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How Cannibalism Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast Josh and Chuck here Say hi, Chuck, Hi,
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Speaker 1: Chuck Chuck. Um. Have you been paying attention to that
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Speaker 1: that story that came out of Canada this past ually,
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Speaker 1: that that um grizzly murder on the on the Greyhound bus. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that was It's you couldn't write something that ghastly. No, No,
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Speaker 1: you really can't. So well, I guess we should probably
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Speaker 1: fill in anybody who's not aware of it. There's this guy,
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Speaker 1: UM named Vince Lee who allegedly, out of nowhere, uh
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Speaker 1: leans over in this bus and the dark of night
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Speaker 1: that's just traveling down the planes of Manitoba thing uh
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Speaker 1: and he just leans over and um starts stabbing this
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Speaker 1: guy sitting next to him, who's never met before, and
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Speaker 1: apparently witnesses say that they hadn't even spoken. Now, completely unprovoked.
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Speaker 1: Um and just stabs him and stabs and stabs him,
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Speaker 1: and everybody just starts fleeing the bus and they end
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Speaker 1: up locking this guy on there and he starts walking
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Speaker 1: around back and forth like kind of I got the
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Speaker 1: impression kind of like a caged animal. And then I
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Speaker 1: guess he gets the the idea to go back and
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Speaker 1: UM cut the victim's head off. He's not dead, but
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Speaker 1: he cuts his head off, and he's walking around with
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Speaker 1: the bus exactly and apparently he dropped this poor guy's
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Speaker 1: head um in front of the witnesses, like at the
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Speaker 1: steps at the front door of the bus, who were
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Speaker 1: these people were holding the doors closed to trap them on. Um.
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Speaker 1: And there's this one other This is bad enough, right right, um,
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Speaker 1: but there's this he did something else that just I
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Speaker 1: think it makes everything kind of even worse. Um. He
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Speaker 1: he walked back and started cutting off pieces of the
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Speaker 1: guy and eating them. And this should have had a
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Speaker 1: little warning before this podcast this, yeah, maybe, so hopefully
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Speaker 1: from the title people will be a little prepared. So basically, UM,
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Speaker 1: I started researching this. I had heard about it. Um,
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Speaker 1: this this incredibly ghastly murder. Uh. And I at the time,
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Speaker 1: I was writing or researching h an article how cannibalism works.
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Speaker 1: So I'm thinking, you know, as as grim as it is,
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Speaker 1: like this is this is pretty good story to use
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Speaker 1: as a lead as an introduction for the article, right,
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Speaker 1: And the more I started researching it, the more I
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Speaker 1: realized I had this perfect line. It was like, you know,
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Speaker 1: when uh, when Mr Lee, I should say, allegedly he's
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Speaker 1: been charged, but he hasn't been convicted. Um, you know
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Speaker 1: eight that that those bits of flesh. He went from
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Speaker 1: a mere murderer to you know, something like a monster,
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Speaker 1: like a cannibal. Right. But the more I looked into
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Speaker 1: this story, like, honestly, the cannibalism almost falls in line
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Speaker 1: with everything else he was doing. It was such an
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Speaker 1: unspeakable act that didn't stand out. The cannibalism was also
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Speaker 1: or almost muted by the rest of this stuff. So
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Speaker 1: instead I went with armand Mavus, right, which was another
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Speaker 1: really bizarre and ghastly story. It really was. It was.
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Speaker 1: It's not nearly I don't find it nearly as disconcerting
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Speaker 1: as as um the greyhound bus story. Yeah, that was
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Speaker 1: a little more frightening. This is definitely definitely creepy, though.
