{"podcast":{"title":"Podcast Benomtad","slug":"podcast-benomtad-7087193","podcast_index_feed_id":7087193,"rss_url":"https://feed.podbean.com/benomtad/feed.xml","website_url":"https://benomtad.podbean.com","image_url":"https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/18753353/PodcastBenomtadLogo8.jpeg","author":"Ben Lundy","episode_count":100,"summary":"Open, philosophically-oriented conversations about almost any topic with almost anyone, but focusing on culture, spirituality and personal growth.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-13T06:20:40.123528+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/podcast-benomtad-7087193"},"episode":{"title":"Why are Zombies Everywhere?","slug":"why-are-zombies-everywhere","published_at":"2026-05-27T01:28:21+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/podcast-benomtad-7087193/why-are-zombies-everywhere","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/podcast-benomtad-7087193","url":"https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/why-are-zombies-everywhere/","audio_url":"https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/fp6jiyc4bcm9i375/ZombiesCh18jgo5.mp3","summary":"Zombies are everywhere in our culture, in movies and shows, and even in real life, on zombie walks. They’ve gone from being an object of horror to one of fascination, one that seems to reflect something back to us. In “Zombies in Western Culture,” zombies are analyzed as a myth of Western culture and a symbol of the meaning crisis. In this episode, we discuss chapter one, where Vervaeke and his coauthors discuss the zombie as part of the zeitgeist, of something hugely significant in and about our culture. They think this reflects the crisis based in the loss of the “sacred canopy” of Christianity. We briefly summarize the chapter and the riff off it. We compare the zombie with other monsters and discuss its link to consumerism. We discuss other attempts to awaken us from our slumber and the difficulty to doing so, and we talk about returning to the senses, the body, knowledge, and life. “Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis,” by John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, and Filip Miscevic: http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0113 Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 03:31 General Thoughts & the Aesthetic of the Zombie 05:35 “A Choice to Sleep Through Modernity” 16:00 The Hebrew Golem 17:22 Play Acting a Walking Dead 22:15 Zombie Walks and Serious Play 30:15 Muay Thai, Civilization, and “Fight Club” 34:54 No Meaning Out of Consumption 42:42 The Zombie Mirror, Marketing, & Anger in Society Now 48:45 “The White Zombie” 52:15 Everything is Seen from Your Own Need 56:55 The Zombie & Christian Resurrection 1:01:49 Healthy Seeing by Returning to the Body 1:08:01 The Nightmare of Descartes’ Idea 1:10:30 HP Lovecraft’s Monster and the Desacralization of Our World 1:15:10 The Artist as Shaman 1:22:03 The Usefulness of Form in Art & Twisted Messages 1:29:45…","meta_description":"Zombies are everywhere in our culture, in movies and shows, and even in real life, on zombie walks. They’ve gone from being an object of horror to one of…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":5512,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/podcast-benomtad-7087193/episodes/why-are-zombies-everywhere/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/podcast-benomtad-7087193/why-are-zombies-everywhere.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}