2023 is officially over, and what a wild ride it's been! Celebrate with us as we mark a year of thrilling reads and apocalyptic scenarios, all while navigating the juggernaut of daily life and personal battles. From the literary feast of 'The Girl with All the Gifts' to the gritty survival in 'Plague of the Dead' we've traversed the spectrum of undead fiction with laughter, insights from authors like Lori Calcuttaire, Brandon Starocci and Joshua Grant, and heartfelt discussions on more serious issues such as climate apocalypse.
As the winter solstice approaches, we can't help but reflect on the joys and challenges of the past year, from crafting mushroom art to contemplating Santa's shamanic origins. Tune in for an eclectic mix of humor and horror as we look forward to new horizons, including engaging with more zombie aficionados like Sylvester Barzey and laying down our ambitious plans for weekly episodes and community voicemails. Whether it's discussing the potential of plastic eating mycelium or mulling over the best Hilliard, Ohio spots to wait out a zombie outbreak, 2024 promises to be an amazing year for Zombie Book Club.
Wrapping up this brain-munching anniversary episode, we cast a hopeful glance at the year ahead, dreaming of convention appearances and our very own line of merchandise. Join us as we continue to carve out a niche for zombie literature lovers, and don't forget to spread the infection by sharing our podcast with fellow apocalyptic aficionados. With a promise of more games, challenges, and late-night psychedelic musings and the undead, we're gearing up for another fantastic year of Zombie Book Club—where your next favorite read might just save your life in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
IPCC Climate Change Report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
Living Dead Weekend
https://www.thelivingdeadweekend.com/
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
2023 is officially over, and what a wild ride it's been! Celebrate with us as we mark a year of thrilling reads and apocalyptic scenarios, all while navigating the juggernaut of daily life and personal battles. From the literary feast of 'The Girl with All the Gifts' to the gritty survival in 'Plague of the Dead' we've traversed the spectrum of undead fiction with laughter, insights from authors like Lori Calcuttaire, Brandon Starocci and Joshua Grant, and heartfelt discussions on more serious issues such as climate apocalypse.
As the winter solstice approaches, we can't help but reflect on the joys and challenges of the past year, from crafting mushroom art to contemplating Santa's shamanic origins. Tune in for an eclectic mix of humor and horror as we look forward to new horizons, including engaging with more zombie aficionados like Sylvester Barzey and laying down our ambitious plans for weekly episodes and community voicemails. Whether it's discussing the potential of plastic eating mycelium or mulling over the best Hilliard, Ohio spots to wait out a zombie outbreak, 2024 promises to be an amazing year for Zombie Book Club.
Wrapping up this brain-munching anniversary episode, we cast a hopeful glance at the year ahead, dreaming of convention appearances and our very own line of merchandise. Join us as we continue to carve out a niche for zombie literature lovers, and don't forget to spread the infection by sharing our podcast with fellow apocalyptic aficionados. With a promise of more games, challenges, and late-night psychedelic musings and the undead, we're gearing up for another fantastic year of Zombie Book Club—where your next favorite read might just save your life in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
IPCC Climate Change Report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
Living Dead Weekend
https://www.thelivingdeadweekend.com/
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Follow our linktree for social media links, and links to all the places you can find our podcast!
https://linktr.ee/zombiebookclub
Zombie Book Club Voicemail
(614) 699-0006
Zombie Book Club Email
ZombieBookClubPodcast@gmail.com
Our Secret Website That Isn't Finished
https://zombiebookclub.io
Our Merchandise Store (Where you can find our Evil Magic Chicken Zombie Shirts)
https://zombie-book-club.myspreadshop.com
Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a podcast. That podcast is a year old and that podcast is this podcast.
Speaker 1:Happy birthday zombie. Happy birthday, it's her zombie. Hi, I'm Dan and I'm a writer when I'm not witnessing the mass functional alcoholism of my entire family. I'm writing a book about a narcissist who could have easily avoided a zombie apocalypse with the reasonable public health policies, but instead sabotages the whole system in order to manipulate the stock market and make him and his rich friends just a little bit richer.
Speaker 2:Sounds a little bit like Mark Zuckerberg and his $2 million bunker in Hawaii.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's not a politician.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, it depends on who you think runs this company, True? True, I'm not to say country, but it's a company. Well, united States is a company, it is. It's not. Oligarchy means United States Incorporated.
Speaker 2:I need to Google oligarchy to know if I'm using it right. Hi, I'm Leah and this podcast is my anchor during a year of grieving for my horse, atlas, who died last year, and battling unexpected chronic pain. But the cool thing is that this community we are building has actually brought me a lot of unexpected joy, so thanks for being here. Zombies and people who love zombies are the unexpected cure for many of life's ailments.
Speaker 1:It's true. Yeah, I had something clever to say, but I forgot when it was.
Speaker 2:Too late yeah.
Speaker 1:Leah. Leah has some chronic pain in her feets. That happened when she was taking care of her horse, who also had chronic pain in his feet. Yeah, it was sympathy pain, and now I have the sympathy pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now Dan's feet hurt. And, by the way, we know that it's not plural feats and also that horses are called hooves. It's just one of our idiosyncrasies, like skizzers versus scissors. What Feets? Yes.
Speaker 1:It's pronounced scissors, but it's spelled with a C. Today we're talking about the zombie book club and how amazing it is that we manage to keep putting out episodes despite the demands of my paving season. I drive a truck full of asphalt during the summer and it's very hard because sometimes 14 hours a day. But today we're going to talk about the best and worst of this year and talk about what the future of our beautiful zombie baby has in store for 2024. They're going to be a toddler. They're going to be the president.
Speaker 2:You know what? Zombie baby for president. I think zombie baby would be a great president. Yeah, personal life update Leah, no more personal life updates.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're never going to do it ever again.
Speaker 2:The end Nah? We love ourselves too much for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is where we come to tell you all about ourselves. But we decided that a small portion of the podcast at the beginning wasn't enough, so we're just going to make a whole episode of it.
Speaker 2:It's going to be more than that. It's going to be more than that. We're going to actually have an episode come out every week. Now Some folks have been asking for that. The first episode, or rather like week ones episode, is going to be I'm titling it for now talking shit, dan has some better options below. Yeah, I have.
Speaker 1:Here's my three ideas. You ready? Yep, the casual dead, okay, no, zombies allowed. Life after zombies. Life after zombies.
Speaker 2:I think I like the casual dead, which I do too. I'm curious what you all think. Let us know which of those three you like. But basically it's going to be a little bit of our life updates. It's going to be things like zombies in the news. And then actually, I made a phone number for you all because I had this moment on mushrooms shocking. You know, by now, this is a thing for me. I was like I want to hear from the people who are listening to us. They've invested so much fucking time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she said this in the middle of like several minutes of complete silence and leave us just like. I want to know what the people are saying. Yeah, I want to know what you're thinking about. My reaction was there are people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more than just you and I. You know a little mushroom universe, but seriously, if you want to ask us for any random advice, ask us anything, bring up things with Xypocalypse that you want us to talk about, whatever you got three minutes if you call this number 614-699-0006. That's 614-699-0006. You've got three minutes to leave us a voicemail. This number is actually from one of our top locations of listeners, which is Hilliard Ohio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a Hilliard Ohio phone number. Now we're moving to your town. We realize that this is where we get the most support, so we're moving to Hilliard.
Speaker 2:Is that creepy?
Speaker 1:We're moving into your house. Whoever you are, we're coming.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's what's going to be like our one episode every two weeks. We'll do something like that. That's a little more fun and casual. And then what are we going to do the other week? Dan Wait, what was the first week, the potentially called casual dead week?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the casual dead. Yeah, that's just going to be us talking about things that we want to do, and then the week after that is a regular old fashioned zombie book club episode where we talk about books and movies and sometimes games, comics.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:A tabletop RPG game that I'm really excited about the Walking Dead Universe. Yeah, we got to play it soon. Yeah, I actually signed up for for a role playing group on I think it's called Start Playing, where, like DMs go to set up games that you pay like $20 to join and they DM for you and you just show up with your character and you play with strangers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you should share the link in the show notes, because actually I appreciate the day that this comes out as the day that you're playing, january 7.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll let you guys know how it goes, and then we'll see.
Speaker 2:So the biggest change I think to know is that typically we had a book that we were reviewing or talking about part of the book club, every five episodes, which is every 10 weeks. So now it's going to be every 10 episodes and so very five, but still the same amount of time. You got 10 weeks to read the book with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the reason that we do it that way is because, you know, not everybody has time to read a zombie series in a week, like some people sitting at this table.
Speaker 2:Well, you had all that time because you're on the road driving.
Speaker 1:You know I've been reading a lot less now that I've been off of work.
Speaker 2:Isn't that funny.
Speaker 1:It is funny.
Speaker 2:Well, we're going to actually I'm going to be reading Sylvester Barzy's planet bed, planet bed. That's funny, planet bed, planet dead as a bedtime story for the next little while.
Speaker 1:Bill Vester Sarzi Dan at blood.
Speaker 2:But it is going to be our bedtime story because I want to read about clown cannibals or bed.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about this one because I mean. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I could very well could be, but Sylvester Barzy is an Indian author. Yes, yeah, and I've been seeing this huge thing on threads between authors, where some people are in this camp of all, indie authors Don't edit their manuscripts before publishing a book and they're not worth reading, and then a lot of people are saying that's ridiculous. I've read tons of really good indie authors and they're just as good as any traditional publisher book. So it's all on you, sylvester.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've read some publisher books and some self published things and same thing with, like YouTube, like it's really going to. The quality is always going to vary, but I believe in Sylvester because, like I said, I did open it up randomly on a page and was like this is really good and also disturbing.
