt and say

thank you for taking time to be with us, Carol. Carol is a pleasure. You're welcome, Carol. Travis Hancock, Hanukoff author of dinner with a cannibal. The complete history of mankind's oldest taboo. Very, very interesting reading. Good for Halloween, I think. Stay with us. We're going to be right back in the switchcares and talk about how to geek out your Halloween. A little something to do. Stay with us. I'll be right back. I'm Ira Flato and this is Science Friday from NPR News. I am Ira Flato. We're

talking this hour about Halloween science. This is the time of the year for Geeks Gone Wild. Tinkering with tiny motors. You have your LED lights, fake blood, fog machines, time, money, creativity, all going into making each Halloween geekier and techier than the last one. And that's what we're here to celebrate. We're going to talk about how to geek up your Halloween. Maybe you do that already. Do you have a geek, great geek project for Halloween? You could suggest to us. We'd like to hear about it. We're looking at the most innovative ways to geek up Halloween 2009 from simple things. I guess it is pretty simple to reinvent the jack -a -lantern using LEDs or you can create holograms with some home videos. So perhaps as I say, you have a geeky costume you've created. Have you seen those pair of iPhones that those two Geeks on a YouTuber wearing? This is giant iPhones and they work. Well, maybe you've got something to go along with that. My guest is Mark Freinfelder. He is Editor -in -Chief of Make Magazine. Welcome to Science Friday, Mark. Thanks, Ira. Is it a good geekier every year? Every Halloween? Yeah, I think it absolutely gets geekier every year.

And that's because thanks to the internet, people can build on their past creations and learn from each other and expand on that. So there's this kind of rapid evolution taking place. And before in the earlier days, before the internet, there were kind of the standard tricks that people knew. But it's just an explosion of stuff out there. Well, let's see what's out there. Our number is 1 -800 -989 -8255. Also, we're taking tweets at Sci -Fi, at SEIFRI, and also in second life. So let's talk about what's your favorite thing this year? Well, there are a lot of them that I really like. But I think my favorite is one of the most gruesome ones. And it's this electric chair simulator where the guy has set up a dummy that looks like a human body with a black blanket over his head and these big electrodes going into his body. He's sitting in a chair and next to it, it looks like a voltage generator. And it tells kind of a whole story.

All of a sudden, the siren starts blasting and its light starts flashing, warning people to stand away. And then you hear this tremendous noise of like a dynamo revving up. And then the guy gets hit with this huge jolt of electricity. And he starts screaming in his body shaking and smoke is pouring out of his body. And the sparks are flying. And then it winds down. You hear the generator wind down. And the guy just kind of goes limp. And the whole thing takes about 45 seconds. And it's just riveting. You can watch the video of it on YouTube. And is this something you greeted at when you get to the Go Trick or Treating at their door? Yeah, sure. You know, these kind of garage and front yard haunted houses. Right. This is a chance for geeks to show their stuff. Is there anything that little simpler that you could do if you want to geek something out? I talked about LEDs. I guess you could do that. If you want to decorate your pumpkin, right? Yeah, sure. There's a lot of easy little projects you can do. A popular one is to make a sylon pumpkin. So you have that little kind of row of LED lights zipping back and forth across the eyes of the pumpkin. Right. A little things like that. A remote control

from little remote control cars to, you know, turn a motor that bangs a pie tin inside that jack a lantern, things like that. There's all levels. It's open everyone. Yeah. And what about in costume making or any geeky things? I was mentioning these two guys on YouTube with that iPhone. Those iPhone costumes that really work. Oh, yeah. That's incredible. Well, you know, the year before they made these iPhone costumes with 37 -inch flat screen television monitors to simulate the screen, but they were non -operational. This year they're using 42 -inch flat screen TVs powered by car batteries that are dangling between their legs. This whole get -up weighs 85 pounds. And they are actually projecting the image from their iPhone, real iPhone onto that 42 -inch screen. So it's really working. You're seeing an actual iPhone in operation. That tremendous amount of work. I bet. Is there something simple like a home gadget that lots of people are using? Well, I think one of the most popular gadgets is

