Dinner can be found in the freezer. You'll see partly sunny skies today highs in 80 tonight partly cloudy lows around 61 and partly sunny tomorrow highs in the mid seventy's Good afternoon I'm coyote Wolf that's 1 o'clock a rebroadcast of the Collin McEnroe show is next and support comes a landmark community theater at the Thomaston opera house chase Collegiate School and copper beach Institute for mindfulness. Cannibalism is supposedly the ultimate taboo although we're also aware that in times of terrible famine whether it's Russia. And Iran or trying to circa 1960 or even the Jamestown Colony we know that in times of famine when people get hungry enough and there's nothing else to do with people start eating each other and it doesn't seem to be inflexible here I mean it just seems like you know something you do well meanwhile in popular culture we're in prison fascinated by cannibals and there are no longer represented so much as the other are but I was kind of another version of us Lucia entertaining people like Hannibal Lector today on the show to talk about culture history and reality of cannibalism after this through. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying President Trump is authorizing new sanctions against North Korean companies and individuals in response to Pyongyang's refusal to give up its nuclear weapons program North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development is a grave threat to peace and security in our world. And it is unacceptable that others for the entry support. This criminal rogue regime tram speaking alongside South Korean Japanese allies today's executive order allows u.s. Authorities to cut off revenue that fund North Korea He also praised China for ordering its banks to stop doing business with Kim Jong un's regime China accounts for roughly 90 percent of North Korean trade a key figure in the Russian investigation has indicated he would like any transcripts from government wiretaps of his conversations to be released publicly N.P.R.'s Greg Myre He has details president trumps one time campaign manager Paul Mann afford hasn't commented on media reports this week that investigators received secret court warrants to wiretap his conversations but man afford spokesman Jason Maloney told the one a program on n.p.r. Member station w.a.m. You that Manaf or would like any transcripts released let the transcripts of any intercepts a repeat of releasing e-mails people make up their own by the f.b.i. Also raided man a force apartment in suburban Washington in July as part of the Russian investigation man a Ford has longstanding ties to Russia and Ukraine he has denied any wrongdoing Greg Myre e n.p.r. News Washington French media reporting that the world's richest woman L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt has died at the age of 94 private details of her life became very public during legal battles with her only daughter over the family's billions a scandal that also exposed political entanglements. Hurricane Maria is just off the Dominican Republic with top sustained winds of 115 miles per hour was the worst hurricane to strike Puerto Rico and 80 years and left a trail of destruction in the u.s. Territory N.P.R.'s Greg Allen reports the entire island is without power flash flood warnings continue for all of Puerto Rico today Maria dropped a record $35.00 inches of rain in some places rivers across the island are out of their banks authorities open the floodgates on reservoirs making flooding worse in some downstream communities in Levittown west of San Juan flooding forced residents to their rooftops where they waited rescue in the city of last p address officials say they recorded wind gusts over 200 miles per hour Marias high winds took roofs destroyed homes and step concrete power poles into gov Ricardo Rajjo says his top priority is wrist abolition communications across the island rebuilding the power grid may take months after Maria took down major transmission lines this is n.p.r. News. Rescue teams atop the rubble of a collapsed school building in Mexico City are carefully navigating their options they're trying to reach a girl trapped under the debris since a portion of her school caved during a magnitude 7 point one earthquake on Tuesday 1st responders are doing what they can to keep the concrete slabs another debris from shifting and endangering lives making the operation a painstakingly slow process they've been trying to reach the girls since yesterday as a vigil was broadcast nationwide thousands of volunteers and emergency personnel are involved in similar searches across central Mexico the death toll has reached 245 and thousands of people have been injured in Oregon State geologists are warning of the risk of major landslides in parts of the deep Columbia Gorge that we're in Gulf and wildfires this year Northwest News Network Santa King has more there are 2 overlapping maps that are Laura me and Bill Burns one of Oregon's lead experts on landslides one map shows past landslides the other map is where this year's fires hit this particular area in the gorge is very susceptible to landslides and when an area like this has a wildfire it actually increases the susceptibility and one way it does it is it is a wildfire removes the tree canopy that's there which allows all of this rainfall to get directly to the ground much faster Burton says just in the late ninety's multiple landslides took out a handful of buildings reliance and a chunk of interstate for n.p.r. News I'm in a King this is n.p.r. Support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include the ne ek c. Foundation developing solutions to support strong families and communities for America's children to help ensure a brighter future more information is available at a.t.c. After dot org. Good evening ma'am and welcome to Hannibal's Is this your 1st time with us yes it is we do things a little differently here we serve people but don't all restaurants serve people not the way we do Ok Tell me about the ravioli excellent choice his name was Jimmy ravioli and he's oven big with crispy Yukon gold potatoes fava beans and nice to have anything vegetarian do you mean someone who was a vegetarian would you have Alan was a macrobiotic flexitarian and we're serving him today with praise fennel and polenta was a free range totally He was a jogger. Joggers are tough I'm not sure that's what I want as we say here at Hannibal's yellow at way I'm sorry what that means you only live once and then we each you. Know how much is the jogger 269526 that's outrageous