Why don’t we eat people? (classic)

A question from a four-year-old tips us into an investigation of one of our most fundamental taboos: cannibalism. With help from New Yorker food critic Hannah Goldfield and writer Kelefa Sanneh.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00PJ Vogt?

  Hello, Search Engine Nation and beyond. February 20th is National Cherry Pie Day, as well as National Muffin Day. Two widely celebrated, widely observed American holidays with the same message: Some foods should be eaten. In honor of both of these holidays, we're re-airing one of our very favorite episodes, which is about what foods you can eat and can't eat, and a young man with questions about both. Also, if you have a moment, we've been real good and haven't asked this for a while. Please consider reviewing and rating us on Apple Podcasts. All of our moms and dads read the reviews and it makes them feel better about our jobs doing audio podcasting in 2026. Thank you. Our episode after these ads.

• 0:48PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Toyota. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla, or Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And, long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering

• 1:29PJ Vogt?

  with legendary resale value built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you can trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews, all on the app. Download today.

• 2:40PJ Vogt?

  First of all, can you say your name and how old you are?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  I'm four and I'm... My name is Otto.

• 2:49PJ Vogt?

  And did you just turn four, or have you been four for a while?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  I turned four, um, like, a few days ago.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  You turned four in May, right?

• 3:00PJ Vogt?

  Okay, okay. It's good to have a fact checker.

• 3:06PJ Vogt?

  Otto had arrived with his mother to Search Engine's recording studio because he had a question. Our interview had begun, as all my interviews do. I'd offered the guest some candy from our office candy jar. Otto had chosen a lollipop, which he was now crunching on with some gusto. Meanwhile, I was just trying to begin our conversation with some softballs.

• 3:27PJ Vogt?

  I asked you your favorite color, but I'm gonna ask you again for the record. What's your favorite color?

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Red.

• 3:32PJ Vogt?

  What's your favorite season?

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Winter.

• 3:37PJ Vogt?

  Winter?

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Because I like to build snowmen.

• 3:41PJ Vogt?

  Oh, that's pretty good. You're here with your mom, is that true?

• 3:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:47PJ Vogt?

  And what's your mom's name?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Hannah.

• 3:51PJ Vogt?

  And do you know what your mom's job is?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  She works at restaurants.

• 3:56PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so just another quick fact check here. Hannah Goldfield, Otto's mom, does not work at restaurants. She writes about them. She's a food critic for The New Yorker. And part of her ethos, and this will become important later, is that she considers it part of her job to, quote, "eat anything."

• 4:15PJ Vogt?

  You asked your mom a question recently. Do you remember what the question was?

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Why don't you eat human heads?

• 4:22PJ Vogt?

  Why were you wondering about that?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Because I would ask my dad what else I could eat for dinner.

• 4:30PJ Vogt?

  And did you suggest a human head, or did he suggest a human head?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  I did.

• 4:35PJ Vogt?

  And why do you think you were hungry for a human head?

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Because I know you eat cow.

• 4:41PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Because that's like beef.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  I mean, so the full context was that I actually wasn't in the room at the moment that the question was first asked. And my husband was asking Otto what else he wanted for dinner other than what we were having that night. And I actually can't remember what it was. And Otto said sausage, chicken skin, and the meat of a human head.

• 5:09PJ Vogt?

  Okay, okay.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  And Josh, my husband, was obviously surprised and he laughed. And then he texted me. I was upstairs doing something. He was like, you gotta come down and hear what Otto just said. So we repeated this whole exchange. And I said, Otto, do you know what would have to happen for us to eat the meat of a human head? And he said, yeah. And I said, you know, the person would have to be dead. And he said, yeah, well, they would already be dead, like, like an old person. And their body was just there. And we could just eat

• 5:50Speaker 03

  the meat of their head. And I explained to him that humans don't eat other humans. But the more I tried to explain why, the less of a good answer I had.

• 6:06PJ Vogt?

  Did it seem like Otto still wanted to know? Or was it kind of like, the question had more sticking power for you than it did for him?

• 6:12Speaker 03

  I think it had more sticking power for me. I think that he kind of quickly realized it was taboo. And he backed off of it. And that's something I've been thinking a lot about about. I actually, I was talking about this to a friend, and I described it as taboo. And he thought that that word was like, not nearly a strong enough word. He felt like taboo was like, you know, it's taboo not to give up your seat for a pregnant woman on the subway. But, you know, but I think it's one of the ultimate taboos.

• 6:43PJ Vogt?

  I have a friend who says that the truest taboos are the ones whose existence we don't even acknowledge. It's an idea that we've decided culturally or instinctively is so.

• 6:53PJ Vogt?

  Rotten, that it becomes hard to even explain why we don't do it because we don't even talk about why we don't do it. We just don't do it.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly.

• 7:01PJ Vogt?

  So Hannah found herself stuck thinking about her son's brush with the cannibalism taboo, even after Otto had moved on. And she soon found herself poking around on the internet.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  I just like looked up cannibalism on Wikipedia and there's like a famous cannibal, which is such a funny word also. Like when I, when I hear that word, immediately I have this like cartoon image, maybe from like Mad Magazine or something of like a quote unquote savage wearing like bones.

• 7:31PJ Vogt?

  It's the bone necklace.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, bone necklace, loin cloth.

• 7:34PJ Vogt?

  The like Western explorers and like an iron pot and like the soups being like gradually heated. Totally. That's the cattle in your brain.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Right. You start to realize that.

• 7:46PJ Vogt?

  Otto.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  There isn't that much logic to it.

• 7:49PJ Vogt?

  And if like tomorrow you got a PR blast email that said like, the people who made the Impossible Burger have figured out how to like make a synthetic human steak, like a lab grown human steak. So you can satisfy your curiosity about human meat without causing human suffering. Would you go?

• 8:09Speaker 03

  So the idea would be you can taste what human meat would taste like without?

• 8:13PJ Vogt?

  Killing someone.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Killing someone. I think so. Yeah. I think I would. I don't think if it was totally lab grown, I think I would.

• 8:24PJ Vogt?

  Otto, would you eat human meat if you were allowed to eat human meat and if nobody had to get hurt for human meat to be eaten?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:32PJ Vogt?

  And is it because you think it would be tasty or because you're curious?

• 8:37Speaker 02

  Because I'm curious.

• 8:39PJ Vogt?

  Will you eat things that are like, that most people would be scared to eat? Like, are you a picky eater?

• 8:46Speaker 03

  What's the rule in our house about food?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Please try something before you say you don't like it.

• 8:54PJ Vogt?

  Which would suggest that you guys are slightly breaking your own rules here. If there's just a blanket prohibition on a human, humans call me.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  I mean, this strikes me as like, it's so absurd and hilarious, but then I'm like, but why? You know?

• 9:08PJ Vogt?

  Right, right.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Like, it feels so taboo. It just.

• 9:12PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  I feel like a slight sense of nausea, a little bit of shame.

• 9:18PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  And yet, the most logical part of my brain is like, sure.

• 9:22PJ Vogt?

  It's weird, you know, it's a taboo because there's the rule, but then there's something more powerful behind the rule that's like bigger than the rule. You know what I mean? It's like, that's how you know you're in the presence of a real taboo.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:34PJ Vogt?

