S4 E5. DINNER GUESTS – Nibedita Sen & The Mayday Podcast

Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast

We are joined by our final dinner guests, writer Nibedita Sen and Ana and Luca of The Mayday Podcast, to talk speculative fiction, colonialism and some disastrous adventures that may not have ended in survival cannibalism, but probably should have.

Did you know Casting Lots now has merch? Find us on Redbubble: https://www.redbubble.com/people/CastingLotsPod/shop

CREDITS

Written, hosted and produced by Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis. With guest appearances from Nibedita Sen and The Mayday Podcast.

Nibedita can be found on Twitter and Instagram as @her_nibsen, or check out her website at https://www.nibeditasen.com/.

‘Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island’ is published in Nightmare Magazine (May 2019, 80). Read it here: https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/ten-excerpts-from-an-annotated-bibliography-on-the-cannibal-women-of-ratnabar-island/.

The game ‘First Times’ is available in Strange Horizons (2022): http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/first-times/.

Watch Nibedita and Carmella along with some other familiar faces in the panel ‘Worldbuilders After Dark: Cannibalism in Real World and Genre Fiction’ via Worldbuildersinc on YouTube (14 December 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik7yV0kVJdM.

The Mayday Podcast can be found online at https://themaydaypod.com/, and on Twitter and Instagram as @TheMaydayPod.

Theme music by Daniel Wackett. Find him on Twitter @ds_wack and Soundcloud as Daniel Wackett.

Logo by Ashley. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @tallestfriend. Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network. Network sting by Mikaela Moody. Find her on Bandcamp as mikaelamoody1.

TRANSCRIPT

Alix: Have you ever been really, really hungry?

Carmella: You’re listening to Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast.

A: I’m Alix.

C: I’m Carmella.

A: And now let’s tuck into the gruesome history of this ultimate taboo…

[Intro Music – Daniel Wackett]

A: Welcome to Episode Five. This time, we are joined by Hugo-nominated writer Nibedita Sen, and Ana and Luca of The Mayday Podcast.

[Intro music continues]

A: Hello, we have another guest with us today. Now any eagle eyed followers of Casting Lots on other media – there’s got to be at least someone out there- may recognise the voice of our next guest from a panel that Carmella was on a few years ago, but I will let her introduce herself. So, Nibedita who are you?

N: Well, first off, I’m very happy to be here. Yes, I am Nibedita Sen. I am a queer, Indian writer of science fiction and fantasy, mostly fantasy, mostly in the horror slash dark fantasy adjacent corner. And a lot of my work deals with themes of food or more generally speaking, hunger and consumption and appetites, particularly which appetites are catered to, and which appetites are deemed taboo or monstrous. And sometimes that involves cannibalism.

A: You can see the crossover there emerging perfectly as to why we were ‘Oh, would you like to come and tell us some more about your work?’

C: Yeah. So I think a great place to get started with the conversation then would be your piece that you wrote, I think in, I want to say 2019. But correct me if that’s incorrect-

N: Time has no meaning anymore.

C: Some years ago…

A: What was 2019? Five years or like three months? Who knows?

C: Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island.

N: Yes, it’s a very long title.

[Laughs]

C: Could you please tell us a little bit about that?

N: Yeah, so Ten Excerpts is, it’s a funny piece. It’s written in the form of an MLA Bibliography, an annotated bibliography, because one of the things I was playing with in that piece was the idea of academia and racism and colonialism within academia and how the frameworks of academia are used to excuse and prop up colonialism. And I wanted to kind of use the form against itself to subvert itself and talk about well, cannibals. But telling a story pieced together from extracts from these fictional academic papers and articles about cannibals, and sort of telling the story in the gaps between those things and things that are not being said and things that are being deliberately left out, speaking to the story of these women who are cannibals and the ways in which the world reacts to them, and what it- what it means really, to be a woman and have an appetite that is deemed monstrous, or deviant.

C: And I think reading it was so interesting from the Casting Lots perspective, because obviously, we include a bibliography with every episode, which is a bibliography of cannibalism, and it’s, it is something that we are often confronting and thinking about in our episodes that what sources are we using and how are those sources interacting with the stories in a biased way? We will often get sources that will claim cannibalism can’t possibly have happened because these are white Europeans-

N: Right.

C: Or cannibalism must have happened for this purpose because of this culture. And yeah, I think that that’s something that your story obviously is talking to and really highlights.

N: Right? Yeah, like the sources in that story. Start with, they start with the start with white European scholars who are writing at a remove, and it slowly transitions into works. It starts with academic articles, and it translates- it transitions into things like an article on Bitch Media erm, or a blog post written by actual diaspora, actual women from this community of, this fictional community of cannibals who were taken from their home by colonial British well-meaning explorers.

A: “Well meaning”

N: Yeah, [Laughs] Yeah, just that transition from European people, academics writing at a removed from this position of comfortable superiority transitioning into here, people who actually lived it, who are actually diaspora were from that community, what it means to them.

A: And one of the joys of fiction, especially when it comes to the sorts of stories that we end up telling, and I’ll apologise but I don’t really mean it because I’m going to make a really bad pun, because that’s just what happens here– is actually being able to flesh out these stories.

C: [Pained] Oh.

A: Told you it was bad. But a lot of the time, all we have are – gonna do it again. The bare bones of- Carmella’s face.

[Laughter]

A: The bare bones of the facts like this is what did or didn’t happen. This is what someone said about it. We don’t actually have the emotions or the feelings and those are often things that we have to read into the narratives that we’re telling. But of course, with your fictional cannibalism, with these stories, you’re able to give that life in a way that really can’t be done with real historical events.

N: Yeah, well, first off, I have ended so many of my conversations on food and science fiction with ‘food for thought’ that I cannot- [Laughs] I am in no position to criticise in fact, I appreciate puns greatly. Secondly, yeah, yeah I mean, you guys, deal with survival cannibalism, which necessarily means some kind of dangerous situation, which not everyone survives. Right. So, people might not be able to directly bear witness to what happened. But yeah, I do. In my own work. I do really like the idea of pushing back against. Here’s what you were told. But here is someone directly bearing witness and taking back control of the narrative. And maybe in some ways – here’s another pun – turning the tables–

A: Nice.

N: On their oppressors.

C: So as Alix said, we’re often fleshing out real-life cases to tell our stories at Casting Lots, I was wondering, were there any real-life inspirations behind your story, whether from history or– hopefully from history, but maybe from the present day?

N: Yes and no in that, so my story is about this fictional island called Ratnabar. And there’s people on that island who practice funerary cannibalism, which is a form of paying respect to the dead and this is a thing that is actually practised in several cultures across the world is you eat a portion of the dead as a way of showing respect as a way of making sure their legacy endures, that you take of them into yourself and you preserve their memories and their lineage and to honour them. It’s a way of honouring the dead.