seriously you're eating at a cannibal restaurant and you think the prices are outrageous All right that's a fair point today on the show our continuing fascination revulsion and occasional amusement with people who eat people and now he didn't know what to make of the new interim so he settled on spaghetti sauce college McEnroe Ok it is not true that we eat the interns room having interns because we hate them. So we're going to talk about cannibalism Today we'll talk about it in the real world and in the fictional world towards the end of the show you'll even meet a person who was prosecuted not for cannibalism but for fantasizing about cannibalism and talking as if you were maybe just about to engage in cannibalism and somebody was prosecuted and then ultimately freed anyway Well that story is to come so would a start in culture but then we're going to move back back into history back into even the Bible were cannibalism comes up maybe more often than you think than you might think so let me tell you who's here with us today John. Us by phone is Bill short a professor of biology at our you post and research associate at the American Museum of Natural History where they do not have it cannibalism Vajra that was a different show we did anyway he's the author of cannibalism a perfectly natural history and Charles Brehm asco freelance film and t.v. Critic writer for sites including Rolling Stone Vanity Fair and The Verge and author of the article we're living in the golden age of on screen cannibalism He's joining us from the n.p.r. Studios in New York City so Charles let's begin with you than make the case for the idea that we're living in the golden age of on screen cannibalism Yeah for sure I think it's more than just the fact that we're seeing and the flux of entertainment featuring cannibals but it's more a reinterpretation of what that means about examining the motives behind cannibalism the ramifications that it has on the people who practice it whether you know that this is a a whaling process or something that they do against their better judgment sort of trying to resist it we're seeing altogether a more nuanced approach to the material and it's being stretched in a bunch of different tunnel directions as well it's being mined for comedy on Netflix a series sent to create a diet and it's also pervaded the world of art film there's a fine film called Raw by a director an image really a talking now that came out earlier this year about a young girl's coming of age where the cannibalism used almost as a metaphor for the mulcher as urges of adolescence so let's pause with one of those because I think there's maybe the fulcrum that we're looking for there cynically the diet diet which I watch a little bit of is a black comedy featuring Drew Barrymore and to me the all offense in that they are real estate agents which I think might be significant for the real estate agents and she's developed this thing where she doesn't look like a zombie. She just looks like her normal self except that she has developed an appetite for human flesh which you're She's shown graphically and bloodily consuming it's like the human flesh eating equivalent of a party eating condos or something I mean she's got you know blood dripping under Jim and all this come stuff and so. This is a change and we'll get to maybe where that will see change happen but but Charles this is a change in the sense that the cannibal isn't depicted as the other of quote t capital t. Capital right the cat but the cannibal here is a real estate agent who just happens to have gone off the reels in one particular area of her life and it's funny because obviously transgressions against very basic taboo but it's not funny and in a way like look how completely weird this person is right some of the normal lives of her is some harder part of of the viewpoint of the show Yeah absolutely and that's the idea is the comedy comes from the show's willingness to take this material seriously and imagine how a real person a recognizable person a friend a neighbor and a wife would handle being placed in a in a situation that is to us fanciful the show you know she at the same time is very drawn to the process of eating flesh I think it's not gratuitous that they have all you know as you say blood running down the channel you know pie eating caliber feeding frenzies because that communicates the full intensity of her need to do this and so you realize that she's not you know this other as you describe she's not so much a monster as much a person a person like you or me but a person who's played to. A desire that she can't control you know whether whether that speaks to addiction that's already analog there but anyone's familiar with having feelings that they can't control or feelings that they wish you know they weren't having this amplifies those and exaggerates them and takes them to comic. Grizzlie extremes All right so let's hear a little bit from that show this will be a Drew Barrymore as she lay him in the reboot realtor she's being really hit on by a guy who pays the price for his pushiness She'll is going to bite off his fingers and use them about the show we have so far short of offering the I don't say anything to you a little spin or we don't and I totally foretold Leslie and lady with. Care and willingness to take no for an answer as mate will tell Thanks for having. Parents. Over. The oh oh oh oh. Oh my. God. Oh just. Like out where does your boy I've heard you let finger. Your finger each egg might be just how you are right and then as Nathan Fillion as the guy gets his fingers button so you know Bill should I want to add to this conversation because I think one of the big departures we're seeing and it predates this particular moment as we will discuss but if you think about the way that popular culture might have depicted the can our cannibal say 50 years ago and it was particularly Jew in say Warner Brothers looney tune cartoons where there is kind of crypto racist. You know trope of most of waiting spores being dropped into this big black cooking pot in there would be gathered round them African looking people with bones in their noses and often that's not a cannibal was right but cannibal was a way of describing a completely alien culture where people did things that we don't do which as we'll talk about a little bit more in the 2nd segment tracks pretty well with the way that we tend to demonize societies or subculture that we want to dominate in other ways. But this notion build that the cannibal might be somebody living next door to us it's a very