Speaker 1:I've seen a lot of testimonials claiming that Sylvester's book is incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's a whole series, so beginning of many, but this is actually our last personal update of the year because we're recording this before the Gregorian calendar New Year. It's actually December 30th today, so I thought the New Year was in two months. Oh, you mean the Chinese New Year.
Speaker 1:That's the actual New Year.
Speaker 2:There are many New Years.
Speaker 1:I don't change the calendar year until February.
Speaker 2:I don't think that would go very well if you had a job like mine. That'd be very confusing. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we go by the Gregorian calendar as we're going with, so tomorrow night is New Year's Eve. But a couple things just to share some fun stuff that's been going on with us. Dan threw me a prom for our wedding anniversary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I haven't always been the best at like knowing how to make like grand gestures in relationships with Leah. It's very important to me that I let her know that I love her and you know to do something that's special and thoughtful and not boring and more original. You know it gives me a lot of anxiety, so when I came up with this idea of doing prom.
Speaker 1:I was like brilliant and it like took so much, so much off my shoulders about like, you know, what kind of an anniversary gift does Leah want? What kind of what should I make for dinner? And like, no, we're doing prom, we're going to get a laser light show, we're going to get a bubble machine. Yeah, I thought about getting a fog machine, but you know, I felt like our dogs swimming through carbon dioxide might not have been a good idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they wouldn't have appreciated that. I think they were pretty freaked out by the lights.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got a big, big mylar like prom 2024, which that didn't go well because 2023. 2023. Yeah, next year.
Speaker 2:I'm going to just buy a four. I think we're going to make this a tradition, because I love prom.
Speaker 1:Prom was great.
Speaker 2:It was, I got dressed up, dan got dressed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know when I saw how your face lit up with joy when you saw the prom, like I knew. I did a good job.
Speaker 2:Making my nostrils flare and my nose tinkly thinking about it.
Speaker 1:That's so sweet it's giving me post nasal drip, just thinking about it.
Speaker 2:True romance. Yeah, it was wonderful. There was a lot of passion which cannot be discussed in detail on this podcast. But just know, spicy, I'm a lucky, lucky person.
Speaker 1:I also very much enjoyed it too.
Speaker 2:Okay, moving on, I also really enjoyed the night sky.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's very beautiful.
Speaker 2:We're not talking about any more than that. Leah really loves the sky. I did it was a good time. Also, just like looking at Dan was really nice. I really like his face. The fact that you all don't get to see his face so much is kind of a tragedy, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. I agree, I love you too. Thank you for giving me a prom. It was really fun. On less exciting news, or maybe very exciting, you want to share your biggest update in the last week, dan.
Speaker 1:What is my biggest update?
Speaker 2:That you visited your family. We visited your family for Christmas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I had a nice time visiting my family for Christmas. It's been a long time since I've actually spent a Christmas at my family, my familial home. I haven't seen my sister Monique, for I don't know since. I think 2017 is when she got married. I went to her wedding.
Speaker 2:She's divorced now. She's divorced now. Yeah, seems like it was his fault. I really like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was a douche. Yeah, I knew it from the beginning.
Speaker 2:So Dan's mom makes everybody in the family special, like hand knitted stockings, and she makes partners stockings for them. But the sister had to get her ex's stocking back and she just sewed over it the word pets. So now my life goal in our relationship is to never have my stocking replaced the word pets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's become an inside joke. Now, don't become a pet stocking. Yeah, our stockings. It's like one of the few, like original traditions that my family has, like my grandmother or my grandmother made these.
Speaker 2:They're really cute and they have jingle bells on them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're very specific design, Like you can't buy this in a store.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I know, because you know. Every time I wonder if rats got into the storage place where I keep them. I'm like I can't replace these.
Speaker 2:Your mom could make one again. She's probably the last.
Speaker 1:I'm out of the family. If I lose my stocking, you'll be going to family Christmas alone.
Speaker 2:Maybe your stocking will become pets, yeah.
Speaker 1:She'll keep me. I don't know I'm out of the family if I lose it, but yeah, that was really nice. Leah, what have you been up to for the last two?
Speaker 2:weeks. Well, I have two weeks off of work, which is wonderful. I guess this is officially a week. Over is a week is done. I've got one more week and it's just been like art extravaganza. I figure how to make these really cool mushroom incense holders and mushroom like containers out of Sculpey clay, which is super fun. I'm going to sell those on Etsy, giving a few away to some friends. My art is officially up in the gallery so I could go check that out and I've just been making a lot of like really horny teenage version of me art that.
Speaker 2:I'm not really sure I'm ever going to share, but it's been super fun. I just finished a piece called Forest of Dicks, so that's been good. It is exactly what you think it is. Yeah, and I've also been writing well, been writing. I wrote yesterday and I forgot how much I enjoyed it, and I just want to say publicly on this podcast how much Dan has inspired me. So thank you for helping me be creative again.
Speaker 1:It's been really cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, don't know where I'm going to rewrite that or publish that stuff, because it's scandalous Skindalosa. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing Leah happily creating drawing on my tablet. She's just scribbling away on my tablet.
Speaker 2:I'm obsessed with the tablet.
Speaker 1:Learning this new thing that she's never tried before. It's really wonderful to watch. I really enjoy seeing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the thing about that was our dog, for emphasis, in case that grumbling came up on the audio. It wasn't me, it was Nero.
Speaker 1:Leah's over here grumbling again and blaming it on the dog.
Speaker 2:But I will say this when Dan and I were first together, maybe a year or two in, Dan asked me we were sitting on our back porch I think it was the first year he bought this house and you were like Leah, what do you think about? What do you dream about? And I was like chores, what Things we have to do to get done in the house? Stress, nightmares yeah, Basically. And then Dan's like oh, I have a million fantasies in my head of all these different storylines and characters and things I want to create. And I was like a little bitter, honestly, and then I realized I don't have to have my brain be colonized by things like productivity, because creation is so much more fun. So this podcast, I think, has actually really helped open me up.
Speaker 1:Me too. Yeah, this podcast is great. You should recommend it to your friends.
Speaker 2:You should. We want more Hilliard Ohio listeners specifically.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we need more people in Hilliard.
Speaker 2:I don't know the population of Hilliard is. I'll look it up later.
Speaker 1:We want all of them, should we? Should we take out like a huge advertising campaign and like buy billboards in?
Speaker 2:Hilliard Ohio. What would they say?
Speaker 1:They'd be like the zombie book clubs number one town. Thank you listeners. And there'd be like I don't know what the population is, but there'd be like several hundred or thousands of people being like what the fuck is? Zombie book club. And then get some interested people, then you know what they check it out, but then they might leave as a voicemail like grumpy. Yeah, we hate your billboard. There used to be a perfectly beautiful McDonald's billboard there, and then you took it down and put it up with your garbage. Zombie book club yeah.
Speaker 2:Last but not least, we made some winter solstice commitments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who's so great solstice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, let us know, we're big fans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 2:It's very actively, verifiably happening, I know for sure. Solstice, yeah, yeah, santa, it's on the calendar. Yeah, jury's out for Santa.
Speaker 1:But we know winter solstice really does happen and it's worth celebrating. Santa was a Siberian medicine man. Yeah, they used to walk around in the snow and drop psychedelic mushrooms in through their chimneys.
Speaker 2:I thought that he would like eat them and then give people his pee. Yeah, he'd pee into people's mouths. And was it always a guy. Why are we making him a guy?
Speaker 1:It's because of the patriarchy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, none of this is verifiable, by the way. I've not done my research to know if this is true, but we should.
Speaker 1:I've done some research because it's mushroom research. But yeah, the aminita muscaria mushroom I've talked about it before the fly agaric yeah, yeah, it needs to be prepared in a certain way for it to be edible Makes you sick if you just eat it straight, but like if you have a reindeer pest on it and you dry it out and sprinkle it with some lemon juice or something, then you have a really good time when you eat it. And these medicine dudes used to wear the red coats with fur lining around it and ride around in a reindeer sleigh and go to people's houses and climb down their chimneys and be like here's some psychedelic mushrooms. Oh my God, that's my kind of Santa. Yeah, that's my Christmas, right?
Speaker 2:there Definitely not crumpus Crumpus, crumpus nuts, crumpus nuts.
Speaker 1:My second favorite winter holiday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, we got to go to a crumpus nuts. We'll dress up like a goat, man devil, I think this coming in and drag a sack behind us that we claim has a child inside of it and beat it with sticks Whoa, yeah, that's what crumpus does. Crumpus is Santa's best friend. Is he who gives you?
Speaker 2:the call.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Honestly, there's a lot about Santa that's a little bit fucked up.
Speaker 1:He leaves coal in your stocking, but he also abducts the child and takes him back to his torture dungeon. It locks him in a cage and then he only takes them out of the cage to beat them with sticks and put them in a burlap bag and drag them around and throw them across the room and then they take them back to their house and they're like if you're bad next year, I'm not bringing you back home. And the Santa's like thanks for taking care of that crumpus, you're a cool dude.
Speaker 2:I am so disturbed but also having a flashback of my friend's father telling you these things called mug lumps that if you don't go to sleep we'll come and get you in the night, and I lived in terror of them. So I don't know. I'm no longer a fan of crumpus knocked.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love, I love the crumpus. I think that crumpus has been slacking and needs to beat more children.
