Artwork

Innhold levert av Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis. Alt podcastinnhold, inkludert episoder, grafikk og podcastbeskrivelser, lastes opp og leveres direkte av Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis eller deres podcastplattformpartner. Hvis du tror at noen bruker det opphavsrettsbeskyttede verket ditt uten din tillatelse, kan du følge prosessen skissert her https://no.player.fm/legal.
Player FM - Podcast-app
Gå frakoblet med Player FM -appen!

S4 E4. DINNER GUESTS – Ally Wilkes & Linnea Hartsuyker

 
Del
 

Manage episode 347677324 series 2659594
Innhold levert av Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis. Alt podcastinnhold, inkludert episoder, grafikk og podcastbeskrivelser, lastes opp og leveres direkte av Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis eller deres podcastplattformpartner. Hvis du tror at noen bruker det opphavsrettsbeskyttede verket ditt uten din tillatelse, kan du følge prosessen skissert her https://no.player.fm/legal.

Why do we (being the specific group of people who make and listen to Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast) enjoy narratives about survival cannibalism so much? Authors Ally Wilkes and Linnea Hartsuyker join us to discuss the power of storytelling.

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 Ally Wilkes and Linnea Hartsuyker.

Ally Wilkes can be found on Twitter as @UnheimlichManvr and on Instagram as @av_wilkes, or visit her website to find out more: https://www.allywilkes.com/. All the White Spaces (Titan Books, 2022) is out now: https://titanbooks.com/70684-all-the-white-spaces/.

Linnea Hartsuyker can be found on Twitter and Instagram as @linneaharts, or explore her website: https://www.linneahartsuyker.com/. The Half-Drowned King is the first novel in her trilogy of books (Little, Brown, 2017): https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/linnea-hartsuyker/the-half-drowned-king/9780349142531/

For further information on the caloric content of sea lice, please refer to ‘Chances for Arctic Survival: Greely’s Expedition Revisited’ by J.M. Węslawski and J. Legeżyńska in Arctic (2002), 55(4), pp. 373-379: http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic55-4-373.pdf.

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]

C: Welcome to Episode Four. Today, we are speaking to author of All the White Spaces, Ally Wilkes, and author of The Half-Drowned King trilogy, Linnea Hartsuyker.

[Intro music continues]

C: Welcome to Episode Four. Today we are speaking to author of All The White Spaces Allie Wilkes, and author of the Half Drowned King trilogy Linnea Hartsuyker.

A: Welcome to our next guest, Ally Wilkes. Now, Ally, do you want to tell us a little about yourself and your connection to cannibalism? Do feel free to leave out anything that will get you into any form of legal trouble?

Ally: Yeah, I feel almost like I should have my lawyer present with me for this, Alix. Hi, everyone. I’m Ally Wilkes. I’m a horror writer and a long time polar exploration and grizzly polar tales enthusiast, my debut novel, All The White Spaces is out now in the UK in the US. Sadly, it doesn’t have any survival cannibalism, per se. But it’s got lots of stuff. There’ll be familiar to friends of the pod, imperial hubris, the ice, frostbite, the ice, the sad fate of animals on polar expeditions. ‘Oh, God, we’re all gonna die down here’. Portable soup and the like.

A: And ice. I don’t think you mentioned the ice.

Ally: Oh, yeah, the ice, the ice is a massive part of it.

C: It really delivers on all points, including ice.

Ally: Thank you. I like to try and cram it in there.

C: Well, I think that that’s a nice segue into a question that we would love to hear your thoughts on? Which is why do you think the poles are such a good place for horror?

Ally: Hmm, I’ve been thinking about this a lot myself, because my debut book is set in Antarctica, and my second novel will be set in the Arctic. So, it’s no secret that I’m pretty much obsessed with that sort of area. I think for me, what it is, is the combination of both the sort of agoraphobia of the poles, the wide open spaces, the nothingness, the loneliness, the emptiness of it, the weather that’s trying to kill you constantly, and the claustrophobia of the environments that people put themselves in to survive, so the ships beset on all sides, you know, the powder keg of tensions as people start overwintering and going slightly mad, or like tents and things getting worse and worse, because as we all know, once you’re in the tents, it’s probably all over for you. Let’s be fair. So it’s got that wonderful, and I think very gothic combination of the wilderness and the deathly outside, and then the claustrophobic and really pent up inside.

A: Now, one of the reviews of All The White Spaces calls it a mixture between The Terror and The Thing. And that always just puts me in mind of when my favourite real life anecdotes about Antarctica being there every year, just after the last flight has left and they’re about to overwinter there is a showing of The Thing for everyone that is left at the Antarctic base. And there is something very, not quite cathartic about that. But there’s a bit of black humour going on there surely.

C: Isn’t like when you’re at work, and they make you watch a safety training video of what not to do. [Laughter] Guys, we don’t want to see any of this.

Ally: In fact, it gets even better because on the Scott Amundson base, which is the base at the South Pole where this The Thing screening happens every winter, they also screen alongside it. Perfect double bill, The Shining. [Laughter] We definitely don’t want to see any of this guys, no axes, none of that. Thank you.

A: I don’t know if I’m remembering this correctly. But I feel that someone goes into a physical altercation over someone’s spoiling a book series at the Antarctic?

Ally: Yes, that’s right. That was- I can’t remember which base it was on. I think it was on one of the Antarctic Peninsula bases, and it devolved into fisticuffs when someone spoilt the end of a novel someone else was reading, which really does show that when you are in these sort of powder keg environments over winter, it takes the least petty thing for people to really reveal their worst selves. And of course that’s a gift for horror writers.

A: If you’re working with heightened emotions, and the minute one of those emotions is hunger…

Ally: Yeah, exactly.

A: Have a Snickers. You’re not yourself when you’re hungry, boom, it turns into just ultimate consumption. You’ve referenced book number two a couple of times, I’d like to ask what you’re allowed to say about book number two.

Ally: That’s the sort of thing that I really should have checked before coming on this podcast. [Laughter] What I think I can say is that it set in the 1800s Arctic, it does involve a massive hefty dollop of survival cannibalism. It’s very queer. It’s very spooky. And it’s playing with sort of my lifelong fascinations with both the Franklin Expedition and lesser known to many, but obviously well known to you guys the Greeley lady Franklin Bay expedition

A: Ah, he of the beautiful eyes and the threatening to shoot someone for not doing his laundry.

Ally: He of the bedraggled dressing gown. Yes, that’s him. Adolphus Greely he ya guy.

A: He is a gift to the survival cannibalism like genre just because you wouldn’t believe he really existed if we didn’t have all of this written down.

Ally: I know. It’s just that entire expedition. Everything about it just beggars belief. It almost descends into comedy fast, doesn’t it with what happens to all the rescue ships, and then the newspaper cutting they find in the cairn which is like, I’m so glad I left the expedition because they’re obviously all going to die up there. Like, yes, what a hopeful thing to be reading by the light of your single candle under your whaleboat as the winter [Laughter] as the winter comes in, one of your former mates saying I fear they will perish. Right? Thanks, guys.

A: They’re almost certainly dead. Oops. What a hell of a story is the Greeley expedition.

Ally: It’s fabulous. It’s absolutely fabulous. And I came across it through the slightly whitewashed version that prevails still in some books, I think in Ranulph Fiennes’ Cold, he still puts forward the story that they survived on sea lice bred on the corpses of their comrades, which let’s face it, that would be a tonne of sea lice to sustain the number of eventual survivors for that long. And no one who was actually on the expedition ever really, I think put that forward. That was a sort of whitewash wasn’t it afterwards by the American Navy. In fact, when they had all the exhumations, and the autopsies of people like Kislingbury-

[?]: Kislingbury.

A: Ah, Kislingbury.

Ally: It was fairly obvious that there was more than just sea lice farming going on.

C: As anyone who has listened to episode on Greely, will remember, we have done the maths on the sea lice, it just doesn’t add up to enough calories.

Ally: They’re very small and not very palatable surely?

A: I will add the link in the show notes to the wonderful JSTOR article, I found all about the calorific intake of sea lice and how that compares to an emaciated body and how one of these things is not like the other.

Ally: Excellent, excellent. I think back when I used to have a blog, which is now defunct, the only angry letter from readers I ever got was because I replicated one of the quotes from that book, which talked about sea lice. And people did actually write in to tell me, nope, they ate them. And I was like, I know, man, but it’s like, a 6000 word article, just keep reading. I’m sorry, if it’s too long.

A: Now, I don’t know if any of our listeners will be able to pick up on the site shuffling noise that we have going on but our intern Darcy here is having a little sleep on some of our equipment. And I’ll cover her ears up here. But dogs don’t have the best fates in a) history b) the sort of stories we tell generally, and c) your story specifically. So why do we do this to ourselves? I think that’s the question.