different kind of depiction an argument about cannibalism I what do you make of that yeah I certainly think it's a new take on on an old famine as you said classically when you when you know when you hear the word cannibalism you have these these need jerk reactions and you certainly don't think about the person next door or a real terror or a war or you know somebody that you might sit down to a regular meal with so that you know this is this is really sort of a and from what I can tell it it's a new take on this so I know I think we know when the pivot Papen probably and and Charles it really is the introduction I would say of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the layers but he's also in a whole bunch of other things. Both both preceded and come after I think Brian Cox with the original Hannibal Lector. But anyways we see this guy who far from being this you know prim the devised being is like smarter than me are and kind of louche and appealing in certain ways we d. And possessed of a peculiar moral code but a moral code none the last he can do horrible things to people but he does like other people doing horrible things to people so in and I guess I guess I don't kind of wondering what was going on there I mean one argument would be that we just kind of domesticated all of the ghouls and if you can have a louche entertaining vampire you can have a louche entertaining cannibal etc. Yeah well I think the longevity of the Hannibal Lector cycle of film speaks to the enduring appeal of this character is at the center is this very beguiling contradiction that he does he's defined by the fact that we consider savage the eating of flesh which he often does as frequently in a savage matter as he does in a refined manner you know you he talks about it in the liver with fava beans in a county which is in an extremely tasteful pairing but then you see and I dragon and in Silence of the Lambs is also capable of create violence and great Savitri and so seeing this seeing this lifestyle made sort of sophisticated made almost seductive by the way that Lecter carries himself he almost Where is this taste for flesh as a sign of refinement and so this character begs the question you know what is it that separates a sane person from from a cannibal is just the willingness to do so and animal like her makes the very troubling suggestion that when you reach a higher plane of morality that's how he considers himself at least that the distinction between eating animal flesh and they think human flesh falls away and it's just a matter of simple taste so Bill should if our if our villains in our horror figures are about our anxieties you know are you a little bit different and I think you can make the same argument with vampires vampires used to be Eastern European and you know and they said things like least. And there was this sense that they existed in this very Once again capital o. Other place the other place they weren't us we're not vampires they're via pyres and gradually vampires kind of crept into our neighborhoods and began to talk much more like we talk and look much more like we look and I said I you know I don't mince is there really need to construct a kind of cultural theory you're right you know but but it seems like all of this is more about our notion that we're not comfortable with each other you know that that. That the people that we're around are potentially I mean even if you think about The Walking Dead ultimately what becomes scary in The Walking Dead is not so much the zombies but the other people who survived the zombie apocalypse their hike worse than any zombie It's like we're more frightened of each other these days than we are of some weird thing that live somewhere else. For sure yeah I mean I don't know what's the question there I'm not well I guess I'm not sure but I guess Bill I'm wondering does it seem anyway as though we're focusing our anxieties in a different place if we make cannibals into someone who is basically you know an exaggerated version of our most bullying college professor. You know are we in fact sort of saying something about where are these are right now yeah I suppose I mean that as I said you know this is sort of a new take on an on an old theme and and and it's innovative and you know I think that cannibals and and vampires come in and out of style and and they're sort of. You know you know 2030 years ago it was vampires and all of a sudden they got really sexy and and now we're seeing a slightly different take on cannibalism All right let's hear a little bit from Hannibal This is from the actual the t.v. Series animal because people could not get enough animal Lector this is the animal throwing a dinner party at which he serves a paralyzed colleague sorry about this if you're on your lunch hour right now it paralyzed colleague his own quick legs planing that it's practical use of an otherwise wasted limb here we go play rules to cite and new cut. So they come off. Thank you already have. Election military anymore. It's called the chief or front shows of. This whole practical use of those lives. You intend me to be my own last. Yes. How does one politely roast Here's a dish circumstances such as these. When just the tragedy is not to die. But to be wasted. So Charles promotes go is Hannibal also just a little bit and I haven't seen raw I'm not quite sure I'm going to see raw but is Hannibal. A little bit of just the insufferable foodie as well that's kind of notion that Millet alternately there's going to be a food trend for everything. Yeah I think at least on the show that's ultimately Annabelle's undoing is that he is you know very Hoddy very you know said in his own manners and that manifests as an arrogance which eventually you know threatens to undo and that all these different points on the show and so the extent to which that speaks to this real world culture of you know food elite ism however you want to call it foodie ism there's definitely a lot of that there about food manifesting as a social mark of merriment about almost conspicuous consumption in the most literal sense and what you are consuming animal isn't on Instagram but it's not hard to imagine him taking photos of his elaborately prepared to shiz to show them off that's why he always loves having guests over his because he wants to show how eating food and more specifically the way he prepares it which is very meticulous as you hear you know he carves it that's that's a sign that he is superior at least in his own estimation So Bill you know somewhere on him electors family tree