Speaker 2:Oh my Okay, this is a joke.
Speaker 1:Bad Dan is joking Only if they're bad. Children aren't bad. Crumpus knows. Crumpus knows that children are bad.
Speaker 2:The thing about the whole Santa thing and crumpus knocked is like I don't really think the kids are bad. Well, you know, they're just kids that are developing and don't understand anything, nothing, everything. They have to learn all of it is terrifying.
Speaker 1:I disagree. I think they're dumb. Sorry if you have kids.
Speaker 2:Sorry, if you are a kid, actually, you know what this is why we're not having children. You heard it here first Dan wants to put them in a bag and beat them. I want a demon to do it.
Speaker 1:That's messed up, no.
Speaker 2:I would not be a good kid.
Speaker 1:Crumpus basically looks like a sleep, paralysis, demon anyway.
Speaker 2:This took us way off track. My point was is that we made some wishes for 2024 on Winter Solstice, and one of them was to grow our podcast community. Another was for me to be able to use my feet for three whole hours a day. It's all I wanted at this point. I could do so much, but most importantly, my biggest dream and I think Dan's is that he can keep working from home in 2024. No more truck driving. We don't know if it's possible. Well, you know it's possible. We don't know what's going to happen, but we are going to do everything we can to make it happen this winter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to get into a number of things I happened to. Did you know that I edit podcasts? Yeah, this one specifically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this one.
Speaker 1:So if you think this podcast sounds good and you have a podcast of your own and extra money, let me know We'll do that. It's expensive, so give me lots of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and other things, mushroom growing. We'll see what happens, but yeah, those are our personal life updates, the last ones that will ever be. In the same episode is everything else we're about to talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unless we go off track when we're talking about a book and we start talking about all kinds of crazy stuff.
Speaker 2:You know what you should let us know if you actually just fast forward through all the personal life updates.
Speaker 1:because if that's the case, Well, we'll find out when we look at the numbers of our new episode concepts.
Speaker 2:That's true. I mean, they're not going to just be personal life update, but there will be zombie content. It'll just be more casual. Top three zombie survival fails and wins. Oh, 2023.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:These are our own personal slash. Global survival fails and wins.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mostly personal. The way is that we have failed to survive. Yeah, should you start? Should I start?
Speaker 2:I think you should start. I'll start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is probably the biggest fail of 2023. My biggest fail.
Speaker 2:Okay. Unless we're accounting the pool. Well, that was in 2023. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean I put it up in the last version of it, up in 2023.
Speaker 2:I thought that was in 2022.
Speaker 1:Anyways, biggest fail Getting the truck stuck in the mud in our backyard. Yep, yeah, I got the lawn mower stuck in the mud and I had the brilliant idea to be like, hey, our backyard's a marsh, in the lawn tractor stuck, I'll just drive the pickup truck back there. So I have something to winch off of with this hand winch that I have and immediately got stuck.
Speaker 2:And now we have basically, like I don't know, two and a half foot deep pond like tracks.
Speaker 1:The person driving the record told me that I gave it a valiant effort.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think that was a survival fail in the sense that good judgment is important for survival and that was not a good judgment moment. And again, if you're hearing grumbling, Nero has a lot to say today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he has big feelings about us getting the truck stuck in the mud. He does.
Speaker 2:Right Win, though, is that we got our first chance to use the generator this year.
Speaker 1:It was under not so good circumstances, but you know, when the time came we had fuel and it worked.
Speaker 2:And it was one of those things where we bought it. I think it was one of the first things we bought when we got the house, because I was like I don't know if somebody I think somebody that was Vermontian said to us like you need a generator because the power goes out here all the time, because we're fucking in a forest and like leaves or not. Leaves, Leaves break things. Yeah, leaves break everything. Limbs, tree limbs- falling shit.
Speaker 1:Those leaves come down. They take down power lines. You haven't seen leaves like this before.
Speaker 2:Or you can have like an icepocket lips where the lines get so heavy with ice, like. Either way, you need to have a generator and it definitely pulled through for us and a lot of us to stay warm for like four days without power.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of days, I don't know. I think it was three. Well, it was three, and then we left for Canada. Yeah, that's right, we just left it that way. This is way back at the beginning of this podcast.
Speaker 2:I guess technically that was 2022. Oh well, it still can't.
Speaker 1:No, it was 2023.
Speaker 2:Let's go on to the next one.
Speaker 1:Oh, we had no water. When did we have no water?
Speaker 2:That was the same water. I mean another one. We lost power a few times last year or this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did have to go get water and we never had water every time we lost power. Yeah, but you know what, when we have water now, we have six gallons more downstairs, but six gallons of water on hand, just in case.
Speaker 2:Yep, and according to the CDC, as you all know because you've been listening to our podcast, that's three days worth of water.
Speaker 1:All they say is one gallon per person per day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, although honestly the dogs will just go out and drink dirt water.
Speaker 1:They don't care. There's lots of that around, I figure. If we have at least three days worth of water, that gives us plenty of opportunity to gather snow or standing water and purify it. Yeah, yeah, how we would do that I don't know.
Speaker 2:But also a win from this year is that we have three backup locations to go to the in the event of a zombie apocalypse. We figured that out, so that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know where the third place is, so that's a. Oh, that's right I got it?
Speaker 2:Well, no, we have their house, then our secret place, then our other secret place, and then there's the fourth option I haven't told you about, which is a acquaintances house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I don't even know what town it's from.
Speaker 2:The other book club. Wow, Nero is like super grumbly bumbly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why are you so grumbly, you okay?
Speaker 2:Are you uncomfortable? You stopped grumbling as soon as you looked at him. Boo boo. What's going on? Your grumbles are affecting our podcast. I love you very much, but could you stop with the grumbles? Okay, you're a good boy. Third zombie survival fail of the year Dan, what is it?
Speaker 1:Oh, is this all about? The intergovernmental panel for climate change is 2023 report indicating we are very unlikely to not hit 1.5 degree warming in the next decade and if we want to stay below two degrees, we have to make an immediate, drastic change now, as in this decade in which we are almost halfway through.
Speaker 2:Yes, oh, tell me about that. Dan's reading my notes. Tell me all about that. I guess you know. The fail is that, while we have not yet had a zombie outbreak, we are definitely in a climate apocalypse, and it's here. I think it's worse than zombies. Like, if I had to pick between zombies and climate change, I think I'd pick zombies because in this year alone like us personally we have dealt with flooding not once, but three times. Forest fire smoke coming in, making the air unbreathable outside. Yeah, the climate apocalypse is actually here and it's way fucking worse than zombies. I picked zombies any day, because what we're dealing with now is flooding, constant flooding here anyways in Vermont, fires smoke from fires, making the air unbreathable. Food charges because there's too much flooding, so shit can't grow. Running out of water in the West. Like they're literally at a point now where they know they have like maybe one more mortgage left for homes. Like they know that they can sell a house for a mortgage now because they've got 30 years of water but then after that it's basically useless.
Speaker 1:For a second. I thought you were talking about like one mortgage payment left.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's extreme yeah.
Speaker 2:And they can't guarantee water access in places in Arizona anymore. It's a fucking mess.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I look at the zombie apocalypse as like nature's way of reclaiming the earth, like it takes away the problem which is us and replaces it with carbon neutral beings who will just continue to decompose until they're gone and won't reproduce anymore, and leaving the world to the rest of the animals who aren't huge assholes like us.
Speaker 2:Well, this one makes me sad, though, is like I don't believe that most of humanity like there's eight billion of us now, right, yeah, but like the ones that are actually the real problem are like you and I.
Speaker 1:Where the problem?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we consume 30 times the fucking resources of somebody that's in like Sub-Saharan Africa. Oh yeah, 30 times, definitely. At least that's the last time I checked, which was a few years ago.
Speaker 1:I say as I sip on my plastic bottle of Diet Coke, and it's shipped to me on the back of a truck that runs on diesel, from probably Atlanta.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who knows. And then I want to think of where this shit comes from. I'm like where's the label made? We don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some type of polymer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically, we're drinking out of an oil, an oil. We're drinking out of oil. We are drinking out of oil. That's plastic. That looks like plastic. Now that's fucking weird.
Speaker 1:You know, um sidebar on plastic, um, something that I wanted to get into studying, because you know people that listen to this might might remember that I I like growing mushrooms, um, not the illegal ones, um, though I I would if it was legal. In a second Uh sidebar to the sidebar. Anyways, there was a um, there's a specific mushroom, or rather the mycelium of that mushroom, uh, of which I can't remember the name of that I really wanted to get into growing and and like testing with and seeing what it can do, which is capable of breaking down polymer. That's pretty cool. Yeah, they, they, I mean, they found it in the late 1800s. It's been around the entirety of the time that we've had plastic Um, but it's, it's capable of breaking down plastic and turning it back into compost, like non-toxic compost, um. There's a lot of people that are like I wouldn't want to eat those mushrooms, but I don't personally think that you should eat mushrooms from this.
Speaker 2:But yeah, but you could use those mushrooms to like, build houses with the material, the mycelium, like you know, kinds of mushrooms I don't know about these mushrooms.
Speaker 1:But, um, something that I thought would be really interesting is to take plastic bottles, fill them up with more plastic and introduce this mycelium culture in there with, like other types of things that it likes to eat maybe some types of grains and then just throw that into a landfill and see what happens.
Speaker 2:You know, that sounds really fucking risky. That's what humanity does. We're like. This seems like a solution, and then it causes other problems.
