Dr. Barry Saunders holds a Ph.D in religious studies, in addition to being a physician. He’s seen the horrors that can happen in a hospital setting and those experiences help him relate to literature about the living dead. Saunders believes that in many ways, vampires, zombies and other creatures are cultural reflections of our society’s feelings about death and dying. In the spring, Saunders will teach a seminar course called “The Undead: Bodies In Between” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he is an associate professor of social medicine. He joins host Frank Stasio with a preview of his class and his thoughts on why the living dead have never failed to fascinate us.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.