actually an old windshield wiper motor. You can, because of the way that the levers work and back and forth motion, you can make ghosts and you can make things try to jumping out of cages or boxes or things like that. That's a really popular thing. Yeah. I guess you could do that right on your front if we stoop. You could put that up there. Sure. You could rock a skeleton back and forth with that motor. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. A articulated ghost that's really popular. All those kinds of things. And there was some very simple things on your website. You show something simple as making tombstones out of a port concrete that are pretty easy to do. Sure. You can do that or making tombstones out of carved blocks of styrofoam and then painting them works well. And then also using that spray that people use to close up cracks and they're out of walls to prevent draft. It's like an expanding insulating foam. You can use that to spray out and it expands and you

can add wires and strings and then paint it red and it looks a lot like guts and gore. That's a really popular thing. And then you spray with clear acrylic to make it shiny and even grosser. Yeah. Let's go to Gus. Gus and Indiana. Hi. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Go ahead. This is a phenomenal industry to be involved in the haunted house industry, the professional end of things. Exactly. I've seen it for 10 years and over the years. I've seen and the internet is a big portion of the cause of it. But I've seen just a huge rise in the level of animatronics and nomadic sensors, controllers. It's every year at the trade shows that we go to and the national trade shows. There is new ideas, new people, new companies starting up and doing well. It's an awesome industry. It was actually over $7 billion spent on the haunted industry last year. $7 billion bucks on haunting. That's haunting. So every year they're trying to outdo the products they had the year before. Absolutely. And this industry is very free. Free sharing. You get a product. You go buy someone's product

and then make it do something it never was meant to do or you know, enhance it in a style that fits your attraction. And so there's a lot of that going on. There's some real creative people in the industry. All right. Good luck, Gus and have a happy Halloween. Hey, thank you. Thanks for calling. 1 -800 -999 -825. Let's go to Laura in Brooklyn, New York. Hi, Laura. Hi. Hi there. I have an animatronic rat. An animatronic rat. Yeah, it's big. I got one of those big plastic rats from a Halloween store and then a remote control Jeep, a toy Jeep. And you take the chassis out the Jeep and then mount the rat on the body around the guts. And it's very scary. We painted the wheels black. You can't see them and put LED eyes on the rat. Very creepy. Anybody try to hit it with a baseball bat or something? That's the first year we've done it. So we're concerned because I love my rat. I

think that's the first on -site Friday work. But it's a great idea because you can go into radio shack or any of these stores and buy a lot of these remote control things. Yeah, I mean, it was really easy. Well, I have to say my husband did the work, but it was my idea. And I guess depending on your neighborhood, the rat will look real, a bigger small rat, depending on your neighborhood. It's dark. You really can't tell it's a toy. It's very scary. You can do somebody a heart attack with that. Well, I hope not. Well, that's it. I personally might not give away a lot of candy because if they get past the rat, you know, they do, but a more creepy stuff going on past the rat. Yeah. There's one never mind. Never mind. That's for another show, Laura. Sorry. That's for another show, I think. All right, have a happy Halloween. That's a really easy thing to do. I mean, Mark, you just get a body of remote control stuff, or whatever you want on there. Yeah, sure. I mean, that's the fun thing about this is that you just kind of remix and reuse technology that people have spent millions of dollars to develop. And then you

can buy, you know, remote control car for five to twenty bucks and got a zombified baby's head on it or something. And you've got yourself a pretty cool Halloween prop. Wow. Let's go to Stefan and Anchorage, Alaska. Hi there. Hello. Hi. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween to you. One suggestion I have is that I've been home haunting for years now is what they call flying crank ghost. It is a electric motor on a aluminum frame. And it basically has a crank that you attach three strings to and you make a married puppet out of a ghost. And then you hang it in your window when it moves up and down. The kids absolutely love it. You light it up with a black light. And I mean, the kids absolutely love it. You can Google it flying crank ghost. It's one of the easiest home hard props to make. And it's a lot of fun. Mark, are you familiar with this? Yeah, I am. In fact, in our, we have a special issue of make that's completely devoted to Halloween props. And we talk quite a bit about the flying crank ghost and explain how to make one. That's an old classic

