50 episodes listed below
One zombie metaphor, stretched from parasites to school.
Zombified treats the zombie as a working metaphor, asking whether its hosts have been zombified by parasites, psychedelics, education, bad ideas or the work-and-shopping routine. The material runs from toxoplasma to the solar duck curve, and the banter and joke merch pitches keep it from sounding like a lecture.
PRESS PLAY
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains is built on one question, and it keeps asking it. Have you been zombified? The host, Athena Aktipis, introduces herself on air as a psychology professor at ASU, while co-host Dave Lundberg-Kenrick describes himself as creative director for the psych department there and a bad idea enthusiast. At the top of an episode the question comes back with a new culprit. Imagination, or the lack of it. Parasites. Psychedelic drugs. Bad ideas. Education. The scheme, which in their telling is the loop of going to work, buying things, going home and never getting enough sleep. The titles pair each theme with a name: 'Parasitized: Kelly Weinersmith', 'Psychedelified: Shane Mauss', 'Mental Immunity: Andy Norman', 'Educational Zombification: Meredith Small', 'The Mad Scheme: Gary Dirks' and 'The Rise of AI: Andrew Maynard'. Read as a run, they show that zombification works here as a lens rather than a genre, turned on biology, the mind, school, work and ideas themselves. The talk carries real detail. In 'Parasitized: Kelly Weinersmith', the conversation covers an arms race between parasitoids with elaborate ovipositors and the protective growths a wasp manipulates a tree into producing, and whether the wasp changes its instructions at different stages is described as still unknown. 'The Mad Scheme: Gary Dirks' gets to the solar duck curve, built by subtracting a day's solar output from electricity demand. 'Psychedelified: Shane Mauss' brings in the brain's default mode network and the sense that, in a psychedelic state, everything carries equal importance. 'Mental Immunity: Andy Norman' makes room for stories, which may be untrue yet can lower resistance to new ideas. In 'Educational Zombification: Meredith Small', someone calls grades worthless and says college is for becoming an educated person. Personal asides keep coming up, like an 11-year-old's verdict that a parent is both the fun one and the serious one, or a joke about getting tested for toxoplasma because it would at least explain the lost keys. Then there is the silliness. A mock disclaimer notes that supporters do not necessarily endorse anything said about drugs. Merch plugs promise stickers that guard a computer against viruses and T-shirts that let the wearer live forever, or suggest turning shirts into license plates, followed by a reminder that this is not legal advice. More than once someone asks on air what they are supposed to say at the end, and in these episodes the sign-off is the same line: thank you for listening to Zombified, your source for fresh brains. What a listener gets is serious science and big questions, handled with a loose, joking curiosity that rarely stays on script.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes science as a rambling conversation rather than a lecture, and who will follow a thread from tree-hijacking wasps to college grades as long as the jokes keep coming.
What sets it apart: Rather than covering a single field, it runs one metaphor, zombification, through parasitology, psychedelics, schooling, energy and the spread of ideas, and it opens episodes by asking whether the hosts themselves have been zombified by the subject at hand.
Is something taking over your brain? Zombified is a podcast about how we are vulnerable to being hijacked by things that are not us. From microbes hijacking behavior, to humans influencing each other, to our brains being taken over by social media, we talk about why zombification happens, why we are susceptible to it, and what we can do about it. Hosted by Dr. Athena Aktipis, a Psychology Professor at Arizona State University and the founder of the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance, and co-hosted by zombie enthusiast Dave Lundberg-Kenrick, “Zombified” takes a radically interdisciplinary approach to the science of zombification. If you enjoy fresh brains, this podcast is for you!
A gall wasp makes a tree build its nursery; now your own routines look a little suspicious.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A warm conversation on adult busyness, wonder, and why serious work may still need play.
Imagination comes through as something adulthood can press down, not a luxury left behind in childhood. The discussion moves from the pleasure of a mind in "flow state" to the worry that busyness crowds out the room needed for wonder.
A playful science conversation about parasites, gall wasps, and the uneasy line between host and manipulator.
Kelly turns a conversation about the unsettling idea of toxoplasma gondii nudging behavior into a sharper look at biological control, moving from parasite anxiety to the stranger image of a gall wasp getting a tree to make shelter and food for its young.