is Norman Bates No we don't see Norman Bates you know making human farms in clay pots but Norman Bates actually also has a more real life interest the right somebody you know that would be again who was a famous murderer and necrophile back in Wisconsin in the 1957 and when Robert Bloch wrote novella psycho in 1958 he really sort of downplayed the mutilation and cannibalism and he concentrated on that mother fixation and Alfred Hitchcock purchased centers people out to purchase every book he could find so that when he decided he was going to make that into a movie he didn't want anyone to know the ending. But yeah so there is this tie in between between Ed Gain and our anti-hero in Psycho. The other thing I'm wondering about Charles and once again I haven't seen raw which is the new French cannibal film that's made the rounds of festivals and seems to be visceral enough to be inducing various kinds of fainting attacks and vomiting and God knows what else but it's also the sort of sense that well we want to be afraid of something and people who make scary movies and horrifying movies want to be able to horrified people and after a while you've seen zombies do everything that they're going to do and you've seen vampires in every possible configuration in some of this just world kind of looking around or or creators looking around for something that still will make people swoon. I think a lot of it is a matter of horror being cyclical I think that when trends you know trends arise and then they peak and then they. And then it falls to writers and directors to sort of move and the other direction you know that we spoke about vampires and how they were sort of romanticized near the tail end of the 2 thousands and the 20 terms with Twilight and everything and so then the vampires are primed for sort of a return to their monstrous origins more than the way they've been domesticated and I think the same goes for cannibals was that after all these years of considering them as barbarians returning them to a sort of civility is to us a very chilling right now but I think as soon as audiences start to recognize that as the norm it will be very smart filmmaker who realizes the time to go in the opposite direction is common and bring someone who is not recognizable to us who is almost frightening in one recognizable they are. So if they're Charles while we're on this topic. We've named a few of these things there's another movie called The bad batch I should 1st of all should say that I found just looking around I found that Trey Parker was involved in movie called Cannibal The Musical which predates things like the Book of Mormon and so it's a it's a basically a Donner Party type of musical which only somebody from South Park would probably think of to do they would tell us about the bad batch is this a new film or a war one in the recent past this is an upcoming film that's coming out this summer I think August I believe or maybe late July but I managed to catch this trying to film festival back in September. And cannibalism does take a sort of central role in that film as well it focuses on a just open society near the Texas Mexico border where undesirable figures are sort of deposited in this vast almost desert president kind of is left to their own devices and so this colony called the bad batch file. Forms and these are people who through virtue of necessity have begun to eat human flesh as well which goes back to you know among the most notorious cannibals ever were the Donner party who were all you know they embarked as regular people but when supplies were scarce and they were on the skids in terms of having food to eat they were as savage as the situation called for and then the bad that speaks to that as well and it's and its depiction of cannibalism it shows that there's a people who have adapted as necessary and just incorporated and 3rd lives what they have to do to survive so Charles Burma's go 1st of all thank you so much for talking to us a freelance film and t.v. Critic for sites including Rolling Stone Vanity Fair of the Virgin more author of the article we're living in the golden age of on screen cannibalism definitely a readout for other insights we're going to take a quick break we're going to come back Charles has given us a perfect segue to a longer conversation with Bill Schott remark a little bit about that notion that yes one thing that happens is that when we're normal people have nothing else to eat guess what they do. Well is that it's fun. To shun something else and shop next. To watch but. I'm just gonna keep the competition only. Telling you. When you're going to. Win You never know if it's going to run. Over the Kurds or you're stranded in 3 percent. Was. Was Yes at home where there's a rice bowl with. 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Fear of deportation is real for thousands of people living in New England without documentation but that fear can also be used as a weapon of domestic violence and this is said I mean come on kind of a skate I was afraid every time he did something to me because I couldn't call the police because he'd say to me that if I called the police they're going to deport me next from the New England news Calabro will explore a visa program meant for immigrants who've been targets of crime I hope you can join us. This afternoon at 2. Support comes from ever present with local store front or concierge and home services to convert photo album slides and home videos to digital your family memories company ever present dot com. Partly sunny today with a high near 80 degrees. The calm McEnroe show was previously recorded. All right we're back talking about cannibalism it was only this show can I think or maybe any of the shows to who knows Terry Gross may have something like this coming up Bill shots which is with us not right now professor of biology at l.r.u. Post and research associate at the American Museum of Natural History is the author of cannibalism a perfectly natural history so we're going to talk about places where maybe cannibalism is a little bit more normalized places in history where it's been intentionally engage him for various reasons places on the globe where maybe it's not so weird but I think maybe we should start by putting one fundamental premise on the table and tell me if you disagree but it just seems like anybody any group of people I mean on the one hand cannibalism is this terrible taboo that place where absolutely nobody should go Jeffery Dahmer is the horrible person in the world he's worse than other serial killers