that is very versatile. And it is a great effect and it uses the windshield wiper motor. But that's kind of a must have if you're going to have a good home haunted house. All right, Stefan. It's a great prop to start with and get the tombstone, foam tombstones. And you're good to go. And I think home haunting in front of you is a great scene. It kind of brings a whole neighborhood aspect. The kids all come out and enjoy it. So you work your way up from there. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween to you. All right, bye. Bye, bye. Well, mark to get the idea that they know home haunting is starting to rival Christmas decorations on some of these people's homes. Yeah, I think so. I think there's more opportunities to to have fun with Halloween. Christmas is fun too. And people do great stuff with it. But really you're completely unlimited when it comes to Halloween to doing things. What's a good way to trick trick or treaters as they're coming up to your door there? Well, I think it's always fun to startle them, you know, as

opposed to scare them because it's an instant reaction. One of our editors that make me this funny little jack -a -lantern that has a big red button for a nose. And if you see a big red button on Halloween, of course, you're going to push it. I mean, you can't not push a big red button. And so when you push it, nothing happens for three to five seconds because it has a built -in delay. And then this really loud car horn inside the pumpkin goes off. It's really loud. And people will literally jump out of their skins when it happens. Even the guy who made it marked the bank every time he does it to himself, it scares himself. Wow, that's pretty easy to make. Very easy to make. Yeah. And a lot of these projects use microcontrollers, which are little electronic components that are getting very inexpensive now. And they basically can be programmed to control a variety of devices like fog machines, lighting, sound effects, motors. And that kind of thing has really taken Halloween to a new level using these microcontrollers. 1 -800 -998255 is going to Brad and Wichita. Hi, Brad.

Hello. Hey there. Hello. You're on. Well, I'm like this, sir. Go ahead. Really, one thing that we have is up in Topeka. We've got a live -action gaming society. It's called heroic. And effectively, we do Halloween once a month every year. Wow. And we've got all sorts of little little acts and props that go on. And one of the fun things that I've seen is somebody used water at a natured alcohol to set his hands on fire without actually hurting himself. And he could just put it out real quick, but it was kind of a nice effect. And it's just not only using motors and props, but it's also using chemistry to help with all the different things you could have for Halloween. Well, we're not advocating that on try this at home, section. We'll leave that to the professionals. That's kind of dangerous to set yourself on fire. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It takes a lot of safety. All right, Brad. Thanks for calling. What about creating moods, Mark? I'm talking with Mark Freudenfeld, who was editor -in -chief of Make Magazine. And you guys develop whole

sections to making stuff by yourself. What about mood? You know, there's a lot of, I'm thinking of fog generating machines and lights that create effects that you think you see something, but it's not there. Yeah. Well, fog is an essential component to Halloween. It gives an eerie feeling, and it also does things like hides cables and wires and high, you know, removes some of the details so that it just gives an overall eerie appearance. It's really important to chill the fog. You know, if you have a standard fog machine, the fog will dissipate pretty quickly, but if you chill it first, it really helps. And so they have at these Haunt cons, this big annual Halloween convention, they have a thing called a chill -off contest where people bring in their homemade fog -chilling machines. And the best one turns out to be a big plastic trash can with a whole bunch of dryer ducts, that kind of aluminum plastic tubing. And then you pack the, the trash can filled with ice, and you run the fog through that tube, and it gets really

cold when it comes out. And then it just hangs out there really thick ends. Yeah, so we show you how to make that award -winning fog -chiller. And that's something that's inexpensive and really will, you know, double the effectiveness of your haunted house. We're talking about haunting things this hour on Science Friday from NPR News. I'm my replator with a Mark Freundfelder Editor -in -Chief of Make Magazine, on number 1 -800 -998255. Let's go to Alex and Kalamazoo, I Alex. Hey, how's it going? I love the show. I wasn't doing it every day after school. I was calling the last year. I've actually got two Halloween ideas. Last year, what I did was I took a webcam and an LCD screen from like an old monitor that I wasn't using anymore. And I did, I used the the microcontrollers, just like you was saying, it was a mid -range chip, to create a little pouch on my waist that was at a battery there. And I powered the webcam through that as well as the LCD screen. So then I cut a bunch of holes on my clothes,