  Where you're like, I'm worried to even get near this thing, even though I think I understand why the rule exists, even if there was a carve out, I'm kind of afraid of being caught near the carve out.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 9:45PJ Vogt?

  Have you, like, in the course of your life as a person who eats a lot of things, have you eaten things that felt to you instinctively like as, like you had a similar reaction as if you'd eaten human meat, where you just felt like, I shouldn't be eating this, or like, my mind is telling my body not to do this?

• 10:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, nothing as extreme as the taboo of eating human meat, but the first thing that comes to mind is balut, which is.

• 10:10PJ Vogt?

  What's balut?

• 10:10Speaker 03

  It's a Filipino dish, and they may eat it in other, in other parts of the world. It's a fertilized duck egg. I think it can also be other poultry eggs, meaning like, unlike an unfertilized egg that you eat with bacon for breakfast, it's been fertilized, so it's like the fetus of a duck.

• 10:32PJ Vogt?

  That sound you're hearing in the background is of a precocious and slightly bored four year old figuring out that if you make funny sounds with your mouth, the microphone will pick them up? Anyway, balut. So when you bite into it, is there like?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  You like pull out what looks like an embryonic bird.

• 10:50PJ Vogt?

  Wow.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  I had it only once, many years ago, at a Filipino restaurant, but it's very, very popular there, like so popular that kids eat it as like an after school snack. And I try to remember that it's like, everything is so based on what you grew up eating, what was considered normal. So it's like, for me, yes, I can't quite get over how weird that feels, but I totally can understand how. Someone could grow up eating that and think it was the most normal thing in the world.

• 11:16PJ Vogt?

  But when you were eating it, the FM radio station in your brain was just broadcasting like, no, no, stop, no.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  For sure. It just felt off to me. Not even like, no, no, no, but like, I'm doing this so I can say that I've tried it. But it's not something I will, you know, jump at the chance to eat again. Although I would like, if you offered me some right now, I would try. I just like, I have an insatiable curiosity about food.

• 11:43PJ Vogt?

  It's also just funny because it's like, if you were like, do you want to eat an egg? I'd be like, sure. If you were like, do you want to eat a duck? I'd be like, absolutely. If you were like, do you want to eat a baby duck? I'd be like, I don't really have a strong opinion about that.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:54PJ Vogt?

  What, what are the reproductive politics of like, duck fetus is bad? It's really weird. Like, there's just a, there's a complicated amount of culture in that response that I don't know how to explain.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 12:13PJ Vogt?

  In America, there's a newer taboo, which says that people shouldn't be disgusted when they encounter foods from other cultures, which is absolutely polite. But also does not take into account that pretty much every culture has ideas about what's gross. And for some of those cultures, what's gross is actually what we eat. In India, where my editor Shruti grew up, a lot of people are born and raised vegetarian. They've never eaten a bite of meat. Can you imagine how gross meat would be if you'd never eaten it?

• 12:43PJ Vogt?

  Or what inhospitable ideas you might harbor about the ropey, wet texture of animal muscles towards the people who compliment crispy skin? Shruti told me in the school lunchrooms there, she'd often see a kid react to their neighbor eating chicken the way a kid here might react to their neighbor eating blut. Disgust, the real disgust you feel in your stomach, doesn't feel like it comes from culture. Our disgust feels hardwired, but that's just not true. If it were, Otto would have just been born knowing he can't eat people. Instead, it's a rule he's being taught.

• 13:22PJ Vogt?

  And a rule he'll soon understand is so important, he'll forget that he ever had to learn it at all.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:29PJ Vogt?

  Otto, thank you for coming in to ask your question. You're welcome. Hannah, thank you for coming in and bringing Otto.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Thanks for having us.

• 13:37PJ Vogt?

  Otto, you're free.

• 13:40PJ Vogt?

  There's something about eating a person, even if they're already dead, that we've all agreed is something to avoid. And we are not contesting that rule. But we are interrogating it? We're just asking questions about it? After the break, three stories about cannibalism, at least one of which I think will complicate your certainty about the anti-cannibalism feelings that you think you were born with. We'll see. That's after some ads.

• 14:22PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Vanguard. To all the financial advisors listening, let's talk bonds for a minute. Capturing value in fixed income is not easy. Bond markets are massive, murky, and let's be real, lots of firms throw a couple flashy funds your way and call it a day. But not Vanguard. Vanguard's commitment to institutional quality means offering top-grade products across the board, backed by a lineup of over 80 bond funds. While other firms love to highlight a single star portfolio manager, Vanguard believes the best active strategies shouldn't depend on one person. Instead, their funds are driven by a 200-person global squad of sector specialists, analysts, and traders, sharing collective brainpower. Vanguard's scale allows them to invest across global markets and spot opportunities

• 15:07PJ Vogt?

  others miss, all while avoiding high-risk bets to deliver steady, dependable results. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in, year out, go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/audio. That's vanguard.com/audio. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation, distributor.

• 15:29PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Bombas. Cozy season is here, which means it's time to bring out the movie marathons, crisp morning walks, and super soft layers. Once fall hits, I genuinely just want absolute comfort on my feet, and Bombas have become a go-to for me. Their new suede moccasins are a total game changer for this weather, packed with water-resistant suede, ultra cushy soles, and a plush, sheerling lining. On those busy days, or whenever I have travel coming up, I reach for their compression socks. They offer specialized support that actively fights fatigue and aches, keeping my legs completely energized no matter how long I'm on my feet. And best of all, for every item you purchase, Bombas donates an essential item to someone experiencing homelessness, with over 200 million items donated so far.

• 16:13PJ Vogt?

  Head over to Bombas.com/Engine and use code ENGINE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash ENGINE, code ENGINE at checkout.

• 16:37PJ Vogt?

  Welcome back to the show. Normally, you know how podcasts work. This is not your first one. We did the intro part, then we do the part where I talk to an expert on cannibalism. Somebody who wrote a book, they'll say a bunch of smart stuff. I'll ask them follow-up questions about it. This week, we're going to do something a little different. So I read a bunch of books on cannibalism, some science, some cultural history. I watched a TED Talk. There is a cannibalism TED Talk. And then I called a friend. I mentioned in the first half, when I was talking to Hannah, that I had a friend who I text with about taboos. You're probably picturing a pretty tawdry relationship right now, but it's just my friend Kalifa, Kalva Sane. You may have heard him in another episode of Search Engine, where we asked him, how am I supposed to find new music now that I'm old and irrelevant? Kalva, welcome back.

• 17:22Speaker 04

  PJ, I'm here. I've been here. Ever since the last time you interviewed me for your podcast, I've been sitting here at this table, in this chair, just watching you, listening, waiting patiently for you to turn my microphone back on.

• 17:37PJ Vogt?

  I'm sorry I made you wait so long.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Finally.

• 17:42PJ Vogt?

  So the reason I wanted you talking here today, we text a lot. You're, I would say, chronically open-minded, to the point where, presented with most rules, particularly most social rules, you're the person I know who's liable to ask, why? How come? Are we sure? Does this seem like a fair characterization?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  I think that's a fair characterization.

• 18:01PJ Vogt?