because people that makes it worse somehow there's sort of that taboo but there's you know this understanding or maybe it's an understanding we don't have that we're all you know 10 years of bad food supply away from even other people every world famine in history is accompanied by documentation usually of cannibalism whether it's China in 1960 after the Great Leap Forward Russian 1921 Jamestown you know the original European or rivals in America Ireland during the famine right I mean with people one reason people eat other people when there's nothing else to eat Yeah I you know I think that survival cannibalism spans this cultural taboo that we've had in the West probably for around 2000 years you know what when when when there's nothing else to eat it's not a matter it's not really a matter of choice at a certain point your body is in a sense cannibalizing itself and you come to the point where in this extreme stage of starvation where you are either going to consume the dead or see the dead to. To your kids or to your loved ones or you're going to perish and so at that point the choice is made it's not something that you can sort of plan out so there's that and then we have to sort of talk a little bit about our own nature too so keeping in mind Bill that I have done my 23 and Me profile and I am I have more Neanderthal d.n.a. Than 72 percent of the population and I'm very sensitive about microgravity and. There's this notion that maybe one of the places we get the whole cannibal thing for is from our Neanderthal forebears Where do you come down on that one yeah I don't think that that's the case I think that before we had. I believe that ancient humans. Cannibalized when necessary it might have been part of their culture once that started to develop it might have been a funerary right it might have been a way to deal with with with your enemy after you killed him but I don't believe that it's that it's you know something that was necessarily passed down by the Neanderthals there is evidence in several different ancient human societies that cannibalism took place whether it was cannibalism because of a lack of food or whether it and it had some other you know whether it was calling or a cannibalism you know I don't think that a lot of these a lot of these folks back then were worried about about Western taboos because they didn't exist yet so when you had meat in front of you whether it was human or or you know from something that you killed that these types of questions probably didn't come to mind it was just a matter of well there's this meat what are we going to do with it and and and and often I imagine it was even. No Actually in my Neanderthal family as a joke that was passed down for generations was play one on the intervals as you know like your mother in law just eat the noodles. All right so. We have talked about the Bible you don't think of the Bible as a place where there's a lot of cannibalism talk but in a way you'd be wrong and particularly in that will come to communion in the 2nd but in the New Testament there's mostly I would sort of say talking in the form of admonition more than hey you're a bunch of cannibals Yes I mean there are really 2 things going on in the Bible and one is as you mentioned before transubstantiation we talk about communion but the other is is your basic siege cannibalism where you have the cities of Jerusalem and some area that are surrounded there's no food and now you are you know you could descriptions of possible cannibalism occurring within the cities but it's I mean whether it's usually one of. Profits were the voice of God saying if you don't change your ways repent whatever this is what's going to happen right so I mean it really is kind of held up as a very undesirable outcome Absolutely and you know it's a warning and you have an opportunity to divert your your life's course so that you avoid that particular eventuality Ok so and then you get into the New Testament we have the complex notion of transubstantiation which is the argument that the waver in the blood are not simply symbols but in fact true manifestations the flesh and blood of Christ anecdotally it's been even said that missionaries in other places have found it I mean contrary to all of our stereotypes that the people in other cultures is that your god within it why would that be your god that's very weird so . Tell me where you how you how you process the notion of Holy Communion through the lens that you're using Well I mean a lot of this starts back in 1215 when Pope Innocent the 3rd basically said that the consecrated elements of the Eucharist were literally transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ and this got a lot of people you know I'm sure a lot of people thought this was really strange because Jesus had spoken and you know some he had used symbolism before I'm the gaydar I'm the true vine and I'm sure a lot of not many people thought that he was talking literally but here was an instance where what seems to be a symbolic ritual was basically determined not to be and up until this very day you know in 1065 Pope Paul the 6th reconfirm the fact that that this was not a symbolic event that you were literally during communion you were literally consuming the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ and anybody who believed that it was a symbolic. Event or ritual. Was not really a good Roman Catholic for example right so and this approach avoidance I don't know if you can draw a dilemma direct line from one thing to the other but you know we get to the time of the restoration so there's kind of 2 things going on at the time of the restoration 1st of all there's the beginning of the exploration of the so-called new world and so tales are coming back of these horrible primitive tribes who do all kinds of things that they're not supposed to do including perhaps acts of cannibalism Isn't that awful look at those people in Brazil look what they're doing and at the same time in a way that is a little reminiscent of communion there's this sudden interest in using. Silly shall we say parts of the King I mean in the in the span of the restoration beheading of Charles the 1st and the subsequent rise eventually Charles the 2nd there's this whole thing that goes on tell us about that thing well I mean look I think what you're really need to do is go back and look at Have To me the important thing was how cannibalism was how how the taboo that developed 2000 years ago was really used as a bludgeon as as explorers like Christopher Columbus came to the new world so