Ally: Hmm, I think it is an important part of exploration history. You can’t really get around sometimes the fact that they did take dogs or In Scott’s ill-fated case ponies, what the actual, but animals did tend to be taken to the Arctic and the Antarctic. And most expeditions had a very pragmatic plan to eat the animals as they went or eat the animals in case of extremists. So, I think the sort of stories we tell certainly if you’re talking about fictionalised accounts like my novel is, I didn’t want to do away with what was such for me a massive glaring sharing feature in all the stories told about Antarctic exploration to date, but it is, you know, for animal lovers, it is extremely upsetting. They never have a good time. And the story I find particularly most poignant myself is, of course, the horrible, horrible fate of Mrs. Chippy, who was a ship’s cat on Shackleton’s Endurance expedition. Now, Mrs. Chippy was in fact a male cat belonging to Chippy McNish the carpenter, and he shipped out very happily with the expedition got all the way into the expedition, was beset by the ice in the Weddell Sea, made it off the sinking and falling apart ship, made it onto the ice until the point at which Shackleton had to make a judgement call about how much weight could be taken, and how much food could be taken for the dogs and indeed for Mrs. Chippy, and that’s the point at which the story gets truly sad. If anyone wants to torture themselves, there is a book by Caroline Alexander called Mrs Chippy’s Final Expedition, which is told from the point of view of Mrs. Chippy-

C: No!

Ally: And it will reach straight into your chest and take your heart out. It’s terrible. Spoiler alert, it ends with Mrs. Chippy being delighted to have been given a really good meal on the ice of sardines and receive lots of cuddles and pets from all the men and getting really ready for his duties on board ship are on both the ice the next day and then being taken off behind the hammock.

C: Oh, poor Mrs. Chippy.

Ally: It’s an absolute tear jerker. It’s horrible, but it’s all true. That’s the thing. Animals traditionally never having a good time on these sorts of expeditions.

A: And it’s not just up in the ice either. I was remembering for the unfortunate- unfortunate [Laughter] They all are, sort of, sort of the running theme here. The HMS Wager with Lord Byron’s grandfather, Midshipman Byron, who was only about 16, managing to sort of adopt a local dog after where they were wrecked and it guarding his home. And then as his food supplies were running out some of the rest of the crew coming over and demanding the dog. Byron putting up a fairly weak argument, but still trying. I know Darcy don’t listen, allowing the inevitable to happen. And then a few days later coming back and scavenging the paws.

All three: Ooh.

Ally: The paws.

A: Yeah.

Ally: I mean, it’s all sorts of animals that have bad times. I mean, just thinking about the Franklin Expedition, you have the monkey called Jaco. [Laughs] A morale booster for the man until presumably one day he wasn’t. [Laughs]

C: I guess, one of the reasons that this, outside of real history, is also such a compelling feature of these narratives, from a story point of view is the fact that animals are companions. They’re often a part of the family. They really feel like your friends, especially in these, as you’re saying isolated situations where you’ve maybe not got anyone to turn to. And it’s that point of what’s the next step. What’s the next step, and they’re the logical connector between normal food and human meat?

Ally: Absolutely.

C: Darcy the dog.

Ally: I was I was thinking about this the other day, because I think one of my lifelong reasons for being interested in survival cannibalism, is that as a vegan, most people seem to think that I’m an imminent danger of crash landing on a desert island and having to make a grisly series of choices, because they come up to you at parties or wherever, and they ask you these really earnest series of questions designed to get to the root of your veganism or being a sham, based on the fact that you would eat animals on a desert island. And my position is always mate, I would eat you on a desert island. [Laughs] Like, let’s let’s not beat around the bush here. But why people think that conditions prevailing in southeast London in 2022 is anything like the Uruguayan flight disaster, I have no idea though. There we are.

A: I mean, we’ve definitely discussed that survival cannibalism definitely can be vegan. It just depends whether you’ve had that Fireside Chat beforehand or not.

Ally: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yes, I think you’re very right Carmella in that it’s that progression. Because if people can see the animals having a bad time, and people having to make that horrible choice in relation to their companion animals, you can see that it’s going to go down a pretty well-worn path. I don’t know where boots come in the natural progression or hierarchy, but somewhere in the hierarchy is boots, and somewhere is companion animals and then it’s the bodies of your fallen comrades.

C: And then it’s the not yet bodies of your-

Ally: Yes! And then it’s casting lots.

C: Wayhay.

A: Name drop.

Ally: Yup.

A: I think it’s also quite relevant, maybe less so in fiction, but definitely for us, as we’re looking at these true stories is, we tend to divide our cases into two camps, the ones who can laugh at and the ones who can’t, [Ally: Yeah], the ones who can’t laugh at you can’t laugh at at all. But generally, it’s especially for the very hubristic cases. For right or wrong, sometimes I think that emotional connection comes in more to, ‘and then they have to consume the ship’s dog’ than it does to ‘and then the very rich white man who had not listened to a single piece of advice ever realised that he had voted for the leopards eating his own face party’.

C: Oh, they keep voting for that party. Franklin voted for it twice. Why?

A: Why do they keep putting this man in charge?

C; I know.

Ally: The only anecdote I have that is even the slightly lighter side of survival cannibalism, isn’t survival cannibalism at all because of course, it’s the story of Perce Blackborow, who was a young Welsh lad who stowed away on Shackleton’s Endurance expedition, making extremely poor choices as it turns out to be on this ship. But there we go. And that was the kernel of an idea which I eventually spun into my novel All The White Spaces, but purse snuck on board in Argentina, he was discovered in the roadblock that about three days sail towards the South Georgia and whaling stations, he was hauled out Shackleton was very mad. And there became a sort of argument about what to do with him. And eventually, Shackleton said, ‘Well, we’re going to keep you on. But on the other hand, you know what we do with stowaways, when we ran out of food, we’re going to eat you first.’ And he commanded that Blackborow to be taken off to the galley, so that the cook could get a good look at him. So, he could recognise who was the first on the chopping block. And the anecdote goes that without a beat, Perce, looked at Sir Earnest Shackleton, who was quite a stout man, no Franklin, but quite physically imposing man and said, immediately ‘get a lot more meat off you wouldn’t they boss?’ [Laughter] At which point, the laughter of the crew sort of embraced Blackborow. And I think that’s lovely that they could all laugh about their impending choices to eat each other. Although, of course, it never came to that. But damn close, I have to say damn close.

A: I think Shackleton is one of the stories that you were always quite impressed that didn’t end in survival camp.

Ally: Oh, I know it’s it’s absolutely incredible. Meanwhile, of course, although again, no actual survival cannibalism, on the other side of the continent, his Ross Sea Party, which weren’t meant to be laying depots. The idea was the expedition was a two-pronged approach. He was coming in from the Weddell Sea, and it was gonna be a depo laying party going up from the Ross Sea. So from you know, north and south combined, and they were going to march of the continent, the Ross Sea Party, we’re having an arguably even worse time of it than the Endurance men, because they’re, three of them actually died on the expedition. And their dogs had possibly some of the worst dog times – Darcy, I’m so sorry- of any expedition I’ve read about if you ever want to read The Lost Men: the harrowing story of Shackleton’s Ross Sea party, it tells very vividly about this, this trail of destruction that they called the dead dog trail, and it’s just brutal.

A; Oh,

C: I’d say that that’s a trail that I don’t want to try as walking day out.

[Laughter]

Ally: It… It contains such gruesome morsels as leaving dead dogs behind or burying them and then coming back and dealing with the blood that had frozen on the snow to be used to make a sort of hoosh.

C: Hmm.

Ally: Disgusting.

C: Delicious.

A: Like a slushy.

C: A slush puppy!

A: Ooooh.

Ally: No.

C: I’ll see myself out.

Ally: Oh, now you’ve ruined the entire genre for me. Thanks.

Now, one of the things I did want to get your opinion on, especially related to your first book All The White Spaces is you have transgender protagonist and bless him he is isn’t he’s not the smartest cookie in the bunch. But I do love him-

Ally: In the words of Gordon Ramsay. He is an idiot sandwich.

[Laughter]

A: Bless Jonathan.

Ally: He’s always wrong but he’s so brave about it.

A: So, I wondered what your opinion was about the quote unquote, discoveries about the chromosomes of the body is of the Franklin Expedition. Do you think we could have had trans members of the Franklin Expedition? Could we have had female stowaways joining aboard? And then probably not having a very good time? Or is science just fallible?

C: I’d also like to point out that in our notes I’ve written this point is trans Franklin, which is a question I don’t think anyone’s ever asked in history. But Franklin?

Ally: Yeah, Franklin, what a bold would a bold question.

C: We can’t prove either way.

Ally: I think there are sort of two strands of it really the first being that we know that throughout history, trans people have existed and trans people have, in inverted commas ‘gone stealth’. And, in particular, trans men have taken part in traditionally masculine [unknown], like the American Civil War, or sailing. So, I think odds on it’s very easy to speculate that there were either female stowaways or trans men on expeditions like that simply because of the sheer balance of probability. And also what we know about, for example, the career of Dr. James Barry, who managed to evade detection of his being assigned female at birth throughout the entire have a long and very illustrious naval surgeons career. So I think we can almost I would say, take for granted that there will have been instances, although maybe lost time. What I think about those Franklin chromosomes is that I’m not entirely convinced, because I tend towards the idea that the deterioration of the DNA used, and then the amplification methods used to get a decent sample from these very old bits of tissue, might well have just lopped off the necessary sequencing. So, I don’t think I regard that as conclusive evidence but I think the argument from anecdotal evidence and common sense it is a lot stronger, frankly-

A: Frankly, nicely done.