Speaker 2:Maybe it'll make zombies Maybe, but that's the fail. The fail of 2023 is that we really fucked up y'all as a species, but it won't sleep us like in the West, who are consuming a bunch of shit and carelessly throwing it out including me. I am not, uh, not innocent in this thing, uh, but yeah, that's a fail. But uh well, yeah, I've got some stats. I'm going to rewind for a second. I've got some fun fail stats for you all about this.
Speaker 2:Uh, according to Forbes, a third of Americans are thinking about moving due to climate change is the main motivator. And actually a lot of folks that I talked to they're talking about where they're going to move or moving for climate change. And when we chose Vermont, I chose Vermont partially because it seemed to you relatively climate change proof. Well, this year proved that wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're safe from a lot of things, one being like the massive droughts and heat waves that you'll see in the South and the Southwest, um, and also we're out of mountain. So, uh, the floods, while we have floods, they don't affect us where we live.
Speaker 2:Well, they affect our roads, which means we don't have access to things when we have to leave. That's why Vermont gave us kayaks when we went here, but I think we've had this discussion before in the podcast, but we're not even close to a body of water that could take us down Not yet.
Speaker 1:Not yet, that's true.
Speaker 2:This most recent flooding that we had a couple of weeks ago, like there were rivers and waterfalls in our yard that should not be there. Thankfully, our house is okay, but also, um, the reason why folks are willing to move and why I really think climate change refugees are going to be more and more prevalent uh, as if they're not already is that? Um, the CoreLogix climate change catastrophe report found that 14.5 million homes were impacted by natural disasters in 2021, which is about one in 10 homes in the United States and it's a collective cost of almost 60 billion in property damage. That's from things like severe weather, wildfires, hurricanes, hail and wind events, winter storms. It's, it's kind of a mess out there. I think 2023 is going to be the year that I will always remember as the one where I'm like, oh yeah, like this is no longer a theoretical exercise, but I am trying to fix this is this?
Speaker 1:is really fucked up. It's, it's here. It's here right now.
Speaker 2:But when the final win of 2023 is, this is probably the best year we're ever going to have, for climate in our lifetime. So we should remember it fondly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, remember 2023 fondly. 2024 is going to be a doozy for so many reasons. Oh my.
Speaker 2:God, yeah, don't even get into the elections. Oh, the end is nigh, folks, the end is nigh, but it is a win, especially if you are an adult now, because, according to the intergovernmental panel for climate changes 2023 report, if you were born in the 80s, like Dan and I, you'll be around in your 70s for, like, mild to moderate climate change impacts which, by the way, if this shit's mild to moderate, oh my fucking God, that is some scary shit. But kids who are born in 2020 are fucked and we'll see severe impacts in their lifetimes. Learn how to swim Basically.
Speaker 2:I don't know it's going to be, you know, for those of you with kids, I have only admiration for you and I 100% believe that you are raising the generation that can hopefully try and create a more resilient world, a fairer world, a kinder and more egalitarian world, and I just want to say I'm sorry on behalf of myself and all my ancestors who really just help fuck it all up for them. Sorry, I'm trying in my own little way to be slightly less damaging for your children's future.
Speaker 1:Children born in 2023 will be using this podcast as reference material.
Speaker 2:Oh my God For their survival. Oh, that's terrifying.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about our favorite episodes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what was your number one favorite episode?
Speaker 1:Dan oh my favorite, I'm going to say. Even though it wasn't like the same level of quality as like later episodes, I really enjoyed the $100 Amazon zombie survival challenge. I'd like to do something else again similar to that, because that was a fun time and you really surprised me with your answers.
Speaker 2:It was really fun, but I don't know if I can repeat that level of awesome surprise like that one.
Speaker 1:It could be a different thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would actually like to see what other people would buy for $100 on Amazon. That could be like a cool social media engagement thing Like what would you buy if you had $100?
Speaker 1:for your survival. Maybe we can get guests to make a survival list and then we question them about their list.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's our zombie wean year two episode. Maybe it's a $100 Amazon challenge and they're competing for the most impressive. Amazon purchases for survival.
Speaker 1:That sounds fun to me. Leah, what was your favorite episode?
Speaker 2:I think I just spoiled it. I loved zombie wean game show. Truly, dream come true. Have you all listened to it?
Speaker 1:Zombie wean was your baby. It was yeah, you made it happen. It was random, you put it together, you executed it. I laughed and made jokes.
Speaker 2:And we got to meet Lori Calcuttaire from the Pappapale Rider of that.
Speaker 1:She's wonderful One of my besties.
Speaker 2:Eric was on. One of our new besties, joshua Grant, was on it. It was just a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Lori said on social media that she will be friends with us.
Speaker 2:Yay.
Speaker 1:Runners up the billionaire bunkers episode. That was fun. I made a really funny fake ad in the middle of that about billionaire fingers.
Speaker 2:That is true. Yum, yum, yum Maybe back billionaire fingers. So, yummy, I can probably do an update on that this coming year. I do want to talk about more of Mark Zuckerberg's $2 billion, or $2 million, $2 million bunker in.
Speaker 1:Hawaii of all places.
Speaker 2:I fucking hate that. No $200 million, just $200 million. Okay, fact check us folks. I don't know what's true, but I think we need to talk about that. And then I think my runner up is zombie verse or zombie worst. One of the titles is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the title.
Speaker 2:And secondly, it was such a ridiculous show that it was just really, really fun to talk with you about rice pops. I don't know. It was all about the potato guns as a weapon and the zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1:So we also have our most underrated episode. Yeah, this one's really interesting because not only is it underrated, as in like not as many people, this is the lowest listens of any episode, but on social media we got the most engagement out of any episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like really strange to economy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the zombie astrology, episode seven. We talked, we tried to apply astrology to what was it? It was just. It was characters from the walking dead right.
Speaker 2:It was awesome friends and family characters, the walking dead, and we used a BuzzFeed article, highly scientific, to determine if we felt like zombie astrology was real and it could actually like predict our future in apocalyptic scenario. I would say it didn't do the greatest job, but it was super fun.
Speaker 1:It was interesting. But yeah, everybody, a lot of people contacted us about what their, what their sign was and how they felt they were represented.
Speaker 2:It was really great to read the responses, so if you haven't listened to that one yet, go back and listen and let us know. Do you think that zombie astrology is real, leah, did you?
Speaker 1:know that we read books.
Speaker 2:I mean you read most of them. I read some of them for the book club.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Some of them. I read and I tell you all about Yep and the only way that my undiagnosed autistic mind can do by word, vomiting it at you In great detail.
Speaker 2:I don't need to read them.
Speaker 1:I basically just recite the book from the beginning to the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Dialogue and everything uses different voices for different characters. Basically an audio book.
Speaker 1:So here we read five whole books, is that?
Speaker 2:right. Well, yeah, we talked about well, we both read more books, but we talked about five books on the podcast, which feels like not very many. But, honestly, like all of you voracious readers out there that read like a book a week, screw off. Okay, I'm not as cool as you. I don't have the ability to do that. One zombie book every 10 weeks is like an accomplishment for me.
Speaker 1:So how would you rank the books that we read?
Speaker 2:Okay, number one, but I only watched the movie the girl with all the gifts, right, I love the movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's where our lists are. We both have number one girl with all the gifts by MR Kerry. Yeah, I read the book. You watch the movie. Movie was incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was telling a lot of people that aren't typically zombie fans or horror fans this is one worth watching, is a really interesting concept, and it actually made me want to go back and read the sequel. But technically a prequel, right? Dan, the Boy on the Bridge, yeah, yeah, but also if they made a movie, that'd be great. Yeah, I prefer that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, make that movie, guys, yeah.
Speaker 2:What's your?
Speaker 1:what's your number two?
Speaker 2:The one we just did Clay's Ark by Octavia Butler. I stan Octavia Butler so fucking much. I think she's an incredible writer. I was thrilled from start to finish. I am absolutely going to read the rest of the pattern of series after reading that one Hands down. It was actually close between Clay's Ark and the girl of the gifts, but I decided like, objectively, the girl of the gifts was better.
Speaker 1:Clay's Ark is my number four. Damn. You know I didn't hate Clay's Ark, but it kind of makes me want to read a different Octavia Butler book. You know, we just talked about that last episode.
Speaker 2:I need to get more into that.
Speaker 1:Listen to that.
Speaker 2:I stand by it. That's fair. We're allowed to have different opinions. What was your number two, Dan?
Speaker 1:Oh, my number two is your number three. Oh, world War Z by Max Brooks, it's Z.
Speaker 2:Zed. We're in America, yeah, but I'm always going to be Canadian. World War Z by Max Brooks I haven't read that book in a really long time. We did rewatch the movie and I really enjoying that book because of the stories and like I think we did, like a book versus movie episode, yeah, and even having not reread the book recently, I knew the book was better than the movie by like a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the movie is a fun action romp but you know, it really didn't hold up the way that I thought it would. When I actually looked at it and dissected it as a zombie movie, I'm like, ok, it's just Brad Pitt versus the zombies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very tropey. The best part was when the zombies climbed over the wall in Israel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like the outbreak at the beginning.
Speaker 2:I don't remember when they're in, like Philadelphia I think oh yeah, that was a good break out scene, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean very, very few movies can do a good, you know, do justice to zombie outbreak. You know, I feel like World War Z and what's it called? Donna the dead had a good outbreak, yeah those outbreaks are like chef's kiss.
Speaker 2:Hmm, yum the only thing that could have made the outbreak scene in World War Z was if. What's his name? Again Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt, thank you. If Brad Pitt was eating a philly cheesesteak, yeah, you know what happened.