these people described them as innocent and and worthy of becoming good Christians and we couldn't find any gold. Look for another resource that resource turned out to be humans that. Queen Isabella told them Look if these people are not or are not cannibals you can insulate them but if they are then you can do all bets are off you can do whatever you want and you know this to me and and the work that I did with this book really showed that that an important result of the of the cannibalism taboo that we have in the West was the fact that we that many people starting in the Mediterranean started starting on the Caribbean rather and then into Mexico South America Africa used the term cannibalism as a way to differentiate to do to delineate themselves from anyone else any other group and resistance and cannibalism became sort of synonymous terms and that to me was the important thing you know whether people ate their kings and thought that that was you know that you know that that was really and my book secondary to to really what was happening to people across the world as as the term and as the as this practice was whether they've performed it or not was really used to destroy them right it's kind of shorthand right rather than a detailed explanation of why it's going to be Ok to enslave these people ship them back here separate them from their families with their help expose them to diseases they have no immune system for take all their stuff. You can go into a lot of rumors about those but they're cannibals he's close right yeah it's pestilence you're not you're not talking about humans so you could hunt them you could destroy their culture you couldn't slave them anything you want but you could take their property you could. Ultimately just completely destroy their culture and it wouldn't matter because these were not human beings. But meanwhile back to the restoration really there was this notion particularly when somebody was beheaded like the 1st that if you could get some of the blood that came out right then it had all kinds of medicinal values and yeah you know and this this to me was one of the most surprising things when I wrote this book 1st of all as a wallet just so I spent a lot of time working on looking at cannibalism across the animal kingdom and I was surprised at how widespread it was for the reasons I don't have anything to do with a lack of food or cramped captive conditions but the real surprise when I started to work on on on the human on human cannibalism was just how prevalent it was. In Europe for hundreds of years as medicinal cannibalism and as you mentioned. You know blood just about any body part that you can that you can envision from the skeleton to the Seraph lever. That was it was used in medical preparations for hundreds of years starting in the middle ages throughout the Renaissance and lasting right up until the 20th century 1908 Mark index had moved the ground up money listed as a medicinal as you know having the dissonant value so that blew me away given that given the Western taboo that was incredibly surprising to me well and I think yeah I and I think obviously did have ways of differentiating say well no we're not doing it that way we're doing it this way it's really you know it's a term measure make it disappear I got you don't read about that very much well I'm done and that's all I want to do is a wind up there too as we get ready for the next segment which is. Again we had this in a weird approach avoidance attitude towards the subject and you know most people know about the Donner party the 846 a group of pioneers they get caught up in a past and I mean basically the story is that they just gauge in survival cannibalism I mean what in general I think when that happens among one's own people the goal is to make it disappear writers are not i didn't happen I was like in China they did that yeah. I mean if you're going to write I mean that try to incorporate themselves back into Saudi society as quickly as possible and as far as the Donners went not a lot of people wrote of not a lot of the survivors wrote anything about it it came out of a couple of interviews and there was really you know there was very decent documentation that the cannibalism happened at least in 4 different places with the diners you know although over the last couple of years the media threw a monkey wrench into that one by releasing some kind of bogus information that came out of us a valid scientific study saying cannibalism didn't take place and everybody was really ready to jump on that bandwagon and accept the fact that these good Christians were weren't really cannibals right and I did the same thing as with James down to it's maybe not the story that people particularly relish if they want to cling to the notion of American exceptionalism but the other side of that coin is that if you want to get something on the evening news if it has a cannibal angle it goes to the top of the list right absolutely Yeah absolutely and that you know that happens with cannibalism in nature to the you know we've been dealing recently about this whole idea that that global climate change has turned polar bears into cannibals when that's not a reality and that the the real story is more interesting than that but that's not to say that the media forgot to mention that scientists have known for Al for 100 years that bears will eat their young one whenever they can get all of them. Right so I left that out because I was in the sexy plot the sexy part was you know that cannibalism was taking place and then I added that on to global climate change and they had their story right so our final segment going to be about an interview with somebody who was depicted in the media that way but even the phrase that you just used I know exactly what you mean by doing that can alyssum is the sexy part that somehow or other there's a little bit more to the story if it involves cannibalism Oh no doubt Yeah but why would that be I mean in some ways it's the thing we don't want to hear about we don't want to hear about it particularly in connection with a nice western you know Judeo Christian people just like us but then we do suspect it somehow or I don't know we're delighted by it somehow to yet no doubt and I think it's because it has become the ultimate taboo for a number of reasons and I had a chapter on my book used to be called Blame it on the Greeks and because I wondered where did this taboo come from and if you look back at that it probably started with Homer and Polly famous the Cyclops and then and and then