Cognitive Engineering

There’s something about zombies that makes them the perfect genre to explore our apocalyptic fears and anxieties. Films about zombies seem to constantly reinvent the genre in new ways, whilst staying true to some core tenets. But how are zombies actually supposed to work and why are they so popular? In this week’s episode, we discuss zombies with friend-of-the-podcast Mikey Lear. We discuss the etymology of the word zombie and the history of zombie films, the cordycep fungus, technozombism and the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. We ask whether AIs are zombies and Jordan presents his zombie survival plan. Finally, we share our favourite scenes from zombie films. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - List of Zombie Films https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zombie_films - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Zombies https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/ - How the Zombie Represents America’s Deepest Fears https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/31/13440402/zombie-political-history