  So then, before we even begin, I just want to make sure that I know what page we're starting on. Like, what is your feeling about people eating people?

• 18:09Speaker 04

  My feeling about people eating people. I mean, look, this is a taboo that everyone recognizes is a taboo. But when you tell me about people eating people, I immediately want to break it apart into different pieces, right? There's people eating people on top of a mountain after a plane crash. Yes. And some people have died and the other people need the sustenance, right? That's one kind. Yes. There's a kind of ritualized people eating people where that's part of the culture and you do it on special occasions or for a special reason. Or there's lots of different kinds of people eating people. But in general, yes, I certainly, I share the idea that it's something that we generally don't do. And I can't claim I've ever had an overriding desire to do it.

• 18:54PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so Califa being Califa is already a step ahead of me, defining some of our categories here. But I do have a plan for how this is going to go. Well, not a plan, a menu. Today, I'm going to serve you three stories of cannibalism. The Amuse Bouch is a historical story, possibly the origin story of our modern fear of cannibals. For the main course, I have a contemporary story of a person eating a person. And for dessert, a mystery set in remote Papua New Guinea.

• 19:26PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so the first story I told to Califa, The Conquest.

• 19:33PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so Kay, this story happens alongside the Western entry into the Americas. And I think it is where we got the modern meme of cannibalism, like the ubiquitous cartoon image that Hannah and I talked about, this guy with a bone in his nose, cooking an explorer in a steaming cauldron. That image, like the origin story of that image, I think I have a story of that for you.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  The origin of cannibalism as taboo. Now we know how the taboo starts and we can work on ending it.

• 19:58PJ Vogt?

  Yes. Okay. 1493, Christopher Columbus lands in Guadalupe, which at the time he would call Santa Maria de Guadalupe. He's on his second voyage to the New World. According to this one book I read called Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Shutt, Columbus's prime directive, like his mission from Spain, was to find gold in the islands. I don't know why this belief was propagated, but the Europeans believed that silver was found in cold places and gold was found in hot places. So according to their logic, it stood to reason this expedition was going to yield lots and lots of gold. So he arrives with an army of 17 ships, lots of well armed men, and he reports back to

• 20:39PJ Vogt?

  his sponsors in Spain that there's this one group of native people called the Arawaks. And according to Columbus, these Arawaks, they are great. He writes that the Arawaks, quote, "are fitted to be ruled and to be set to work, to cultivate the land and do all else that may be necessary." But according to Columbus, the Arawaks warn that there's this other group on certain southern islands, and this group is not as nice. They're called the Caribs. The Caribs do not want to be ruled. They're ready to fight. And Columbus says that the Arawaks warn him, "If the Caribs beat you in battle, they might eat you." Columbus writes, quote, "Thus I have found no monsters, nor had a report of any, except

• 21:22PJ Vogt?

  in an island, Carib, which is the second coming into the Indies, and which is inhabited by a people who are regarded in all the islands as very fierce and who eat human flesh."

• 21:32Speaker 04

  So this is a familiar story. He's going to some faraway place, meeting a bunch of people and basically trying to categorize them.

• 21:39PJ Vogt?

  Yes, exactly. And like, some of them, he seems like they're going to be helpful, some of them are not. So these locals are called Caribs. Carib somehow gets mistranslated to cannib, and cannibal becomes like what the cannibs do. So this is really like, while there was an idea that it was bad to eat people before this, we had a different name for them. Like cannibal goes to this moment. But this whole story is just rife with like mistranslation, misunderstanding, and so we don't know what really happened. Like, did Columbus make all this up? Were the Caribs actually ritually eating their captured enemies? Were the Arawaks making this up to get Columbus to go after their enemies? Like, there's just a lot of debate here even today. But what's important is Columbus told people that on these islands, some of the locals

• 22:24PJ Vogt?

  were dangerous and that they would eat his men.

• 22:26Speaker 04

  Why did the eating thing loom so large in his mind? I feel like if I was meeting some people, possibly hostile, whether or not they would kill me would loom a lot larger in my mind than whether or not they would eat me.

• 22:37PJ Vogt?

  I think it was just sort of like...

• 22:40PJ Vogt?

  A particularly bad way to die in their minds? Because I agree. Like, for me, I'm like, I'd prefer not to be killed. After being killed, being eaten would be like a tertiary concern, probably.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  But maybe it's a way of measuring distance. Maybe it's a way of thinking, well, me and people like us, we don't eat people. And so if I encounter someone and I hear that they do eat people, then those people are somehow maximally different from me and my people.

• 23:04PJ Vogt?

  I think there's a lot of evidence that that is what is going on here. Because what ends up happening is Queen Isabella, who is like sent Columbus on this journey, when she gets the reports back that some of these people eat people, she says that he's allowed to treat the cannibals differently from the other locals.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  Ooh, I see. So the incentive structure gets all messed up.

• 23:24PJ Vogt?

  Exactly. So she writes, this is the letter she sends. "If such cannibals continue to resist and do not wish to admit and receive to their lands the captains and men who may be on such voyages by my orders, nor to hear them in order to be taught our sacred Catholic faith and to be in my service and obedience, they may be captured and are taken to these my kingdoms and domains and to other parts and places and to be sold." So basically, just the queen appears to be giving Columbus and his fellow colonizers special permission to subjugate and enslave cannibals in a way that he wouldn't be able to with other people.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Because cannibal is sort of linked with a kind of a maximum cruelty or a definition of quote unquote savagery.

• 24:04PJ Vogt?

  Yes. And so what ends up happening, he shows up trying to find gold, because again, he thinks you find gold in hot places. There's not as much gold as he was anticipating. And so since they're not finding gold, the Spaniards just start looking for people to enslave. And that will be the resource that they go after. So now, even when they're an erudite country, they'll just label people their cannibals. Anytime someone resists them, anytime it's convenient, it's like this magic word, cannibal. You call someone a cannibal, you can take their rights away.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  But there's an irony here, right? Which is that for those people in Spain at that time, cannibalism represented human beings at their worst, right?

• 24:40PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  And for us, many of us now, enslavement represents human beings at their worst.

• 24:46PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  And so, and so the idea was if we suspect, the way, from what you're telling me, the idea is, they were like, if we suspect that human beings are being at their worst, we're going to do the thing that future generations will think of as human beings at their worst.

• 25:00PJ Vogt?

  Exactly. There's actually another complicating story here. The whole time the Europeans are obsessed with cannibalism, The price was, I'm just like in a slightly different form.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 25:12PJ Vogt?

  So the thing they were accusing the cannibals of doing was ritual cannibalism. It's like, I eat you because I won in combat, because it symbolizes something, because I think that I get strength from doing it. What the Europeans had been doing was medical cannibalism, which is when you eat people or body parts because you think there's a medical benefit to it.

• 25:33Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 25:35PJ Vogt?

  So there'd been a trend from the 11th century through the 17th century in Europe of eating something called mummia, which was a material made from ground up powdered mummies, which was supposed to be good for you. They had gotten, yes.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Obvious question about the sourcing.

• 25:53PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 25:55Speaker 04

  They were, are these, are these ethically sourced mummies?

• 25:57PJ Vogt?

