Stuff You Should Know - How Cannibalism Works

Episode Date: October 9, 2008

Cannibalism is one of humanity's near-universal taboos, but it has been practiced in widely varying circumstances throughout history. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn the difference between the three types of cannibalism. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for our drug pilot, would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Brad Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. Josh and Chuck here. Say hi, Chuck. Hi, Chuck.

Chuck, have you been paying attention to that story that came out of Canada this past July? That grizzly murder on the Greyhound bus? Yeah, that was, you couldn't write something that ghastly. No, no, you really can't. So I guess we should probably fill in anybody who's not aware of it. There was this guy named Vince Lee who allegedly out of nowhere leans over in this bus in the dark of night that's just traveling down the plains of Manitoba, I think. And he just leans over and starts stabbing this guy sitting next to him who he's never met before and apparently witnesses say that they hadn't even spoken.

Now, completely unprovoked. Yeah, and just stabs him and stabs him and stabs him and everybody just starts fleeing the bus. And they end up locking this guy on there and he starts walking around back and forth. He's like, I got the impression kind of like a caged animal. Right. And then I guess he gets the idea to go back and cut the victim's head off. He's not dead. Right. But he cuts his head off and he's walking around with the bus.

Showing people outside. Exactly. And apparently he dropped this poor guy's head in front of the witnesses like at the steps at the front door of the bus. Right. Who were, these people were holding the doors closed to trap him on. And there's this one other, this is bad enough, right? Right. But there's this, he did something else that just, I think it makes everything kind of even worse.

He, he walked back and started cutting off pieces of the guy and eating them. Right. And this should have had a little warning before this podcast. This, yeah, maybe so. Hopefully from the title people will be a little prepared. So basically I started researching this. I had heard about it, this, this incredibly ghastly murder. And at the time I was writing or researching an article, How Cannibalism Works.

Right. So I'm thinking, you know, as, as grim as it is, like this is, this is a pretty good story to use as a lead as an introduction for the article, right? Right. And the more I started researching it, the more I realized I had this perfect line. It was like, you know, when, when Mr. Lee, I should say allegedly he's been charged, but he hasn't been convicted. You know, eight that, that those bits of flesh he went from a mere murderer to, you know,

something like a monster, like a cannibal, right? But the more I looked into this story, like honestly, the cannibalism almost falls in line with everything else he was doing. Right. It was such an unspeakable act. It didn't stand out. The cannibalism was also almost muted by the rest of this stuff. Sure.

So instead I went with Armin Mivis. Right. Which was another really bizarre and ghastly story. It really was. It really, it's not nearly as, I don't find it nearly as disconcerting as, as the, the Greyhound bus story. Yeah. That one's a little more frightening.

It definitely is. Definitely creepy though. I mean, this was a consenting adult, right? Right. So you want to tell them about Mr. Mivis? Well, yeah, this is a guy, I believe he put an ad on, in the newspapers or on a website. It was on personal websites. Yeah.

Looking for someone who would allow themselves to be eaten by this guy. And what's, that's remarkable enough, but he had, he had a taker. Well, he had, he got close a few times apparently. But yeah, this one guy named Burt Jurgen Brandis. Right. 43. Wasn't exactly what Mivis was looking for. Mivis was advertising an 18 to 30 year old well built guy.

And apparently, you know, a little less picky as time went on. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So Brandis comes over and they basically get him drunk. Right. He's taken some painkillers and Mr. Mivis cuts off his penis and proceeds to cook it. For the both of them. For the both of them.

And I didn't put it in the article, but what I gathered was that they both ate some and didn't really like it. Right. So this, by this time Brandis, who's like totally consenting, fully aware of what's going on, what's going to happen, he's going to die tonight. This is what he came over for. Right. He goes to take a bath because he's just bleeding everywhere.

His penis is cut off. Right. And he goes to take a bath and he loses consciousness in the bath. So Mivis is like, all right, it's you're done. And cuts the guy's throat and actually had set up like a basically a butcher room where he butchered the guy and I guess made steaks out of him, flanks. Over a period of time, he ate his body, right? 44 pounds of this guy's body over the over a few months.

The thing is, he was, he had totally gotten away with it. Right. Like there was the police had no idea this had happened. There was no like missing persons report as far as I know or anything like that. And the way he was caught was some fellow chat room dwellers knew what Mivis was doing and apparently got wind that it had been successful or whatever and alerted police. And they found out he's like, oh yeah, totally. It was great.

Right. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs.

Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty.

The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it.

And apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart. He could do no wrong. Like he was a God.

But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life? Were the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed? He used to say, what are you looking at dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

So I think what's most remarkable about this story is not only that this guy did this, but there was no law against cannibalism at the time in Germany. No. So he was tried from or is being tried for murder. First, they had him on, I think they had him on manslaughter. Right. And because you know, the other guy consented.

He consented and there was such outrage in Germany against it that they're retrying him somehow. Right. For murder. But yeah, there is no law in the books. I think there is now. Right. And the same goes for the UK.