Ally: Franklin. Yes. Although, yeah, Franklin, what if? We don’t know. I find it very fascinating that no one’s ever found the point at which Franklin was buried, because some of the Inuit testimony talks about seeing something like a concrete vault being created on King William Island stone that then hardened and became part of the other stone, and so on, so forth. So, if it’s possible that key personages were buried, and we just haven’t found them yet, who knows? Maybe one day we will dig them up and find out.

A: See, I think this is where I’m getting very back into like the good old days of debating what on earth happened up there?

Ally: Yes.

A: There was an Inuit source of some of the emaciated men carrying a box. [Ally/C: Ooh.] And the argument being they had nothing what could have been so important that they’re still carrying it? And it was thought, is that the remains of Franklin?

Ally: Oh, for God’s sake, like they are dying, they are marching down King William Island, they’re not going to make it to Back’s Great Fish River that they’re going to die as they walk. And yet they’re still carrying a coffin with them with the body of a not entirely svelte middle-aged man in it.

A: Have you met the British Navy?

Ally: Actually, yeah, I was gonna say like, how I met the British Navy several times. Yes. Unfortunately, it’s probably in its own way as crucial as all the curtains and curtain rods and other random bits and bobs that they hauled as far as the boat place.

A: He’s out there somewhere. We just don’t know where.

C: Well, he got eaten by the Tuunbaq. Guys. So…

Ally: I always feel very bad about my work being compared to The Terror because although I have read and loved the novel, I mean, it’s exactly written for people like me, who would like to read an eight page Socratic dialogue on the capacity of whaleboats, I mean, sign me up. That’s my jam. But I haven’t watched the TV show because I don’t know. I’m worried that it [Franklin voice] might interfere with my creative process, to use a Franklin voice there for a moment.

A: Yes, some of my opinions on The Terror have been a little bit wacky, shall we say? The Terror and In the Heart of the Sea have similarities.

C: Hmm.

A: They might not cover accurate historical instances of survival. cannibalism, but my god, do they look pretty.

Ally: Oh batten down the hatches, we’re going to talk about Whaleship Essex.

[Laughs]

A: I am wearing my team Pollard t-shirt.

C: Ayyy.

A: Unfairly maligned, definitely was not having sex with his aunt.

[Laughter]

C: You’ve brought this up in several of these interviews.

A: I can’t help it. I can’t help it. It’s just weird.

Ally: I’ve got a question I want to ask you guys, if I may, if I’m allowed to turn it on its head a little bit.

A+C in tandem like the sisters from The Shining: Please do.

Ally: Well, I was recently asked this in an interview and I couldn’t come up with a decent answer. Why is it that we think that there are so many Arctic expedition stories that end in survival cannibalism, and (leaving Mawson aside for a second) none in Antarctica?

A: It’s easier for the British to get to the Arctic than the Antarctic.

Ally: A solid answer. It’s the British.

C: A curse, there’s a there’s a curse on the North Pole. And not on the South Pole.

Ally: Quite possibly, the answer that I came up with after a little bit of soul searching was, I think it might be to do with the periods of time in which the… the British were mostly exploring the Arctic, and the time periods in which they were mostly exploring the Antarctic. Because Antarctic comes later, you would hope people would have learned some basic and essential lessons by then. But then on the other hand, you’ve got Scott’s blokes refusing to learn how to ski and taking ponies. So you know, all bets are off when it comes to things like that.

A: I reckon that’s what you’ve got. You’ve got earlier time periods in which it is the race for the North Pole and the race for the South Pole does come later. And you’ve also got better preservation of food, maybe not much better, and you know, pemmican’s pemmican. I think that’s where you’ll get your answer from there.

C: I do think that you’re both onto something with this being able to learn from the past, but I will remind us of our earlier conversation that Franklin, literally the same person, managed it twice, easier to learn from other people’s past mistakes than from your own. Perhaps?

Ally: He was nowhere near that survival cannibalism. That was Richardson and Back and Michel Terohaute back in there sort of like a little fun party at the back of the supply line. So you know, he probably didn’t think it could ever happen to actually him.

A: It’s just not something the British do is it?

Ally: Absolutely not, hi Charles Dickens.

[Laughter]

A: This is like just doing the ‘Best Of’ really.

[Laughter]

Ally: This is the problem. I’m, as you both know, a massive fan of the podcast and a massive fan of the topic. So yes, it’s great to listen to you when you’re cleaning on a Sunday afternoon. I will also say that, you know, scrubbing out out damn spot, etcetera, whilst you know, reading about people being picked apart with flechette and things. It’s great. It’s great. Can’t beat it.

A: We are happy to help.

Ally: Yeah, that’s my unconventional domestic goddess tip there.

C: Well, to bring things back and to a wrap? Charles Dickens, to bring it back to the subject of books and authors. Thank you very much for joining us today Ally to tell us about All The White Spaces and Book Two, which we’re very excited about. Can’t wait to read. Apart from book two is there anything else that you’d like to plug to our audience or suggests the checkout in the meantime?

Ally: Well, I suggest everyone check out All The White Spaces for a rollicking good time for all apart from the dogs and twenty something of the humans.

C: It’s a rollicking good time for the reader and I can add to that recommendation, Casting Lots are very big fans of the book. So-

Ally: Thank you very much.

A: We very much are, I think we’re like ‘friend of the podcast, it’s Ally!’

Ally: It’s me.

A: Friend of the podcast! I think that is a wrap so, thank you very much for joining us Ally.

Ally: Thank you.

A: It has been a wild ride, as it always is when we end up talking survival cannibalism. For once we’re doing it in an appropriate setting.

[Laughter]

Ally: Yes, and not outside at a cafe.

[Casting Lots theme music plays]

C: Welcome back to Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast. And our guest today is Linnea. Linnea would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and your personal connection to cannibalism?

Linnea: Sure. My name is Linnea Hartsuyker. I’m an author of historical fiction. I have a trilogy out from HarperCollins in the US and Little Brown in the UK and some other countries as well. The first book is The Half Drowned King and it’s about Viking Age, Norway. And while there is not cannibalism in it, I have long been a fan of either maybe fans the wrong word? I have been fascinated with stories of survival and people freezing to death, especially. And oftentimes, cannibalism comes into that. So especially when I discovered the literature of Arctic exploration, I became even more into this wonderful grisly subject. And I’ve been a huge fan of Casting Lots Podcast for a long time, and I’m thrilled to be able to be a guest here.

A: We’re very happy to have you here while you said that in your trilogy, you do not have any cannibalism.

L: I’m afraid not.

A: It is, it is a tragedy. But there’s always next time.

L: Exactly.

C: We’ll forgive you.

A: Cannibalism is something that is becoming more and more prevalent- there was a wonderful New York Time that sounded wrong. But it’s become more and more prevalent in popular culture. There was a New York Times article a few weeks ago, which for our listeners, considering this podcast will come out at some point in end of October/November, was around mid-August, early August, mid-August, The New York Times came out with this article about how cannibalism is on the rise, and was talking about cannibalism and media, in television and pop culture and in historical fiction. Sadly, we didn’t get a shout out although I do appreciate everyone who tweeted us and said that we should have got a shout out by the New York Times, which is a very long winded way of coming around to talk about survival cannibalism in historical fiction.

L: Yes, and I am working on a project that does involve some survival cannibalism. Hopefully, someday it will see the light of day but I’ve been thinking I should just write about the things that fascinate me and that is one of them. But it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. Because oftentimes, in fiction, when you have something like really terrible happen to people, it’s really hard not to kind of see the hand of the author in it very much. And that’s why two of my favourite books of fiction that have instances of survival cannibalism in them are historical or semi historical, and based on a real subject. So, one of those is The Terror by Dan Simmons. It’s, it’s a classic of the genre for a reason. I read the entire 700 pages in one sitting.

C: Wow.

L: Yeah, it was I was kind of stuck in a hotel room in a city I didn’t particularly want to be in. So that’s why but it was, it was like it was quite a day. And by the end like it gets, it gets real gruesome, more gruesome than the TV show gets. And I was reading quite fast to get through some of the instances of people being forced to cannibalise themselves and things like that that happened. And it it gets real gruesome. A lot of the stuff in it that happens is sort of has been attested to. And so or at least there’s there’s some idea that, that it happened and did get extremely gruesome from Inuit testimony. And so you can’t really necessarily say like, ‘Oh, it’s just the author making things as gross as possible’, being sensational. And then another book that I really enjoyed that had cannibalism, survival cannibalism, and it is Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson. And that’s kind of a slice of life of prehistoric shaman, I think living in maybe northern Canada and that’s sort of just like, there’s some superstition associated with it. But at one point, the main character and the people he is travelling with, it’s a difficult journey, one of their companions dies, and they take the body with them, and consuming the body helps them finish the journey.

And in that case, it also made sense from a perspective of that would have been a way that they needed to survive at the end of winter. Their community was near starvation, and at the end of every winter, there was always like, what are we going to have to do to make it until spring and plants start growing again, and animals come out of hibernation, so it made sense from that perspective. Otherwise, I It’s like, we’re trying to write it myself. I’ve kind of felt like, like it needs to have a really good, good reason for it to happen and be foreshadowed and be not just something that I’m doing because I find survival cannibalism fascinating. I was thinking about sort of what my favourite stories have been from the podcast and from the history of survival cannibalism, and I’m just a sucker for Victorian men going to places they shouldn’t be [C: Yep] dying horribly from being there.

[Laughter]

A: Now that is a classic of the genre.

