{"podcast":{"title":"New Books in Archaeology","slug":"new-books-in-archaeology-736373","podcast_index_feed_id":736373,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/LIT7466012449","website_url":"https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/politics-society/archaeology/","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/f6afca30-ece1-11e8-941d-3bcfe1253be2/image/842e54a826b14a261b8bac22eb1937f5.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"New Books Network","episode_count":188,"summary":"This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/archaeology","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-archaeology-736373"},"episode":{"title":"John Blair, \"Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World\" (Princeton UP, 2025)","slug":"john-blair-killing-the-dead-vampire-epidemics-from-mesopotamia-to-the-new-world-princeton-up-2025","published_at":"2025-10-30T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-archaeology-736373/john-blair-killing-the-dead-vampire-epidemics-from-mesopotamia-to-the-new-world-princeton-up-2025","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-archaeology-736373","url":"https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK9900343310.mp3?updated=1761706797","audio_url":"https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK9900343310.mp3?updated=1761706797","summary":"Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton UP, 2025) by Professor John Blair provides the first in-depth, global account of one of the world’s most widespread yet misunderstood forms of mass hysteria—the vampire epidemic. In a spellbinding narrative, Dr. Blair takes readers from ancient Mesopotamia to present-day Haiti to explore a macabre frontier of life and death where corpses are believed to wander or do harm from the grave, and where the vampire is a physical expression of society’s inexplicable terrors and anxieties.In 1732, the British public opened their morning papers to read of lurid happenings in eastern Europe. Serbian villagers had dug up several corpses and had found them to be undecayed and bloated with blood. Recognizing the marks of vampirism, they mutilated and burned them. Centuries earlier, the English themselves engaged in the same behavior. In fact, vampire epidemics have flared up throughout history—in ancient Assyria, China, and Rome, medieval and early modern Europe, and the Americas. Blair blends the latest findings in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology with vampire lore from literature and popular culture to show how these episodes occur at traumatic moments in societies that upend all sense of security, and how the European vampire is just one species in a larger family of predatory supernatural entities that includes the female flying demons of Southeast Asia and the lustful yoginīs of India.Richly illustrated, Killing the Dead provocatively argues that corpse-killing, far from being pathological or unhealthy, served as a therapeutic and largely harmless outlet for fear, hatred, and paranoia that would otherwise result in violence against marginalized groups and individuals. This interview was co…","meta_description":"Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton UP, 2025) by Professor John Blair provides the first in-depth, global acc…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3089,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-archaeology-736373/episodes/john-blair-killing-the-dead-vampire-epidemics-from-mesopotamia-to-the-new-world-princeton-up-2025/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-archaeology-736373/john-blair-killing-the-dead-vampire-epidemics-from-mesopotamia-to-the-new-world-princeton-up-2025.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}