C: Hmm.

N: So that’s what the tribe, this people in my story does. And while Ratnabar isn’t real, I was somewhat inspired by this island of people called the Sentinelese which is in the Andaman Islands. It is an island of what we call uncontacted peoples, which is that they have had little to no contact with the modern world and have in fact, mostly violently repelled any attempts to make contact with them, which people have tried to for various reasons, mostly ranging from well-meaning to patronising.

A: They’re mostly missionaries, aren’t they?

N: Yeah, yeah. The Sentinelese are not to my knowledge cannibals. That part I completely made up. Yeah, cannibalism crops up a lot in fiction, and when it’s not outright being depicted as this horrifying, monstrous taboo thing, it often is to the tune of cultural, ritual funerary cannibalism.

A: One of our other interviewees gave us a rather nice phrase that rang a bell when you were describing the cannibalism of your story, which is called ‘affection cannibalism’ as a form of emotional connection between the dead and the living. So that, that rang a bell there as a softer term, considering that…

C: Cannibalism’s a loaded word.

A: Yeah, it has a bad rep, shall we say?

N: I have never heard that term. But I love it. And I may just, like, steal it to use forever. Because, yeah, that is absolutely what it is. It is. It’s an act of, in the right context. And in the context, certainly in my story, that it’s being used. It’s an act of respect, of love and affection, of wanting to keep part of someone, quite literally with you.

A: I don’t necessarily want to go off on a tangent about the Uruguayan flight disaster. But I will nonetheless. No, just really briefly, it just reminds me of those moments, even in survival cases, such as when Nando gave permission for the bodies of his mother and sister to be eaten, if necessary, when he left the crash site, and it was this ultimate act of love and compassion for his fellow men. So, there are more similarities, I think, in this sort of affection cannibalism sphere than necessarily just funerary or just ritual or just survival.

N: Right? Obviously, you guys are the experts on things like the Donner party, right? Like I won’t pretend to be an expert that that’s you guys’s area of expertise, but to my knowledge, there were people in that party who as they died, begged their children and surviving family members to eat them once they were dead. Because yeah, it’s- it’s in many ways. It is the ultimate act of love, knowing that you are dying and wanting those, your loved ones who survive you to survive and wanted to give of yourself even past death, to be sure they can survive. This is of course presuming the context in which consent can be given, which is not always the case.

C: Yeah.

A: It is one of the things that we’ve discussed before that cannibalism is one of the only forms of the consumption of meat that can technically be vegan.

N: Yeah.

A: If you give consent.

N: Yes. And it did not even result in the death of the person involved. I don’t know if you guys heard about this, there was this case. Again, time has no meaning some amount of years ago where someone lost their- had to have their foot amputated after an accident, like, then had that amputated foot made into chilli, which he invited his friends to come over and eat, again, fully with their knowledge. He wasn’t this wasn’t a Arya Stark baking the Frey lords into pies to serve to their dad kind of thing this was fully with their knowledge and consent. And it’s situations like that. It’s like, well, it’s your it’s literally a part of your own body. Why would you not have, you know, if– who, if not you, could give consent to permission for that to be shared?

C: I’m familiar with that story. I think my favourite thing about it is that this man texted all of his friends that he thought would be most up for cannibalism with ‘do you want to come over and eat my leg?’ And it’s definitely a conversation that we’ve had with so many of our friends. Like, if I were to lose the leg do you want to be on the guest list?

[Laughter]

A: Although imagine the conversation you’ll have to have with the doctors to persuade them to let you keep it.

N: Yeah, I wonder what went into this guy getting to take his foot home in an icebox, honestly. Again, people get to keep tumours that have been extracted. You get to keep your teeth when they’re extracted.

C: Placentas?

N: Yeah. People eat those.

C: Exactly. It’s such a hazy area really, isn’t it? Of what you define as truly cannibalistic?

N: I guess I mean what like super fascinates me in my work is just a question of why eating flesh is a bridge too far, when we’re perfectly okay with consuming people in every other way. Like something I say a lot that I completely believe is true is that colonialism is the ultimate form of cannibalism, right? Like, colonialism might not be literally devouring people’s flesh, but it is certainly devouring their country’s resources, their country’s natural resources, their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their blood, sweat and tears. You know, it’s– it’s a consuming, devouring extracted process in every way and then we as a culture have built our lives around excusing and defending it and condoning it and normalising it. So, it’s just really interesting to me to wonder why all of that is okay, but then actually going so far as to literalise the consumption is a step too far.

C: I think something that we’ve come across a lot is that in the earlier European cases of survival cannibalism, it’s normally people going out being colonisers and often we’ve found that they’ve come back with tales of cannibalism in these far-flung countries and it– I think it’s almost– it speaks of a cultural anxiety around being the ones going out and metaphorically cannibalising other cultures you say and also literally cannibalising one another when they run into hot water. And yeah, I think there’s definitely a projection there. And it’s interesting that cannibalism as taboo seems to have risen up at around the same kind of time in those European cultures as a sort of deflection from facing up to the reality I guess.

N: That’s a really good point. That’s a really smart point. Yeah, if I may draw a parallel, it reminds me of a lot of the well, for lack of a better word panic around artificial, artificial intelligence or robots in science fiction, which often truly to me, seems like it’s coming from a place of ‘what if women and minorities treated us the way we treat women and minorities?’ There’s a reason androids AI are so often feminine or feminised in science fiction, right?

C: Hmm.

N: It’s, it seems like it’s coming from a place of– the same kind of place of here’s a race of- a class of beings that we have deemed sub-humanoid and who we wish to exploit. What if they rose up against us and treated us the way we treat them horror?

C: That’s a really interesting parallel.

N: Right. Definitely wonder if there’s something to the fact that oh, you know, we are aware at some level that we are devouring people, God forbid that the tables be turned on us.

A: It came up in our almost infamous Douglas Mawson episode as well. The concept of sort of cannibalism by proxy. So, the argument with Douglas Mawson is sort of, did he or didn’t he?

C: He did. He did eat. He ate Mertz.

A: Carmella is on the ‘he did.’ But even if he didn’t physically consume him, if he had eaten all of the resources that Mertz will have needed to survive, leading to Mertz’s death and his own survival. What is that, if not one step away from cannibalism? He didn’t physically consume him. He did everything but that final act.

N: He devoured what he needed to survive. He devoured his chance to live.

A: Yeah.

N: If not directly his flesh.

A: Yeah, it’s quite fun looking at sort of how far cannibalism can stretch out. We’ve had it in terms of how far survival can stretch out if it’s the survival of the body or the survival of the soul. But then how far cannibalism as a definition also has a bit of elasticity.

