sort form Submissions:
submissions
The National – Conversation 16 Lyrics 14 years ago
So, there is an obvious Zombie motif in the song:

--->"It's a Hollywood summer"/"leave the silver city 'cause all the silver girls"
This could be a reference to the 'silver screen' hit Night of the Living Dead, if not it is definitely an interesting comparison

"I think the kids are in trouble
Do not know what all the troubles are for"
---> A possible reference to Roger Ebert's review of George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead:
"The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying"

--->"I was afraid, I'd eat your brains 'Cause I'm evil"
Romero's modern reinvention of zombies is notable in terms of its thematics. He used zombies not just for their own sake, but as a vehicle to lambaste real-world social ills (ie vanity, greed, lust)

Lastly: philosopher David Chalmers coined the term "philosophical zombie"
"as a concept used in the philosophy of mind, a field of research which examines the association between conscious thought and the physical world. A philosophical zombie is a hypothetical person who lacks full consciousness but has the biology or behavior of a normal human being; it is used as a null hypothesis in debates regarding the identity of the mind and the brain"

* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.