L: It really is. It really is. And I think it’s partially because like they’re getting, there’s, there’s a lot of symmetry to that story whenever it happens, because they’re suffering from their own hubris. That’s yeah, it’s awful, but in some ways, a little bit satisfying when they’re forced to resort to cannibalism.

C: I think those are always the episodes that are the most enjoyable for us to do. Are these sort of, oh no, did the colonisers starve to death and have to eat each other? Boo-hoo.

A: Again?

L: Again. Yeah, and I mean, it’s I think it’s important to talk about the the, you know, more horrible instances of politically motivated starvation that have led to mass cannibalism, like the famines in Ukraine that Stalin caused, but those are just like, they’re, they’re depressing and horrible, and people did awful things.

A: I do have to give the warnings to my friends. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ve not started the podcast yet. I really want to but…’ Right, okay, you want to listen to the Medusa, the Andes, you want to avoid Russia, China, and North Korea, you want to avoid these ones. These are the funny light hearted ones that will work as your sort of entry into the concept. If it’s something that you struggle with, the more modern and the ones that have been enforced, rather than self-inflicted, they really are the ones that can be quite heavy when we’ve come out of recording sometimes.

L: Yeah, that makes sense. And I always appreciated that you’ve taken those subjects kind of more seriously, and dealt with them with respect. I mean, I think you’ve done that for all your subjects. But yeah, it’s I think it’s important to take those ones more seriously. I really the- the Raft of the Medusa episode is one that I really like, and also not an instance that I was familiar with before. So it made me so happy. I think I reached out to you when I was finally watching The Terror on AMC. And, and Captain crosier makes a joke about the Raft of the Medusa, before anything terrible happens. And I was like, I get it, I get the joke.

A: And that, my friends is the beauty of foreshadowing.

[Laughs]

C: Do you think then that the appeal of these ones where it’s because of their own hubris, and there’s this sort of tale of downfall, that this is what appeals as an author, when there’s this clear sort of story, and it’s almost like you’re saying, it’s like real life foreshadowing it feels like a plot coming to a satisfying resolution for the characters, in quotes, because they’re real people who sort of behaved and existed in the world. It feels like a novel in itself. A lot of these ones I find.

L I think so too. And that’s, that’s kind of why I like my favourite books that have survival cannibalism in them are either about fictionalised accounts of real things that happened, or just journalism or historical writing about things that really happened. As an author, you can kill a character at any time in any horrible way you want to, but it’s much more satisfying for a reader if it feels like it’s happened for a reason that there’s been a chain of cause and effect leading to it, rather than just something awful happening.

C: Yeah, definitely.

L So one of the things that I’ve also always been really interested in is mythology and folklore. And I have some wonderfully grisly collections of folklore from all over the world. And something that was really fascinating around stories of cannibalism is that they often really speak to the anxieties of the culture.

C: Hmm.

L: And in certain ways, I feel like even in real stories, cannibalism is never just cannibalism, it has like a meaning. It’s an incredibly potent symbol. And it doesn’t happen unless a lot of other things have gone horribly wrong. So, like there’s Inuit stories about cannibalism, where someone who’s tasted who’s even who’s done cannibalism for – done a cannibalism – for purposes of survival will then be kind of have an insatiable desire for human flesh thereafter. And I think there’s kind of a, an implied lesson in that where if you’re willing to use a human for that once, what are you capable of doing in the future? I’m not an expert and it’s just one story from one tradition, there’s a wide range of Inuit traditions and from the historical record and or the archaeological record, there have been plenty of instances of survival cannibalism in those cultures. So but then, so then I was comparing that to, like in Greek tragedy, there’s in the House of Atreus there’s a lot of cannibalism, not survival, cannibalism, the Greeks weren’t generally starving to death. But in that case, it’s a lot more to do with kind of breaking that taboos of family obligations and angering the gods. And so, it just the way it shows up in different folklore, I think, speaks to the preoccupations of the culture, and probably the way I enjoy Victorian men dying horribly has a little bit to do with some, you know, guilt and being descended from them and, and benefiting from colonisers but then also just liking to see them get there comeuppance that you can’t just try to take over the world without having something bad happened to you.

C: There’s definitely this common theme isn’t there in like in the ones that you reference and in some of the real life cases that we’ve had, where there’s this idea that once you, as you said earlier, ‘done a cannibalism’ you become a cannibal. And it’s seen as something that inherently changes you. And I’m sure that, obviously, any experience with survival, cannibalism will inherently change a person because of the trauma, but it’s not the actual eating of human flesh. In real life, cannibalism is something that you do not something that you are, but there’s a cultural preoccupation with it. It’s something that transforms your, I guess, into a cannibal. And that’s who you are now?

L: Yeah, definitely. And I think also part of the fascination with it for people and for me, and with all survival stories is like, what if I were in that circumstance? Would I be able to do that? Or would I would I choose to, to perish instead? And then what is looking at that? How does looking at that changed my opinion of myself?

A: I think there’s also something about the morality because I know that we’ve been talking and Linnea the way you were saying about how well maybe these Victorian men getting their comeuppance flew cannibalism is some sort of bitter irony. But we do have this focus, I know that we try in the podcast that anthropophagy isn’t something that has its own moral weight. And I don’t know how much this comes through in literature and fictitious representation of cannibalism, but there does always tend to be that very moralistic black or white, if you choose to eat you’re bad if you choose to die pure, you’re good. And, I mean, I also have my big thing about how, you know, there’s no moral value to surviving via cannibalism. Brackets, we’re not talking about if you murder people, close brackets, that’s a bit different. But there does seem to be an there’s a lot more of a relationship between morality and food when it comes to cannibalism, rather than maybe any other diet? So I do think in I don’t know where this thought is going, but it’s going somewhere.

L: No, I think that’s really interesting, because I think there’s a lot of a morality around food, regardless of whether you’re cannibalising or not. And, and, and when you’re talking about cannibalism, you’re, you’re heightening all the ideas around morality of consuming food. But that also reminded me of I hadn’t, for whatever reason, I hadn’t really read much about the Andean disaster also, in some ways, I know that, you know, hopefully, I have many years ahead of me, and there’s only so many cannibalism stories in the world, and I’m saving them for when I really need to.

[Laugher]

L: So I haven’t read that much about them yet. But I really appreciate it in your podcast episode about a talking about how everyone wrestled with and then found peace with the morality of it, and were absorbed by the Catholic Church. And, and I thought that was really interesting, because in a lot of other stories, you don’t hear too much about the aftermath or becomes a shameful thing. And I like that focus and that story.

A: That’s where I’m wondering with how in fiction, whether there’s this idea to subvert the traditional cannibalism equals bad person narrative, because I know, for example, especially in the TV version of the Terror, it does stick to those more traditional values, as it were.

C: With our Hickey, the bad guy, he’s the one who starts the cannibalism. Yeah.

L: Right. Yeah, I agree. And I really, really liked the TV version of it. I mean, it has flaws, but I think it tries to improve on some of the flaws of the book.

C: Yeah.

L: And a lot of the acting is really spectacular, but actually feel like the show runners were not that interested in cannibalism, except as to what it had to say about Hickey. And I feel like the whole project of that show was trying to show the different ways that people chose to approach their deaths or were forced to approach their deaths. And yeah, and so yeah, the cannibalism became a pretty strict morality play of you’re either good or bad for, for doing it. And that’s probably why it didn’t. I’m really glad it didn’t. But why it didn’t dwell on the the fate of a lot of the other members of the party who probably did and engaged in all kinds of just purely survival based cannibalism near the at the end of their lives.

A: Because obviously, from my perspective, I’d have wanted to see more of it everywhere. But I, I can see that there may have been a few issues with the narrative that it was telling.

L: Well, and I love to read about this stuff, but I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to seeing it on my screen. So that’s I’m just selfishly blind I bet they kind of cut the horror a little a little short for that. I have not seen Yellow Jackets yet, although I should watch it at some point. Have you seen it?

C: Yes, I, you know, it starts strong with some scenes of cannibalism, but then that isn’t really the focus. It’s the mystery of how they get to that point. I really enjoy it. Yeah, could do with more cannibalism.

[Laughs]

A: We say that about most media were engaging with.

C: We do.

L: Actually I was fascinated to learn recently about biblical cannibalism. In the Book of Kings, there’s a siege of Samaria by the Arameans. And there is a very frank discussion of two women who I think have have traded their sons to cannibalise them. And it’s one of those interesting things in the Bible where it’s like, I mean, it’s predicted as a horror but not moral, not that they’ve committed that much of a moral sin it is they were forced to a really, really awful circumstance. And it’s an illustration of how just how awful the circumstance they were in was, so that that one reminded me more of the Chinese cannibalism and the Ukrainian cannibalism where it’s just people in awful circumstances.

A: Siege warfare, almost always results in survival cannibalism.

L: Leah, that actually reminds me of another book that we’re cannibalism is not a main feature. But it’s a book set during the siege of Leningrad, City of Thieves by David Benioff, who went on to be one of the writers of the Game of Thrones series for HBO-

A: I thought I recognised the name.