A funny, concrete conversation about psychedelics, attention, and the trees that suddenly command notice.
Psychedelified: Shane Mauss turns psychedelic experience into a practical question about attention, asking what changes when the brain's usual sorting of focus and background detail starts to loosen.
A lively look at how stories can soften skepticism and help bad ideas travel.
The episode opens on a slippery question: how do bad ideas get past the mind's defenses, and why can some still prove useful? Athena Actipas and Dave Lumberg-Kenrick keep the exchange loose while drawing a clear line between playful invention and false narratives that cause…
A loose, thoughtful episode connects social integration with the solar grid's duck curve.
The episode frames the scheme as a kind of social operating system, tying together work, buying, too little sleep, and the uneasy sense that stepping outside society is no longer simple.
Big ideas, louder than necessary.
Bayesian thinking where uncertainty meets decisions.
Behavior analysis, poured into real practice.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains uses Andrew Maynard's take on AI and technology to ask whether imagination gets crowded out by templates, routine, and being busy.
["Athena Actipas and Dave Lundberg-Kenrick open Zombified's Parasitized episode with toxoplasma gondii jokes, cat urine, and Kelly Wienersmith.", "Kelly Wienersmith, an adjunct assistant professor at Rice University and science communicator, explains how Toxoplasma gondii reproduces in cats and spreads through oocysts in garden soil, unwashed vegetables, and prey animals.", "She cites Joanne Webster's rat studies, Yaroslav Flager's human behavior work, and Kevin Lafferty's country-level correlations, including slower reaction time and about 2.5 times more car accidents.", "The interview also moves through zombie ants, pinworms, tapeworms in moose, and the cryptkeeper wasp, showing how parasites can change fear, itch, movement, and plant tissue rather than only brains."]
Shane Mauss says psychedelics can de-zombify attention by disrupting the brain's default mode network, but the culture around psychedelics can create new forms of conformity.
["Athena Actipus and Dave Lumberg-Kenrick open Zombified by joking about shooting stars, literal fireworks, and bad ideas before bringing on Andy Norman, author of Mental Immunity.", "Norman says bad ideas can act like 'mind parasites,' and the conversation ties their spread to outrage, fear, social media algorithms, Alex Jones, and attention economies.", "He argues that 'everyone's entitled to their beliefs' is a bad cultural axiom because critical thinking can disturb beliefs and mental immunity depends on controlled exposure, not quarantine.", "The episode closes on stories, suspension of disbelief, and a witchcraft example in early modern Europe where broomstick travel widened accusations from a few nearby women to about 100."]
Gary Dierks treats modern life as a transactional "scheme" built on energy, raw materials, and information, and he argues that a week without power in Phoenix would quickly become a food, water, and heat problem.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines whether schools suppress curiosity through a conversation with anthropologist Meredith Small, professor emerita after 28 years at Cornell University.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews Nicole Barbaro, a PhD psychologist who moved from evolutionary human-behavior research into communications at Heterodox Academy.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines the Twitterpocalypse through Stephen Beschloss's account of growing from about 5,000 followers to more than 280,000 during the Trump years.
Athena Actipas and Dave Lundberg-Kenrick interview Liz Grumbach, an Arizona State University digital-humanities scholar with more than 12 years of experience.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains launches season four by defining “refusing to die” as staying human, maintaining autonomy, and continuing to engage with life.
Bob Cialdini explains how automatic influence can shape decisions before people recognize the cue, using Judith Langer’s Harvard Xerox study where “because” raised compliance from 60 percent to 93 percent.
Christy Rushby, managing director of the News CoLab at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School, defines media literacy as analyzing purpose, representation, context, and missing voices in media.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews Wendy Rotterweiss and Josh Kurtz about Shabam, a family science podcast that uses a zombie-apocalypse story to explain infrastructure, immunology, and critical thinking.
Mary Ziegler, a Florida State University law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction, explains how abortion became a strongly partisan issue in the United States.
