Episode 20: Braaaainnnns

SUBJECTIVE

We've made it to the end of season 2! In the final episode of this season, we're dipping into the world of iZombie to talk about Romeros, misguided proteins, and an unexpected reason why you shouldn't mix drugs and energy drinks.. Now that you know how to make zombies and unmake them, how do you keep one fed and happy? Or at least just fed. There's only so much you can do about undead happiness levels.

OBJECTIVE

Resources, Citations, and Mentions:

• "Why Is It That Zombies Eat Brains?" by Karl Smallwood, Today I Found Out, Gizmodo, December 2014
• "George A. Romero: 'Who Says Zombies Eat Brains?'" by Eric Spitznagel, Vanity Fair, May 2010
• TV Tropes - Brain Food, accessed Oct 2020
• iZombie Wiki - Zombie, accessed Oct 2020
• "Why Don't We Eat (More) Brains?" by Alan Jasanoff, Lit Hub, March 2018
• "Thought for Food" by Heather Arndt Anderson, Taste, December 2017
• "When People Ate People, A Strange Disease Emerged" by Rae Ellen Bichell, NPR: The Salt, September 2016
• Whitfield, Jerome T et al. “Mortuary rites of the South Fore and kuru.” Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences vol. 363,1510 (2008): 3721-4.
• "How a history of eating human brains protected this tribe from brain disease" by Sarah Kaplan, The Washington Post, June 2015
• Asante, E., Smidak, M., Grimshaw, A. et al. A naturally occurring variant of the human prion protein completely prevents prion disease. Nature 522, 478–481 (2015).
• Hosszu, L.L.P., Conners, R., Sangar, D. et al. Structural effects of the highly protective V127 polymorphism on human prion protein. Commun Biol 3, 402 (2020).

ASSESSMENT

• Deepa: 3 out of 5 for pneumothorax corner, 5 out of 10 tainted Utopium vials
• Jen: 3 out of 5 lack of stethoscopes for pneumothorax corner, 5 out of 10 cans of Max Rager

PLAN

And that's a wrap for season 2! We'll be taking a short break before coming back with season 3. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time!

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Theme Music and SFX: Kevin MacLeod (CC BY) - RetroFuture Clean, Danse Macabre-Big Hit 2