You watch a horror movie or TV series and think, “Zombies don’t really exist.” But when you consider the broader definition of zombification—the control of one entity by another—then zombies are definitely among us. And, it turns out, they have much to teach us about the world.

Athena Aktipis of Arizona State University is a self-professed apocalypse enthusiast, and as the host of the podcast Zombified, she knows the undead inside and out. With Zombified: Real-World Lessons from Fictional Apocalypses, she’s compiled her research and insights into a fascinating Audible Original that will have you thinking deeper about all those shambling, brain-hungry corpses in pop culture—not to mention our everyday lives.

Drawing on years of research on zombies and zombification, these six lessons offer a fun way to explore and understand the many forces that influence us. You’ll discover how organisms in the natural world, like the jewel wasp, hijack one another for their own ends. You’ll examine cases of social and psychological zombification involving family members and romantic partners. And, of course, you’ll spend plenty of time with fictional zombies—why they fascinate us, how they map onto topics like infectious diseases and disaster preparedness, and what they reveal about our hopes and fears for the future of humanity.