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Speaker 1: I mean, this was a consenting adult, right, So you
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Speaker 1: want to tell them about Mr MAVs, Well, yeah, this
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Speaker 1: is a guy I believe he put an ad on
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Speaker 1: in the newspapers or on a website, personal's website. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: looking for someone who would allow themselves to be eaten
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Speaker 1: by this guy. And what's that's remarkable enough? But he
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Speaker 1: had he had a taker, well, he had he got
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Speaker 1: close a few times apparently. But yeah, this one guy
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Speaker 1: named Burnt Jurgen Brandis right, forty three wasn't exactly what
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Speaker 1: Mavas was looking for. Mavus was advertising in eighteen to
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Speaker 1: thirty year old well built guy and apparently, you know,
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Speaker 1: a little less picky time on exactly. Yeah, Um, so
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Speaker 1: Brandis comes over and um, they basically get him drunk,
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Speaker 1: he's taken some painkillers and um Mr Mivas cuts off
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Speaker 1: his his penis and proceeds to cook it for the
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Speaker 1: both of them, for the both of them, and um,
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Speaker 1: I didn't put in the article, but what I gathered
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Speaker 1: was that they both ate some and didn't really like it. Right, So, um,
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Speaker 1: this by this time, Brandis, who's like totally concerning, fully
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Speaker 1: aware of what's going on, what's going to happen, that
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Speaker 1: he's going to die tonight. This is what he came
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Speaker 1: over for. Um, he goes to take a bath because
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Speaker 1: he's just bleeding everywhere. His penis is cut off right, um,
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Speaker 1: and he goes to take a bath and uh he
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Speaker 1: loses consciousness in the bath. So myvas is like, all right,
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Speaker 1: it's it's you're done, and uh cuts the guy's throat
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Speaker 1: and actually had set up like a basically a butcher
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Speaker 1: room where he butchered guy and um, I guess made
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Speaker 1: steaks out of him flying over a period of time,
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Speaker 1: he ate ate his body, right, four pounds of this
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Speaker 1: guy's body over there over a few months. The thing
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Speaker 1: is he was he had totally gotten away with it, right,
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Speaker 1: like there was the police had no idea this had happened. Um,
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Speaker 1: there was no like missing person's report as far as
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Speaker 1: I know or anything like that. And the way he
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Speaker 1: was Um, the way he was caught was uh, some
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Speaker 1: some fellow chat room dwellers uh knew what Mivas was
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Speaker 1: doing and apparently got when that it had been successful
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Speaker 1: or whatever an alerted police and they found out and
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Speaker 1: he's like, oh, yeah, totally, it was great. Right. So UM,
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Speaker 1: I think what's most remarkable about this story is not
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Speaker 1: only that this guy did this, but there was no
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Speaker 1: law against cannibalism at the time in Germany, so he
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Speaker 1: was tried from or is being tried for murder. First
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Speaker 1: they had him on UM. I think they had him
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Speaker 1: on manslaughter, right, and because you know other guy consented,
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Speaker 1: he consented uh And and there was such outrage in
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Speaker 1: Germany um against it that that they're they're retrying him
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Speaker 1: somehow for murder um. But yeah, there there is no
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Speaker 1: law in the books. I think there is now um.
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Speaker 1: And the same goes for the UK. I really really
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Speaker 1: try to could not find any federal statute outlawing cannibalism
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Speaker 1: in the US, but I did find vague references that
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Speaker 1: it is illegal, but I couldn't find any actual law.
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Speaker 1: But the thing is, it's almost like you don't really
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Speaker 1: have to outlaw cannibalism because it's a taboo completely. It's
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Speaker 1: it's like it's beyond the law. It exists beyond the law.
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Speaker 1: It's something way worse than anything that we need to
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Speaker 1: sanction legally. You would think you would think, right, So, um,
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Speaker 1: what what Mivas and um Lee allegedly and Albert Fish
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Speaker 1: who is a murdering uh pederas cannibal of the nineteen twenties, um,
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Speaker 1: and of course one of the most famous of all,
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Speaker 1: Jeffrey Dahmer, what what they're what they were doing is
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Speaker 1: called pathological cannibalism, which basically that's that's psychology that has
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Speaker 1: very little to do with anthropology. The rest of cannibalism
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Speaker 1: falls very much into the realm of anthropology, and it's
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Speaker 1: been studied and study. It's actually one of the more
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Speaker 1: interesting fields of study, or sub fields of study, I think,
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Speaker 1: in in any aspect of anthropology. What what do you think? Well,
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Speaker 1: I mean, as far as cannibalism is religious custom and
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Speaker 1: offering up to the gods, that kind of thing with
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Speaker 1: the as, that's part of it. Yeah, there's there's a
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Speaker 1: bunch of different Yeah, there's different subsets and different kinds
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Speaker 1: you know, probably disturbing. Well, I don't, I know, you
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Speaker 1: do you school me? Okay, So you've got survival cannibalism,
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Speaker 1: learned cannibalism, which is which is subdivided into endocannibalism, but
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Speaker 1: which is eating like members of your family or your
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Speaker 1: tribe or whatever, and exo cannibalism, which is the opposite
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Speaker 1: it's eating um, members of outside your tribe or family.