and the webcam was basically just showing exactly what was behind me. So it looked like I had holes in my shirt, and I like holes all the way through my body there. So you had the screen on your stomach pointing behind you with a webcam? Yep, and then the webcam would show exactly what was behind me. So people were looking at me from the front, and they, you know, it was all kind of goered up on my shirt, and I was like that. People were looking at me from the front, and they would be exactly what was behind me. So it was like they were looking through me. Really cool. Yeah, I mean, I can't take credit. For that 100%, you know, I got the idea. I love make magazine. I just got all of my subscription, and then I need to renew it, but college is expensive, but I love make magazine, and I like instructables .com. That's another cool, like, doing yourself websites that I kind of got a couple of ideas there, and it's big, you know, I love the big communities that do it, that do it yourselfers, you know, it's a big thing now, and it's great. So. Well, good, that's a great suggestion, Alex. Thanks for sharing it with us. Good luck. You have to help me out. You too. Interesting, but you got to be a little, you got to be a little experience with your soldering iron on that one.

Yeah, yeah, there are certain ones that are very sophisticated for sure. Yeah, and but people are, you know, they, when you think of all the planning that must go into some of these costumes, it could take, you know, a year to do them. Yeah, definitely. It's a year. Some people ramp up as soon as Halloween's over, they're getting started on next season, you know, what they learned, and from their experience, and yeah, because it's just a great opportunity to show off what you know, and share your, share your technical prowess with other people. Let's go to Mike and Colorado. Hi, Mike. Hello there. Nice great show. Thank you for, for Halloween. I was going to go as a swine flu, but everyone's doing that, and here in Colorado, the balloon boy is big. So I'm going to balloon boy is dead with a convict outfit. I got this inflatable helium UFO at the hobby store, 80 bucks, and it has even the remote control servers in the transmitter,

and it's going to be, you know, great with that, you know, the helium UFO and and dad who's who's now going to jail probably. Yeah, that is the topical. What do you, what do you think, Mike? Mark, did you get any, are you getting requests for balloon boy things this year, you know? I haven't gotten any specific requests, but I have seen a few examples of of jackalanderns that are just pumpkin slipped upside down and painted silver to pay homage to balloon boy. All right, we're going to take a short break. Well, we'll come back and talk a little more with the Mark Freinfeldr editor in chief of big magazine. Number 1 -800 -998 -255. Stay with us because we'll also talk about the mind of a zombie after that. So we'll be right back after the short break. Am I replayed? Oh, this is science Friday from NPR News. Support for NPR comes from NPR members stations and from

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You're listening to Science Friday from NPR News. I'm Ira Flato. This hour we're talking

with Mark Frauenfeld, who is editor in chief of Make Magazine about the geekiest Halloween ideas of the year. Let me see if we can go to the phones, get a caller to in here more. Randy from Cincinnati. Hi, I said, Randy. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi there. Hi, how are you? Yeah, you're talking about something that I really love to do and I haven't done it for last couple of years, but one of the first things I did is I worked at the automation industry and I deal with servomotors a lot. I actually put about a three -foot spider on a clothesline essentially and ran a clothesline on the ground and then hooked it to the clothesline. It would move about 20 feet per second, which was really fast. It would actually burn the rope after a few moves. One of the most memorable things was the little boys walking up in a dinosaur costume and I let the spider go and it actually fell over. So it was a really cool little front yard haunt. Wow, it's got a lot of attention all day. Yeah, yeah, kids still talk about it through this day and I keep thinking about making it again,

but don't have access to the equipment anymore. It was a quite expensive stuff that I would borrow. Oh yeah, you need it special parts motor plate. Yeah, all right, thanks. Yeah, Mark, if you can get the parts, you can make the stuff. That's right. And the good thing is that we're living in a time when people, well, I guess good and bad, people discard perfectly good stuff and makers and DIYers can grab that stuff and repurpose it. And not only that, we're living on the time where the internet allows you to find any part you'd want for just about anything. Yeah, it's it's like an indexable scrap yard that you can zero in on things right away. Yeah, and you can go to your website at the makescene .com and all kinds of stuff about making these Halloween items. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us. Mark and have a good Halloween. Yeah, happy Halloween to you, too, Ira. Thank you. You're welcome. That was a Mark Fraunfelder editor and chief of makes magazine. I'm talking about our

geekiest Halloween ever this year. Welcome to a night of total terror. What would Halloween be without a scary zombie movie just like this classic one? Night of the living dead, the dead who live on living flesh. Oh, right. Of the living dead. That is the classic. That is the, I guess, the grand idea of all horror movies for Halloween and for the rest of this hour, we're going to be talking about what drives those zombies are brains. What's going on in their brain? Not the normal ones, but the zombie brains, which as they show you in the movie, are very hungry for flesh, human flesh. Well, my next guest has taken the necessary precautions in case there ever

