102 – Nina Nesseth and How the Gross-Out Can Save Your Life

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Do you like scary movies? Yes, course you do – you’re listening to a horror podcast.

Okay, cliched horror quote asides – this week is something a little different for the show. It’s been a minute since we’ve had some non-fiction, and how better to scratch that itch-for-facts than with a discussion of BRAINZZZZZ?

Our guest is Nina Nesseth: scientist, researcher and author of Nightmare Fuel: The Science of Horror Films. It does what it says on the cover. Nina guides us through a century of horror cinema, looking at how we, as a species, react neurologically and physiologically to scenes of blood, violence and carnage. Think of it, perhaps, as a tour of the most haunted house of all, the human mind. 

We dissect everything ­– movies, culture, eyeballs (prepare yourself!), and the trailer for Rob Zombie’s The Munsters. We also talk about communicating science in the new age of anti-rationality, how our brains can tell screens and real life apart, the best ever decade for horror, and we mock the phrase elevated horror in all the ways that stupid term deserves. 

Enjoy!

Nightmare Fuel: The Science of Horror Films was published on July 19th by Tor Nightfire

Other books discussed in this episode include:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), by Mary RoachFound Footage and The Appearance of Reality (2014), by Alexandra Heller-Nicholls 

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