Speaker 1:Brad Pitt is well known for eating in movies Like he is. Like everybody, every like great actor has a thing like Tom Cruise looks cool when he's running. Tom Hanks likes to pee. In every movie he has a P scene.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that realness.
Speaker 1:And Brad Pitt. He knows that he can eat food and look really cool while doing it. So I think he should have just had a fucking philly cheesesteak just shoving in his mouth while he's running away. He's like looking at his clock measuring the outbreak of the zombies and he's like just takes a bite of the philly cheesesteak. And you know what? If they could, if they could find a way to sell philly cheesesteaks that way, that movie could have made a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Be great Broad placement dam in excellent plant based philly cheesesteak recently that I am still thinking about, which is probably why it came up for me. Think of World War Z, zed, zed, what about your third one, dan.
Speaker 1:Oh, my third one is plague of the dead by Z A Rect. This, for a very long time, was like my favorite go to zombie series and rereading it and especially talking to you with you about it, I realized it's OK.
Speaker 2:I think it was special to you because it was like your first real encounter with the living dead the first time anybody had like done it justice and like took it serious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and it was number four for me just because I didn't read it, but mostly because, like, one of my favorite things is dance on diagnosed autism, because I got to hear all about it and I think it's a special book to me, sort of, even though it's in number four position because of what it meant to you. And then our last choice no one's going to be surprised if you've been listening this year.
Speaker 1:Weird that our number ones and our number fives are exactly the same.
Speaker 2:I didn't realize that yeah.
Speaker 1:Pride and prejudice and zombies. What a fucking mess. We didn't even finish it. We DNF'd what is DNF, did not finish.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a lot of books in my life, but yeah, I was really committed. I recommended this book because I was entertained by the concept. It was a mess.
Speaker 1:I mean, we talked about this in the episode and, for what it's worth, we enjoyed it for a little while.
Speaker 2:I like talking about it in the episode because it was really fun, yeah, but the but the three and a half hours that I invested into listening to it probably only the first hour was somewhat entertaining, but mostly still confusing.
Speaker 1:Oh also, I made an ad, a fake ad, for extreme T, the Bennett sisters.
Speaker 2:Extreme T, that's right, that is a good one. You should just do like some clips on social media of just your ads. Yeah, I don't know if it makes sense in a context or not, I don't know. I don't know, but I do. You all like Dan's ads. Do you want more? Nobody said anything about my heartbreak and somebody used to write Dan a review on Apple podcasts.
Speaker 1:Maybe they think maybe they're just so good that they think they're actual ads.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:They're trying to buy extreme T, you know, like that's what I need in my life.
Speaker 2:And what was your rice puff one?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a multi level business marketing.
Speaker 2:Oh, what about a zombie loudeners?
Speaker 1:Zombie loudeners. Yeah, for oh, it's called the French, the French zombies.
Speaker 2:Oh, and the night eats the world.
Speaker 1:The night eats the world, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which was also an excellent. We were talking about books, but I fucking love the night eats the world as a movie, Definitely one of my favorites. Are there any other ads you did Dan.
Speaker 1:There might have been.
Speaker 2:I think my favorite ad is zombie loudeners. Oh, there was the tropical vacation one and billionaire bunkers or something you like had like a tropical jingle. No, no, no, that was the baby back rib, baby baby fingers.
Speaker 1:You have the billionaire bunkers, had the billionaire fingers, the, the, the. The one that you're thinking about was actually in the last of us.
Speaker 2:I don't remember, but you should just go listen to them all again. Do you know? Sometimes Dan and I listen to our own podcasts less and less because I've kind of figured out what we sound like now and what things I want to improve. But it's kind of fun and sometimes we'll be like in the same room listening to ourselves on a podcast and I will have the exact thought that I then say out loud on the podcast and it's fucking really creepy when that happens. Yeah, it's like wow, I predict it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I've experienced this many, many times with all kinds of things that I've done. It's like you get to a certain point and, like you, don't remember what you said, but like you, you're you're presented with the same information that you were in the moment and you come to the same conclusion. You say the same exact thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a little. It makes me feel a little more like a robot and like recognizing that my brain has programming, yeah, and neural pathways. That is just like it's going to go here.
Speaker 1:Leah, did you know that there were things that disappointed us in the zombie media world?
Speaker 2:I mean, I was there for them and I'm still a little scarred. So, yes, what do you really want to bring this trauma back up to us?
Speaker 1:I want to talk about it, I want to bring it up. I am talking about season 11 of the Walking Dead. I will never forgive you for season 11. Me Anyone? Ziggy Nero, I don't I'm blaming this all on you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just got to pour one out for season 11, the Walking Dead. We had a whole episode about that. Dan was very upset. I was very upset, dan, you were more upset, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, we really wanted to just like go season by season and like talk about the Walking Dead and how much we loved it. We were rewatching the whole series we had so much to say yeah, so that we could watch season 11 with like fresh, fresh, well-informed eyes? Yep, we're enjoying it the entire way. Like you know, season 10 has its ups and downs, but you know.
Speaker 2:all in all, it wasn't horrible, Still decent. I was still there for it. I was like anxious to see a season 11. Season 11.
Speaker 1:I know you don't agree, but I thought like the first, you know, three or four episodes started off really well. I loved the whole. Like going into the subway tunnels kind of started to feel like a like a horror movie.
Speaker 2:There was potential. It definitely had horror vibes, and then what the fuck? All I know is that, like literally, we would have had at least three or four episodes this year around just Walking Dead themes that we wanted to talk about, and that season ruined it for us. So if you are not a huge fan of Walking Dead, maybe that's for the best and maybe why you're here, but if you're wondering why we haven't talked more about it, that's why it was kind of like you know a relationship that you have that was good for so long, and then they just fucking flip overnight and become a total asshole and then everything is ruined and all your good memories are ruined because you're like, wait, was this person really just season 11, all along.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, it's like you know you're, you're dating somebody, you think they're great. Then they stab your dad.
Speaker 2:And now they're just a dad stabber.
Speaker 1:Oh you can't, you can't forget when they stabbed your dad.
Speaker 2:You know, Dan, you was kind of sad about that. That is really. Some people have had dad stabbed.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's true. I worked with a guy who stabbed his dad, that's right. Yeah, that's a sad story, I'm gonna not tell it.
Speaker 2:No, this is getting dark real fast at the dad stabbing. So, I really hope that all of you people have never had dads to have yeah, just to leave that.
Speaker 1:if your dad got stabbed, I'm sorry. We laughed about it. Yeah, I wasn't laughing at your dad. No, maybe my dad. It's okay, anyone can stab my dad. If you need to take it out on me, you know I'll give you his address.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we drove by his house. Just like stalking father Of course, yeah, dan and I are applauding the return dance. Patriarchy side, patriarchy, paternal side, paternal side of your family, yeah, has a bunch of land Good land, by the way and campground. I thought we should game of thrones that and, like Dan, should get his rightful title back as king of the campground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it used to be like a respectable campground that like retirees would go to and spend the whole summer there, when my grandparents ran it and when they died, my, my uncle and my biological father took over and kind of turned into a trailer park where everybody with my last name goes to live, basically for free. And it is a fucking nightmare apparently, and to the point where when I got a ticket in a town nearby and I had to go represent myself in traffic court, they asked me if I was from the camp.
Speaker 2:It's famous, infamous and not in a way notorious camp, and I let them know.
Speaker 1:I don't know that side of my family. It's probably the only reason I got away with what I did.
Speaker 2:Honestly, there could be a really good parody here, though, of kingdom, like a combination of kingdom and trailer park boys, where, like you're the, you're the crown prince Returning to claim what's yours. You're going to help the commoners that have had a bad run under the leadership of your shitty dad, and you're going to have to stab your dad.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I just figured, you know, I'd just grab a 30 pack of Miller light, hop on my riding lawnmower and just roll in there and tell them all to just bow before me because I'm the crown prince.
Speaker 2:I just want a really good fucking outfit for this. I don't want me standing in the back.
Speaker 1:I mean. But you know, we have grand outfits, like you know, dressed in our battle dress but still very like proper, but it's all made out of like beer cans and stuff.
Speaker 2:See, this is kind of. This is the kind of content you're going to get every other week from us. Now, folks, is this back to our biggest disappointments of 2023 when it comes to zombies? I do. There are two things that I really wanted to talk about that we did not get to talk about enough. One of them is sex in the apocalypse. I'm very interested in that. Not the clay's art kind. That's all I'm going to say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was not that kind but other kinds Also.
Speaker 2:I'm really interested where people go poop in the apocalypse, yeah, and that has not been discussed enough. So I will be trying to bring more of those themes quality themes into 2024.
Speaker 1:These are the important questions that nobody asks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're still biological beings. It's like you know, we have zombie things where there's always a baby, but like I want to see the baby get made, not in great detail, Just enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to make that zombie. You know, as far as pooping in the apocalypse, I'll give you a teaser. My plan is to find a different bathroom every time. That way you know, like you just you're not hungry, you're migrating around. Yeah, you fill up one and you move on.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine like being the next person, though You're like, you know you're trying to scaven from this convenience store, and convenience store bathrooms are already fucking terrible in regular life.
Speaker 1:They're like oh, this place has a bathroom. You know that I'll just hit this one because we're moving on our way and they go in there.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I've got a lot of convenience store bathrooms that might just be like there was an apocalypse. Apocalypse has happened in there. They already happened. There was a something horrible there's literally stuff smeared on walls, like I've just, like many of them, I've just walked by.