is an outbreak of zombies. He is studying the zombie literature and the movies to be able to understand what is going on in the brains of the undead and see if there could be maybe a vaccine to protect us from those zombies just in case. Dr. Steven Schlotzmann is a co -director of the medical student education in psychiatry at Harvard Med School, as well as staff child psychiatrists at Mass General Hospital. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Schlotzmann. Thanks very much. It's fun to talk to you. It is fun. What made you study zombie brains? What zombie motivation? Good question. I was watching, I guess a little bit over a year ago, night of the living dead was on TV and it was kind of on that list of movies that I had never seen and needed to see. First of all, it was a totally compelling movie. I loved that clip. You just played, but I was kind of watching them and thinking there's something clearly not right about the way they're moving, talking, behaving, acting, they're really talking. They moan a lot, act. And then I started thinking about what must be going on in their brains to make them back that way. And I wrote this fake

paper about it. And what did you discover or think what must be going on in there? I mean, the wonderful thing about writing a fake paper is that I can make up all the references myself and things like that. You had some co -authors, right? They're somewhere infected, somewhere have already deceased, somewhere humanoid. It was all good fun. So with the caveat to their fictional characters, I kind of decided that there wasn't much of a frontal lobe, which is the region of the brain that allows you to plan and do complex tasks and also to control and pulse of acts to stop you from doing things that have you had two or three more minutes. You might not do it. Figure they didn't have much of that. They had a whole lot of amygdala going on. Amygdala are telling which is the region of the limbic system that's responsible for very, very base emotions, usually rage, fear, and maybe lost. And then there's an intermediary part of the brain, the interior singular cortex, which helps to modulate communications between higher and lower brain.

And I figured that probably wasn't working so good, because you figure out normal humans. If that lower brain gets too loud, the interior singular cortex helps to modulate it, so the frontal lobe can process it in time. But zombies don't process that well. Do we know why they're so hungry for human flesh? At all. What's going on here? It's a great question. So we know this one is kind of me. We can say why they're hungry. So there is a region of the brain that's responsible for letting you know when you're stomachs full. We ignore it all the time. You know, I'm Thanksgiving, things like that. But the ventramedial hypothalamus, which is a region of the brain that sits below the phalamus, basically receives signals from your stomach and from your GI tract that tells you that you've had enough and it's time to stop eating. And it turns out there are a group of infectious agents that usually exist in animals, sometimes jump to humans, but usually viral viruses, born of irresistence, things like that, that make their way into the brain and cause you to ignore those satiety signals. You can also do that surgically. So in mice that have had the enteroventral medial

hypothalamus, ablated surgically. They'll just eat and eat and eat until they die, basically. 1 -800 -999 -8255 talking with Dr. Steven Schlossman about the psychiatry, I guess. Do you mind the mind of a zombie? Do we, you know what's never explained, you know, George Romero, who's the father of the zombies here? Yeah, he never really explains how it spreads. Does, you know, he's a lovely man. That's one of the most fun things about this has been getting to meet him and know him. The very learned guy incredibly well read. He will steadfastly refuse to explain. I mean, there are little hints in his movies that night of living dead, there's one hint that it was that it was radiation. It's just to be radiation all the time in the old movies. Right, sort of plague stuff. It tends to be, I think, whatever freaks us out the most at the current time. So right now we're sort of fixated on, you know, plagues and things. So it's usually a plague that, you know, some kind of infectious agent that's caused the

zombification process. And so it's a viral sort of thing for half. Yeah, so folks will usually turn to virus in the same way that when, you know, your doctor doesn't quite know what it is, but they know you got something that they probably have virus. So it will turn to virus. And virus kind of makes sense. There was this great moment at MGH when I was talking to other folks about this, talking to one of the ID docs and said, hey, what do you think would work here? And his first his first thing was Steve gets serious. We actually had patients to see. But then his second thing was, you know, you got to go with with prions, which are the proteins for not even living that caused things like spundra form changes in the person. And then at like one o 'clock in the morning, that night, he emailed me, said, I've been thinking more about it. It's got to be more contagious than that. Can you do something with influenza? That's what you want to get started spreading it around it. Exactly. It caused by the flow. Right, right, right. I mean, if you actually came up with it with a scientific term, what's happening