  These were not ethically sourced mummies. These were deeply unethically sourced mummies. They were robbing mummies from Egyptian graves.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Hmm. This suggests that this would be a very valuable product because there's a finite supply of mummies?

• 26:13PJ Vogt?

  So it is a valuable product and it quickly becomes a problem, which is that they exhaust the finite supply.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Did they call it peak mummy?

• 26:23PJ Vogt?

  No, they just pretended like they had more mummies and started finding other recently dead people.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  That sounds, I don't want to go on a limb, that sounds bad.

• 26:31PJ Vogt?

  It was bad. So they had recipes to speed up the mummification process of corpses. There's a, I don't know, there's a 17th century book called London Pharmacopeia, which includes a recipe describing how to do this. I've read about it in Shudd's book, but the recipe recommends that, quote, "The mummia be made of the cadaver of a redheaded man aged 24 who'd been hanged. The corpses to lie in cold water in the air for 24 hours, after which the flesh was cut in pieces and sprinkled with a powder of murr and aloes. This was soaked in the spirit of wine and turpentine for 24 hours, hung up for 12 hours, and again, smoked in the spirit mixture for 24 hours, and finally hung up to dry."

• 27:13Speaker 04

  Was there a sense about why these people were being hanged? Or was the idea that we're hanging so many people, we can just grab some of the ones that happened to have red hair?

• 27:22PJ Vogt?

  My guess is the latter, although I'm also not sure how you get from.

• 27:29PJ Vogt?

  There's something special about an Egyptian mummy to whatever is special about an Egyptian mummy is also special about a red-haired person, except for like, maybe red-haired people were rare.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  But, you know, in a non-taboo sense, that's the big, that seems like a big distinction, right?

• 27:44PJ Vogt?

  What do you mean?

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Are we killing people so we can eat them, or are we doing weird things to corpses?

• 27:49PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, and I have to say, in my, whatever like, internal kind of taboo radar I have inside of me, killing people so you can eat them feels like way worse than doing weird things to corpses. Like, if they were hanging-

• 28:03Speaker 04

  I mean, as someone who does not want to be killed so he can be eaten, I absolutely agree with that. And I'll say, on your podcast right now, you know, hundreds of years from now, if something happens to what remains of my corpse, it doesn't seem like that big a deal.

• 28:18PJ Vogt?

  It seems completely fine.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I don't know-

• 28:20PJ Vogt?

  Completely fine.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  You're on the record, PJ.

• 28:22PJ Vogt?

  It seems mostly completely fine.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  They're gonna have to bury you in an unmarked location.

• 28:27PJ Vogt?

  They can just throw me in the ocean.

• 28:33PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so, remembering Otto's question, why can't we eat people? I think what's nice about the carib story is it's kind of like, the fact that we have this taboo against cannibalism, we would have the taboo anyway, I feel very confident about that, but the language we have for it, like, the fact that we call cannibals cannibals, and the mental image that's in Hannah's mind and my mind of the, like, explorer in the Stephen Cauldron with the islanders going around him, like, that comes from this historical moment. Like, there, there was a reason to have political propaganda in 1493, well after Columbus sort of completed his mission of taking over this land and wiping out lots of people, we're left with this little artifact. And I just find that interesting.

• 29:17PJ Vogt?

  Anyway, that is our first story. Before we go to the next story, I just want to say that one aspect of cannibalism I'm not gonna spend very much time on this week is survival cannibalism. That's when people eat people because they're forced to by extreme circumstance. In America, we have the Donner Party, who in the 1800s took what they were told was a shortcut on the Oregon Trail, then were stuck camping through a very harsh winter. They ate some of their dead. In Uruguay, in the 1970s, there was very famously that rugby team whose plane crashed in the mountains, those survivors ate some of their dead as well. Obviously, those are vivid examples of cannibalism.

• 29:52PJ Vogt?

  For me, what I find most interesting is that in cases like the rugby team, we'll say that they get a pass, but then we will also mark them for what they were forced to do. Like, it's almost like we've decided that they are in a different category now. The only reason I'm not spending much time on survival cannibalism is I think it's sort of the exception to Otto's question. Like, as far as I can tell, the rule goes, if you're starving and the people are dead, you can eat people. It's just that that fact will now dominate your Wikipedia page for the rest of time.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  So cannibalism is, might be acceptable under certain circumstances, but it's still going to be infamous.

• 30:30PJ Vogt?

  Yes, exactly. And like, it's sort of weird because those people have survived terrible things. And it's like, I mean, I understand why they are infamous for the way they survived. But like, yeah, it's just a mark that I don't think they ever get to get around.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  And we'll use cannibalism to judge the terribleness of the thing they survived.

• 30:50PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  How bad was it up there? It was so bad, they had to eat people.

• 30:54PJ Vogt?

  Yeah. And you almost, like, it was funny, I was reading, I was trying to decide whether to include the Donner Party story in this. And I read a lot about the Donner Party story. And it's like, there's a lot of story there besides that fact. But I also understand, my brain does it too. My brain is just like, Donner Party, eating people. That's it.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. And maybe it's that little kid part of your brain, right? That's like fascinated by this thing that we don't do. So of course, anytime there's a story about someone doing the thing, that's much more interesting than just like someone went into the snow and died.

• 31:24PJ Vogt?

  Yeah. It's also interesting in the story because, like, there's even this much time later, when you read an account of it, the writing will be one way where it's like, you know, they'd read this book, and the book suggested a shortcut, and the shortcut sent to the wrong place. And it's sort of one level of detail. And then, once it gets into the cannibalism sections, it gets so much more detailed and so much more like, at the time, this person claims that they didn't do it, but later, we found out they did do it. But some, it almost takes on the feeling of gossip where how the information got out becomes very important. And you just realize like, oh, we are fascinated by this.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  But PJ, in the interest of listener service, you explained in some detail how to make mummia.

• 32:07PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  Do you have a Donner Party recipe too?

• 32:11PJ Vogt?

  It doesn't seem like, honestly, here's what I will say about the Donner Party. The most fascinating thing about the Donner Party story is not about the preparation of humans. It's that, and I didn't know this, the reason they got lost is that there's all these people who are going out west. And there was like a cottage industry of people who were selling them guidebooks. And there was this guy who was essentially a huckster who wrote a guidebook that's like, so you're going out west? Here's how to do it. And what the other guys won't tell you is I've found a secret shortcut.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Oh, it's like Maps to the Stars houses.

• 32:39PJ Vogt?

  Yes, except for this Map to the Stars house was a bad map that he had not actually tried himself. After publicizing the book, he tried it once, just like on a horse by himself. And so no one in a wagon had tried to do what he said was easy to do. And the whole time they're proceeding on this shortcut that they've read about in his book, and they're realizing how bad it is, he had gone out ahead as like promotion and nailed to the trees notes encouraging people to keep following his path. And so things are getting worse and worse, and they're beginning to understand the size of their predicament. And then they're finding these cheerful notes being like, keep on going. That's the best part of the Donner Party story.

• 33:20PJ Vogt?

  It's just the grimness of having received bad advice from someone promoting their book, which feels like a very modern problem.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  The survivors immediately went on Goodreads.com.

• 33:31PJ Vogt?

  One star.