Speaker 1:There's just like a handprint, oh my God, and it like streaks down like something that you would see in a zombie movie.
Speaker 2:You know, the best part of those moments is there's always a sign that's like it's you're just satisfied with the state of this and the manager like call this way a hundred number, like I'm just leaving.
Speaker 1:The sign itself is covered in black mold.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 1:You know I have some honorable mentions yeah For for books that I've read during my work season that we haven't talked about on this podcast yet. Hopefully we'll talk about them in the future. What are they? I read this series, the Remaining, by DJ Mollye. I highly recommend it if you're into like a really super gritty, like really super realistic zombie apocalypse series it's. It's about mostly about this the main character, lee Hardin, who's who's a captain in the army and he's part of this thing called Project Hometown, where his whole mission is to basically just live in a house that has a bunker in case something bad happens. And when something bad happens, they tell him to go down to the bunker for a month. Then when they come out, they need to go find survivors and help them survive.
Speaker 1:That sounds really good yeah it's great and it's a whole series how many books are we talking? I think six. And then there's actually a series after that, which I think it's three years later, just called the Lee Hardin series.
Speaker 2:And would you like, if you're going to give it a Zed today, how many Zeds would you give these series? Oh my God.
Speaker 1:If it weren't for the way that there isn't a whole lot of representation for BIPOC characters, I would give it like nine and a half stars. I'm going to have to give it like eight and a half just because it's like I would have. I would feel more comfortable if there was more representation.
Speaker 2:It's a zombie world of white people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a few times where there's people who are not white and it's just, it's. It's kind of like a white person's take on what they think those people are like.
Speaker 2:And it's not overtly racist.
Speaker 1:I don't think that he has any hatred in his heart for people who are not white, but it's not, it's not, it's, it's not. I feel what BIPOC characters experience would be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's totally fair. I think whenever we talk about authors like that, I always feel like it's less of a judgment of the author and more of a statement about our current state of society. Yeah so hopefully that changes. I think the more we read, the more people will learn. Hopefully the writing will get better.
Speaker 1:Another series is called the Last Survivors. I don't remember who wrote it. I should have wrote it down, you should have but this series actually takes place 300 years in the future after a zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 2:This is when I feel like I read, because, like pretty much every day down I come home from work and be like Leah, the, the. The book is so good yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's. It's a pretty good series and it's basically it's basically a fantasy. You know, it's like like as your standard fantasy, like swords and shields going on adventures in the woods, except it takes place 300 years in the future where, like, basically all learned knowledge is very rare, Books are rare, Materials are rare and zombies are everywhere. There's still everywhere 300 years later. Yeah, there's a whole thing about it.
Speaker 2:Do the zombies not rot in this world?
Speaker 1:They're technically still alive. They're the cordyceps zombies.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not whole fucking cordyceps to you though.
Speaker 1:But some of them live a really long time, some of them waste away. There's no explanation. They say that some of them, you see, you know they last like 20 years. Some of them last six months and there's a few of them that were from the beginning.
Speaker 2:That one. This series is interesting to me. Like I like the idea 300 years in the future, but it's also really depressing to think that 300 years in the future there's still zombies. Like you'd like to, I like the World War Z approach, where it's like we had a really bad decade there or so, but we've gotten, we've kind of figured this out.
Speaker 1:And also you kind of realize that part of part of this civilization that rebuilds itself is based around them needing people to stay inside the walls and be afraid of what's outside. So some of it is kind of feeding the zombies with. You know the overpopulation, you know whatever they have like a famine or something. You know like we got to, we got to fight the evil outside Everybody. You're drafted. 20,000 people are drafted. We're going to go outside, we're going to fight them and then they don't come back.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, that sounds horrible and also like I need to read this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting. I'd give it eight stars. Okay, the writing is good, representation is meh, but also I think I think it might be it might take place in, like England. Maybe it's really unclear because they don't know where they are.
Speaker 2:They don't know where they are. Yeah, maybe they have a whole new names for things because it's 300 years later. I mean this country's only how old.
Speaker 1:Oh, our country, yeah. Well, since the beginning of the planet, this country yeah, where we live has existed.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, but not really because it was like attached to other continents and stuff. There's Pangea.
Speaker 1:We're actually on live on an ancient volcano that's, I think, 400 million years old. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that puts our lives in perspective pretty.
Speaker 1:But the United States like 250 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my point is is like 250 years ago it wasn't the United States, so what could it be in 300 years? It would be interesting. I really like that idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting. Also, I like the way that that society has changed and religion has changed and politics.
Speaker 2:Sounds kind of familiar. Yeah, unfortunately, we have not like created a better world from the apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's kind of you know, that's kind of the point of the series is. Like you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And my, my last honorable mention is this book that I was suggested on audible. It's it was free, it's called zombified it's by somebody who has a podcast of the same name, but it's it defines, like what they think a zombie is. It's about like real world examples of what we would consider zombification. It talks about psychology of zombies and how they fit into our society.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting. I definitely want to explore this one more, maybe even talk to the person who wrote it at some point. I will say I had like a moment, just as you were talking about the last survivors and the remaining, where I was like you know, I never thought of this before and maybe this is not shocking to anybody else or news or anything else but I just had this moment where I was like wait, another thing that's interesting at the zombie apocalypse is that it's like we created our own predator in a world where we are no longer really. We don't well, we certainly don't see ourselves as prey. We can get eaten by other things, but we are our own worst predator in a way. Yeah, and zombies it's like suddenly, if there are zombies who live in a world where we actually genuinely have to be concerned about something eating us, yeah, it's a.
Speaker 1:it's a return to a simpler time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. That's why we're afraid of the dark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, maybe you're afraid of dark.
Speaker 2:You're not afraid of the dark.
Speaker 1:No, way too manly for that.
Speaker 2:Everybody's afraid of the dark.
Speaker 1:No, I'm really super duper.
Speaker 2:All right, you're an alpha male.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm tough.
Speaker 2:You're the head of the wolf.
Speaker 1:I'm a tough boy.
Speaker 2:No, you're not, You're my son.
Speaker 1:I go in the dark all the time. You know I'm not too afraid of the dark, but I will say that we watch hereditary. I'm not afraid of the dark. And you know I had to wake up at like four o'clock in the morning to get ready for work and I don't get like the heebie jeebies thinking about that movie, but I will say that I thought about hereditary every morning getting ready for work like For weeks. Yeah Well, still do.
Speaker 2:Really yeah. Are you still like looking up at the ceiling to see if there's like a demon up?
Speaker 1:there. No, no, I'm not scared of the ceiling demons, but it's like right at the end, when the mother and the grandmother's corpses were like kneeling before their new king yeah, without their heads on like I think about that a lot, which is weird because I didn't really think it was that scary at the moment. I was like this is kind of like the happy ending.
Speaker 2:The way your brain works fascinates me, that you have like these incredibly crisp memories of movies and books. Yeah, and I don't.
Speaker 1:You asked me what I had for lunch today. A salad.
Speaker 2:It was a good salad that you made? Yeah, oh, I made it, you did. You also made us peanut butter toast for breakfast. Oh yeah, I've got an honorable mention, yeah.
Speaker 1:What's your honorable mention?
Speaker 2:Mushrooms and the person who got us mushrooms, who I will not name. Yeah, very legal mushrooms, very legal mushrooms with very wonderful effects on my mental health. Yeah, and also more creativity, and I just think that more people should have access to mushrooms, like in Colorado where you can give them to each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know one of the many examples of how it can be legal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what I love about how mushrooms work in Colorado is that it's an example of not capitalism. It's literally a gifting system. You cannot sell them, but you can give them away and they have giving events. Yeah, like, what a fucking dream.
Speaker 1:You know, and anybody who's had, who's experienced mushrooms, they love giving away mushrooms Because it's just a wonderful experience. You know a lot of people are afraid of what we're talking about because they haven't experienced it, but when, or they've had a bad experience. That is also possible. But if you, if you go into an experience such as that a very legal experience, I might add- yes, in legal places like Jamaica and Colorado.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also California, if you're part of the mushroom church, that's right, and I think Oregon Not sure, but I believe you. Everything is decriminalized, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe Washington state. Yeah, eric, fact-checked that for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Let us know Eric. Well, wait, has Eric gotten back to us yet? He hasn't. I'll text him, but the the? The experience is like euphoria and feeling at one with everything around you, and the entire time you don't even remember.
Speaker 2:You have a phone, You're not looking at your phone and if you look at it, you're like uh, get this away from me. Technology? Yeah, don't like it. How old do you think you'd fare in a zombie apocalypse on a low dose of mushrooms? Do you think you'd be like, more effective at survival or less?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, anything that requires memory I'd be totally fucked. But you know what I would? I would probably be hit with this instant like survival mechanism of let's just go into a dark place and be very quiet and for and with that I would do very well, like I'd probably find a closet and I'd hold up in there and I'd just be like all right, now I just wait for the scary undead corpses that are trying to eat me.
Speaker 2:You probably feel some affinity to the dead corpses, or, like you'd be like. I'm a mushroom and the mushrooms will eat the dead corpses when they eventually become an animate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd probably try to give the zombies mushrooms. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Oh, what if it would help them decompose faster?
Speaker 1:What if it would make them not want to eat people?
Speaker 2:Maybe Maybe it's healing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe Next part is a really fun thing that we've been looking at for a long time that we've mentioned a little bit, especially at the beginning of this podcast.