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Speaker 1: And that's mainly for a religious uh not necessarily. We'll
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Speaker 1: get to that in a second. Um, there's there's also
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Speaker 1: pathological right, and then There's another one that I find
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Speaker 1: arguably the most disturbing auto cannibalism. That's eating oneself. Correct, Yes, Now,
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Speaker 1: I I didn't find any examples of some an actual
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Speaker 1: documented case of a person voluntarily eating themselves, aside for
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Speaker 1: from Jurgen Brandis, who apparently ate some of his penis
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Speaker 1: but didn't really like it. So usually cannibalism it's forced. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: but what about like, I know, I bite my nails,
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Speaker 1: and a lot of people think that that is it
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Speaker 1: is technically, Um, do you eat your fingernails clippings? Do
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Speaker 1: you just bought your nails? Because now, when I was younger, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: when I was younger, I would swallow my fingernail clippings
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Speaker 1: and uh, you would have like stomach problems and stuff,
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Speaker 1: I would imagine. So so I'm not supposed to swallow. Well,
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Speaker 1: I did those a little kid. I didn't know that.
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Speaker 1: I didn't realize that was a nervous kid. Kind of
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Speaker 1: it's a little more fortunate, I take it, so I don't.
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Speaker 1: I don't do that anymore. I don't swallow. That's good.
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Speaker 1: But yeah, you people do consider technically that biting your
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Speaker 1: fingernails is a form of auto cannibalism. UM. More often
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Speaker 1: it's uh, it's forced auto. Auto cannibalism is forced. UM.
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Speaker 1: I think in like two thousand three or two thousand four, UM,
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Speaker 1: in in the Congo, some Congolese rebels were accused of
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Speaker 1: um killing pigmies and uh and forcing other pigmies or no,
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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, forcing pigmies to eat parts of themselves before
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Speaker 1: killing them. And also you know, practicing cannibalism by eating
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Speaker 1: the pygmies themselves. Just some pretty terrible stuff going on
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Speaker 1: down in Congo. Yeah. And I know in the in
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Speaker 1: the early nineteen thirties and the United States even they
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Speaker 1: had a lot of racist fueled uh acts of auto cannibalism.
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Speaker 1: You know, I don't think enough people know about this.
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Speaker 1: I hadn't heard about this guy until UM I wrote
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Speaker 1: this article. Claude Neil. Had you heard of him before?
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Speaker 1: And now I hadn't because you know, they don't teach
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Speaker 1: the stuff in historical no, and they really should, so
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Speaker 1: I think it's kind of up to us to to
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Speaker 1: to teach it. Right. So in in Florida, UM, about
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Speaker 1: two thousand white Southerners gathered and basically sacrifice this black
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Speaker 1: guy named Claude neil and they advertise that they advertised
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Speaker 1: in the paper. They sent out invitation, right, and so
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Speaker 1: all these people show up and it's like this um
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Speaker 1: uh just kind of orgiastic um sacrifice or ritual where
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Speaker 1: they basically, um, they tortured him. They they cut off
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Speaker 1: his penis and made him eat it. It was forced
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Speaker 1: auto came right. And one thing that didn't make in
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Speaker 1: the article is that they forced him to say that
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Speaker 1: he liked how it tasted. And then finally, after a
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Speaker 1: couple of hours I take it, um, they finally lynched him.
