Music in this lesson is from Purple Planet.

The tradition of breaking vampire rules.
Here's a really interesting study that shows how the vampire legend emerged out of a fear of disease.
Online version of The Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology by Theresa Bane.
Do vampires keep you up at night? Well, it may not be vampires at all. Imagine you’re fast asleep and then suddenly awake. You want to move but can’t, as if someone is sitting on your chest. And you can't even scream! This is sleep paralysis, a creepy but common phenomenon caused by an overlap in REM sleep and waking stages. Ami Angelowicz describes just how pervasive (but harmless) it is and introduces a cast of characters from sleep paralysis around the world.
They're not vampires, but what if you ran across a herd of grazing zombies? Can geography save your life in case of, say, a zombie apocalypse? Understanding the push and pull factors that create geographic movement -- or how people, resources, and even ideas travel -- might help you determine the location that's best for survival. David Hunter playfully analyzes the geography skills that you'd need to escape the zombies.
Speaking of zombies, what makes them tick? Zombies eat brains. They are also, like all of us, driven by brain functions. What is happening in their brains to make them act as they do? In this intriguing dialogue, Tim Verstynen & Bradley Voytek apply the various human medical possibilities that make zombies...zombies.
How are different brain stimulations involved with human behaviors, and how can observing a zombie help us understand the brain? In the second part of the Diagnosing Zombies series, two scientists continue to ponder the erratic behaviors of a zombie to explore the relationship between the brain and behavior.
This is really going to make your skin crawl! This is stranger than science fiction. The jewel wasp and the cockroach have a disgusting and fascinating parasitic relationship. The jewel wasp stuns the cockroach, and months later, a jewel wasp hatches out of the cockroach. At TEDYouth 2012, Carl Zimmer walks us through how this happens and why it personally fascinates him.
Let's take the spooky into our writing. Few mistakes sour good writing like nominalizations, or, as Helen Sword likes to call them, zombie nouns. Zombie nouns transform simple and straightforward prose into verbose and often confusing writing. Keep your nouns away from elongating nominalizations!
What else are you afraid of? Perhaps it's public speaking? Heart racing, palms sweating, labored breathing? No, you’re not having a heart attack -- it’s stage fright! If speaking in public makes you feel like you're fighting for your life, you're not alone. But the better you understand your body's reaction, the more likely you are to overcome it. Mikael Cho advises how to trick your brain and steal the show.
Music in this lesson by http://www.purple-planet.com/

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