Speaker 2:It's our top cities which are, by the way, like really interesting ones, because none of them are major, major metropolises, I mean, I guess the third one is yeah, number one Hilliard Ohio, hilliard yeah, we got to learn more about Hilliard Ohio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually wanted to have a whole bunch of fun facts about Hilliard Ohio, but I didn't do that.
Speaker 2:What I just want to know is where is the best place to hole up in Hilliard Ohio in a zombie apocalypse? That's not your house.
Speaker 1:Also what's happening in Hilliard Ohio, that everyone's listening to us.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm assuming that one of you got bitten and started biting others, and that's true, thanks, Probably.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's probably early on. They got bitten, didn't realize that they were going to turn, so they went and they hung out at their friend's house and they're like ah, some crazy person bit me.
Speaker 2:And then they bit their friend.
Speaker 1:And then their friend is like well, I've got family staying over, so we'll just hang out together. And then they turned and bit a whole bunch of other people. So I think that's probably what happened.
Speaker 2:We really love it when you bite people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We appreciate it Number two, smithville, tennessee, another place, yeah, who would never expect.
Speaker 2:It's kind of cool to know that there's these places that I'll probably never go to, with like people there living their lives yeah.
Speaker 1:Thinking about zombies, or maybe we will go there.
Speaker 2:Maybe we'll do like a tour one day.
Speaker 1:If we have a tour, if we have a tour between Hilliard Ohio and Smithville, tennessee, if we ever do have a tour.
Speaker 2:We are going to Hilliard, ohio, and Smithville, tennessee. Okay, and number three, atlanta. See, this makes me wonder if people I know are not telling me they're listening but they are listening Because, like Atlanta's, yeah, I got a lot of friends in Atlanta, so if you're a friend, I'd rather listen to Atlanta. Your brother didn't even know the podcast until like two days ago. That's true. We don't we don't involve our family or friends really in the podcast but except for yeah.
Speaker 2:But seriously, if you are one of my friends in Atlanta and you've been listening to this and you never told me what the fuck?
Speaker 1:Yeah, leah's friends, or possibly my friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, possibly your friends?
Speaker 1:Who are you Speaking of, friends? We made some zombie friends.
Speaker 2:We did. That was such a nice part of this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we met and interviewed Joshua Grant, who made another zombie apocalypse graphic novel.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's got some. Go fund me money to big. A little short film I believe about the robot.
Speaker 1:One Video game. Yeah, every time we talk to Joshua Grant, he's making a new thing.
Speaker 2:He is the most creative person I like, possibly more than you which is saying a lot.
Speaker 1:He's the most ADHD person I've ever met. That's why he's wonderful, yeah, that's why I get along with him. Yeah, and I see a lot of myself in him. And I don't know how old Josh Grant is, but I feel like when I was younger I had that same sort of not reeled in ADHD energy where I was just like I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to do this. What are you finding? He's as old as you. I'm broken down a lot by life and paving and I'm like I can only do one thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you're not. You're never just doing one thing, that's true.
Speaker 1:I do a bad job of doing one thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but Josh, we love you.
Speaker 1:We talked to Brandon Storaki. Did I say his name? Right, you did, I did. Brandon made a graphic novel called Avalon. We read the first three issues of it Is the fourth out.
Speaker 2:I think it's going to be out soon, okay.
Speaker 1:I am patiently waiting, brandon, so hurry up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we get email notifications.
Speaker 1:Yeah, give it, to give it we're on your email list.
Speaker 2:Brandon, you want more?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to know what happens to the police buddies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're my favorites. And, brandon, thanks for introducing us to Lori Calcuttaire.
Speaker 1:Yeah who, we haven't read her graphic novel yet, the Path of the Pale.
Speaker 2:Rider Comic series yeah, Comic series.
Speaker 1:Sorry, path of the Pale Rider, and we want to, though, especially since she sold it sold us on it so well when we started talking about zombies having human rights.
Speaker 2:Yes, zombie bears. I was actually looking at Lori Calcuttaire's merch because I wanted to get a T-shirt Even though I haven't read it yet. I'm like just a fan of Lori and there's a there's actually a zombie bear T-shirt, which I'm very excited about Zombies.
Speaker 2:There's zombie bears, zombies, yeah. And then also there was a like a poster, or maybe it was the one of the cover options for one of the issues. It's like somebody being like zombies on the outside, humans on the inside placard, like at a protest. And then just I love the concept, so we backed one of her recent kick starters and I'm just waiting to get that so we can read all four and hopefully have her back to talk about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we are. We are awaiting that because she was, she was incredible during the zombie. She was, yeah, we contacted Lori. It wasn't like we didn't have like a huge amount of time to get her involved, did we like. It was kind of like we had a suggestion from Brandon and and then we're like, yeah, I guess I guess we can get this Lori person and we haven't talked to her before.
Speaker 2:And then she was awesome, yeah, and she won and got the best prize ever and then posted it yeah.
Speaker 1:And last but not least, certainly not least, is our friend Eric Eric Lloyd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my goal for 2024 is to mention Eric in every single episode. All right.
Speaker 1:We got to stick to that.
Speaker 2:But yeah, eric, also on the zombie ween games show episode. So was Joshua Brandon. You're invited next year if you want to come, and I really hope that we make some more zombie friends in the future. But I think there's there's actually a whole bunch more people and we don't know all your names. So I'm just going to give a shout out to the listeners, to the folks who you know.
Speaker 2:You found us, you deliberately infected yourselves, you kept coming back and like it's that was my big mushroom revelation is like I am so interested to know you folks. Like who are you? You know, a few of you have introduced yourselves and I really enjoyed chatting with you. It's usually me on Instagram, usually Dan on threads, yeah, but in general, like, thank you, thank you for finding us, thank you for listening, thank you for writing reviews on Apple podcasts or just giving us five stars on Spotify or wherever you are. Thanks for being the kind of person that is into both the zombie apocalypse, anti oppression and liberation for all people and somehow tolerates our random rants and ADHD. Maybe you also have ADHD.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think all of them do.
Speaker 2:And if you don't, that's cool too. You're still part of the club. We need some folks who are linear thinkers to help us along.
Speaker 1:Those linear thinkers are probably listening to this episode. Oh my God, I can't take this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, seriously, thank you. It's really cool to know that you're out there. I feel a little less alone when I look at the stars. I think of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not that's not really true, but I will now.
Speaker 2:So let's let's finish up with our top 10 zombie book club wishes for 2024. What's your first one.
Speaker 1:Well, interview more authors and zombie aficionados. We want to get more people on the show and talk to them about things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a few people in mind, but we haven't contacted them yet, so stay tuned to find out who those people are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't want to jinx it, because then I'd be really sad if they said no.
Speaker 1:We don't want to like put their name out there and then find out like they fucking hate us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that'd be terrible. Number two we want to watch the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies movie, which would be shocking considering how much we both hated the book.
Speaker 1:I love that. This is one of our top wishes for 2024. We just do that.
Speaker 2:We're going to watch it and talk about it because apparently it's better.
Speaker 1:Our third wish for 2024 is we want to go to one of the Living Dead weekends and meet up with people and possibly be a vendor for our merch, which we haven't created yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I went down a rabbit hole looking at the event that's happening in Monroeville On the side of the Dawn of the Dead mall. I'm not going to be able to tell anybody while I'm there, if they don't already haven't listened how much I didn't like that movie. I'm just going to pretend.
Speaker 1:Well, that's not the movie that was based there. Oh really, the 1978.
Speaker 2:Is the one that's in Monroeville. Yeah, I'm going to have to pretend like I knew that too. I'm just going to like really brush up on my zombie memorization of facts, zombie facts. But either way, we might go to that, but we need to have merch first. So let us know if you like, meet up with us. If we went to one of the Living Dead weekends, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we're going to put the link to Living Dead weekends in the show notes. And if there's like another, I want to say conference, what's the word I'm looking for? Convention, convention. Yeah, there's like another convention you think that would be really fun for us to go to, or that you go to? Yeah, let us know, because I think I'd like this is like an opportunity where we could meet people and get the word out there what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Leah does need to stay off of her feet, though. Like we talked about at the beginning, leah wants to be able to use her feet for at least three hours in a day. Right now, it's zero hours a day. 20 minutes yeah, 20 minutes is all she has. So if you see Leah being pushed around by me in a wheelchair, it's not as bad as it looks. It's just her feet don't work and she can't walk. That sounds pretty, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah but I mean lots of people are disabled. Odds are, if you live long enough, you will be disabled.
Speaker 1:So it's just a reality check.
Speaker 2:Can't wait, and certainly I will be very grateful when I can walk more than 20 minutes a day.
Speaker 1:What's our fourth wish?
Speaker 2:Oh, I've been talking about this a lot here from you all, the Book Club members, the folks who are a bit. Give us a call, leave us a creepy voicemail 614-699-0006. I'm going to listen to them, but not too creepy, okay, I don't know I'd say creepier the better. Creepier, but not sexually inappropriate.
Speaker 1:That's my boundary. Don't get a shadow band on the Internet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm like I like to talk about sex and apocalypse generally, but I don't want to be. You know, don't give us, like the voicemail equivalent of a dick pic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can they send us dick pics?
Speaker 2:I mean they could actually. We have an email, but we haven't disclosed it yet.
Speaker 1:But if you send us a dick pic, it has to be dressed up like a zombie.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know what I'm going to do. It it's zombiebookclubpodcast at gmailcom. You can leave us a voicemail. You can send us an email. We're not the fastest at responding to those things. Probably we'll just read it on the air. But what I really want is like give us your juicy life problems and we'll give you advice based on whether or not that as if that thing was happening during a zombie apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it'll be the best advice I hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're both highly qualified advice givers.