L: Which I’ve mixed opinions about but the book is, I taught it when I taught a creative writing class, it’s pretty gruesome. Nowadays, I would have given a trigger warning for some of the stuff that happens in it but there is cannibalism happening in kind of in the background of the city because it’s under siege by the Nazis, and everyone’s starving to death. But it’s also a extremely well-constructed novel in terms of everything that’s set up in the beginning of it coming back at the end, almost to a point where it’s a little it’s like too much, but it’s I taught it because I felt like it did such a good job of being a novel, and that anyone as a creative writer could take a lot of lessons from it in terms of setting the scene and in terms of the characters and their journeys. And the way that events had happened in the beginning of the book are connected to the end, how it all wraps up in the end. Yeah, that’s City of Thieves by David Benioff, but if there’s only some like cannibalism off screen, and you didn’t want to go wandering around alone, if you didn’t want to end up in someone’s stewpot. And you probably shouldn’t buy meat at the market these days.

A: But it’s, it’s nice to have a bit of scene setting cannibalism, because I know, we’re coming back to me on my morality, black and white. But if it’s something that’s happening out of necessity, and something that is part of a background character’s life, that grounds what is quite often difficult to envisage a situation into something that is just very ordinary.

L: Yeah, yeah. It reminds me a little bit about what you had to say about I think one of the mediaeval famines where people kept on looking for it to be some sort of Christian metaphor or something like that. How you also see that in discussions of homosexuality in the past, how people look for any sort of metaphor, rather than No, no, they were sleeping together and kissing each other a lot. No, no, people were starving and eating each other and out of necessity. It’s not a metaphor for Christianity and Christ’s body, it’s just what happens.

C: But what does it really mean?

A: And this is where we’ll drop the reference to one of our favourite articles, Lovers of human flesh, homosexuality, and cannibalism and Melville’s works.

L: Oh, my goodness, yes. Now I remember you mentioning it.

A: Brings everything beautifully full circle.

L: And they were on a ship and Victorian era men doing well. Maybe not quite Victorian era but nineteenth century men being where they shouldn’t. That was reminding me about how you introduce me to the term ‘gastronomic incest’, which I do not get a chance to use very often, but well, I guess those women in the siege of Samaria swapped their sons so that they would not have to commit gastronomic incest.

A: Once you start looking for it [Laughs] there’s an excuse to say gastronomic incest everywhere. We did decide against putting gastronomical incest on any of our merch.

[Laughs]

L: That would be a tough t-shirt slash mug to explain to people. I think they also might have come to your attention because I was very upset about the Raft of the Medusa and how quickly they went to cannibalism.

C: Yes.

L: And so one of the interesting things about all these stories, I think, is who gets there faster or not and in The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, which is about the Donner party, which is is one of my favourite recent books I’ve read about an incident of survival cannibalism, he really goes into how they resorted to cannibalism rather quickly on their journey, like five days after leaving their camp or something like that. But there’s good reasons because they not only felt like they wanted to survive for themselves, but they were a rescue party.

C: Hmm.

L: And so other people’s lives were depending on them. So they went to cannibalism rather quickly in order to give themselves the energy they needed to bring help to others. I thought that was interesting the Raft of the Medusa. It’s longer ago. We have less sources about it, but it seems like they were just real drunk.

C: Yeah.

[Laughs]

Well, I mean, the best one is the 99.9%. Not true, but still reported. Elizabeth Rashleigh where they still have potatoes on board, but immediately just go straight for the member of the crew. It is almost certainly not the case. But everyone just loves it as an account so much that it becomes the Elizabeth Rashleigh, the potato boat.

L: Well, as someone who’s given the subject quite a bit of thought, I think I would think of cannibalism early and be prepared. But I’ve also put myself forward as a cannibalism etiquette opinion haver and three days is too soon. If you have potatoes, it’s too soon. And granted on Yom Kippur war, I fast for like 23 hours and would eat anything at the end of 23 hours. [Laughter] I haven’t yet you know, I like to think that I would have a little more restraints.

C: I mean, it’s easy to judge from the safety of our own homes…

[Laughs]

L: And they were really drunk on the Raft of the Medusa, just so drunk.

[Laughs]

A: The average is 10 days. So, starvation rations all the way that’s fine. After the end of starvation rations, it’s normally about 10 days of eating nothing by the time the decision is made, whether that decision is vocalised, or acted on, it’s 10 days of starvation, when you’re malnourished, and then, then you’ll know.

L: And I also I wonder how much it has to do with whether you have a body sitting around also, because if you have to decide to murder someone to feed yourself, that’s a different calculus than if there’s already a dead body there.

C: Eyeing them up, is it? Is it time?

L: I can safely say it would take me less than 10 days, there was just a dead body. I will I will admit to that I’m get hungry very easily. And they’re just going bad.

C: I mean, there’s always the one that frustrates Alix, if you’re on a boat, why don’t you just fish with them?

L: This is true. Yeah.

A: Or at least go halfsies, you’re not going to eat the hands, you’re not going to eat the head, you’re not going to eat the feet. You know what will sharks.

L: Yeah, you may as well try.

A: If you’ve got the ability to cut up a body, you have the ability to at least attempt to stab a shark.

[Laughs]

A: As the common saying goes.

[Laughs]

A: So God bless the Peggy who actually fished for their survival. {L: Indeed] She tried.

C: I think perhaps bringing it back to stories and fiction, it might be a slightly less exciting narrative to then just have months of people fishing on a boats? But maybe not. That not what Moby Dick is?

[Laughs]

A: And that’s a classic.

L: You could always not be able to catch enough fish.

C: That’s true.

A: Or you’re at first successful and then someone does the classic drink seawater goes mad and throws fishing rod the board.

C: Yeah that does happen.

L: Yes, indeed. In fact, I say as a reader of fiction, I think I would be disappointed if they didn’t try even though we have many examples of people not trying. But then I think I always like to make my characters a little more rational than people are in real life.

C: Yeah, the reader is going to be asking, why aren’t they fishing first?

A: The reader just being Alix screaming the book, ‘Don’t you know about the Peggy?’

[Laughter]

A: Although that sorry, it’s just sort of occurred to me. Thinking- Especially with the examples that you’ve been bringing up Linnea and the ones that I know of, they will tend to be land based the historical retellings of true survival cannibalism cases, I’m struggling to think of a maritime one.

C: I mean, The Terror-

A: That’s ice.

C: Yeah, there on a ship, but it’s not. They’re walking-

L: And they’re on Prince William Island. By the time the worst of the cannibalism was going down. But I guess that I appreciate how you divided up things between land, water and ice being the different places that you can be forced into survival cannibalism.

C: There’s one that I can recommend at sea, which I don’t think is based on a real story, but I need to look up the author…

L: I was just thinking of the Life of Pi.

A: Life of Pi is famously a cannibalism allegory.

L: Yeah. So I feel like it goes in for some more criticism than it deserves and or at least criticism I don’t that comes from the perspective I don’t understand like people consider it in the same breath with like The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which like they’re both allegories, but one’s an allegory for survival cannibalism and surviving against someone who really plans to eat you and the other one is an allegory for like, being your truest, best self. This [laughs] is somewhat different than focus.

C: The one that I was going to recommend is Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch. So I don’t think this is based on a true example, but informed by them. And that is a boat-based survival cannibalism case. But that’s a waiting for your friend to die so you can eat him situation.

L: Hmm. I have not even heard of that. I’ll have to add that to my TBR list.

C: I don’t think they tried to fish though. It was a while ago that I read it, so, disappointing.

L: So much of the- these disasters, like there’s hubris involved, but there’s also quite bad luck, like the Franklin Expedition encountered the, you know, a few of the worst winters that had happened in that part of the world in decades.

C: Yeah.

L: And, and so that’s, I think part of the problem for the fiction writer is, if the things that are happening, and I think I keep coming back to this, but if the things that are happening, that that get them to that situation are just bad luck, it can be not that satisfying for a reader, it has to be their fault for it to be satisfying for the reader.

C: They sort of deserved the bad luck because of something they’ve done or because of the choices they’ve made.

L: Or at least there’s like a cause and effect. And not just that, like, as happens all the time in real life stories that like a bear carried off their food or whatever. Do you at least have to see them being-

A: ‘We don’t need to have a watch for bears.’

L: Right, right.

A: ‘We know the area, we know that there are no bears around here.’ ‘But haven’t there been records of bears by the indigenous population?’ [Laughs] ‘No. What do they know? There are no bears?’

L: Right, right.

A: The only one that I have on my TBR pile I am notoriously not a big fiction reader. I’m a big nonfiction reader. But the only cannibalism book that I have on my TBR in terms of fiction is Tender Is The Flesh.

C: Ah, yes.

A: Is it survival cannibalism, or is it just heavy?

C: I don’t know whether you’re familiar with this one. Linnea.

L: I’ve heard of it. But I haven’t read it.

C: So speculative fiction in a future where I can’t remember why. But for some reason, all meat is inedible. Apart from human meat so there’s got to be human meat farms. But I mean, my point I hope the author isn’t listening, but I couldn’t get through it, because I kept going ‘well, I know that there’s a lot of other options for things to eat that aren’t meat based’. No. I just don’t think that the first the first thought would be human farms, human farms, it would be better up our peanut production.

A: Like Beyond Burgers are quite good these days.

L: Yeah, I’m not a vegetarian, but if the option we’re only human flesh or being a vegetarian, like I like portobello mushrooms, it would be fine.

A: Yeah, yeah, I’m like, as long as we can manufacture some form of cheese. I’m happy.