in Tommy? What is the genetic satiety deficiency syndrome? It's a tactic, meaning you don't walk that well. And the neurodegenerative means your brain stops working, so you degenerate neurologically. Satiety is the sense that you're full, and that's not working, so it's deficient. In the paper I wrote, it was originally called RAH, or Reptilean Aggression Hunger Syndrome. And that is basically because if you look at a reptile's brain, it's mostly all, it's mostly a international classification of disease in 11, 2012, which hasn't happened yet, of course, decided to change it. I getcha. Let's go and see what some of our listeners are thinking. Diana and Boston, hi there. Hi, how are you doing? How are you doing? So I'm a medical student here, and I've had friends and me joke articles, and some serious things for a number of years, because I kind of have this irrational fear of zombies, and actually getting over it this year by dressing as one. And I discovered from a

psychiatry basis what made me afraid of them, as a small child, we had a rabies epidemic where I was living in Connecticut, and my mother described the features to me, and kind of scared the daylights out of me to avoid raccoons that I saw on the yard who were out when they shouldn't be out, were extremely aggressive, who couldn't be stopped by normal physical exertions fighting, and who, if they bit me, I might become sick like them. It wasn't until studying rabies in one of my classes, in my second year that I realized that those would be exact characteristics of zombies, and this fear that I had of the zombies was just a remnant of how my mom had scared me. Subsequently, when I told another friend who's a medical student in New York, she sent me articles about diseases, old -case studies in the south of infectious agents that flowed the heartbeat to a point where, off top of my head, I can't remember what it was, and that it had fed the sort of zombie

heritage, which I know has a long, southern history to it. You know a lot about zombies, don't you? I know a little too much for a person who considers himself a scientist. But it's kind of flooding. This is good. You're treating yourself. This is a good, this is a good thing. Yeah, so this year I'm going as one. I'm actually, I've got everything, the blood I got, professional prosthetic makeup, and I'm, you know, PTSD treating myself this year. I've proud of you. You're not only, you're not only talking to talk, but you walk the walk. With all the atactic movements and everything. Wow. Happy Halloween, Diana. Happy Halloween. Good luck to you. She really has covered the waterfront on that one. She has, you know, the, especially in the, so rabies comes up an awful lot in the discussion. It doesn't quite fit for the path of physiology because actually rabies create a kind of hydrophobia where, where people are afraid of drinking and eating. They, they buy it out of aggression, but they don't buy because they're hungry. So that was why I ended up ruining it up, but, but you got to consider it. I mean, yeah, that's a great diagnosis. 1 ,899 -8255, Andrew in Nebraska. Hi. Hey, I was

just wondering if the doctor could explain if there was some kind of difference psychologically between the slow zombies and the ones like the monstrous, fast ones that are just terrifying off of 28 days later. That is, that is like the, you know, when I, when I started doing this, that's like the question was, so my, my first answer is always, um, it's like talking about the DH and baseball, you know, like, like, whether you think the DH is a good thing or not, you really love baseball. So everybody who asked me this question, they all love zombies no matter what. What I would say is that, like, the zombies in 28 days later aren't really zombies because they're not really dead. They're infected with the rage virus and not like the, the walking dead. But neurobiologically speaking, they got to be different. They, they got to have better cerebellar function than do the Romero types zombies because they move too fluidly. And they also kind of use pack behavior, hunting behavior, which suggests higher cortical involvement than you would see in Romero zombies, which literally stumble around and kind of get stuck at windows and can't figure out how to open

them. So if you were going to write something different about the 28 days later types of zombies, or for that matter, the, um, the remake of Don of the Dead had running zombies, which was like this big change from the previous 78 Don of the Dead. Um, you'd have to sort of design their brains a little bit differently so that they could communicate with each other and so that they can run more fluidly and sort of do pursuit activities. Makes sense to me. Thanks Andrew. Yeah, I hope you got the analysis you're looking for there. 1 899 8255. We're talking about zombies this hour on Science Friday from NPR News. Am I reflator talking with Dr. Stephen Schlatzman about zombies? Let's a lot of people want to ask. So let's, uh, let's see if we can get another question to do in here. Darryl and Austin. Hi, Darryl. Hi, hi, hi there. My brother -in -law exhibits all the symptoms of a zombie and all he eats is big necks and twinkies. And here we have yet another theory for the rapid