Speaker 1:Number five. We want to reach more listeners and make it, we want to make it onto some podcast list websites. You know, when we first started this thing, I was doing a lot of research about like where can I find a zombie podcast where they talk about only zombie movies, sometimes zombie books or zombie games or zombie TV shows? And there were so many websites that are like these are the top 10 zombie podcasts of blah blah blah. And you know I listened to a lot of them and, first of all, a lot of them weren't anything about zombies. A lot of them were like radio dramas I don't know what you would call that actual play, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, radio Live action like a book, but not written very well. And yeah, I was like you know what? Nothing like what we do exists.
Speaker 2:Which either means that we are sitting on a gold mine, that we're not aware that it's a gold mine yet, or nobody cares, except for the folks who are already listening. And if that's true, we still extra love you.
Speaker 1:We're doing this for fun. We're a small community. Now, yeah, what's number six?
Speaker 2:Number six is have more of a media presence. So finish the website, do more with social media, create videos, memes et cetera. I skipped number six because I can't say what number six is that's? Actually number seven, and so what's number six, dan?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw that and I thought it'll be funny if Leah gives up number six. Number six is I want to finish the first draft of my book this year.
Speaker 2:How close are you? I don't even know.
Speaker 1:I mean I probably have a hundred. Yeah, oh shit. Oh wait. No, I have a hundred pages. I don't know how many words I have, maybe 50,000.
Speaker 2:Wow, but a lot of them I need to delete. How long is a book?
Speaker 1:Oh, like 80,000. Damn I'm no, or so you're like two thirds of the way, I mean the story itself is nowhere near completion.
Speaker 2:I feel like you're going to have to break this into multiple books. That's my theory.
Speaker 1:Yes, but yeah, I want to be able to at least, at the very minimum, finish the first draft I wrote a little while ago, before our Christmas break. I was the last time I wrote and I sat down and I wrote 2600 words. Yeah, that was a good day, and like in like two hours, two or three hours, something like that, and I'm like I need to have more days like this. If I had more days like this, I can finish this book.
Speaker 2:That's like me. The night before an essay was due back in the day, just bang it out. Yeah, number eight we really want to play the Walking Dead. I don't know what these. I know RPG, tabletop, rpg, thank you, there's an acronym on this list. I'm like what? And Dan's the one who's like really into this and I think he like sunk an entire day into like world building for a future campaign. Am I using the right language? Sure, but I am actually really interested in playing this and giving it a try, having a few friends potentially come on the show and play with us. But yeah, I am ready to have a real, genuine foray into the RPG.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm going to be playing it for the first time ever.
Speaker 2:January 7th.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, next Sunday, the day this comes out. Yeah, the day that. Yeah, this Sunday, right now.
Speaker 2:Dan is playing this as you're listening.
Speaker 1:Very likely, or several days ago, depending on when you downloaded this, true, yeah, so I'm going to be playing it. For the first time, I found a person on Just Play, which is this website where or Start Playing, yeah, start Playing. It's called Start Playing. It's a website where you can find a DM for whatever game you're interested in. There's somebody probably hosting a game and it'll probably cost you about $20 per session and you meet over the internet and you make new friends and you go on and play whatever game you want. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you could play the TTRPG Walking Dead with Dan one day on what's it called? Again Start?
Speaker 1:Playing.
Speaker 2:Start Playing, yeah, and maybe Dan will host. You'll host some yourself sometime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or maybe we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Speaker 2:Number nine I want to read more books and comics of the zombies that are written by women or non-binary folks, cis women, trans women, trans people, trans men, just not just dudes. And again, I think that there's probably some reasons, like ologically possibly covered in a zombified episode, maybe about why, specifically, men are drawn to writing about the zombie apocalypse more often, but I don't know if that's really true. It is more often where if they just get more of a platform and a venue. So I've actually been Googling and making lists of authors of all folks' identities and backgrounds to start reading and talking about their work, and of course, the very first will be Lori Calcuttaire, as Path of the Pale Rider, when we get the four issue series that we're waiting for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I read a few this year off podcast, some off podcast reading. There was one book that I de-adapt very early on and I wanted to give it a shot because it was an indie author and a person of color and a woman and it had a really cool sounding name. I'm not going to say what the name is because I don't want to trash this person, but I did not like their book. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That can happen, and we don't want to trash talk any indie writer because it might just not have been your taste. There is a female indie author whose name I don't remember, but I believe that it's like a combination of erotica and zombie fiction and the main character is a woman and she has a harem of five dudes. All right, I'm into it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that one we got to read. Yeah, let's get some zombie harems going on, yeah, and what's our number?
Speaker 2:10? Wish for 2024, Dan.
Speaker 1:My personal number 10 wish is the annual Zombie Ween game show, year 2. Yay, the thing that.
Speaker 2:I made. That's be a man. Take credit for everything I do. I see how it is yeah.
Speaker 1:Zombie Ween game show was really great. We loved it. Yeah, making this an annual thing sounds like a fun time and I think we came up with the concept. I mean who?
Speaker 2:knows what will happen in the year, but I think we came up with the concept today, which is that we should have people bring their top 10 $100 Amazon Challenge items and see who wins. Yeah, got $100.
Speaker 1:Find some shit on Amazon and the winner will pay.
Speaker 2:We'll give you $100 to buy it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what.
Speaker 2:We'll see, we'll see. Well, this has been really fun to reflect on the year. Like I said, next time I look at the stars I'll be thinking of you, so I hope you think of me too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, think of us when you look at the stars. We're stars.
Speaker 2:We are made of stardust Is Joni Mitchell. Is Joni Mitchell who said that? I thought it was Neil deGrasse Tyson. A few people have said it.
Speaker 1:Or.
Speaker 2:Carl Sagan, is it deGrasse, not deGrasse?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not deGrasse.
Speaker 2:Dan, there was a TV show in Canada called Degrassi High, so I've been saying his name wrong.
Speaker 1:Not the same person. No.
Speaker 2:Neil deGrasse.
Speaker 1:Tyson is not the same thing as.
Speaker 2:Degrassi, degrassi, high I know.
Speaker 1:But yeah, there we go, everybody. We're reaching the end. Remember that we're reading a book. We're actually reading Sylvester Barzee's book Planet Dead. Yes, that we were talking about earlier and we hope it's really great because we want to talk to Sylvester all about it sometime, if he will have us. But you know what? This is going to be actually episode 35 of that. We're going to do that because, like we said at the beginning, we're now going to do an episode every week.
Speaker 2:That's real love and commitment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is for you and us.
Speaker 2:We were only part-time parenting the Zambabie. This is movement to full-time parenting.
Speaker 1:Do you want to tell us about Planet Dead Leah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So it's set in a politically isolated future this is actually Sylvester's words I'm pretty sure I'm just reading them when the wall is built and America has turned its back on many of its allies. I love Unrealistic. We'll see what 2024 does. Honestly, I'm not even sure it matters. God, it's such a mess. That's my pessimistic comment. An unknown virus has been released into the world and those infected die rapidly and painfully, only rich to return as bloodthirsty zombies. In this world, where you can't trust the government and survivors of poverty worse than the dead, all you can count on is family, which means that Dana and I would be fucked except for our chosen family, each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we got a pretty good chosen family.
Speaker 2:We do. Yeah, I don't know that I want to rely on my biological family in an apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, like we said before, we want you to call us with your burning questions, even if the questions are about literally being on fire. Yeah, because we'll try to help you with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can ask us like what should I make for dinner? I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:And we'll give you a zombie survival recipe. Yeah, I'll tell you, I'll give you a recipe. But yeah, if you have a good zombie apocalypse tip or a good question, we might talk about it on the podcast and give you our response. Give us, call it 614-699-0000006.
Speaker 2:Or you can email us.
Speaker 1:But I made more.
Speaker 2:You can email us at zombiebookclubpodcast at gmailcom. I will not read it if it is more than 300 words.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't write an essay. Yeah, we have enough to read.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would really prefer the voicemails, to be honest. Yeah, that would be super fun Up to three minutes.
Speaker 1:Yes, three minutes or 300 words.
Speaker 2:We are modeling the importance of boundaries in relationship. I hope that you also have good boundaries in your relationships.
Speaker 1:They help a lot. Also, if you want to follow us on social media, we are on Instagram and Threads Zombie Book called Podcast. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dan's going to make some really great zombie survival tips.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And sharing them.
Speaker 1:Also all these things will be in the link tree in the description. I should add our phone number yeah, and our email, and our email.
Speaker 2:I'm going to actually start to have checking it yeah. Because, I've never shared it with anybody, except for guests.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and don't forget to subscribe, or whatever the button is that makes it so that you see that we've uploaded a new episode, and also give us a rating and a review, because it is the way that we reach new listeners through their ear holes and infect them with the zombie book club virus.
Speaker 2:Yep, and if you're a bit, go bite someone else, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go find a populated area and then turn into a zombie right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we appreciate you surviving in the wasteland of late-stage capitalism with us. Have a wonderful new year. Hope it's been great for you, looking forward to 2024.
Speaker 1:Yeah, new dumpster fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 2024.
Speaker 1:New problems.
Speaker 2:Climate change for the win. Yeah, it's all over guys. More world wars. Yeah, bye, the end is near, we're so it's such a hopeful podcast. Bye-bye the apocalypse is nigh. It's already happening Bye.