L: It’d be hard to do without cheese.

C: I didn’t think it was the old animals with dead I think it was just that we couldn’t eat them.

L: And to any question about whether that survival cannibalism, I wrote a very weird theory that the reason there was so much human sacrifice in the Aztec culture is because there weren’t any large animals to eat in the area. And so people were getting their nutrients from eating human flesh. But that seems very specious reasoning they had they had capybaras and alpacas and things like that and-

C: Yeah, is there much basis for that one?

L: No and well, I think that there would and also, there’s one of the interesting things about the historical cases of cannibalism is there’s pretty strong signs when a when a body has been cannibalised. There, it leaves very distinctive markings on the bones.

C: Definitely.

L: As I think as you pointed out, in your episode on prehistoric cannibalism.

C: There’s a lot of ways to tell whether a body has been eaten.

A: By today, I would say that if we’re coming across human remains that have signs of cannibalism we’re more inclined to talk about it, especially the more historical they are.

L: Yeah.

A: I think it’s that distance that comes into how willing we are to say, yeah, these people definitely did some cannibalism.

L: That’s probably true.

C: Yeah.

L: I have one more book I wanted to mention, which is Ice Ghosts by Paul Watson, which is nonfiction book about the search for the Franklin Expedition.

C: Hmm.

L: And well, it’s kind of only mentions cannibalism in terms of the stories that the Inuit were telling and the histories they were telling about what happened to the Franklin Expedition, I have to imagine that the overlap of people interested in the Franklin Expedition, and people who listened to the podcast is a circle.

C: Yes!

L: I have to recommend it, because it’s so fascinating how they did eventually find it and how vital the Inuit testimony was to finding both ships and it really kind of puts a button on that story in an interesting way. So I really recommend it.

A: I think Franklin is just so fascinating, because it does have this true beginning, middle and end. And so it would be been a mystery for so long, that has actually finally been uncovered and wrapped up. But there’s still just enough that we don’t know.

L: And it’s so recent that I’m really hoping for some beautiful coffee table book of photographs from the from the the diving that they will have done around the ships and things like that. I’m sure if something like that hasn’t come out already something like that is in the offing. Those of us who, like polar exploration and people dying horribly in the Northern waste, pay handsomely for beautiful books about it.

A: Take a look, and Google for the museum exhibition images of Erebus’s bell. Beautiful.

L: Yeah .And the cold waters preserve everything so well, too. Yeah. So I think I’ve covered the things that I wanted to mention. And again, I really appreciate you letting me come on as more of a fan than a an expert in any way, except for hopefully an expert in making my eventual novel about cannibalism be satisfying for readers who are interested in cannibalism, and those for whom there it might not be the reason they pick up the book.

A: It might not be to their taste?

L: Ahh.

[Laughs]

C: Before Alix makes any more puns. I’m going to bring us to a close there. Thank you so much for joining us on Linnea and for sharing those recommendations which I’m sure our audience will love delivering further into. Did you have anything that you’d like to plug obviously there’s your trilogy starting with the Half-Drowned King. Was there anything else that you’d like to point our audience towards, though, whilst we have you here?

L: I think the only thing I plug is is my trilogy of um of Viking novels there. There’s no cannibalism in them, as I said, but they’re pretty violent, and-

[Laughs]

A: We’ll take that!

L: And yeah, I think the Vikings probably, whenever they just like every other human in the history of the world when they were in a survival situation, would have practiced cannibalism but I did not put them in that situation so…

A: It’s happening off-screen.

L: Yes.

C: Go read some books. That’s the message of this episode.

[Outro Music – Daniel Wackett]

A: Thank you for listening to today’s episode, featuring Ally Wilkes and Linnea Hartsuyker. Next time, we’ll be speaking to an author of speculative fiction, and a podcast duo who love a disaster.

[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]

Ally: One of my author friends who I introduced to the podcast – like, in my sort of circle of people who’ve already been published, were all very sort of like sanguine about ‘oh yeah, your book is out, blah blah blah’ – the one thing that I’m doing that she is, like, continually really excited by is ‘so you’re going on Casting Lots?’ Like, that’s–

[Carmella and Alix laugh]

Ally: That’s like her sort of ‘Oh my God, you rockstar!’ moment.

[Carmella cackles]

Ally: And I’m like ‘yep! Yep!’

A: You’ve made your debt, you’ve made your Casting Lots debut.

Ally: I know! Who amongst the horror writing community can say the same?

  continue reading

57 episoder

Artwork
iconDel
 
Manage episode 347677324 series 2659594
Innhold levert av Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis. Alt podcastinnhold, inkludert episoder, grafikk og podcastbeskrivelser, lastes opp og leveres direkte av Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis eller deres podcastplattformpartner. Hvis du tror at noen bruker det opphavsrettsbeskyttede verket ditt uten din tillatelse, kan du følge prosessen skissert her https://no.player.fm/legal.

Why do we (being the specific group of people who make and listen to Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast) enjoy narratives about survival cannibalism so much? Authors Ally Wilkes and Linnea Hartsuyker join us to discuss the power of storytelling.

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 Ally Wilkes and Linnea Hartsuyker.

Ally Wilkes can be found on Twitter as @UnheimlichManvr and on Instagram as @av_wilkes, or visit her website to find out more: https://www.allywilkes.com/. All the White Spaces (Titan Books, 2022) is out now: https://titanbooks.com/70684-all-the-white-spaces/.

Linnea Hartsuyker can be found on Twitter and Instagram as @linneaharts, or explore her website: https://www.linneahartsuyker.com/. The Half-Drowned King is the first novel in her trilogy of books (Little, Brown, 2017): https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/linnea-hartsuyker/the-half-drowned-king/9780349142531/

For further information on the caloric content of sea lice, please refer to ‘Chances for Arctic Survival: Greely’s Expedition Revisited’ by J.M. Węslawski and J. Legeżyńska in Arctic (2002), 55(4), pp. 373-379: http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic55-4-373.pdf.

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]

C: Welcome to Episode Four. Today, we are speaking to author of All the White Spaces, Ally Wilkes, and author of The Half-Drowned King trilogy, Linnea Hartsuyker.

[Intro music continues]

C: Welcome to Episode Four. Today we are speaking to author of All The White Spaces Allie Wilkes, and author of the Half Drowned King trilogy Linnea Hartsuyker.

A: Welcome to our next guest, Ally Wilkes. Now, Ally, do you want to tell us a little about yourself and your connection to cannibalism? Do feel free to leave out anything that will get you into any form of legal trouble?

Ally: Yeah, I feel almost like I should have my lawyer present with me for this, Alix. Hi, everyone. I’m Ally Wilkes. I’m a horror writer and a long time polar exploration and grizzly polar tales enthusiast, my debut novel, All The White Spaces is out now in the UK in the US. Sadly, it doesn’t have any survival cannibalism, per se. But it’s got lots of stuff. There’ll be familiar to friends of the pod, imperial hubris, the ice, frostbite, the ice, the sad fate of animals on polar expeditions. ‘Oh, God, we’re all gonna die down here’. Portable soup and the like.

A: And ice. I don’t think you mentioned the ice.

Ally: Oh, yeah, the ice, the ice is a massive part of it.

C: It really delivers on all points, including ice.

Ally: Thank you. I like to try and cram it in there.

C: Well, I think that that’s a nice segue into a question that we would love to hear your thoughts on? Which is why do you think the poles are such a good place for horror?

Ally: Hmm, I’ve been thinking about this a lot myself, because my debut book is set in Antarctica, and my second novel will be set in the Arctic. So, it’s no secret that I’m pretty much obsessed with that sort of area. I think for me, what it is, is the combination of both the sort of agoraphobia of the poles, the wide open spaces, the nothingness, the loneliness, the emptiness of it, the weather that’s trying to kill you constantly, and the claustrophobia of the environments that people put themselves in to survive, so the ships beset on all sides, you know, the powder keg of tensions as people start overwintering and going slightly mad, or like tents and things getting worse and worse, because as we all know, once you’re in the tents, it’s probably all over for you. Let’s be fair. So it’s got that wonderful, and I think very gothic combination of the wilderness and the deathly outside, and then the claustrophobic and really pent up inside.

A: Now, one of the reviews of All The White Spaces calls it a mixture between The Terror and The Thing. And that always just puts me in mind of when my favourite real life anecdotes about Antarctica being there every year, just after the last flight has left and they’re about to overwinter there is a showing of The Thing for everyone that is left at the Antarctic base. And there is something very, not quite cathartic about that. But there’s a bit of black humour going on there surely.

C: Isn’t like when you’re at work, and they make you watch a safety training video of what not to do. [Laughter] Guys, we don’t want to see any of this.

Ally: In fact, it gets even better because on the Scott Amundson base, which is the base at the South Pole where this The Thing screening happens every winter, they also screen alongside it. Perfect double bill, The Shining. [Laughter] We definitely don’t want to see any of this guys, no axes, none of that. Thank you.

A: I don’t know if I’m remembering this correctly. But I feel that someone goes into a physical altercation over someone’s spoiling a book series at the Antarctic?

Ally: Yes, that’s right. That was- I can’t remember which base it was on. I think it was on one of the Antarctic Peninsula bases, and it devolved into fisticuffs when someone spoilt the end of a novel someone else was reading, which really does show that when you are in these sort of powder keg environments over winter, it takes the least petty thing for people to really reveal their worst selves. And of course that’s a gift for horror writers.

