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Plight of the Living Dead

What Real-Life Zombies Reveal About Our World--and Ourselves

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About this listen

 A brain-bending exploration of real-life zombies and mind controllers, and what they reveal to us about nature—and ourselves

Zombieism isn’t just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It’s real, and it’s happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose—and even humans.

In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom.

Nothing Hollywood dreams up can match the brilliant, horrific zombies that natural selection has produced time and time again. Plight of the Living Dead is a surreal dive into a world that would be totally unbelievable if very smart scientists didn’t happen to be proving it’s real, and most troublingly—or maybe intriguingly—of all: how even we humans are affected.

“Fantastic . . . You'll be thinking about this book long after you're done reading it.” —Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish Animals Biological Sciences Biology Outdoors & Nature Science
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Interesting, terrifying and hilarious. I have a running argument with my friends where I state free-will is a useful illusion. I am to get them read this. Case closed! Liked the narrator too.

Horrific. Brilliant.

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This is a riveting and highly accessible overview of nature’s incredible parasites and the many ways they can control the minds and behaviour of their hosts. It’s very icky but also fascinating, and viewed through the lens of the zombie movie, a lot of fun. Holster Graham’s reading captures the enthusiasm and passion of the author, making you feel like you’re at the world’s coolest TED Talk.

Fascinating and more than a little creepy

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