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Speaker 1: They killed they hung him. And the sad thing is
10:57
Speaker 1: this doesn't go down as like a sacrifice or an
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Speaker 1: auto can ballistic. It's called the lynching, which it's a
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Speaker 1: lynching is bad enough, but this seems so much further
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Speaker 1: beyond well it is, and it's a way, it's kind
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Speaker 1: of a way of even whitewashing. I mean, lynching is
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Speaker 1: bad enough, you're right, but when you don't hear about
11:11
Speaker 1: those details, you think this guy was taking out and hung,
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Speaker 1: which is already horrible, but it just goes so far
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Speaker 1: beyond that. It's just it definitely isn't And like you said,
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Speaker 1: they don't teach that in the history books, and I
11:21
Speaker 1: think they should so, but um, those are the types
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Speaker 1: of cannibalism, right, Um, what about you knew much about
11:29
Speaker 1: survival cannibalism, like Alive and all that. Yeah, Well, the
11:32
Speaker 1: Donner Party was one of the earlier ones. That was
11:35
Speaker 1: the group of settlers that were heading out west right,
11:39
Speaker 1: and they splinter group went off in this year in
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Speaker 1: Nevada Mountains and kind of encountered some bad badness weather
11:44
Speaker 1: and the like, and they resorted to cannibalism. And then
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Speaker 1: the film and book Alive about the soccer team that
11:53
Speaker 1: crashed in the andies, I think, yeah, you're team yeah,
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Speaker 1: And they ended up resorting to cannibalism from some of
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Speaker 1: their comrades who had who had already died. They survived
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Speaker 1: like seventy one days like that now, And you know,
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Speaker 1: that's one of the more forgivable, probably the most forgivable. Definitely,
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Speaker 1: cannibalis definitely because it's survival. I'd say, you're you're you're surviving.
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Speaker 1: And then these guys wanted to do what they had
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Speaker 1: to do, but they you know, they needed to agreed.
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Speaker 1: And and this was in nineteen seventy two or something
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Speaker 1: like that I think, thank you. Yeah, it was the
12:22
Speaker 1: early seventies. Um, so this is really really recent. The
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Speaker 1: thing is is this has been going, This has happened
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Speaker 1: many many times. The dinner party. Um, there was a
12:31
Speaker 1: there was actually something in the nineteenth century called the
12:34
Speaker 1: custom of the sea, right, which is where, um, you
12:38
Speaker 1: know where you uh, you're not happy with your lot
12:41
Speaker 1: in life. That phrase that actually comes from the customer
12:44
Speaker 1: to see where you're drawing lots drawing straws. Right, So
12:48
Speaker 1: you you have the straws cut up two different lengths,
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Speaker 1: and everybody draws them. And as as per the custom
12:53
Speaker 1: of the sea, the person who drew the shortest straw,
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Speaker 1: and this is like if you were stranded, if if
12:58
Speaker 1: you were shipwrecked and you were forced to resort to
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Speaker 1: survival cannibalism, whoever drew the shortest straw, um was that
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Speaker 1: person was tapped to die. And whoever drew the next
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Speaker 1: shortest straw was a person manity to kill them, and
13:11
Speaker 1: then everybody ate the person that was killed. It was
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Speaker 1: like basically a codified survival canibalism because it happened. It
13:18
Speaker 1: was just a fact of life when you were a sailor. Yeah,
13:20
Speaker 1: I guess it's because there were no rescuing parties or
13:23
Speaker 1: anything like that. I mean, like you may just if
13:26
Speaker 1: you were rescued somebody stumbled upon you, you know, So
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Speaker 1: it did happen a lot, and like you said, it
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Speaker 1: is the most forgivable form, at least in the eyes
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Speaker 1: of Westerners. It's survival, canibell, and you did what you
13:35
Speaker 1: had to do to stay a lot. But at the
13:37
Speaker 1: same time, um, it's kind of chilling in that how
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Speaker 1: how easy it seems like it it would be under
13:45
Speaker 1: those circumstances to eat another person, you know, which kind
13:49
Speaker 1: of points out that at any given point in time,
13:52
Speaker 1: where like one plane crash or shipwreck away from you know,
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Speaker 1: eating one another. Yeah, it's it's a little kind of
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Speaker 1: spooky to realize, is that it's it's there. It's innate
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Speaker 1: in all of us, right, nobody would think that they
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Speaker 1: would want to do something like that. But when push
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Speaker 1: comes to shove and you face you're facing death, and
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Speaker 1: there's a difference also, I mean, I guess you're a
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Speaker 1: lot in life that that story. You're actually killing somebody
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Speaker 1: to eat them. But in the case of the alive ones,
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Speaker 1: they they you know, they ate they ate the dead Yeah,
14:21
Speaker 1: they're falling comrades. So so that's that's a difference. Yeah, yeah,
14:26
Speaker 1: that's survival cannibalism. And then you've got learned cannibalism, right,
14:30
Speaker 1: and this is the stuff that's like really heavily studied.
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Speaker 1: Um there's uh, basically they call it learned cannibalism or
14:37
Speaker 1: customary cannibalism because it's it's a socially indoctrinated right. Um.