A: If you’re working with heightened emotions, and the minute one of those emotions is hunger…

Ally: Yeah, exactly.

A: Have a Snickers. You’re not yourself when you’re hungry, boom, it turns into just ultimate consumption. You’ve referenced book number two a couple of times, I’d like to ask what you’re allowed to say about book number two.

Ally: That’s the sort of thing that I really should have checked before coming on this podcast. [Laughter] What I think I can say is that it set in the 1800s Arctic, it does involve a massive hefty dollop of survival cannibalism. It’s very queer. It’s very spooky. And it’s playing with sort of my lifelong fascinations with both the Franklin Expedition and lesser known to many, but obviously well known to you guys the Greeley lady Franklin Bay expedition

A: Ah, he of the beautiful eyes and the threatening to shoot someone for not doing his laundry.

Ally: He of the bedraggled dressing gown. Yes, that’s him. Adolphus Greely he ya guy.

A: He is a gift to the survival cannibalism like genre just because you wouldn’t believe he really existed if we didn’t have all of this written down.

Ally: I know. It’s just that entire expedition. Everything about it just beggars belief. It almost descends into comedy fast, doesn’t it with what happens to all the rescue ships, and then the newspaper cutting they find in the cairn which is like, I’m so glad I left the expedition because they’re obviously all going to die up there. Like, yes, what a hopeful thing to be reading by the light of your single candle under your whaleboat as the winter [Laughter] as the winter comes in, one of your former mates saying I fear they will perish. Right? Thanks, guys.

A: They’re almost certainly dead. Oops. What a hell of a story is the Greeley expedition.

Ally: It’s fabulous. It’s absolutely fabulous. And I came across it through the slightly whitewashed version that prevails still in some books, I think in Ranulph Fiennes’ Cold, he still puts forward the story that they survived on sea lice bred on the corpses of their comrades, which let’s face it, that would be a tonne of sea lice to sustain the number of eventual survivors for that long. And no one who was actually on the expedition ever really, I think put that forward. That was a sort of whitewash wasn’t it afterwards by the American Navy. In fact, when they had all the exhumations, and the autopsies of people like Kislingbury-

[?]: Kislingbury.

A: Ah, Kislingbury.

Ally: It was fairly obvious that there was more than just sea lice farming going on.

C: As anyone who has listened to episode on Greely, will remember, we have done the maths on the sea lice, it just doesn’t add up to enough calories.

Ally: They’re very small and not very palatable surely?

A: I will add the link in the show notes to the wonderful JSTOR article, I found all about the calorific intake of sea lice and how that compares to an emaciated body and how one of these things is not like the other.

Ally: Excellent, excellent. I think back when I used to have a blog, which is now defunct, the only angry letter from readers I ever got was because I replicated one of the quotes from that book, which talked about sea lice. And people did actually write in to tell me, nope, they ate them. And I was like, I know, man, but it’s like, a 6000 word article, just keep reading. I’m sorry, if it’s too long.

A: Now, I don’t know if any of our listeners will be able to pick up on the site shuffling noise that we have going on but our intern Darcy here is having a little sleep on some of our equipment. And I’ll cover her ears up here. But dogs don’t have the best fates in a) history b) the sort of stories we tell generally, and c) your story specifically. So why do we do this to ourselves? I think that’s the question.

Ally: Hmm, I think it is an important part of exploration history. You can’t really get around sometimes the fact that they did take dogs or In Scott’s ill-fated case ponies, what the actual, but animals did tend to be taken to the Arctic and the Antarctic. And most expeditions had a very pragmatic plan to eat the animals as they went or eat the animals in case of extremists. So, I think the sort of stories we tell certainly if you’re talking about fictionalised accounts like my novel is, I didn’t want to do away with what was such for me a massive glaring sharing feature in all the stories told about Antarctic exploration to date, but it is, you know, for animal lovers, it is extremely upsetting. They never have a good time. And the story I find particularly most poignant myself is, of course, the horrible, horrible fate of Mrs. Chippy, who was a ship’s cat on Shackleton’s Endurance expedition. Now, Mrs. Chippy was in fact a male cat belonging to Chippy McNish the carpenter, and he shipped out very happily with the expedition got all the way into the expedition, was beset by the ice in the Weddell Sea, made it off the sinking and falling apart ship, made it onto the ice until the point at which Shackleton had to make a judgement call about how much weight could be taken, and how much food could be taken for the dogs and indeed for Mrs. Chippy, and that’s the point at which the story gets truly sad. If anyone wants to torture themselves, there is a book by Caroline Alexander called Mrs Chippy’s Final Expedition, which is told from the point of view of Mrs. Chippy-

C: No!

Ally: And it will reach straight into your chest and take your heart out. It’s terrible. Spoiler alert, it ends with Mrs. Chippy being delighted to have been given a really good meal on the ice of sardines and receive lots of cuddles and pets from all the men and getting really ready for his duties on board ship are on both the ice the next day and then being taken off behind the hammock.

C: Oh, poor Mrs. Chippy.

Ally: It’s an absolute tear jerker. It’s horrible, but it’s all true. That’s the thing. Animals traditionally never having a good time on these sorts of expeditions.

A: And it’s not just up in the ice either. I was remembering for the unfortunate- unfortunate [Laughter] They all are, sort of, sort of the running theme here. The HMS Wager with Lord Byron’s grandfather, Midshipman Byron, who was only about 16, managing to sort of adopt a local dog after where they were wrecked and it guarding his home. And then as his food supplies were running out some of the rest of the crew coming over and demanding the dog. Byron putting up a fairly weak argument, but still trying. I know Darcy don’t listen, allowing the inevitable to happen. And then a few days later coming back and scavenging the paws.

All three: Ooh.

Ally: The paws.

A: Yeah.

Ally: I mean, it’s all sorts of animals that have bad times. I mean, just thinking about the Franklin Expedition, you have the monkey called Jaco. [Laughs] A morale booster for the man until presumably one day he wasn’t. [Laughs]

C: I guess, one of the reasons that this, outside of real history, is also such a compelling feature of these narratives, from a story point of view is the fact that animals are companions. They’re often a part of the family. They really feel like your friends, especially in these, as you’re saying isolated situations where you’ve maybe not got anyone to turn to. And it’s that point of what’s the next step. What’s the next step, and they’re the logical connector between normal food and human meat?

Ally: Absolutely.

C: Darcy the dog.

Ally: I was I was thinking about this the other day, because I think one of my lifelong reasons for being interested in survival cannibalism, is that as a vegan, most people seem to think that I’m an imminent danger of crash landing on a desert island and having to make a grisly series of choices, because they come up to you at parties or wherever, and they ask you these really earnest series of questions designed to get to the root of your veganism or being a sham, based on the fact that you would eat animals on a desert island. And my position is always mate, I would eat you on a desert island. [Laughs] Like, let’s let’s not beat around the bush here. But why people think that conditions prevailing in southeast London in 2022 is anything like the Uruguayan flight disaster, I have no idea though. There we are.

A: I mean, we’ve definitely discussed that survival cannibalism definitely can be vegan. It just depends whether you’ve had that Fireside Chat beforehand or not.

Ally: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yes, I think you’re very right Carmella in that it’s that progression. Because if people can see the animals having a bad time, and people having to make that horrible choice in relation to their companion animals, you can see that it’s going to go down a pretty well-worn path. I don’t know where boots come in the natural progression or hierarchy, but somewhere in the hierarchy is boots, and somewhere is companion animals and then it’s the bodies of your fallen comrades.

C: And then it’s the not yet bodies of your-

Ally: Yes! And then it’s casting lots.

C: Wayhay.

A: Name drop.

Ally: Yup.

A: I think it’s also quite relevant, maybe less so in fiction, but definitely for us, as we’re looking at these true stories is, we tend to divide our cases into two camps, the ones who can laugh at and the ones who can’t, [Ally: Yeah], the ones who can’t laugh at you can’t laugh at at all. But generally, it’s especially for the very hubristic cases. For right or wrong, sometimes I think that emotional connection comes in more to, ‘and then they have to consume the ship’s dog’ than it does to ‘and then the very rich white man who had not listened to a single piece of advice ever realised that he had voted for the leopards eating his own face party’.

C: Oh, they keep voting for that party. Franklin voted for it twice. Why?

A: Why do they keep putting this man in charge?

C; I know.

Ally: The only anecdote I have that is even the slightly lighter side of survival cannibalism, isn’t survival cannibalism at all because of course, it’s the story of Perce Blackborow, who was a young Welsh lad who stowed away on Shackleton’s Endurance expedition, making extremely poor choices as it turns out to be on this ship. But there we go. And that was the kernel of an idea which I eventually spun into my novel All The White Spaces, but purse snuck on board in Argentina, he was discovered in the roadblock that about three days sail towards the South Georgia and whaling stations, he was hauled out Shackleton was very mad. And there became a sort of argument about what to do with him. And eventually, Shackleton said, ‘Well, we’re going to keep you on. But on the other hand, you know what we do with stowaways, when we ran out of food, we’re going to eat you first.’ And he commanded that Blackborow to be taken off to the galley, so that the cook could get a good look at him. So, he could recognise who was the first on the chopping block. And the anecdote goes that without a beat, Perce, looked at Sir Earnest Shackleton, who was quite a stout man, no Franklin, but quite physically imposing man and said, immediately ‘get a lot more meat off you wouldn’t they boss?’ [Laughter] At which point, the laughter of the crew sort of embraced Blackborow. And I think that’s lovely that they could all laugh about their impending choices to eat each other. Although, of course, it never came to that. But damn close, I have to say damn close.