N: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, one story I mentioned, Ten Excerpts, is the work of mine that most explicitly deals with literal cannibalism, but metaphorical or somewhat meta metaphor, adjacent teams of consumption and devouring are all through my work. It fascinates me.

C: What is it about that that fascinates you? If if you don’t mind us asking as fellow fans of the subject-

A: Enthusiasts of food.

N: I mean, that’s what it comes down to right? It was like I really love food. I mean not just to eat and enjoy because it’s food is delicious and why would you not, like, glory and delight in the joy and variety and fun it brings, but also because food is so inextricably tied to every aspect of our lives. Like, I actually– I have taught a workshop on food and science fiction and fantasy before and I use this acronym called CAGER, which is Class, Ability, Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion. And food intersects with every single one of these, right? Your class, your finances, your socio-economic background influences how you your relationship with food, and what food you might have access to. Your disability. You ever see people making fun of people for buying pre-peeled garlic?

A: Oh, it drives me absolutely-

N: Calling them lazy. Ability or disability affects your ability to access food or to prepare foods. Gender, obviously food preparation is so gendered the burden of who prepares food is historically been super gendered thing. Ethnicity, certain- if you’re a person of colour, you’re very familiar with what the way your foods, your historical cultural foods, are called smelly or messy or any amount of things compared to like more traditional European foods, right? Religion, need I even say, like, is connected to food in so many ways. But yeah, just food just like it intersects with every single aspects of our identities, and it’s so fraught, but it’s also something that every single one of us needs, like we cannot survive without food we cannot survive without eating and hunger. The experience of hunger is one of those things that I read a lot of dark fantasy and horror and hunger is so perfect for that because there is nothing quite like hunger to remind you how fragile the comforts and the protection of civilization is. Where hunger comes knocking, at the end of the day, we’re all just animals and we’re all just meat no matter how civilised or safe or superior we might think we are. None of us are anything but helpless in the face of hunger when it comes to it. And no matter how superior or civilised or safe you might think we are, none of us are safe from becoming prey or becoming something to be consumed. And so much of the world has predicated its identity on thinking that it could never be prey, that it is the predator. That is it is the one who sets the table. It is the one who decides what appetites are acceptable, what appetites are, catered to, and what appetites are monstrous or deviant. Right? Like, I’m a woman, I’m a queer woman. I’m a queer woman of colour, I’m very familiar with what it is to have my ambitions, my appetites, metaphorically speaking, ambitions, but also literally appetites and like wanting to eat more wanting to go in for a second helpings. Very familiar with what it is like to have that deemed gluttonous or excessive or just not appropriate for my gender or my sex or my race. Yeah, and it’s just I went off on a tangent there…

A: It was a very good tangent!

N: But I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s – as somebody who writes a lot of horror and dark fantasy – there is this vicious delight in turning the tables on people who have historically been the ones deciding the menu. And there’s something so horrifying about realising that you might be on the menu.

A: In a way it’s similar to our sort of sheer catharsis, when we have two real types of survival cannibalism stories, and in the nicest way possible they’re the ones that Alix and Carmella laugh at and the ones that Alix and Carmella absolutely do not laugh at. And it is that element of catharsis and someone facing their comeuppance and a hubristic mission versus a tragic famine. And how we can find a sort of savage delight out of the former, and very much, not the latter.

N: Absolutely, completely agree. Yes. When you’re from a subset of society that has historically been forced to rein yourself in and restrict yourself, there is, as you said, a savage delight in breaking past that and exercising your appetites, no matter how deviant or monstrous people might label them.

C: It’s this idea of identifying what it is that makes a monster in horror and adjacent genres, monstrous and identifying with that.

N: Yeah, there’s a – Yeah, I mean, as I like to say, it’s, a lot of my work is ‘Oh, you think I’m a monster? I will show you what monstrous means!’

C: Love that.

A: I do quite like the idea that we’re making a sort of feminist statement with our weird little cannibalism podcast.

N: I mean, that’s, I think you are. I agree. I also love that. And one of the extracts in my story Ten Excerpts explicitly says, I don’t have the text to hand but something along the lines of ‘men have historically been the arbiters of the discourse and women are the dish to be consumed’.

A: [Impressed] Ooh.

C: That’s good. Well, I think that that’s a beautiful place to finish up on. Thank you. That was amazing. Before we let you go, did you have any upcoming projects that you would like to make our listeners aware of?

N: Hmmm. Does it have to be cannibalism related?

C: No, it can be absolutely anything.

N: Okay. Well, nothing upcoming, something relatively recent that I released was Strange Horizons did this special issue of short, interactive fiction games about sex and sexuality and I have a piece in there called First Times that’s about well, horromancy and time travel and losing your virginity more than once.

C: Amazing. Love the title. That’s genius. Love a pun here.

N: Yes. So yeah, that’s Strange Horizons, it’s called First Times. And of course, the story we’ve been discussing here is Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island. Why did I give it such a long title?

A: It’s very academia

N: It really is.

C: Am I right in thinking that that one’s available online?

N: Yes, yes, it is available at Nightmare Magazine for free.

C: Great, we’ll pop a link in the show notes below for everyone to go and read. It is– it is a very good read. I do recommend.

A: And we’ll also include a link, I believe it will still be live to a recording of the panel ‘Cannibalism in Real World and Genre Fiction’, which both Nibedita and Carmella took part in.

C: Yes. So if you missed it, you can go and rewatch on demand. [Laughs] Thank you so much for joining us, Nibedita. It’s been wonderful.

N: Thank you for having me. This was so much fun.

A: Thank you so much. It’s been great.

N: Yeah, I feel like we could have gone for double the time, honestly. There’s so much to talk about. So much food for thought if you will.

C: Eyyy.

A: Beautiful.

[Casting Lots theme music plays]

C: Welcome back to casting lots podcast and thank you to Ana Luca who are joining us today from The Mayday Podcast. Would you guys like to tell us a bit about yourselves and your connection to cannibalism?

Ana: Yes. Hello. So I’m Ana.

L: And I’m Luca – I’m sorry.

A: What cousins from Melbourne, Australia. We have as I said, the Mayday podcast tales of mystery and misadventure. So we currently have one season of the podcast out with 15 episodes, pretty proud of mostly we talk about exploration, disasters, maritime mysteries, or anything, we can kind of fit roughly into the topic that we like.

A: So exactly our sort of thing.

Ana: Yeah. 100%. What if we’re vibing with a topic? That’s us? That’s we’re talking about it now everyone has to listen, they have no choice.

L: There is an episode on the Black Death, which does not fit under our topic at all, but Ana I just really liked it. So…

Ana: When you have a non captive audience over audio, they just got to listen to it.

