myths are not stories that are untrue rather they are tales that don't fit neatly into the historical record which serve as a foundation to a culture now of course we've all heard stories about zombies before shambling moaning corpses raised from the grave by foul necromancy or forbidden science and while there are many kinds of zombie stories sometimes who tells the tale matters even more than the myth itself so tonight we're going to explore from three different perspectives how it is said the zombie came to be thanks so much to hellofresh for helping bring this myth
to life [Music] once upon a time the united states military invaded haiti and one sergeant among them was particularly excited to bring american democracy to a nation he thought of as poor and superstitious he'd heard haitians practiced something called voodoo though his chaplain called it witchcraft blasphemous rituals and deals with the devil and the dead mythical nonsense as far as the sergeant was concerned now most haitians weren't happy to see the marines the one who welcomed them with open arms was a planter who grew sugarcane on a northern farm he befriended the occupying troops and
for a price he got them food drink entertainment volunteer labor or dirt on who harbored rebels but one evening as the planter and sergeant were grabbing drinks at a bar in town the planter suddenly fell from his seat gasping coughing up blood startled the sergeant helped him to a hospital across the street but after hours of waiting the sergeant was informed that the planter had died five years later the marines were still in haiti and the sergeant visited a remote sugar plantation to procure more volunteers for an infrastructure project but then something odd happened the
field hands neither fought or ran or even spoke as the sergeant's men forced them into a chain gang and one looked familiar his hair was unkempt his skin caked with dirt the sergeant approached and asked was he the same planter he'd known five years ago [Music] was the man's only response impossible the sergeant thought and put it out of his mind a couple of nights later after a few too many at the bar the sergeant stepped outside to relieve himself but before he could answer nature's call he saw one of his soldiers unconscious his keys
missing and the workers quarters empty following their tracks he found them shuffling toward the forest where a figure waited in the distance on a hill shrouded in darkness the sergeant drew his pistol halt he shouted and for a moment they did but at a gesture from the shadowy figure they continued to shamble on the sergeant's hands shook but then his mind went back to the planter for some reason and he was no longer sure that bullets could solve this problem oh god was voodoo's power real could it truly command the dead what what would it
do to him the sergeant holstered his sidearm and went back to bed and when he finally returned to america he told that story until his dying day of magic reaching beyond life and a man who died and returned at a sorcerer's command but that is just one side of the tail [Music] once upon a time there was a brilliant doctor who worked at a haitian hospital and she hailed from a catholic family who also practiced vodu a religion combining enslaved africans many spiritual traditions into something new in fact stories from her childhood of vodou clergy
concocting herbal remedies actually inspired her to study medicine despite religion never appealing to her why accept mystery when reason could tell her the truth one day a local planter was brought into her emergency room staggering gasping spitting up blood the marine sergeant who brought him spoke neither creole nor french and really couldn't explain anything so she began to treat the planter the best she could as his muscles slackened and his breathing failed and it was clear that by the time his heart had stopped she could have done nothing for him she noted the date and
time of death and released the cadaver to his family for burial but she did feel powerless what had happened to this man drowning in pots of coffee at the bar across the street she researched similar cases long into the evening and the closest she ever came to an explanation was a japanese woman who was nearly killed in a similar manner by a poorly prepared meal of neurotoxic puffer fish though she'd been fully conscious she was helpless as the poison paralyzed her this definitely required more study ten years passed and nothing she'd found in medical science
ever fully explained what she'd witnessed that day but then one afternoon a familiar face walked into the bar oh my the doctor sprang up and confronted him i treated you in the hospital she told the planter his face now lined with age i i watched you die the planter then recounted that he was conscious as he was pronounced dead he was conscious as they buried him in the cemetery and he was conscious when they exhumed his body and dosed him with something that kept him a weak-willed obedient laborer for 10 years that is until one
day when they stopped drugging him and said he was free to go i remember little of those 10 years he said i was a zombie the doctor dove back into her research even getting into contact with some of her parents old vodou connections trying to get a sample of some sort of zombie poison but they all rebuffed her please it turned out however that the bartender whose coffee she'd been drinking all these years somehow rustled up a few vials she claimed were the real thing and while each contained pufferfish neurotoxin no two of them were
the same and while the doctor's theory never satisfied the scientific community she never lost the faith that science could explain what forced upon a living man the stillness of the grave though to be fair she didn't have the whole story either [Music] once upon a time the bartender had been around for a while so long in fact that she knew everyone in town and their business long before the marines arrived and she'd tell you not to ask how a zombie is made until you've asked the more important question of why her story starts during the
haitian revolution when vodou herbalists formed secret societies to fight oppression using toxicology though in recent times when people couldn't trust the military or the police those societies protected their communities from wrongdoers wrongdoers like the planter for years the bartender listened to locals woes as the planter made their lives a living hell he fathered children but abandoned them and their mothers he exploited and mistreated his employees and his collaborating with the marines was the last straw eventually even his own family beseeched a secret society to stop this destructive force and at a midnight tribunal the society
passed judgment the planter who'd betrayed the community for personal gain would be punished in kind now a secret society might have agents anywhere the countryside the town even a bar where a planter drank and boasted but his drink laced with zombie poison wasn't just magic or chemistry it was justice ten years of labor ensured he paid his debts if you ask the bartender a zombie is any spirit with no connections easily controlled the planter willfully cut off and wronged his community so by the time he met his fate he was already a zombie all she
had done was made his body resemble his soul when you tell a story you can't control who retells it elements shift and change like a game of telephone drugged wrongdoer becomes undead monster religion becomes witchcraft context fades and is replaced by embellishment and then of course the more people that tell and retell a tale the more variants appear so the next time you hear a zombie story or any myth really remember to always question for yourself who's telling the story why have they told it and how might it change when you retell it and because
one should never tell tales on an empty stomach we're thrilled to have hello fresh and their home-cooked meals at our storytelling table you know i truly love that hellofresh sponsors our channel because they've been saving me time and keeping me way less hangry for ages now while also eliminating trips to the grocery store and stressful meal planning i get everything i need to prepare delicious meals all delivered to my door and i'm eating in like a half hour or less oh and this week i made one of my hall of fame faves chicken sausage spaghetti
bolognese for two oh yeah and it was tasty while jeff whipped up a family size serving of mamma mia mozzarella meat lovers because you know zoey has really turned me around on this whole second dinner thing you said it bud tastiness aside another great thing about hello fresh is the work that they've done on the sustainability front ingredients are pre-portioned which means less food waste and the carbon footprint of their service is actually 25 smaller than that of meals made from store-bought groceries and there hasn't been a better time to try out hellofresh for yourself
thanks to this delectable deal all you gotta do is go to hellofresh.com and use the code extra credits 14 to get 14 free meals including free shipping oh no you heard me right you can get free food while supporting the content you love the environment and most importantly your tummy again that's 14 free meals at hellofresh.com using the code extra credits 14. your time and taste buds will thank you and so will we thanks a huge thanks to ahmed zion turk alicia bramble casey muscha dominic valenciana joseph blame kyle murgatroyd and obriel's one for being
our legendary [Music] [Applause] [Music] patrons [Music] you