• 33:32Speaker 04

  Do not recommend. Well, I mean, I like the idea that Hannah's kid asks, why can't we eat people? And that your answer would include at least one recipe.

• 33:41PJ Vogt?

  Yes, at least one recipe. There will actually be another recipe before the end of this.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Spoiler.

• 33:48PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so I'm not talking about survival cannibalism, except for that. The other sort of cannibalism, the thing that I noticed reading more about cannibalism and reading these books by experts about cannibalism, is that I have noticed a trend among the academics, which is that They don't like talking about murderous cannibalism, like Jeffrey Dahmer-style cannibalism. In the Bill Shub book I read, he goes out of his way to say he is not going to talk about, like, your Ed Gein's, like, your serial killers who ate people. He has a passing reference to the one German guy who consensually ate a person.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Famous German guy.

• 34:24PJ Vogt?

  Who I have questions for you about, but he's like, he almost like doesn't want to count them in his cannibalism ethnography.

• 34:30Speaker 04

  Why? Because they're outliers? They're too unusual?

• 34:32PJ Vogt?

  Well, here's what's interesting. He says it would be disrespectful to the victims, but to me, I'm like, but that's the taboo, isn't it? Like, that's where you're like, even in walking up to the electric fence, I'm going to step away from the electric fence. Like, I don't want to think about the part of this that is sort of at the core of it.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:50PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so I want to talk about the German cannibal. That's actually the second story I want to tell you, which I'm going to call "The Trial." I feel like I should say, if, like, kids are listening to this episode, this would be a good part to skip. Like, this is not stuff I would have wanted in my 13-year-old brain. But to me, kind of the most interesting murderous cannibal story, when it comes to just thinking about the cannibalism rule and why we have it, is the story of the German cannibal, Armin Mevez. He was a German computer repair technician. He went on a cannibalism message board called "The Cannibal Cafe" and said he was looking for a man who wanted to be killed and consumed. A few people responded to the ad. He actually meets some of them, who all eventually back out, and he lets them back out. But then there's one man who

• 35:33PJ Vogt?

  says he wants to go through with it, and so Mevez kills him and eats him. And they film the whole thing, including the part where the guy seems to be agreeing to everything that's going to happen. So, he's caught, it goes to trial in Germany. He's found guilty of Germany's version of manslaughter and gets a sentence of about eight years. According to reports at the time, Germans were shocked by the sentence. They thought it was way too light. It also probably didn't help that Mevez was saying that he still had fantasies of reoffending once he got out of jail. And so the prosecutors call for a retrial. And they get the court to, like, really pay attention to the tape. And interestingly, in Germany, the way German law defines murder, one of the things that can make a killing a murder is that the killer

• 36:16PJ Vogt?

  was looking for sexual gratification. And so they push that idea here. They're like, if you look at the video, clearly this was about sexual gratification. The video had been included in the first trial, but this time, the court looks at it and they say, yes, this is Germany's version of murder. He's getting a life sentence. But I think you could look at this and you could say what you're actually seeing is a country trying to decide like, what are the limits of things we'll allow consenting adults to do to each other and realize like, oh, we definitely still have a cannibalism to happen.

• 36:47Speaker 04

  Although, there's a way of thinking about that case in a consent-based framework, right? You can think about that and say like, well, this other person, it wasn't truly informed consent. That's not something one can consent to if one is in one's right mind. Therefore, that consent is not valid. Therefore, we're going to prosecute it as murder. That's separate from the question of, did he do something extra wrong beyond committing murder if we think it was murder? Right? Like, would the sentence be the same if he had met up with this guy, made this agreement to kill him and eat him, and killed him, and then not eaten him?

• 37:19PJ Vogt?

  Do you think it would have been the same?

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. To me, that's the crime, right? Is the actual killing.

• 37:26PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  And what happens later, you know? We have laws about desecrating a corpse or something, and there are those other laws. But, you know, mainly to the extent which it's outrageous, the murder is the outrage, even though the other part, the cannibal part, is what makes us all think about it and the reason we know about it.

• 37:45PJ Vogt?

  Right. Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  But it's not obvious to me that that revulsion that most of us have at the idea of cannibalism, it's not obvious to me that that's wrong. Right? Like, that might be a moral intuition we should learn from and respect. And one way to respect a moral intuition is to have laws against it.

• 38:07PJ Vogt?

  So, okay. So, on the one hand, it's like you're saying, once you're dead, if some future society eats your corpse, it's like not the biggest deal in the world. But you're also saying that, like, if we have a feeling, like a moral intuition that cannibalism is wrong, we should probably follow that feeling and create laws around it.

• 38:28PJ Vogt?

  You're both sides in cannibalism.

• 38:29Speaker 04

  I am a little bit because I'm having a double reaction to the existence of a taboo. Right? And so my first reaction is to be like, oh, there's a taboo here where we're being guided by something besides our rational sense of consent and not harming people. Right? Part of this reaction is like a little bit superstitious. Right? So my first reaction is to kind of like try to identify the superstition. But my second reaction is to be like, well, there is something to be said for superstition in that sense. There is something to be said for taboo. And when I think about it, just because I acknowledge that it is a taboo, doesn't mean I want to get rid of that taboo or get rid of all taboos.

• 39:07PJ Vogt?

  And I think what the reason I like thinking about cannibalism as a taboo, even though maybe it's silly, is because it's the one where I'm actually most convinced that it might be like, natural. Like, I think Columbus informed the language we use for cannibalism and like the cartoon images in our head we use for cannibalism. But like, I think it's a rule that as many different human societies could flourish and as many ways they could construct themselves. Like, most of them, when they, if they wrote down their taboos, which they wouldn't, but if they did, cannibalism was one of them. So I think I just like thinking about it because it almost feels hardwired, but then you can also see where it's culturally transmitted.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, and this is a heuristic that can lead you astray, right? Like, you can say like, I've grown up in a world where, you know, slavery is considered okay, and I'm looking at other societies and it seems like there's slavery all over the world and there's a long history of slavery, so this must be a natural feeling.

• 40:03PJ Vogt?

  Oh, right.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Like, that's a, that's a way of thinking that can lead you astray. But obviously, the point is, there's no way to be sure, right? This is what philosophers talk about. This is, right? The idea of like, which of these things that seem really obvious to me are actually kind of wrong? And there's no way to be sure that the things that feel obvious to you are not, in fact, wrong.

• 40:24PJ Vogt?

  I feel pretty sure about cannibalism.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  A lot of people have felt pretty sure about a lot of things over the years.

• 40:33PJ Vogt?

  After the break, a mystery in Papua New Guinea that might make us question some of the things we're pretty sure we're pretty sure about. The story of the foray.

• 41:00PJ Vogt?

  This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by the new book from Michael Lewis, Blockers. For 30 years, Michael Lewis has written about the people behind the stories in character-driven bestsellers like The Big Short, Moneyball, and The Fifth Risk. Now, in his new book, Blockers, Michael Lewis tells the story of six civil servants who devoted their lives to public service that matters. One kept Americans' most sensitive tax data out of the wrong hands. Another made sure that politicians and civil servants played by the rules. One figured out how to stop wildfires from destroying suburban neighborhoods. Another helped uncover the mysteries of cystic fibrosis. There was also a security guard. In the new Washington, these federal employees discovered that their high standards were their greatest liability. If these public servants can't

• 41:44PJ Vogt?

  survive in government today, what does that say about us? I am so excited that this new book is out. Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors. I read everything he writes, and I'm very excited for this one. Blockers by Michael Lewis. Available wherever books are sold. Learn more at blockersbook.com.