C: I just really loved the Black Death.

Ana: Just a huge fan of diseases. Really love it. So we talk about in this household, it’s all tuberculosis and plague.

L: That’s all you talk about in this episode.

A: That’s great.

Ana: Thank you. Finally, people who understand me,

L: I can’t believe I’m the straight guy in the room is in this like, context?

Ana: You’re the weird person who doesn’t want to talk about diseases and scary things.

L: Yes, absolutely.

Ana: Just give a little plug. We are the Mayday pod on Twitter and Instagram. And also our website is The Mayday Pod dot com, and we’re on Spotify, iTunes, wherever people want to listen to podcasts.

A: And may I also say your logo is so snazzy.

Ana: Thank you. Yeah, that was me. I did a little like, enter a few days of weird, not Photoshop, cheap online version of Photoshop kind of playing around. And yeah, that’s what I said, well, not quite proud of actually.

A: It’s nice. I like it every time it pops up when I’m refreshing. And I’m like, oh, something’s gonna go very wrong here.

Ana: And God doesn’t it every single time. So I’ll give you guys a little bio of me. I’m a historian and a PhD student. And I’m currently working on a project related to sort of the relationship between health, decolonization and nation building in the Philippines during the Second World War and a bit after, so not at all related to the things we talk about in the podcast. But still, if you like, you know, health, disease and war and death, I guess.

C: Who doesn’t?

A: You can get some plagues in there, some pestilence it all comes, it all comes together.

Ana: Absolutely. You know, I’m just cramming it in with as much disease history as possible. Back in 2018. I got super into the Franklin Expedition and a TV show called The Terror which is also how I kind of got to know Carmella. And that sort of just led us sort of a no rolling hill of rolling rock down a hill of various cannibalism stories in history and exploration, which led to our podcast.

L: Yes. That is so true. If you’re the rock rolling down the hill, then I am Sisyphus. Struggling dearly. Yeah. I’m Luca. I’m a writer and history enthusiast. But I actually work in accounting. I studied a bit of economics and politics and philosophy and history at uni. But now I just, I just vibe and I just made podcasts

Ana: You do a lot of cool creative things.

L: But yeah, Truly, this came about because Ana was like, I’m a historian, and I was like, I love podcasting. So let’s try it out. But specifically, so I just need to admit to the two of you. I don’t like cannibalism.

[Laughter]

L: Like at all. I I just find it quite queasy inducing. And that’s just all I got to say on that really, but I think through exposure therapy on a has managed to bring me around to being able to have conversations about it without doubling over.

Ana: Yes, every day. I just assault Luca with stories or like media about like cannibalism, survival cannibalism specifically, so I’m working on it, we’re going to have some episodes which are going to make it really struggle. But it’s going to be fun to me. And that’s what matters.

[Laughs]

A: You know, that will be here to help.

L: Yeah.

Ana: I’m so grateful.

C: I love that

L: She has been trying to make me watch The Terror literally since day one since she got back from the UK.

Ana: Yeah, I’ve been back for like a year and a half. And all in all that time, always. I’m just there like, it’s coming. It’s gonna happen. You’re gonna have to watch it succeed one day.

C: I love that combined. You two have the same origin story of why I started this podcast with Alix. Well, why I agreed to start the podcast with Alix, which is that I also watched The Terror and I also found cannibalism really scary. And I would, I would say that Luca through exposure, you can become so comfortable with cannibalism that it freaks other people out.

Ana: I’m manifesting this for us. Give us time, you will be like this.

L: I don’t know if I want that.

Ana: Have no choice in the matter.

A: I’m going to recommend starting with literature. I’m going to go with the classic as always read In The Heart Of The Sea Don’t watch the film. Don’t watch.

Ana: Very wise.

A: We all know my feelings about the film. But the read the book, it sneaks up on you. And then you’re like, Oh, that’s gross. Oh, that’s a really fascinating fact about the Nantucket fishing economy. And then you’ve got Oh shit, they’re eating each other.

Ana: You’re so right. We will absolutely get Luca in with the fascinating facts about the Nantucket Fishing Club. Economic History, and then get him.

A: Nathaniel Philbrick is your guy.

Ana: We have a copy, it’s gonna happen. Do you worry.

A: He could be your gateway drug.

L: I don’t know if I want to take a gateway drug. That’s the thing.

Ana: Yeah, it’s still again have to emphasise your lack of choice in the matter.

L: One day, I will. I will make you engage with media that has leeches in it and you will-

[Disgusted noise]

Ana: I’m so sorry. That is my phobia. That yeah, leeches cannot do this on your loves medical history can’t do cannot touch them. Bleugh.

C: That’s a tough one, I feel like they come up a lot.

Ana: Yeah, sometimes if you just like an I dunno, kind of read around those sentences you kind of get by. This is this is absolutely how it is for you and cannibalism. Isn’t it?

L: It’s literally that yes.

A: I mean, we did have some people that would not cannibalism fans at our launch party. They sort of had to sit to the side on a sofa. We were like I’m sorry. Here it here is our platter of all of the human themed food that we have on one side. And here are the people that don’t like cannibalism who have to sit and talk to each other on the other side while we play a reskin game of Werewolf, but it’s it’s Cannibal.

Ana: Oh, was it the Donner Dinner Party or just like a variant on that?

C: It was a game of my own creation.

Ana: Oh, incredible.

A: I have the Donner Dinner Party next door.

Ana: It’s so good. Yeah, I have made Luca play that and he struggled through but it was fun. It’s pretty good.

L: I mean, it’s just werewolf but you got to eat people.

A: I mean, the werewolves eat people.

Ana: The improved Werewolf. Exactly, and that’s cannibalism of a kind.

L: It’s different though, isn’t it? Because they’re werewolves, not people!

Ana: They’re people the rest of the time.

A: They’re furries.

Ana: They are, they’re furries.

L: Just like Ana.

Ana: Just like oh, no, I’m not a furry. All right, please, for your listeners. If you include this. I’m not a furry. I like werewolf movies. Luca’s mean to me about it?

A: Well, this bit is going straight in the bloopers.

[Laughter]

Ana: That’s for the best I think.

A: Shall we return to Luca’s worst nightmare? And talk a little bit about cannibalism.

Ana: I love it. Let’s do it.

A: You can do it. Luca. I believe in you.

L: I’m trying.

A: Because what I really wanted to ask is I’ve been listening through the podcast. And my question is obviously here at Casting Lots we think well, we’d be able to go on for more seasons if there were more instances of survival cannibalism, but we’re quite limited to only covering disasters, which feature survival cannibalism. You guys do disasters, which may or may not feature survival cannibalism. So, my question is which disaster which didn’t feature survival cannibalism, A) should have done and) B would have been improved if it had? My main one, it goes straight to the Burke and Wills expedition because that was just- I was fully expecting it as I was listening to that double bill and was genuinely shocked that it didn’t happen.

