Zombie psychology is a topic my colleague Athena Aktipis takes very seriously. She wants to answer the question, “Is something taking over your brain?” and she has begun to interview experts in diverse fields who study topics ranging from our mutually parasitic relationships with dogs (the puppypocalyse!) to the way the food and diet industry manipulate us (the zombie diet).
One episode, called "Zombie Friends," features Oklahoma State psychologist Jaimie Krems, an expert on friendship, talking about how even our best friends can parasitize our minds.
Aktipis’s cohost is Dave Lundberg-Kenrick, the media outreach program manager for Arizona State University’s psychology department, and someone whose brain I occasionally parasitize for its store of useful information about movies, music, computer programs, and the connections between art and science. Dave correctly guessed that I would particularly enjoy the Zombified podcast on “Monster Algorithms,” featuring ASU professor Ed Finn, who has the enviable title of Director of the Center for Science and the Imagination, one of Arizona State University’s many new interdisciplinary centers. Finn, in fact, seems to be the personification of the term interdisciplinary. He holds appointments in the Department of English and in the School of Arts, Media, and Engineering. He has published several books, including, in this interdisciplinary spirit, Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds. The book reprints Mary Shelley’s classic horror story alongside essays talking about how various aspects of the story illustrate diverse links between science, technology, and literature.
The podcast’s title “Monster Algorithms” is related to another of Finn’s books, What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing. I was so intrigued by the podcast, which got me thinking about both Frankenstein and computer algorithms in new ways, that I immediately downloaded samples of two of Finn’s books.
In some ways, Frankenstein’s monster is less frightening than modern computer programs designed, in increasingly efficiently ways, to steal your brain, my brain, and the brains of our children. As Finn points out, big data algorithms operate without any intrinsic sense of morality, other than continually redesigning themselves to capture more and more of our attention, more and more of our money, and ultimately as much of our precious time as they can.
Zombified website: Designed to lure your brain. Source: Athena Aktipis, ASU, drawings by Neil Smith, used with permission, Speaking of modern technology grabbing our attention, the Zombified website is brilliantly designed, and Aktipis has managed not only to recruit a group of intellectually interesting guests, but she has also recruited talented illustrator Neil Smith to draw cartoons that perfectly capture the ideas those guests are discussing.
It was definitely worth my time to listen to this podcast, and I am now primed to listen to the others — so I guess Aktipis has successfully managed to parasitize my mind.
Can zombies be a respectable scientific topic?
Although it might sound as though making connections between zombies and scientific research is just a joke, Athena Aktipis has convinced me that the topic is legitimate. Last year, she hosted a conference called the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Meeting. I attended because my colleague, Vaughn Becker, was hosting a session on "zombie psychology," and I was surprised to find that the conference was a seriously valuable scientific event, bringing together diverse scientific ideas and inspiring speakers from around the globe. For example, University of Texas psychologist David Buss gave a quite serious talk on the advantages of not being dead (many of which are nonobvious, but evolutionarily profound).
The website for the conference (which will happen again in 2020), says: “Topics include rabies, toxoplasma gondii, resuscitation, trauma, microchimerism, parasite-associated mental illness, sickness behavior, sleep deprivation, predator/prey adaptations, mind control, manipulation, and eating behavior.”
Aktipis is using zombification as a metaphor for anything that attempts to control another organism’s brain, with the classic example being those pernicious little microbes that invade ants’ brains and inspire the insects to climb out onto the edge of a blade of grass, where they are eaten by a cow.
Since part of the organism’s lifespan is spent as a parasite inside the digestive system of a cow, and another inside the body of an ant, altering the ant’s behavior is the organism’s way of producing more copies of its genes. But parasitism is found in numerous forms throughout nature, and with varying degrees of fatality on the hosts, including the kinds found between friends, relatives, and dogs and their owners.
Friends Essential Reads
How to Build Lasting Friendships 
54 Ways to Strengthen a Friendship The zombified podcast is an outgrowth of the conference and is a lovely example of how science can be fun. I would go so far as to say that, when taken with the right attitude, the scientific examination of natural zombie-related phenomena can be even more fun than watching The Night of the Living Dead.
In a related post, I discussed how social media parasitizes your brain with surprising efficiency.