dissemination of this horrible disease. Um, the couch potatoes, um, thanks Darryl. The question is whether he will turn from big necks and twinkies to human walking flesh, because then we have a problem. Well, yeah, you know, you, you've touched on something before that didn't realize. And in description of zombies is that they're not just eating human flesh, but they're angry, right? Um, so there's rage, right? And that's, um, that's actually one of the most interesting things about the sort of concept of zombies. Um, they appear rageful. They mean they're, they look like they really would like to tear you from one to limb. That's all based on the amygdala of the brain. What's interesting though is, um, if all you are is amygdala, it's not really rage because rage as we conceptualize it is, um, the sort of feeling of wanting to attack and then the cognitive understanding of why we want to attack. And if you don't have a higher brain, you can't really understand why you want to fight. That's why in all the zombie movies, it's actually the humans who are the worst enemies. It's pretty easy to not run a Romero zombie, then it's stumbled around and can't really catch you. So the humans just get bored and turn on each other. All right. That's always what happens in the

twilight zone. It's going to stand in St. Bernardo. Hi, hi, Stan. Hi. Hi there. Um, I actually had a, uh, theory that why zombies attack living humans? So because I had learned in a health class that pregnant women, um, the food they need that they think they need the weird cravings are for some chemical that their body needs for the baby. And so if you're a zombie and you're dead, you're craving and needing living things like living cells to really make a sense that that's why they always go after, you know, eating humans or living. Interesting. What do you say, Mark? It's a cool concept. So I would say, first of all, I mean, you know, we're making all this up. So it can be whatever we want. But from the scientific perspective, um, that that's certainly viable. And that's really, you do read about that thing, uh, that particular phenomena with, um, with the syndromes other than pregnancy as well. There's also kind of existential explanation

that that Romero and others will throw around that they're sort of craving a life force. Um, there's kind of a lot, you know, it's no fun being the living dead. Yeah. You sort of crave things that are alive and an attempt to sort of regain this. Steve, where do you go next with your research? Um, well, I have a book, um, believe it or not, um, which is just totally funny. Since I, most of my research is on things like adolescent depression and stigma and mental health, but I have a novel coming out that amazingly features a short ball Jewish guy who looks not unlike me who, um, tries to save the world from the zombie apocalypse. I'm hoping Hugh Jackman will play me in the movie that ever gets optioned, but I see a little just like you. I can, right. Exactly. You know, there's a light. We're both carbon -based life forms. So, so the, the books in the, in the process and we'll wait for it to happen. Yes. All right. And, and, and we'll wish you a happy Halloween. Thank you, you too. And, and thanks for taking time to be with us and having a lot of fun about zombies. Steve, my pleasure. You're welcome. Dr., he is a doctor at MD, Dr. Stephen Schlazman, who is a co -director

of medical student education in psychiatry at Harvard Mid School as well as staff, a child psychiatrist, as he talks about at the mass general hospital. That's about all the time we have for this edition, our Halloween edition. I'd like to thank my guests, Dr. Schlazman. Also, uh, Greg Smith composed a theme music. We had helped today from in -parallel librarian, Kim Oleski, surfer over to our website at sciencefriday .com, where we have a, a science friday favorite, the thousand pound jack -a -lantern. A thousand pound pumpkin is up there for Laura Lickman, put it up there for you, for your enjoyment to see. An old science friday pick of the week. And I'm sure you'll like to watch that one. Have a great and safe Halloween. We'll see you next week on my Reflado in New York. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and from

the National Science Foundation, from Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide at FordFoundation .org, from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation supporting the performing arts and environmental conservation, medical research, and the prevention of child abuse. And from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, working to enhance public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. This is NPR. It's the best remembered part of our best known book. And God said, let there be light. Under ground comic legend, Arkrum illustrated the entire text of the book of Genesis. For him, the light was a little harder to find. You know it's best to ask these people get. I'm Neil Conan, Arkrum, the book of Genesis. Plus, Jody Cantor on the first marriage next talk of the nation from NPR News.