L: You will be unsurprised to know that that was also one of the ones that I was like, yeah. It’s like it should have like you were literally starving. That was your main problem. I hate to say it, but there was a solution to this problem.

A: Yeah, it was so many months.

L: It causes me pain. Yes, literally,

A: What were you even eating?

Ana: And they were just so bad and everything else they’d planned. You’d think that’s where their brains would go? Like yeah.

L Yeah. Yes, we actually have a handful of things between us that we think probably could have and or should have, for various reasons. It causes me pain but you know, I think there is a reasonable point at which the lack of food is your issue. It’s happened before. So, Burke and Wills was indeed my- one of my suggestions. Would you like me to just like run through like a very brief rundown of what what happened on the Burke and Wills expedition?

A: That would be amazing for our listeners who may not have listened yet but will definitely go and listen after this.

L: There’s a reason that it was two episodes and it was because as I was like reading these books and finding these sources, I was like Jesus Christ, what the fuck?

Ana: Oh, it should be emphasised, especially because your listeners are international and definitely like a lot in the UK, where you guys based. We are Australian Burke and Wills is not well known outside of Australia, but a lot of us grew up with versions of the story of them, often without some of the grisly details and sometimes a much nicer portrayal of what happened then the historical truth, which is that it was bonkers (L: Fucked) and batshit. Yeah.

L: Yeah, as I say, not famous outside of Australia. But I grew up in a town that had statues of both Burke and Wills. So and that was like a small country town. So like, they’re pretty, they’re pretty everywhere. There’s like a massive statue of them actually, like, right me, like Botanical Gardens, the largest gardens in Melbourne. So, they are everywhere and they should not.

[Laughs]

L: So essentially, right, as Australia was being colonised there was a reward put up for anyone that could travel from the southern part of the continent, up to the Gulf of Carpentaria, which is like the northern most sea without dying and up through the interior, because of that part had been unmapped by European settlers, and they essentially wanted to know what was in there was it is mostly desert and jungle. It is 3250 kilometres to travel.

And this Irish immigrant called Robert O’Hara Burke was selected by this committee, his Victorian exploring committee to lead this expedition, he was one of the wildly unqualified and an awful guy. And they and it went poorly. About halfway up, four guys decided to split off from the group, this massive group that they had, they left camping under this very famous now tree that is called the Dig Tree. And these four guys basically made a break the half that distance, like 1500 kilometres up to the Gulf of Carpentaria made it but they were like, almost dead on the way there.

And then they had to get all the way back down, which they did not do. They got back to the Dig tree. One of them had already died at that point, three guys remaining, and they got back to the tree to find that their travelling companions had left earlier that same day. So basically, they were fucked. And at this point, already starving, they dug up some supplies from underneath the Dig Tree, and decided in their infinite wisdom, instead of travelling back home the way that they had come in the way that they knew to go off in another direction and to attempt to travel through the desert to South Australia, which is just not the right direction along the path that had never been travelled and was not known to anyone other than the indigenous nations in the area who they had been persistently attacking on their travels.

C: Classic.

L: And they basically made it like.

Ana: Yeah.

L: They basically made it like a couple of Ks and then died on a riverbed of starvation. One guy John King survived. He was the only survivor from that leg of the expedition. And it was only because an indigenous nation the Yandruwandha people of that area basically saved him and affected him. And the other two died of starvation and one of them had died like earlier than the other, and that is truly where I think cannibalism should have come into play, like- Again- I don’t think it should have come into play at all. But it was gonna happen.

Ana: If there’s some spare bodies that are already dead. Like, you know?

L: Yeah. Why are you why are you calling 100 metres up the riverbed to die alone? When there was another? There was like there wasn’t supply of food.

Ana: There were options.

A: Where the bodies found? Or is there the possibility he did have a little chew down before he died?

L: So they were found, and there is no like a written account of there being any chewing happening.

[Laughs]

L: That being said, the like amount of propaganda and like advertising that was happening around this whole thing is strong possibility that they found some chewing and they just didn’t record it.

A: It does tend to come out someone tends to gossip.

Ana: I’m gonna say there’s so much drama around this expedition and how mismanaged it was so many people were very aware of what a mess sort of came out of all of it. So yeah, probably there would have been some kind of indication. Like to make them look even worse.

L: It was extremely expensive for its time. And all of that money was wasted, like a couple of months in and then this went on. It was supposed to one for three years. And it only made it to about-

[Laughs]

C: Oh.

L: Yeah. Why do we have statues of this guy? Like truly.

Ana: It’s so embarrassing that we continue to like memorise these people who just had no qualifications for what they were doing and prove that by completely fucking it up.

A: I do get strong Greeley vibes from Burke and Wills.

Ana: Yeah, very much.

A: That’s a lack of leadership, shall we say?

L: It’s so funny, like a little fun fact that I enjoy is on the way up while they were still travelling through colonised areas where small towns were popping up because it was right during the Gold Rush and Victoria. Basically Burke the leader of the expedition would stay with like in hotels and with people in their farm houses and stuff while he left his dudes like camping on the side of the road. Guys, yet lack of leadership is truly that is the that is the word.

Ana: He was the worst. Yeah, he sucked so much.

L: He dare I say deserved death.

A: There is also something about the fact that obviously, I know that these are new settlements, it’s not quite the same as treking up the M25. And there being a Travelodge. I mean, like we are exploring new lands, I’m just gonna go to the local hotel and then going to, you know, the pop-up Tesco’s and gonna get a microwave meal and do that in my room. We’re exploring, and you’re surrounded by people.

Ana: Yeah.

L: Yeah, it took them two months to travel 750 kilometres. And they were travelling along the same route as the Royal Mail, which was travelling these routes. And the Royal Mail took two weeks to travel the same path they took two months on.

[Laughs]

C: When you’re slower than the Postal Service. That’s really embarrassing.

L: Yeah, all round and embarrassing chapter in Victorian history. If I may say

Ana: One of many, like, I’m gonna be honest our history is not the best.

A: Well, of course, here in Britain, our history is you know, pure and unfettered. [Laughs] Britain has never done anything wrong in its life ever.

Ana: Should have be noted that at this point, you know, all still British people in a British colony. So yeah, that was British people doing this to congrats.

L: Yeah, Burke was an Irish immigrant who had worked for the police in Dublin.

Ana: And then work for the police in Victoria.

L: He was a cop.

C: Yeah, just goes to show.