14:43
Speaker 1: For with endo cannibalism, generally it's part of like a
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Speaker 1: funeral rite. The four A people in Peppua, New Guinea
14:51
Speaker 1: and the Worry in the Amazon were very well studied
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Speaker 1: for their practices of cannibalism. Like the Worry for example,
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Speaker 1: what they were doing this. Uh, this anthropologist named Beth
15:02
Speaker 1: Conklin found out that they were by eating there they're
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Speaker 1: um recently deceased, they were transforming them. The warrior were
15:11
Speaker 1: really big on or are really big on changing their
15:14
Speaker 1: surroundings so that they're not reminded. Now, actually it's for
15:18
Speaker 1: the it's for them for the survivors. Uh. They they
15:23
Speaker 1: were they're supposed to change everything that reminds them of
15:27
Speaker 1: the dead person so they're not sad or depressed. It's
15:30
Speaker 1: the way, their way of getting over grief and and
15:33
Speaker 1: eating the dead body is um, it's a method of
15:37
Speaker 1: transforming it. So that's a that's a pretty peaceful method
15:41
Speaker 1: of cannibalism. That's endocannibalism, and the foray do the same
15:45
Speaker 1: thing for slightly different reasons. They're actually looking to gain uh,
15:50
Speaker 1: certain attributes like say wisdom or strength or that kind
15:54
Speaker 1: of thing. And it's very specific to the body part, right,
15:58
Speaker 1: so like uh, and and only on certain people can
16:01
Speaker 1: eat certain parts of a deceased relative. It's it's really
16:04
Speaker 1: interesting how you know, over the course of centuries or millennia,
16:09
Speaker 1: humans can really slap labels on all sorts of different stuff. Yeah,
16:13
Speaker 1: but you know, this kind of deserves to be broken
16:15
Speaker 1: down because they're they're also different, you know, all the
16:18
Speaker 1: different forms. So I don't think it's just willy nilly
16:22
Speaker 1: the way they slap different names on the know, but
16:24
Speaker 1: that raises the question why, like why why do people
16:28
Speaker 1: you know, why do why do cultures around the world
16:31
Speaker 1: have codified socially sanctioned UM cannibalism? And I think UM
16:38
Speaker 1: really in the article I divided that between two approaches
16:42
Speaker 1: and anthropology, it's materialism and idealism. Right, So material did
16:48
Speaker 1: you get this far in the article? And actually I
16:51
Speaker 1: fell asleep about at that point. I think I'm just
16:54
Speaker 1: of our readers are or listeners are asleep as well.
16:57
Speaker 1: It's my voice that has a very lolling uh. So basically, um,
17:02
Speaker 1: the materialists say that cannibalism generated from necessity, like there's
17:08
Speaker 1: a drought, that kind of thing, and um, some some
17:11
Speaker 1: people who adhere to that are saying, you know, hey,
17:13
Speaker 1: it happens this cannibalism would would just be logical when
17:18
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have a grocery store. We didn't
17:20
Speaker 1: know how to tame crops and we were just hunter gatherers,
17:23
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden there's a drought, so you
17:25
Speaker 1: do survival cannibalism. Uh. And then the idealists say, no, no, no, Um,
17:31
Speaker 1: it's we interpret the world through symbols and uh so
17:35
Speaker 1: the human brain represents wisdom and that's and then cannibalism
17:39
Speaker 1: came after we started interpreting things as symbols. Uh. And
17:43
Speaker 1: nobody has figured out who's right. But I tend to
17:46
Speaker 1: lean more towards the materialists. Yeah, I think cannibalism it's like, yeah,
17:53
Speaker 1: it's like we were saying, it's it's I think it's
17:55
Speaker 1: innate and all of us and when the chips are down,
17:57
Speaker 1: I would eat you, you know. And his gibson already
18:00
Speaker 1: told me that she would eat me. She called me meaty. Well,
18:03
Speaker 1: I think i'd provide a hearty meal as well, you would.
18:06
Speaker 1: I think I think we're about on par Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: I think, uh at the very least, arm in mipas
18:11
Speaker 1: could live on us for a very long time. Well,
18:14
Speaker 1: I'm hungry. I'm a little hungry too, Chuck. Do you
18:16
Speaker 1: want to go get something to eat? That's a great idea.
18:18
Speaker 1: I mean, nice rare burger might go with a salad.
18:22
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