I really, really try to could not find any federal statute outlawing cannibalism in the US. But I did find vague references that it is illegal, but I couldn't find any actual law. But the thing is almost like you don't really have to outlaw cannibalism because it's a taboo. Completely. It's like it's beyond the law, it exists beyond the law.

It's something way worse than anything that we need to sanction legally. You would think. You would think. Right. Right. So what Mivis and Lee allegedly and Albert Fish, who is a murdering, petrified cannibal of the 1920s. And of course, one of the most famous of all, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Right. What they were doing is called pathological cannibalism, which basically that's psychology. That's very little to do with anthropology. The rest of cannibalism falls very much into the realm of anthropology. And it's been studied and studied. It's actually one of the more interesting fields of study or subfields of study. I think in any aspect of anthropology, what do you think?

Well, I mean, as far as cannibalism is religious custom. Sure. And offering up to the gods, that kind of thing with the aspects. That's part of it. Yeah. There's there's a bunch of different other. Yeah. There's different subsets and different kinds.

Right. You know, you know, you're a quick quiz. Well, I don't. I know you do. You school me. Okay. So you got survival cannibalism. Right.

Learned cannibalism, which is which is subdivided into endo cannibalism, which is eating like members of your family or your tribe or whatever. Yeah. And exo cannibalism, which is the opposite, it's eating members of outside your tribe or family. And that's mainly for a religious. Not necessarily. No.

We'll get to that in a second. There's there's also pathological. Right. And then there's another one that I find arguably the most disturbing auto cannibalism. That's eating oneself. Correct. Yes. No, I didn't find any examples of some an actual documented case of a person

and voluntarily eating themselves aside for from Juergen Brandes, who apparently ate some of his penis, right, but didn't really like it. Right. So usually auto cannibalism is forced. Yeah. But what about like, I know I bite my nails and a lot of people think that that is technically it is technically do you eat your fingernail clippings? Or do you just bite your nails?

Because it's no, when I was younger. Yeah. When I was younger, I would swallow my fingernail clippings and I would have like stomach problems and stuff. I would imagine so. You're not supposed to swallow it. Well, I did. I was a little kid.

I didn't know that. I didn't realize that was a nervous habit. You're like poor kid. Right. Kind of except a little more fortunate. I take it. So I don't I don't do that anymore. I don't swallow.

That's good. But yeah, you people do consider technically that biting your fingernails is a form of auto cannibalism. More often it's it's forced auto auto auto cannibalism is forced. I think in like 2003 or 2004 in the Congo, some Congolese rebels were accused of killing pygmies and enforcing other pygmies or no. I'm sorry, forcing pygmies to eat parts of themselves before killing them. And also, you know, practicing cannibalism by eating the pygmies themselves.

Just some pretty terrible stuff going on down in Congo. Yeah. And I know in the early 1930s in the United States, even they had a lot of racist fueled acts of auto cannibalism. You know, I don't think enough people know about this. I hadn't heard about this guy until I wrote this article. Claude Neal. Had you heard of him before?

No, I hadn't. OK. Because, you know, they don't teach the stuff in history class. No, and they really should. So I think it's kind of up to us to to teach it. Right? Right. So in in 1934 in Florida, about 2000 white Southerners gathered and basically

sacrificed this black guy named Claude Neal. Right. And they advertise that they advertise in the paper. They sent out invitations. I know. I'm sick. Right. And so all these people show up and it's like this just kind of orgiastic sacrifice or ritual

where they basically they tortured him. They they cut off his penis and made him eat it. It was forced auto cannibals. Right. And his testicles as well. Right. Right. And one thing that didn't make in the article is that they forced him to say that he liked

how it tasted. And then finally, after a couple of hours, I take it, they finally lynched him. They killed, they hung him. And the sad thing is, is this doesn't go down as like a sacrifice or an auto cannibalistic act. It's called a lynching. Exactly. Which it's lynching is bad enough.

But this seems so much further beyond. Well, it is. And it's a way it's kind of a way of even whitewashing. I mean, lynching is bad enough. You're right. Sure. But when you don't hear about those details. No.

You think this guy was taken out and hung, which is already horrible. Yeah. This goes so far beyond that. It's just it definitely isn't in. Like you said, they don't teach that in the history books. And I think they should. So but those are the types of cannibalism, right? The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs.

America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that and on the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed.

They call civil asset fortune. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. There is no need for the outside world because we are removed from it and apart from it and in our own universe. On the new podcast, The Turning, Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balanchine. There are not very many of us that actually grew up with Balanchine. It was like I grew up with Mozart.

He could do no wrong. Like he was a god. But what was the cost for the dancers who brought these ballets to life? Were the lines between the professional and the personal were hazy and often crossed. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. Most people in the ballet world are more interested in their experience of watching it than in a dancer's experience of executing it.

Listen to The Turning, Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. What about you know much about survival cannibalism like alive and all that? Yeah, well the Donner party was one of the earlier ones. That was the group of settlers that were heading out west, right? And they, a splinter group went off in the Sierra Nevada mountains and kind of encountered some bad badness, weather and the like. And they resorted to cannibalism. And then the film and book alive about the soccer team that crashed in the Andes, I think.