• 42:04Speaker 05

  Now that fall is in full swing and October report cards are right around the corner, keeping up with classroom lessons can feel like a challenge. That's why I love iXL. iXL is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, from math and reading to science. It gives kids personalized practice aligned directly with what they're covering in class, offering instant feedback and clear explanations that build lasting confidence. Whether your child needs a boost in a tricky subject or is ready to move ahead, iXL adapts to their exact level and pace. Plus, one subscription covers all your kids from pre-K through 12th grade. And an entire

• 42:47Speaker 05

  month of iXL costs less than just one hour of tutoring. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get iXL now. And listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXL membership when they sign up today at ixllearning.com/audio. Visit ixllearning.com/audio to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.

• 43:11Speaker 06

  Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended blinds.com.

• 43:18Speaker 07

  With custom window treatments made to fit your style, space, and budget, customers who shop at blinds.com experienced overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a fuller, deeper night's sleep and a sudden urge to host the watch party again. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Visit blinds.com to order your free samples today.

• 43:49PJ Vogt?

  Welcome back to the show. We've reached our third and final story here, "The Funeral." Kelva, I'm just going to read you my not short introduction to this one.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  I'm ready to hear it.

• 44:01PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 44:04PJ Vogt?

  On the island of Papua New Guinea, there's this small group of people called the Foray. The Foray are a group in the tens of thousands, who for years had been almost entirely uncontacted by outsiders. They live in the remote eastern highlands. Picture a dense landscape of green hills. The Foray have few encounters with the Western world. There's a run-in with an Australian gold prospector in the 1930s. In the 40s, apparently, one World War II fighter plane crashes near them, which must have been an insane experience. But they're mainly left alone until the 1950s, when anthropologists start to really get curious about how the Foray live. And as anthropologists arrive with their questions, they learn the Foray have one of their own. The Foray tell the anthropologists that their people

• 44:47PJ Vogt?

  are dying in large numbers, and in this very scary way. There's a mysterious phenomenon called kuru. The Foray think it's a curse. The anthropologists think it's a disease. The Western media outlets hear about it, and they start calling it laughing sickness. Kuru mostly affects children and women, something like only 2% of cases were found in adult males. When you get kuru, the first stage is that you begin to walk in a wobbly way. You struggle to pronounce some familiar words. It sounds to me a little bit like being too drunk at a wedding. The next phase is where it begins to get scary. You shake, you shiver, you have goosebumps, and you start to laugh. Not because anything's funny. These are spasms. Huge uncontrollable bouts of laughter that come out

• 45:32PJ Vogt?

  of nowhere and which you cannot stop.

• 45:36PJ Vogt?

  At this point, you know you have kuru, and you know that that means you're going to die. How much time you have left ranges. Some people live with the disease for two months, some people as long as three years. But no one recovers. Everyone arrives at the final stage. In the final stage, you struggle even to sit up. You may not be able to talk. You're conscious, but you don't seem to be present. One of the last things you lose is your ability to swallow. Food, water. This is a point where, if you're foray, the people who love you will smother you to death, out of mercy, so that you don't starve. But if kuru was a disease, it didn't function like any disease anyone had ever seen. It didn't seem to be contagious. You could sit with a person dying of kuru

• 46:20PJ Vogt?

  and not catch it yourself. But when the foray moved in with other groups living near them, sometimes kuru came with them. In the 50s, Westerners were guessing that kuru might be genetic. If so, it was a recent mutation, because the foray told them this phenomenon was relatively new. It may have only been happening since the 1910s. There'd been one explanation that had been sort of a rumor that no one seemed to want to commit to writing. In the late 60s, two papers are published hypothesizing that the foray may be contracting kuru through cannibalism. The foray ate their dead. Not always, not all the time. But in the same way that you tell your partner whether you want to be buried or cremated, in foray society, you would tell your partner if you wanted to be buried,

• 47:03PJ Vogt?

  left out in the forest, or consumed by your family. This is from a paper by an anthropologist named Jerome T. Whitfield about what happened to a foray person who chose to be consumed. Quote, "The head of the deceased was placed over a fire to burn off the hair, and then it was defleshed with a bamboo knife. A hole was made in the top of the skull using a stone, and the brain was gradually removed by one of the older women, whose hand would be wrapped in ferns. The tissue was then mixed with ferns and placed in bamboo tubes, normally two or three, and cooked." End quote. For the foray who were eaten, the head and the brains were typically reserved for women, but women would sometimes bring their children to the funerary rite and share food with them.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  There's something, something beautiful about that.

• 47:50PJ Vogt?

  That's what surprises me.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  It's really, you know, it's, you compare it to other rites, on the one hand, to eating the placenta, right? Which is a tradition that some people are reviving. Or even to something like a wake, where if you've never been to an open casket wake, it's a little bit strange. But yes, this seems like an incredibly respectful way of honoring a body, right? It's not treating a body as meat.

• 48:19PJ Vogt?

  No, and it's funny, my assumption is that any society that's practicing cannibalism, it's because of a lack of respect for the body. But this seems like it comes from a place of utmost respect for a body. And from the foray's perspective, if you love someone, first of all, it would be better to be consumed by the people who love you than by worms and maggots, which is like, what's gonna happen if you're in the ground or left out? But also, they felt that by consuming the person, they might be consuming like, not parts, like body parts, but like, aspects of the person's personality might transfer them, or their soul might be protected in some way. Like, it feels like they have a sense of protecting life, and it's causing them to

• 49:01PJ Vogt?

  do this thing that, in our culture, is associated with, you know, a deep disrespect for life.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, you know, at the base of the cannibalism taboo is this idea that, as human beings, we don't look at each other as food. And this, in a way, honors that, right? This isn't like, oh, this person died, they're gonna be delicious, right? This is like, yeah, we don't look at each other as food, and we're gonna do this ritualistic thing to honor the life, maybe.

• 49:29PJ Vogt?

  Yeah. So, so what's interesting about, like, where this foray story ends is, these anthropologists generally knew, there was some debate, but the sort of weight of evidence was on the side of the idea that the foray were eating their dead. Because they knew that, what they were able to figure out is that, when they ate their dead, sometimes what was happening is they were spreading kuru. It's a prion disease, which was a relatively not understood kind of disease, but it's like, an infection of brain protein. And so when they ate brain tissue from a dead foray, they were getting this disease. The strange thing about kuru is it doesn't show up right away. You can carry it for something like as long as 40 years before the time bomb explodes.

• 50:13PJ Vogt?

  And so it wasn't person dies, we hold a funeral for them, the next week, everyone's ill. It was like person dies, we hold a funeral for them, maybe many years later, someone's ill. But the actual ending of the story was the foray decided to change the rules around cannibalism. But it wasn't because cannibalism was wrong or gross. It was just like, we're dying from it.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Hmm. You know, there is this idea that a lot of food taboos traditionally, you think of kosher and halal systems, had to do partly with health and had to do partly with safety and ways of consuming meat that wouldn't put you at risk. And so it's not surprising to learn that there might be some element of that in the taboo against human cannibalism.

