Speaker’s Book:

• The Vampyre, by John Polidari, On Archive.org
• Poet and the Vampyre: The Curse of Byron and the Birth of Literature’s Greatest Monsters, by Andrew Stott

Impossible Immortality Potions & the Chumps who Sought Them

Online:

• Gilgamesh: in Search of Immortality from “Primitives to Zen”  – Mircea Eliade
• 5 Ancient Legends About the Secret of Immortality – Daniel Appel
• Flowing Rivers of Mercury – Chemistry World

Print:

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• Qin Shi Huangdi: First Emperor of China, by Peggy Pancella

Not Dead Yet: William Tebb & the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial

Online:

• Premature Burial and Helpful Hints on How Not to Get Buried Alive – Haunted Palace Blog
• Premature Burial and the Modern Age – Richard Joltes
• Item of the Month, February 2013: ‘Premature burial and how it may be prevented’ – Wellcome Library
• Buried Alive: 19th-Century Safety Coffins – The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice
• List of Safety Coffin Patents

Print:

• Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear, by Jan Bondeson.
• Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented, by William Tebb –  on Wellcome Library
• The Danger of Premature Interment, by Joseph Taylor – on Wellcome Library 

John Dee: Peering into the Spirit World

Online:

• The Fox Sisters: Spiritualism’s Unlikely Founders – HistoryNet.com
• The Sisters Who Spoke to Spirits: how two mischievous girls gave birth to a religion – Salon
• Podcast – Episode 11: When Angels Tell You to Wife-Swap (the discussion about John Dee starts after 41:30)  – Ken & Robin Talk About Stuff
• Painting of John Dee and Edward Kelly – Mitchell Nolte
• Film – Wax or The Discovery of Television Among the Bees – David Blair

Print:

• The Hieroglyphic Monad, by John Dee
• John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, by Peter J. French

Walk This Way: Frogs, Frankenstein, and the Flexner Report

Online:

• Odd Salon Follow Up: movies of cells doing strange things in response to electric fields and an extract from my thesis detailing a more complete history and overview of non-neural bioelectricity – Daniel Cohen
• Young Frankenstein – Rotten Tomatoes

Print:

• Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley 
• Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany, by Gabriel Finkelstein
• The Discoveries, by Alan Lightman (20 of the most important scientific papers and discoveries from the 20th century)

Revenant: A Short History of the Restless Dead

Online:

• Vampires, Burial and Death Folklore and Reality, by Paul Barber
• Meeting the Foreign in the Middle Ages, by Albrecht Classen

Print:

• William of Newburgh – History of English Affairs – William Newburgh
• Vampire of Venice’ Unmasked: Plague Victim & Witch? – National Geographic
• Rituals for the Restless Dead: The Authority of the Deceased in Medieval Iceland – Kirsi Kanerva
• Revenants, Resurrection, and Burnt Sacrifice – Nancy Mandeville Caciola

Future Adventures in Not Dying

Online:

• “Telomerase gene therapy in adult and old mice delays aging and increases longevity without increasing cancer”
• “The aging systemic milieu negatively regulates neurogenesis and cognitive function”
• “Rapamycin fed late in life extends lifespan in genetically heterogeneous mice”

For each salon, we invite our speakers to share the resources and interesting reading they came across in researching their talk, so that we can all dig more deeply. This reading list was compiled by Odd Salon with KC Crowell, Laura Rubin, Michael Brodhead, Daniel Cohen, Steen Comer, & Chris Carrico. Thank you!