A: So were there any other disasters other than the infamous Burke and Wills? And I keep wanting to say Burke and Hare, because obviously here in the UK, Burke and Hare are the Body Snatchers, but it’s Burke and Wills. Anyone else who could have should have would have done a cannibalism?

Ana: Well, I feel like Burke and Wills is definitely the most egregious case of the of the topics that we’ve covered. I was going to bring up briefly the Scott expedition, because it’s, that’s obviously very well discussed well understood expedition, but for those who don’t know, Robert Falcon Scott led an expedition in Antarctica 1910 to 1912 slash 13. But he died in 1912. Various like members of the expedition were going on that different little parties doing a lot of scientific exploration was interesting stuff. But Scott’s team go to the South Pole realise they got the about a month after Roald Amundsen didn’t get to be the first ones there on the way back, and a lot of things went wrong and they all have the, you know, several men left they all slowly died. That being said, they died one after another in succession. And, you know, like what slowly losing energy ,didn’t have food, they had missed a drop of food that had been left sort of further along. So, there were certainly several points there when you think maybe like, I know you were all noble Englishmen, but you could have had a little like, chomp?

C: Noble Englishmen love to have a chomp is one thing that we’ve learned.

Ana: Yes. Exactly. Your podcast is fact. Like, just shows multiple times they’ve done the chomp this time. No, come on, Scott.

L: Does that improve your opinion of Scott or, or the opposite?

Ana: I respect the practical man. Like he was there writing these little journals, he could have been you know, having a little meal, making sure his fellow men were fed.

C: Scott’s always one that surprises me as well, that there’s not even any whiff of it around. Because obviously, the South Pole one that we’ve covered at Casting Lots is Douglas Mawson. Who, again, there’s no hard evidence that cannibalism happened, but there were at least rumours whereas Scott it seems like ya know, maybe it just didn’t happen. But you have to wonder did it cross their minds and then they decided not to?

Ana: Yeah.

C: I mean, it’s I feel like if you’re very hungry and there’s a dead body there and you’ve heard the stories you’ve got to at least be eyeing it up.

Ana: I what we know is right like three of their bodies were found obviously because they all died very close together. But I don’t think they ever found Captain Oates body? I can’t actually remember exactly but he left earlier, disappeared in a blizzard. Did he leave? Or…

A: I’m just stepping outside I may be some time or could that all be an illusion?

Ana: Could one of the most famous quotes in exploration history had been completely made up which also a possibility regardless of cannibalism, but could have been completely made up to hide some cannibalism?

A: You heard it here first.

L: Based on no historical evidence we are going to imply that Captain Oates was eaten by his fellow explorers.

C: His name was Oates.

A: It is a food name.

[Gasp, laughs]

L: They just got confused they didn’t know what was going on.

A: You know when you, you know you’re so hungry. You picked your people as food they just saw a massive bowl of porridge.

[Laughs]

Ana: Oh my god, this is it. This is the point we do the third revision of the Scott history, have a new wave of literature about the cannibalism.

A: We’re still finding Arctic cannibalism stories. They’re out there we just need to you know, melt some ice. Climate change.

[Laughs]

Ana: Oh God, the world’s going down the toilet environmentally, but at least we might find some bodies and evidences of cannibalism.

L: I think you have a couple more of potential cannibalism candidates. I have one final one for myself. I don’t know if you didn’t know much about the Batavia.

A: I love the Batavia. Sorry, that was a very weird reaction.

[Laughs]

Ana: But it’s exactly what we’d expect from you, Alix. With love, but that is being said. Can I say briefly before Luca explains the notes Batavia that I mentioned this in our episode, but I went to the replica of the Batavia] that’s in the Netherlands. And when I was there, I was there with my young stepbrother, who at the time must have been about 11. And we definitely had to do some explaining what some of the like, texts on the wall all meant when you’re reading the like little history of it. And yeah, it was a lot of shielding of eyes and kind of ferrying child along.

A: I’ve lent you the book, Carmella I don’t know if you’ve read it yet?

C: I haven’t read it yet. So Luca, please fire away and be my introduction.

A: Watch Carmella’s face…

L: In 1628 The Dutch East India Company is doing its thing. And they build a new flagship, they call it the Batavia, named after their capital in the Dutch East Indies, which is now modern day Jakarta in Indonesia. They loaded up with 341 people, some mercenaries, some sailors, merchants, civilian civilians. There’s a whole host.

A: There’s a few sexy women as well.

C: Hmm.

Ana: Key to the story.

L: Yeah, unfortunately.

Ana: Yeah. Horrifyingly important.

AL One main sexy woman gets through alright.

L: Well, she gets through, I’m not sure whether alright?

Ana: The trauma would be pretty-

A: I’ll stop interrupting. I’m just excited.

Ana: Nah, this is great.

L: Exactly. Among the crew is a gentleman called Jeronimus Cornelisz which I’m almost definitely pronouncing wrong with my with my Australian accent.

Ana: I don’t think he deserves to have his name pronounced properly.

L: At the time he was already a convicted Satanist. He was a bankrupt apothecary and heretic who was fleeing a Holland at the time, while they’re on the way over there initially with a fleet of seven ships and they, a couple of them, lose sight in those in the storm. And then the world’s worst mutiny breaks out on the way over to Batavia. It’s truly- like as I was reading their plans, I was like, You guys are the dumbest fucking people.

[Laughs]

A: It’s such a stupid plan.

L: Just awful. It’s lead by Cornelisz and the captain of the ship and basically the captain of the ship as part of the mutiny steers the Batavia off course intentionally, just in a direction and this is 1628 so, Australia had not officially been discovered.

[Laughs]

L: They were heading directly for the coast of Western Australia but had no idea what was there like they just assumed it was open water and they were probably going to hit like South America or something, they had no idea. One fateful night, the ship, Batavia strikes a reef and begins to sink and spends the next week sinking slowly into the water and the crew. I don’t even know if I want to go into the orgy, but they have an orgy that night, because they think they’re all going to die the next day because they can’t see that but a hop, skip and a jump away is a small island. They cannot see in the nighttime waking up seeing the island like Oh, amazing, great, let’s unload-

A: Let’s never talk about this orgy again.

[Laughs]

Ana: The world’s most awkward morning after occurs because they see an island.

A: Okay, buttoning up the the breeches, putting the big flouncy jacket back on.

Ana: Truly it must have been, like, surely.

L: Anyway, incredible fact is that Cornelisz was actually afraid of water. So he spends the next week on the boat refusing to go into the water to swim to this island, or take a boat to his island. But finally when the Batavia is like literally breaking apart and beneath his feet, he gets over there. I think it’s like 40 people died drowning, trying to wade slash swim to this island. Like it’s a huge number, which like, Yeah, but also like really? Guys, backstroke.