• 50:56PJ Vogt?

  This would be interesting if the cannibalism taboo, which we assume is about protecting others, might turn out to be also about protecting ourselves. But hypothetically, what if there was a safe way for us to consume people? This is something that had come up in conversation with Hannah, too. Synthetically created human meat.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  Would you eat lab grown human meat?

• 51:18PJ Vogt?

  I can tell you what I want to say I would do, and I can tell you what I know is real. Like, I want to say, like, of course I would try it. I'm a curious person. I wanted to have every single experience. I'm afraid of nothing, blah, blah. Somebody took me on a date once to this restaurant in Toronto where you could eat just like the brains of animals, and I threw up right away. And there was nothing about the food that was bad. It was just like the idea that I was eating a brain and people have brains and you're not supposed to eat brains because people have brains, like, caused me to have a physical reaction where I vomited. So I don't think I would eat. Would you eat human grown lab meat?

• 51:54Speaker 04

  Lab-grown human meat.

• 51:55PJ Vogt?

  Human-grown lab meat would be a scientist who was murdered in his lab while working late one night.

• 52:01Speaker 04

  I think I would eat lab-grown human meat. I mean, it doesn't seem like we're necessarily too far away from a time when you can grow all different kinds of flesh in a lab.

• 52:12PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 04

  And so, in that sense, what it would mean for it to be quote-unquote "human", I guess, would have something to do with the DNA and, I don't know, but it gets a little abstract.

• 52:24PJ Vogt?

  But what about the argument that you've made, which is that if you create that world in which we can eat synthetic human meat and have like PJ sandwiches or whatever, you are reducing, you're lowering the strength of this natural taboo against the sacredness of our bodies and then like perhaps creating a society that you don't want to live in?

• 52:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I mean, you know, that's part of what modernization is, right? It's like various taboos get considered superstitious and they kind of fall away. And then the question is, can we hold the line against other kinds of behavior we think is bad, even as these taboos get weakened? Sometimes we need to develop new taboos or new rules, right? You're living in a world where like sex leads to pregnancy and then all these birth control technologies come in and then you've got to re-figure out your rules and your taboos around sex, which we're, you know, still in the process of doing.

• 53:17PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 04

  In this case, would it be possible to still respect people's bodies and not eat people's bodies, even if we're eating lab-grown meat that sort of tastes the way someone's body would taste? I suspect, maybe, this is a cop-out. Can I give you a cop-out answer?

• 53:33PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:34Speaker 04

  So, one cop-out answer is, maybe we didn't evolve to find the taste of humans that delicious and so that when we're comparing different kinds of lab meat, we're going to be drawn to things that are a little bit more like the kinds of things that humans have traditionally eaten?

• 53:49PJ Vogt?

  I will tell you, unfortunately, so these, these people-

• 53:53Speaker 04

  Is this going to be a version of the New Yorker cartoon where the doctor says to the pig, "It's your ribs. I'm afraid they're delicious"?

• 54:00PJ Vogt?

  Basically, yeah, yeah. The anthropologist who wrote this paper on the foray, the part that I found it kind of most like, "Oh, shit." I would care to read you one more quote from the paper. So the way they talk about the type of cannibalism that the Foray practice as endocannibalism. Endocannibalism is you're eating members of your group. Exocannibalism is eating members of the out group. So they're explaining like why they did it. Later works have explained the role of endocannibalism in the epidemiology of Kuru. And emphasized that the body was eaten out of love, like grief, love, as well as for gastronomic appreciation, which was not the intended purpose of the practice, but its result.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  Hmm. What does that mean? The intended purpose of the practice?

• 54:47PJ Vogt?

  It means that while they were eating their dead to communicate all these things about life and love and grief, the side effect was that they were discovering that people are actually really tasty.

• 54:59Speaker 04

  Oh, but it's hard to separate tastiness from the stories we tell us, right? Just like, just like the label on a bottle of wine is going to affect the way it tastes to people.

• 55:09PJ Vogt?

  Right.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Right? If you have this, all this buildup and all this ritual and all this symbolic meaning, maybe the human body starts to taste delicious, the same way a communion wafer might taste delicious to a believer. I also think that, you know, there's reason to imagine that we might have evolved not to find humans tasty. In general.

• 55:27PJ Vogt?

  Right, right, right.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  I like the idea that you'd respond to this kid with this question. The way we often respond to kids, which is by telling them something that's sort of mainly true.

• 55:41PJ Vogt?

  True but incomplete.

• 55:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 55:42PJ Vogt?

  I think true but incomplete is like the way out of answering this without having to like horrify him with a bunch of stories about like

• 55:51PJ Vogt?

  German cannibals. Even like, I think he should have a uncomplicated version of celebrating what he probably knows as Indigenous Peoples' Day. Like, I think the, the right answer for Otto is you shouldn't eat people because it can make you really sick.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 56:12PJ Vogt?

  That's Kalif Asane, a taboo critic, but sometimes a taboo supporter. He writes about all sorts of things at The New Yorker. This week, as we were wrapping the episode, I briefly spoke with Hannah, Otto's mom. She said in the couple of months since we first spoke, Otto keeps changing the way four-year-olds do. She says these days, they play a game where, when he goes to bed, he's allowed to ask his parents a certain amount of questions before he falls asleep. This week, she said Otto has not been wondering about cannibalism. His mind had moved on to another question, which frankly, I don't have the answer to. What are rocks made out of? Maybe that's next week on Search Engine. After the break, the most anxiety-inducing command in the English language.

• 57:14Speaker 05

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Anthropic is a research company first, built to make sure the transition to powerful AI goes well. When they launched Claude in 2023, its first users were businesses. Since then, it's been tested inside leading startups and enterprises. At DoorDash, a code migration that would have taken four engineers months to complete took one person three weeks. At Carvana, one team used to hunt through old tickets and code to answer a question. With Claude, they get answers 65% faster. And at Rakuten, engineers have achieved 99.9% accuracy on tough coding jobs using Claude.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  Today, nine Fortune 10 companies run on Claude for the work they want to get right. And these businesses are helping Anthropic shape what comes next. Build your business with support from Claude at claude.ai/odyssey.

• 58:19PJ Vogt?

  Check, check, check. Oh, there we go. Now we're live. Hot, hot, hot.

• 58:23Speaker 06

  Hello, hello, hello.

• 58:24PJ Vogt?

  Okay. Welcome back to the show. I'm here in the studio with search engine producer Garrett Graham.

• 58:30Speaker 06

  It's great to be here.

• 58:32PJ Vogt?

  And we're here because it's time for us to do recommendations. I feel like this week, we have like-

• 58:37Speaker 06

  It's a little bit of a, little bit of a show and tell.

• 58:40PJ Vogt?

  It's a show and tell. I feel like we're making like one of those like TV morning shows because there's, on the studio table here, there's two plates with little paper towel napkins and silver on them because we both brought food recommendations for each other. It's like, what podcast are we making now?

• 58:57Speaker 06

  We're just keeping with the organization of the episode. We're just throwing a second dessert on.