Catherine Townsend, a social anthropologist, examines how famine shaped the Ik people’s reputation for selfishness after Colin Turnbull’s 1960s fieldwork in Uganda.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews behavioral scientist Tomas David Barrett about how social networks shape cooperation, conformity, and everyday behavior.
Athena Ektipas and Dave Lundberg-Kenrick interview Cornell economist Robert Frank about how peer behavior shapes consumption, beliefs, smoking, and mask use.
Athena Actipas and Dave Lumberg-Henrich interview Clyde Kane, CEO and founder of Louisiana Cajun Navy and Louisiana Storm Patrol, about civilian hurricane rescue.
Zombified hosts Athena Aktifis and Dave Lindberg-Kenryk interview Chelsea Weber-Smith, creator of American Hysteria, about growing up with a prepper father focused on the 2012 apocalypse.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines youth-sports competition through Scott Brooks’s experience as a former athlete, coach, parent, and urban sociologist at Arizona State University.
Licensed psychologist and ASU assistant clinical professor Matt Meier explains addiction through synthetic drugs, reward systems, environmental pressures, and treatment.
Cameron Carlson, an active-duty U.S.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines how Toxoplasma gondii alters cells, rodent behavior, and possibly human outcomes with Jessica Brinkworth, an immune-system researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Athena Actipas and Dave Lundberg-Kenrick launch Season 3 of Zombified with guests Jessica Brinkworth, Cameron Carlson, Erica O'Neill, and Ilana Rain.
Athena Actipus and Dave Lundberg-Kenrick interview anthropologist Michael Girvin about whether humans repeatedly experienced apocalyptic conditions during evolutionary history.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews filmmaker Ilana Rine about creating screen-based art while worrying that phones, Instagram, and films capture attention.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews Arizona State University social psychology professor Doug Kenrick about evolutionary motives and social parasites.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines memes and cultural transmission through an interview with anthropologist Lee Kronk of Rutgers University.
Christine Laguerre argues that human cognition is especially suited to cultural learning, allowing children to acquire languages, norms, and locally relevant toolkits through imitation.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines paranoia with Nicola Rayani, a professor of evolution and behavior at University College London.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews science journalist David Quammen about bats, zoonotic disease, and the movement of viruses between species.
Katina Michael, Athena Actipas and Dave Lundberg-Kenrick examine how GPS systems, smartphones, wearables and possible brain implants can shift decision-making away from human judgment.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines microchimerism, the transfer and persistence of genetically distinct cells between mothers and fetuses.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews psychologist Sarah Hill about hormonal contraception and the ways she says birth control pills can affect stress physiology, memory, and behavior.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews Harvard biologist David Haig about maternal-fetal conflict and the placenta's genetic origin in the fetus.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines how Diana Fleischman applies behaviorism and evolutionary psychology to manipulation in romantic, family, and other relationships.
Athena Actippas and Dave Lindberg-Kendrick launch Zombified's season on how love and relationships can manipulate behavior.
Mark Flynn, an anthropology professor at Baylor University, describes love as enjoying mutual exploitation through untracked giving and trust.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains interviews illustrator Neil Smith about how design and illustration can influence attention, behavior, and belief.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains revisits Dave's attempt to practice mindfulness after Mary Davis recommended meditation, gratitude, connection, and a fourth activity of choice.
Emily Zarka, an Arizona State University monster expert with a PhD in Gothic literature, explains how horror can rehearse practical and psychological responses to disasters.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains features documentary filmmaker Mark Minucci discussing insatiable curiosity, brain death, microbes, ego, and the ways people become controlled by forces they do not recognize.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines morbid curiosity with evolutionary biologist and cardiologist Barb Natterson Horowitz, whose work compares human and animal health.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines whether chaos paralyzes people or creates opportunities for action, through Athena Ectipus and Dave Lundberg-Kenrick's interview with disaster-response professor Keith Tidball.
Joe Alcock, Athena Actipas, and Dave Lundberg-Kenner examine whether microbes can manipulate host behavior through appetite, pain, mood, and opioid systems.
Zombified: Your Source for Fresh Brains examines laughter and humor through Athena Actipas's interview with psychology PhD and comedian Tom Wisdom.