Ana: The complete disrespect from Australians when can’t swim.

A: Wear your pyjamas and float.

[Laughs]

Ana: Yeah. Just find a plank and like, you know, hold it. Oh, it’s fine.

L: You’re on a boat. Like, I don’t know what your expecting. Cornelisz gets over the island. There’s already been like a small camp set up. Turns out the commander of the ship who was not part of a mutiny obviously, has already taken a boat and a bunch of people and sailed for Batavia, the city to find help and or just to get away. So he’s gone. Cornelisz is now the ranking officer slash sailor on this island so seizes power and basically goes ape, and like starts just killing so many people like, like anyone that disagrees with him. Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s considered Australia’s first serial killing. That’s how like, absolutely awful it gets.

A: I’ve heard it referred to as Australia’s first Civil War.

L: That’s fun. That’s good.

Ana: Yeah, I like that.

L: That is that is very fun. There was almost certainly other civil wars. We just don’t have them recorded.

Ana: Yeah, it’s definitely indigenous conflicts that, like talks about are included in that. But anyway, classic Australian history.

L: No, no, no it’s almost definitely called that. But like, that’s only because it’s really in history is really racist. Cornelisz basically they don’t have enough food to sustain themselves. And he decides that he wants to become a pirate king. So-

C: We all have that ambition.

A: I mean, that was part of the reason called the mutiny.

C: Oh, okay. He wanted to be a pirate king. We- I mean, you’re saying this guy is awful. But so far I’m hearing Satanist, wanna be Pirate King and I’m thinking icon but- apart from all the murders…

L: Yeah, yeah, so we thought the same

Ana: That we definitely are enjoying then yeah, the murders. So many murders really starts to like dampen the cool guy image.

L: Yeah, so it’s not-

A: Have you got the bit where he makes his followers sign in blood that they’re always going to obey oaths?

L: I, I , I didn’t have that in the notes but I’m glad you mentioned it. Yeah, basically he is like a psychopathic tyrant so they don’t have enough food. So he starts just like sailing people out onto small islands around the place and then just like leaving them there being like, oh, we’ll be back later, no intention of returning. So they all start starving.

A: Light a fire if you fine water.

L: Classic. So they’re starving and he then decides that isn’t fast enough and also there are people that haven’t been obeying his every wish. So he sets up a hospital tent but if you go there injured he just has you killed.

[Laughs]

L: And-

C: That’s one way to solve it.

L: Which is just-

Ana: Early medicine is really wack.

[Laughs]

L: Yeah, and like should not underemphasise that his followers and himself are committing horrific crimes throughout this thing. They’re not just killing people but they’re doing it in awful ways. They are assaulting the women repeatedly, you know, treating them as slaves. They kill a baby. Like as, it gets as bad as you can think, it’s real bad. And then there’s like his whole kerfuffle [Laughs] where he sails a bunch of more experienced mercenaries out to an island and he’s like ‘find water, light a fire if you do’ and they do the unthinkable and they actually find water. And they light the fire. And he doesn’t come back because he intended them to die.

A: Like, oh shit.

L: So they’re led by a guy calls Hayes. They set themselves up a camp and they’re like trained mercenaries so they actually know what they’re doing.

[Laughs]

L: And that is where, that’s where the fighting breaks out. There’s a basically like a whole back and forth. It’s a whole thing and then-

A: They have a civil war.

L: And then, exactly. And then at the eleventh hour the captain of the ship, Jacobs, comes back sailing from Batavia, the city on a boat the Sardam I think it is.

A: A ship, sorry!

L: Oh on a ship, I should – you’re correct.

[Laughs]

Ana: We’re constantly affectionately refer to all ships as boats in this household. Just to be annoying, so apologies Alix.

A: I’ve only just trained Carmella.

[Laughs]

L: S’little boat. That’s all.

Ana: She’s a big boat. Big boat.

A: I’m leaving, I’m leaving the recording.

[Laughs]

L: Sardam rocks back up, long story short has all the mutineers tried for mutiny and err, killed? I think has all of them killed. Alix, you might be able to?

A: One of the ones who gave witness and the youngest are both not executed, they are instead the first white settlers of Australia-

L: Yes.

A: Because they are just dumped on the mainland and been like ‘Just look after yourselves’.

L:Yup, which, like, iconic of Jacobs to be honest. They dump them off this, off the coast of this unknown land that they’ve just discovered, “discovered”.

Ana: Air quotes.

A: Quite literally crashed into.

Ana: Isn’t that how all discovery works? Kinda? You just sail til you hit a place, you know?

[Laughs]

L: It happens.

A: The moon.

L: But, the story continues because they come back to Batavia and they, the most beautiful woman on the boat who had suffered an awful experience, I believe it was her baby that was killed gets tried for inciting the mutiny. Yeah, like in court. And basically she is acquitted but like not by much and also there was an application submitted to the court to torture her for information and it is not- and I believe it is not [unknown] it is not known whether or not it was granted or whether it was denied. So possibility she was tortured as part of her trail. But she gets acquitted and lives.

Ana: So traumatised.

L: And is one of the reasons that women were not allowed on boats after that.

C: It takes just one bad apple.

[Laughs]

L: Temptresses and harlots.

A: Yet there’s no rule against satanists!

L: No, no.

Ana: In fact they should be in positions of command.

[Laughs]

L: I’m just baffled by the power structures of the Dutch East India Company that they’re like, ‘hmm, we’ve made this state of the art flagship, we’re going to put this guy in charge that’s fine and under him, second in command is just the worst guy you’ve ever heard of’

[Laughs]

L: A bankrupt apothecary and convicted satanist.

A: What could possibly go wrong?!

C: So yeah, that is such a messy story that you would be really unsurprised to hear there was cannibalism in there would you? And yet.

L: Yeah, see, it’s the fact that they were killing people because they didn’t have enough supplies for the long term and like, that is not the whole reason obviously, they were killing people because they enjoyed it. That was one of the reasons-

A: And because he was batshit insane.

L: Yes.

Ana: Absolutely.

L: So it’s kind of like, you’re already killing them, like.

Ana: It, like, they’re there, the bodies are there. Ya hungry or concerned.

L: Like, just go for it.

A: But it’s like, they were making such detailed records of everything that was happening, that, to the extend of, ‘huh this is how we poisoned the baby and then it didn’t work.’

L: Yeah, oh. That was one of my favourite parts. Yeah, he was such a bad apothecary that he tried to poison a baby, which like, they’re so fragile, you like-

Ana: They’re so small.

L: You give babies like the wrong temperature of milk and they’re sick. Like he tried to poison this kid and it didn’t work. Like he couldn’t even poison a baby.

