It took almost eleven years and 595 episodes of Someone Else’s Movie for someone to bring Night of the Living Dead to the podcast. None of George A. Romero’s other Dead films has made it onto the show, either, despite plenty of opportunity. Maybe it’s just that the series looms too large in people’s minds, and no one wants to come up short when discussing such a landmark.

Fortunately, Jon Blair — one of the sharpest comic minds I know, and who’s bringing his one-man sketch show A Comedy at the End of the World to TO Sketchfest this Friday, March 13th (8pm at the Theatre Centre, tickets should still be available) — was more than happy to wade in. And there’s plenty to talk about, since with this one movie Romero gave us the zombie as we know it, redefined what was permissible on American movie screens and — not for nothing — spawned an entire subgenre of nightmares that’s still going strong after six decades.

I didn’t think of this until after we’d wrapped, but Night of the Living Dead is nearly as old as Star Trek, and maybe even more culturally important. The buy-in is much lower; it just takes a bite.

So jump in! Subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice, or just download the episode directly from the web and listen to it while you board up those doors and windows. Don’t forget the upper floors!

And then you can get caught up on Shiny Things, where last week I spun up the new releases of Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet and Edgar Wright’s The Running Man … and reviewed André Is an Idiot,  Sweetness and Hair of the Bear in Friday’s What’s Worth Watching column for paid subscribers. Are you a paid subscriber? Would you like to be? It’s not hard!

Finally, if you’ve been following the trades you might have read that the Toronto Film Critics Association lost a number of members last week over the editing of Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ acceptance speech to remove statements supporting Palestine. I was indeed one of the cohort that resigned, and while I’m not really discussing it publicly I will allow that being referred to as a “former Toronto fest film picker” by the Hollywood Reporter was a highlight in this whole sorry mess. Top of the world, Ma. Top of the world.