• 59:01PJ Vogt?

  It's like when you're like about to leave the restaurant and they're like, the kitchen's friendly with you and they're like, we brought you one more thing.

• 59:07Speaker 06

  Precisely.

• 59:08PJ Vogt?

  Who goes first?

• 59:09Speaker 06

  Why don't we, let's go pastry first. So I brought some pastries. I do want to set them up briefly. The, which is that a couple of weeks ago, you plugged a sandwich shop. A sandwich and pastry shop.

• 59:20PJ Vogt?

  A local Brooklyn sandwich and pastry shop where I approved of both the way they ran their business and the, and the quality of their food. And I was like, is it, is it okay that this is such a New York specific recommendation? We decided that it was okay.

• 59:32Speaker 06

  We're doubling down a little bit, but also we're doubling down specifically because my competitive juices started flowing a little bit. You were really hyping up sea and soil. You were wearing some sea and soil paraphernalia around the office.

• 59:44PJ Vogt?

  I had a hat. Yes.

• 59:44Speaker 06

  I, I am in love with a pastry shop in my neighborhood. So I brought, I brought some pastries-

• 59:49PJ Vogt?

  You brought pastries?

• 59:50Speaker 06

  For us to sample.

• 59:52PJ Vogt?

  Oh, these are gorgeous.

• 59:53Speaker 06

  Okay, so there are three options you get to pick. I brought a ham and cheese croissant.

• 59:57PJ Vogt?

  Okay.

• 59:58Speaker 06

  Which they sneak a little stone ground mustard inside of.

• 1:00:00PJ Vogt?

  Wow.

• 1:00:01Speaker 06

  A sesame quinamon. I have never been confident saying that word. I'm not going to start now.

• 1:00:06PJ Vogt?

  I'm not confident enough to correct you.

• 1:00:07Speaker 06

  Quinamon, quinamon. And then I brought a sunchoke mushroom cheesy Danish.

• 1:00:14PJ Vogt?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:00:15Speaker 06

  Which is a bit of a curve ball. I gotta be honest.

• 1:00:16PJ Vogt?

  A savory pastry.

• 1:00:17Speaker 06

  A savory pastry. So you get to draft first.

• 1:00:20PJ Vogt?

  I'm going to try the savory pastry.

• 1:00:21Speaker 06

  Savory pastry. Okay, here you go.

• 1:00:23PJ Vogt?

  So where are these pastries from?

• 1:00:24Speaker 06

  So these pastries are from a bakery in my neighborhood. It's called Otway.

• 1:00:29PJ Vogt?

  You've been talking about Otway a lot, like a lot. It's O-T-W-A-Y. And also, there was a listener who was like, you have to try Otway. Which at that point, I was like, okay, clearly something's going on with this pastry place.

• 1:00:42Speaker 06

  It's magnificent.

• 1:00:43PJ Vogt?

  I feel like I'm in a weird position now, though, where like, if I don't like this pastry-

• 1:00:47Speaker 06

  You can't tell me.

• 1:00:48PJ Vogt?

  -I'm just like crapping on some pastry shop on an international podcast for no reason.

• 1:00:55Speaker 06

  Pressure's kind of on for you and for Otway.

• 1:00:58PJ Vogt?

  There's this quote, I'm not sure it's true, but somebody told me that philosopher Zizek said the most anxiety-producing command that you can get in the English language is enjoy, which is how I feel holding this pastry.

• 1:01:08Speaker 06

  Huh.

• 1:01:12PJ Vogt?

  It's really good.

• 1:01:15PJ Vogt?

  It's like flaky. Oh, man, hum.

• 1:01:20PJ Vogt?

  That's amazing. It's almost like eating like a croissant pizza. Wow. Okay, I would recommend Otway. I think if you're visiting, is it Manhattan?

• 1:01:28Speaker 06

  It's in Brooklyn. It's in Brooklyn in the like Clinton Hill, Bed-Stuy kind of area.

• 1:01:33PJ Vogt?

  Is this eventually just going to be a podcast where we review pastries in Brooklyn?

• 1:01:36Speaker 06

  Yes, that's season two.

• 1:01:37PJ Vogt?

  Is there a business model for that?

• 1:01:40Speaker 06

  We'll have to hear from our listeners.

• 1:01:42PJ Vogt?

  Also, we should establish that while the podcast industry is doing very poorly, this is not a paid segment. We're not, the way we're funding this podcast is not by shaking down coffee shops with their pastry.

• 1:01:54Speaker 06

  This is just, this is a passion project.

• 1:01:56PJ Vogt?

  This is a passion project. Okay, this is my recommendation, which is not local to Brooklyn, which might be a relief for some listeners. So my friend Chris Crawford runs this company called Tart Vinegar. It's like she makes her own vinegar in a very, very, very small factory in Brooklyn.

• 1:02:13Speaker 06

  What's, what's this vinegar?

• 1:02:14PJ Vogt?

  This one is salad and soup vinegar. And the thing she started doing recently, which is really helpful, is like, because like I always, basically this holiday season, I just buy everybody Chris's vinegar. But everybody appreciates it, and then sometimes they don't know what to do with it. And with this, now she has recipes on the side. But do you just want to try a straight vinegar?

• 1:02:32Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:02:33PJ Vogt?

  Okay, here's a spoonful of vinegar.

• 1:02:36Speaker 06

  Vinegar and pastries, classic Thanksgiving fare.

• 1:02:39PJ Vogt?

  Yes.

• 1:02:41PJ Vogt?

  What do you think?

• 1:02:42Speaker 06

  Oh, it's really nice. If you hadn't told me it was vinegar, I don't think I would've said vinegar.

• 1:02:46PJ Vogt?

  What would you have thought?

• 1:02:46Speaker 06

  It just tastes like kind of a tasty drink.

• 1:02:49PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, I actually drink this. I'll like mix this with seltzer and just like drink it at my home. I think there are people who believe there are health benefits. I just like it. I just like her vinegars.

• 1:02:56Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:02:57PJ Vogt?

  Okay, so my recommendation is Tart Vinegar, which you can get on the internet. Your recommendation is Otway Bakery. Neither of these companies have paid us to endorse their products.

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  I'll pay them to endorse their product. I pay them every morning when I get a coffee or a pastry.

• 1:03:12PJ Vogt?

  You pay for pastries, I pay for vinegar.

• 1:03:17Speaker 06

  Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey and Jigsaw Productions. It was created by PJ Vogt and Shruti Pennemaneni and is produced by me, Garrett Graham, and Noah John. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazzarian, fact checking by Sean Merchant. Special thanks this week to David Cho. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Leah Reese Dennis. Thanks to the team at Jigsaw, Alex Gibney, Rich Perrello, and John Schmidt, and to the team at Odyssey, JD Crowley, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Matt Casey, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hillary Schuff. Our agent is Oren Rosenbaum at UTA, and our social media is by the team at Public Opinion NYC. Follow

• 1:04:00Speaker 06

  and listen to Search Engine with PJ Vogt now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, as we said at the top, if you would like to become a paid subscriber, head over to PJVogt.com. There's a link in the show notes. Or the other way you can help our show is to head over to Apple Podcasts and rate and review. Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you for listening. We're off next week, but we will see you back here on December 1st.