Ana: Lame apothecary can’t even poison a baby. Come on.

L: Got someone else kill him instead.

C: Ugh.

Ana: Yeah, it’s dark.

L: But yeah, as you say, they were keeping super detailed records and they for sure – well, not for sure but they probably would have mentioned if they’d been having a nibble.

Ana: Or there’d be some rumour, or something.

L: Yeah.

A: And they found a lot of [L:Yeah] bodies, or well they found a lot of skeletons. Is that- I have two fun Batavia facts and by fun I mean, that’s dubious definition but we’re all friends here. The first is that percentage wise Batavia has a higher death toll than Titanic if you look at the number of people who set our versus the number of people who came out the other side.

L: Yeah which is, 341 set sail on Batavia and only 122 survived.

A: More fatal than Titanic.

C: Yeah, that’s pretty bad odds.

A: But now it’s a lovely verdant green island because the soil was filled with the bodies of the dead. I feel it was Darwin, it’s always Darwin rocking around and looking at things.

Ana: Classic.

A: But I feel that 200 years later it was Darwin who was like ‘that’s a wonderfully beautiful island’ and it’s like, yes it’s been watered with blood.

[Laughs]

Ana: Bet there’s lots of food on it now. That’s no problem.

L: The Australian archaeologists are really having a time over there. There’s lots to dig up.

A: It’s nicely protected though. [Yeah] They keep putting them back every time like a fisherman digs up a skull they just put it back.

Ana: Like, not dealing with that today.

A: Like they’ve sort of worked out who some of the people were by like the records and by the notekeeping, like ‘hmm that was a man who got hit by an axe, hmm, luckily we have these notes that say that a man got hit by an axe in this location’ then they’re like, there you go Jeronimus, you stay there.

[Laughs]

A: They just put them back.

Ana: You’ve got to love some excellent record keeping even amongst murdering mutineers.

L: Yeah.

A: It’s like they were thinking about us.

Ana: So grateful.

[Laughs]

L: You know if you wanted to be a Pirate King then you’ve got to have a good administration. That’s all I’m saying.

Ana: Yup.

L: But yes, that is a Batavia, a very very very brief overview of it. Er, there are many things to say about it.

Ana: If you wanna hear more check out our podcast episode on it in which Luca is in pain the entire time.

[Laughs]

L: It’s like e- the incompetence being matched with the psychopathy.

Ana: Brutality?

L: Yeah.

Ana: Following that very excellent horrifying story this one I’m just mentioning because I am really obsessed with Himalayan and mountaineering history – that’s come up a lot on the podcast.

L: Hmm.

Ana: And we did a two-parter on the yeti. More of it’s, kind of about how the Western idea of the yeti appeared, the history of mountaineers who claim to have seen it, that kind of thing. The little titbit I wanted to mention about that is that one of the theories about what the yeti could be was that it was local people who had been exiled or had been tried for crimes and just sent out of where they’d been living, whatever village etc, and were just living in the mountains off scraps and there’s this sort of Western spread idea that maybe these people were the yetis and that they were attacking or even eating other people. But I think it’s pretty obvious that this was just a racist colonial theory and that almost definitely that wasn’t the case at all, but I thought I’d just mention it as a fun little ‘once people thought this was cannibalism’ kind of thing.

C: Good fun! That reminds me of our episode on Yermak Timofeyevich in the Russian Ural mountains which also, in passing through the mountains there are rumours that the local people would eat anyone who walked though. So perhaps a common theme in mountaineering.

Ana: Very much. If it’s white people doing the mountaineering they’re assuming that the local people are-

C: Yes.

Ana: Trying to eat them.

C: Actually just a common theme in all colonial exploration now that I really reflect on it.

Ana: Very true.

A: It’s like, well if we’re doing it, they must be doing it too.

L: Yes I think it’s projection. That’s what I think it is.

A: Now, I think we could keep going forever really, but I think we do have to wrap up where we are today so Ana and Luca is there anything that you would like to plug to our listeners? Any upcoming projects? Any season two news?

Ana: We don’t have an exact date for when season two will come out but we are in the process of sort of doing the research and should be soon recording our first episode of the next season.

C: Hmm.

Ana: So you guys will enjoy this, we will be starting off with the Franklin Expedition-

A&C: Yay.

Ana: And doing it in serval parts because there is so bloody much to say.

[Laughs]

C: Yeah.

L: And later on in this season I’m excited to be delving into Amundsen and I’m gonna just do his whole life because like, what did that guy do that wasn’t super interesting?

[Laughs]

Ana: Absolute king.

C: I can’t wait to listen to those, I’m very exited to hear that. We’ll put a link to The Mayday Podcast in the show notes or you can look it up in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc, so do go listen dear listeners.

Ana: Yeah.

L: Yeah. And all our posts are on the Mayday Pod dot com.

Ana: Or on the Mayday Pod on Instagram or twitter and occasionally a tumblr that we don’t really update enough.

[Laughs]

L: A twitter that we should really tweet from more.

Ana: Really the instagram’s where it’s at.

C: Thank you very much for joining us, it’s been great having you.

A: This has been absolutely fabulous, and thank you for joining us from Australia! We have had to do a lot of timezones.

[Laughs]

A: But we’re digitally all in the same room.

Ana: Yeah, it was really great to do this recording, thanks for having us.

L: Yeah, thank you very much.

[Outro Music – Daniel Wackett]

C: Thank you for listening to today’s episode, featuring Nibedita Sen and The Mayday Podcast. Join us next time for all your cannibalism questions answered!

[Outro music continues]

A: Casting Lots Podcast can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr as @CastingLotsPod, and on Facebook as Casting Lots Podcast.

C: If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, don’t forget to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please rate, review and share to bring more people to the table.

A: Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast, is researched, written and recorded by Alix and Carmella, with post-production and editing also by Carmella and Alix. Art and logo design by Ashley – @Tallestfriend on Twitter and Instagram – with audio and music by Daniel Wackett – Daniel Wackett on SoundCloud and @ds_wack on Twitter. Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network – search #MorbidAudio on Twitter – and the network’s music is provided by Mikaela Moody – mikaelamoody1 on Bandcamp.

[Morbid Audio Sting – Mikaela Moody]

Ana: Um, we did want to check something before all of this. Can we swear or not? Because we swear but bleep it in our normal podcast.

Carmella: Swearing is allowed.

Alix: You can swear.

Luca: Amazing,

Ana: Great, fantastic. This podcast is Australian friendly. Thank god.

C: Yeah, I think we’ve marked it as explicit just because of the- the cannibalism. So-

A: Anything goes.

Ana: That’s a fair point.

C: Nothing’s off limits.

A: That’s a tagline.