Yeah, you're a Gwayan team. Yeah, and they ended up resorting to cannibalism from some of their comrades who had already died. They survived like 71 days like that. I know, and you know that's one of the more forgivable, probably the most forgivable, definitely cannibalism. Definitely, because it's survival, I'd say you're surviving. Right, and these guys wanted to do what they had to do, but they, you know, they needed to. Agreed, and this was in 1972 or something like that, I think.

Yeah, it was the early 70s. So this is really, really recent. The thing is, this has been going, this has happened many, many times. Donner party, there was actually something in the 19th century called the custom of the sea, right, which is where, you know, where you're not happy with your lot in life, that phrase. That actually comes from the custom of the sea, where you're drawing lots, drawing straws, right? So you have the straws cut up to different lengths, and everybody draws them. And as per the custom of the sea, the person who drew the shortest straw, and this is like

if you were stranded, if you were shipwrecked, and you were forced to resort to survival cannibalism, whoever drew the shortest straw was, that person was tapped to die. And whoever drew the next shortest straw was the person who had to kill them, and then everybody ate the person that was killed. It was like basically a codified survival cannibalism, because it happened. It was just a fact of life when you were a sailor. Yeah, I guess it's, I mean. Because there were no search and rescue parties or anything like that.

I mean, like you may just, if you were rescued, somebody stumbled upon you, you know? Right. So it did happen a lot. And like you said, it is the most forgivable form, at least in the eyes of Westerners. It's survival cannibalism. You did what you had to do to stay alive. But at the same time, it's kind of chilling in that how easy it seems like it would be under those circumstances to eat another person, you know?

Right. Which kind of points out that at any given point in time, we're like one plane crash or shipwreck away from, you know, eating one another. Yeah. Right. It's a little kind of spooky to realize that it's there. It's an eight in all of us. Right.

Nobody would think that they would want to do something like that. But when push comes to shove and you're facing death, and there's a difference also. I mean, I guess you're lied in life that story, you're actually killing somebody to eat them. But in the case of the alive ones, they, you know, they ate the dead. The other fallen comrades. Right. Right. So that's that's a bit of difference.

Yeah. Yeah. That's survival cannibalism. And then you've got learned cannibalism. Right. Right. And this is the stuff that's like really heavily studied. There's basically, they call it learned cannibalism or customary cannibalism,

because it's socially indoctrinated, right? Right. For with endo cannibalism, generally it's part of like a funeral right. Right. The Fori people in Papua New Guinea and the Wari in the Amazon were very well studied for their practices of cannibalism. Like the Wari, for example, what they were doing this, this anthropologist named Beth Conklin found out that they were by eating their, their recently deceased, they were transforming them. The Wari were really big on or are really big on changing their surroundings so that they're

not reminded. No, actually, it's for the, it's for the, for the survivors. Okay. They, they were, they're supposed to change everything that reminds them of the dead person. So they're not sad or depressed. It's their way of getting over grief. It's one way to do it. And eating the dead body is, it's a method of transforming it. So that's, that's a pretty peaceful method of cannibalism.

That's endo cannibalism. And the Fori do the same thing for slightly different reasons. They're actually looking to gain certain attributes, like say wisdom or strength or that kind of thing. And it's very specific to the body part, right? So like, and only, only certain people can eat certain parts of a deceased relative. It's really interesting how, you know, over the course of centuries or millennia, humans can really slap labels on all sorts of different stuff. Yeah.

But, you know, this kind of deserves to be broken down because they're, they're also different, you know, all the different forms. So I don't think it's just a willy nilly the way they slap different names on these. No, no, but that raises the question why, like why, why do people, you know, why do, why do cultures around the world have codified socially sanctioned cannibalism? And I think really in the article, I divided that between two approaches in anthropology. It's materialism and idealism. Right.

So material, did you get this far in the article? And actually I fell asleep about at that point. I think part of our readers or listeners are asleep as well. It's my voice. It has a very lowling. Right. So basically the materialists say that cannibalism generated from necessity. Like there was a drought, that kind of thing.

And some, some people who adhere to that are saying, you know, hey, it happens. This cannibalism was, would just be logical when, you know, you don't have a grocery store. Right. We didn't know how to tame crops and we're just hunter-gatherers. And all of a sudden there's a drought. So you kind of, yeah, you've got to do survival cannibalism. And then the idealists say, no, no, no, it's, we interpret the world through symbols. And so the, the human brain represents wisdom and that's, and then cannibalism came after

we started interpreting things as symbols. Right. And nobody's figured out who's right. But I tend to lean more toward the, the materialists. You think so? Yeah, I think cannibalism. That makes more sense to me. It's like, yeah, it's like we were saying it's, it, it, I think it's an eight in all of us.

And when the chips are down, I would eat you. Well, it's good to know. You know, Candice Gibson already told me that she would eat me. She called me meaty. Well, I think I'd provide a hearty meal as well. You would. I think, I think we're about on par. Yeah.

Yeah. I think at the very least, Arm and Mifus could live on us for a very long time. Well, I'm hungry. I'm a little hungry too, Chuck. Do you want to go get something to eat? That's a great idea. Maybe a nice rare burger. I might go with a salad.

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Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot. Would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.