move to the Romans and then William Shakespeare to him the when you look at Titus Andronicus the worst revenge that that that you can take on another person is to have had them eat someone else you know eat a loved one. And then move to the Brothers Grimm and and Daniel Defoe and there was this snowball effect that's a place that at the point where now and the early anthropologists thought the same thing. You know James Fraiser came out and said that cannibalism was was prevalent all over the world and then when the early anthropologist sort of followed him out into the field that's what they expected to see now they expected to see cannibalism and all of these groups whether it happened or not and so now 2000 years later when when we hear the word cannibalism we have this major Korea action and you know I don't think a lot of it has to do with the sort of Judeo Christian belief about the of the soul and the body be in ri and. I did on Judgment Day and and cannibalism implies that you're disarticulated and consuming the bodies of so that that's not going to work down the road and then we've always been taking about our food as well what people eat is has always been used to delineate outsiders and foreigners from us although And we should say it's not as though it doesn't happen and sometimes it is going to the very comparable kinds of belief I believe like in member which New Guinea drive gets cuckoos the disease you know the more a Yakoub crowds builds a drum and you get that because you read the brains of your deceased relatives and and the notion I think is you are somehow they're trying to preserve some aspect of them by eating their brains right yeah I mean this is a is a typical scenery right for that was developed in a group that did not come across those western had those and it happened in New Guinea and it happens and you know in South America and in the war and Brazil for example they were just this mortified when they learned from anthropologists that the anthropologist would bury their dead they were like How could you do that how could you put your loved ones in the ground to rot and hang around and you know be eaten by worms why wouldn't you incorporate them into into yourself and so this is one type of cannibalism that that I found to be extremely interesting you know and it goes far beyond the knee jerk reaction lack of food or criminal cannibalism which you know that had been really been done. A lot of been written about it a lot of it sensationalized and so it's like I thought that there was sort of a space in between the sensationalized works that have been out there that are out there and the academic works and. Went for the middle one try to be entertaining and not use too much terminology you know not don't throw around a lot of scientific terms here keep the jargon to a minimum maybe make it entertaining and a bit humorous where possible and I just found it there were so many interesting stories and so much about cannibalism that it's just it's just not generally known and that was my book and that's your book which is cannibalism a perfectly natural history Bill short is about our guest a professor of biology you know you post research associate of the American Museum of Natural History Don't worry you could bring the kids there there's no cannibalism around all right so we'll take a break we're going to come back we're going to talk to somebody who was accused of plotting and fantasizing about Kimball's. In the instance of. 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Support comes from comp or beach Institute with retreats in West Hartford and Madison offering mindfulness courses and retreats to reduce stress cultivate resilience and restore balance meet today's challenges by discovering your inner strength copper beech Institute dot org. The column McEnroe show was previously recorded. Cannibal has so much baggage maybe if they change the name to something like anthro the. Today show is produced by just merely on a bed of can and make my own wealth executive producer Katie tell us the appeared in the intro and Amanda fish has served poached with a man to fish the part of Bill Curry was played by Johnny Depp. Now back to college so our final guest here today and this is a show produced as only John can produce a show our final guest today is Gil Valley the former New York City police officer who spent 21 months in prison before being exonerated and released he's the author co-author of a raw deal the untold story of n.y.p.d. Cannibal cop as he was known in the process we were just talking about how the press likes to go wild with stories of a cannibal element So 1st of all. Thank you for joining us thanks Collin for having me thanks for the opportunity really appreciate it and this is clearly a very comfortable afternoon Dr subject. So well it's more familiar ground for you and it's certainly you've been through the ringer on this you were sentenced to prison the verdict was eventually overturned the about 16 months after the revolver Circuit Court has since of firmed your acquittal in December of 2015 but maybe we should begin at the beginning how did you get in this mess well. I was a teenager I hit puberty and I I mean this is all kind of explained and the whole evolution of all this is outlined in greater detail in the book but long story short I found myself to be sort of aroused by images and videos of women tied up women in bondage. From there that was pornography website that cater to more cannibalism interests and I started to incorporate the whole cattle theme and fantasy that I was having that I never actually. I was into the actual eating of the person that was more the woman tied up and being prepared for a feast or dinner or whatever I was not really into blood and gore stuff other people that I roll played with were but I understand why the moniker stuck with me and continues to stick with me today so the problem is that you're on these online sites these kind of dark web sites where people talk about this stuff it appeared that you were talking about not only your generalized interest in things like that but your specific interest in preparing cooking and maybe eating your then wife and maybe some other women to know why even fact you don't really want to do stuff like that why would you be talking to other people about it while as you said it was a fetish Web site it was a fantasy Web site and it's for people to explore sexual fantasies. All I mean the whole gamut of stuff on his Web site now my fantasies are unusual Admittedly they're you know people