Know Thyself

  In this interview we speak with Rachel Herz, PhD., neuroscientist and author of "That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion" and "Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship With Food." Topics Include:  -Can eating certain foods affect, or even effect, your personality? -Why exactly do we like some foods and find others repulsive? -How your mind can change your hormonal response to food, and even alter the way you metabolize it! -Why artificial sweeteners are minions of the devil -The German cannibal who did unspeakable things with the full permission of his victim -What is the purpose of disgust, and what does it have to do with morality? -Hacking the best research to decrease (or increase) your food consumption -Much more! Catch up with Rachel via her WEBSITE. Read Her Books and Learn More: Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food and That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion and The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigma

It is the ultimate act of aggression and dehumanization. Cannibals from New Zealand to Syria, from Fiji to Japan show their contempt for vanquished enemies, inspire terror, and bond with their comrades through extreme, transgressive acts. We also delve into the emotion of disgust -- something that arguably evolved as a "behavioral immune system" and has been re-purposed into ethical domains.

Cutting off a city from supplies, food and water and waiting for its inhabitants to succumb and surrender is a brutally effective form of ancient warfare.  But the deadliest siege in history occurred in the modern era, when Operation Barbarossa brought thousands of Nazi tanks to the walls of Leningrad. They surrounded the city for 872 days, killing hundreds of thousands and forcing the inhabitants to survive any way they could. And in this case, there were thousands of literate inhabitants who kept journals, documenting first hand the horrors that ensued. A heart wrenching account of misery on the grand scale. Then we go back to 1098 at Ma'arra, when Christian Crusaders overran the Syrian city, only to realize there was not enough food to keep an army marching... Finally, there are times when Mother Nature lays siege on all of us. We summarize a few of the deadliest famines in history.

A special interview with multiple award winning author, historian of the American West, and frontier storyteller Will Bagley.  Will sets the scene for the Donner disaster by breaking down the national and international events surrounding westward migration to California and the Oregon territories. He describes the schemers and get-rich-quick promoters that populated the overland trails. He mentions: -the worst disasters in overland migration history (hint: the Donner Party was not one of them) -why we find the Donner Party so “sexy,” -what factors predict who will eat whom, -the contributions and motivations of American Indians, -why powerful people do despicable things -what would have happened if the Donner party stayed on the Nevada side of the Sierras for the winter, and too many other insights to list.   Opinionated, iconoclastic, well-informed, Will Bagley is a reliable guide to the Donner party tragedy (even more trustworthy than Lansford Hastings) and a historian in the grand tradition of the old west

This episode is about STRANDED CANNIBALS -- specifically the Donner Party and the Dudley Stevens case. Strange coincidences, ethical questions, never bringing a whip to a knife fight, mutinies and shipwrecks, deserts and mountains, starvation, death, and feats of strength and heroism. And cannibals. Episode Guide (for those who want to avoid philosophy. Or history.) 00:00 to 06:49 Considerations 06:49 to 20:20 The Dudley and Stevens case and “The Law of the Sea” 20:20 to 30:30 Screed: Consequentialism, Rules, and Stranded Cannibals 30:30 to END  The Donner Party    

We look into the evidence from primatology and archaeology to find the roots of human cannibalism in nature or nurture. Along the way we find shadows our own dual nature between sexy hippy bonobos and hawkish war chimps; learn how homo sapiens slept with their food, visit a stone age cave of nightmares in Britain; and join the debate over what seems to have been a short-lived fad for eating humans among the Ancestral Pueblo.