say they're deviant abnormal that's fine but sexual fantasies typically involve people that you know in your life when someone has a fantasy they think about the hot girl at work or in her day all in your class or someone in your life so that part of the story isn't unusual but that's what scared people was the fact that the role played and stories involved. Women that I knew in my life right so your problem was that the hot girl at work was 185 degrees right and so I mean you did you know I mean part of the problem for you a trial is there were Google searches on how to prepare human meat where to find huge cooking Dres how to cook a woman alive is that just I don't know one argument that I've seen one way I've seen you quoted is in order to produce a meat in these things and maybe even be a desirable participant in these fantasy fetish dark web sites the more that you got to come up with details the more interesting a conversational partner you are is that is that what you were looking up all the stuff yeah exactly my role play the stories you know I didn't they start to get a little repetitive and people enjoyed roleplaying with me because I focused on details and I like the I'll go to writer you know I mean the f.b.i. Thought that my stories were a real conspiracy so. You know. I look stuff up to sort of add new things to. 30 stories and I'm finding myself sort of doing it again since the 1st book I'm taking a swing at a horror novel and the things I'm researching are somewhat similar to the things I was researching back then but now I'm doing it as part of the Clearly fictional book but. It was no different from what I was doing back then because it was always all fiction and none of it was real These were quote unquote conspirator plans with screen names on the Internet these were anonymous people I never knew who they were or where they were from I never knew their names they were never phone numbers exchanged these were just people who I knew by their screen names. These were fictional plots that were supposed to be taking place in a mountain house in Pennsylvania with human sized oven Suman you know just all kinds of stuff that they didn't exist right so I mean it's like yeah. Well 1st of all I just want to say if you're writing a novel I hope you get to go to a writer's conference I would recommend bread loaf under the circumstances. That count Ok obviously write what you know. But so look I think you even better than our previous guest go shock to tell you tell people what it's like when the media gets hold of this there was some way in which you know cannibal cop just attached itself to you with crazy glue right and you do have a theory about why why was this such a compelling story compared to all the other wacky stuff that goes on in the world yeah there's a lot of wacky stuff there are police officers who get arrested you know I don't want to say frequently but it happens but when my thing happened the whole cattle story really blew up and the whole cannibal cop thing had sort of a ring to it if the f.b.i. Waited a month I would have been promoted to sergeant and I would have been the scannable sergeant but I don't think that sounds as good anyway. That's a stupid joke but you know alliteration I guess yeah so. Oddly enough I was kind of shielded from everything when I was arrested because I was in solitary confinement I didn't have access to anything I didn't really grasp how big it was until I was let out of prison and then I eventually read all the stuff that was written about me and I think it's just the. The sensational allegations you know what I mean I was this police officer who was going to cook women and. It just sort of blew up and I think your previous guest had on it people hear the word cannibalism and it's just it's like a whole new ballgame. You know do we have very little time left but I do want to know Ok so 1st of all you're basically in the clear there now although there was some thought that you could conceivably go to the Supreme Court have you received any assurances one way or the other about this the case is completely over there's nothing about on the Supreme Court completely exonerated and I have a couple of lawsuits and now so what's life like I mean this is the guy I mean if unless you're going to and you're not really you're doing a show like this one you're writing books about it never saying it's not you're not trying to make it go away so I don't know you meet somebody new What's not like it's complicated when I was out of prison I was worried you know Ok I'm out I'm free but how am I going to be received in society what am I going to do for work again you know I couldn't go back to the police department and my name is easily people type my name into Google and boom you know there you go all kinds of articles so it was difficult there was a lot of misinformation still out there people were making up their minds about me based on myths that were presented early on in the case and an h.b.o. Documentary came out it wasn't close to what I was promised so I was sort of pushed to finally get my story out and you're right and writing the book thing sort of resurrected again but there resurrecting in a different way now I think people now are focusing on the legal parts of this case it's a very important legal case where you know when can someone be prosecuted for thoughts without actions and. I'm happy about that although things are hectic again like you said. I'm doing these interviews and it's sort of contrary to who I've always been I've always been a private person but. Once my family and my support system sort of they told me they would be Ok with it I went with a book and people have received it very well it's impacting people right away and like I said people are now start starting to focus on the important legal questions which is what I wanted you know those sort of got lost early on because of the whole sensational cannibalism you know rhetoric about the case but I hear you feel we are flat out of time here but Bill value thank you so much for talking to us co-author of his own story raw deal the untold story of n.y.p.d. Cannibal cop Thanks to all of you who made it all the way through the show I realize it might have been tough sledding for some of you in thanks to Josh in way over making show happen by for Wolfie on the board too will be back tomorrow I. Thanks for coming to Hannibal's and have a great night oh and how was your service well to be honest our waiter wasn't very good I mean stew again. 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