A: I think Shackleton is one of the stories that you were always quite impressed that didn’t end in survival camp.

Ally: Oh, I know it’s it’s absolutely incredible. Meanwhile, of course, although again, no actual survival cannibalism, on the other side of the continent, his Ross Sea Party, which weren’t meant to be laying depots. The idea was the expedition was a two-pronged approach. He was coming in from the Weddell Sea, and it was gonna be a depo laying party going up from the Ross Sea. So from you know, north and south combined, and they were going to march of the continent, the Ross Sea Party, we’re having an arguably even worse time of it than the Endurance men, because they’re, three of them actually died on the expedition. And their dogs had possibly some of the worst dog times – Darcy, I’m so sorry- of any expedition I’ve read about if you ever want to read The Lost Men: the harrowing story of Shackleton’s Ross Sea party, it tells very vividly about this, this trail of destruction that they called the dead dog trail, and it’s just brutal.

A; Oh,

C: I’d say that that’s a trail that I don’t want to try as walking day out.

[Laughter]

Ally: It… It contains such gruesome morsels as leaving dead dogs behind or burying them and then coming back and dealing with the blood that had frozen on the snow to be used to make a sort of hoosh.

C: Hmm.

Ally: Disgusting.

C: Delicious.

A: Like a slushy.

C: A slush puppy!

A: Ooooh.

Ally: No.

C: I’ll see myself out.

Ally: Oh, now you’ve ruined the entire genre for me. Thanks.

Now, one of the things I did want to get your opinion on, especially related to your first book All The White Spaces is you have transgender protagonist and bless him he is isn’t he’s not the smartest cookie in the bunch. But I do love him-

Ally: In the words of Gordon Ramsay. He is an idiot sandwich.

[Laughter]

A: Bless Jonathan.

Ally: He’s always wrong but he’s so brave about it.

A: So, I wondered what your opinion was about the quote unquote, discoveries about the chromosomes of the body is of the Franklin Expedition. Do you think we could have had trans members of the Franklin Expedition? Could we have had female stowaways joining aboard? And then probably not having a very good time? Or is science just fallible?

C: I’d also like to point out that in our notes I’ve written this point is trans Franklin, which is a question I don’t think anyone’s ever asked in history. But Franklin?

Ally: Yeah, Franklin, what a bold would a bold question.

C: We can’t prove either way.

Ally: I think there are sort of two strands of it really the first being that we know that throughout history, trans people have existed and trans people have, in inverted commas ‘gone stealth’. And, in particular, trans men have taken part in traditionally masculine [unknown], like the American Civil War, or sailing. So, I think odds on it’s very easy to speculate that there were either female stowaways or trans men on expeditions like that simply because of the sheer balance of probability. And also what we know about, for example, the career of Dr. James Barry, who managed to evade detection of his being assigned female at birth throughout the entire have a long and very illustrious naval surgeons career. So I think we can almost I would say, take for granted that there will have been instances, although maybe lost time. What I think about those Franklin chromosomes is that I’m not entirely convinced, because I tend towards the idea that the deterioration of the DNA used, and then the amplification methods used to get a decent sample from these very old bits of tissue, might well have just lopped off the necessary sequencing. So, I don’t think I regard that as conclusive evidence but I think the argument from anecdotal evidence and common sense it is a lot stronger, frankly-

A: Frankly, nicely done.

Ally: Franklin. Yes. Although, yeah, Franklin, what if? We don’t know. I find it very fascinating that no one’s ever found the point at which Franklin was buried, because some of the Inuit testimony talks about seeing something like a concrete vault being created on King William Island stone that then hardened and became part of the other stone, and so on, so forth. So, if it’s possible that key personages were buried, and we just haven’t found them yet, who knows? Maybe one day we will dig them up and find out.

A: See, I think this is where I’m getting very back into like the good old days of debating what on earth happened up there?

Ally: Yes.

A: There was an Inuit source of some of the emaciated men carrying a box. [Ally/C: Ooh.] And the argument being they had nothing what could have been so important that they’re still carrying it? And it was thought, is that the remains of Franklin?

Ally: Oh, for God’s sake, like they are dying, they are marching down King William Island, they’re not going to make it to Back’s Great Fish River that they’re going to die as they walk. And yet they’re still carrying a coffin with them with the body of a not entirely svelte middle-aged man in it.

A: Have you met the British Navy?

Ally: Actually, yeah, I was gonna say like, how I met the British Navy several times. Yes. Unfortunately, it’s probably in its own way as crucial as all the curtains and curtain rods and other random bits and bobs that they hauled as far as the boat place.

A: He’s out there somewhere. We just don’t know where.

C: Well, he got eaten by the Tuunbaq. Guys. So…

Ally: I always feel very bad about my work being compared to The Terror because although I have read and loved the novel, I mean, it’s exactly written for people like me, who would like to read an eight page Socratic dialogue on the capacity of whaleboats, I mean, sign me up. That’s my jam. But I haven’t watched the TV show because I don’t know. I’m worried that it [Franklin voice] might interfere with my creative process, to use a Franklin voice there for a moment.

A: Yes, some of my opinions on The Terror have been a little bit wacky, shall we say? The Terror and In the Heart of the Sea have similarities.

C: Hmm.

A: They might not cover accurate historical instances of survival. cannibalism, but my god, do they look pretty.

Ally: Oh batten down the hatches, we’re going to talk about Whaleship Essex.

[Laughs]

A: I am wearing my team Pollard t-shirt.

C: Ayyy.

A: Unfairly maligned, definitely was not having sex with his aunt.

[Laughter]

C: You’ve brought this up in several of these interviews.

A: I can’t help it. I can’t help it. It’s just weird.

Ally: I’ve got a question I want to ask you guys, if I may, if I’m allowed to turn it on its head a little bit.

A+C in tandem like the sisters from The Shining: Please do.

Ally: Well, I was recently asked this in an interview and I couldn’t come up with a decent answer. Why is it that we think that there are so many Arctic expedition stories that end in survival cannibalism, and (leaving Mawson aside for a second) none in Antarctica?

A: It’s easier for the British to get to the Arctic than the Antarctic.

Ally: A solid answer. It’s the British.

C: A curse, there’s a there’s a curse on the North Pole. And not on the South Pole.

Ally: Quite possibly, the answer that I came up with after a little bit of soul searching was, I think it might be to do with the periods of time in which the… the British were mostly exploring the Arctic, and the time periods in which they were mostly exploring the Antarctic. Because Antarctic comes later, you would hope people would have learned some basic and essential lessons by then. But then on the other hand, you’ve got Scott’s blokes refusing to learn how to ski and taking ponies. So you know, all bets are off when it comes to things like that.

A: I reckon that’s what you’ve got. You’ve got earlier time periods in which it is the race for the North Pole and the race for the South Pole does come later. And you’ve also got better preservation of food, maybe not much better, and you know, pemmican’s pemmican. I think that’s where you’ll get your answer from there.

C: I do think that you’re both onto something with this being able to learn from the past, but I will remind us of our earlier conversation that Franklin, literally the same person, managed it twice, easier to learn from other people’s past mistakes than from your own. Perhaps?

Ally: He was nowhere near that survival cannibalism. That was Richardson and Back and Michel Terohaute back in there sort of like a little fun party at the back of the supply line. So you know, he probably didn’t think it could ever happen to actually him.

A: It’s just not something the British do is it?

Ally: Absolutely not, hi Charles Dickens.

[Laughter]

A: This is like just doing the ‘Best Of’ really.

[Laughter]

Ally: This is the problem. I’m, as you both know, a massive fan of the podcast and a massive fan of the topic. So yes, it’s great to listen to you when you’re cleaning on a Sunday afternoon. I will also say that, you know, scrubbing out out damn spot, etcetera, whilst you know, reading about people being picked apart with flechette and things. It’s great. It’s great. Can’t beat it.

A: We are happy to help.

Ally: Yeah, that’s my unconventional domestic goddess tip there.

C: Well, to bring things back and to a wrap? Charles Dickens, to bring it back to the subject of books and authors. Thank you very much for joining us today Ally to tell us about All The White Spaces and Book Two, which we’re very excited about. Can’t wait to read. Apart from book two is there anything else that you’d like to plug to our audience or suggests the checkout in the meantime?

Ally: Well, I suggest everyone check out All The White Spaces for a rollicking good time for all apart from the dogs and twenty something of the humans.

C: It’s a rollicking good time for the reader and I can add to that recommendation, Casting Lots are very big fans of the book. So-

Ally: Thank you very much.

A: We very much are, I think we’re like ‘friend of the podcast, it’s Ally!’

Ally: It’s me.

A: Friend of the podcast! I think that is a wrap so, thank you very much for joining us Ally.

Ally: Thank you.

A: It has been a wild ride, as it always is when we end up talking survival cannibalism. For once we’re doing it in an appropriate setting.

[Laughter]

Ally: Yes, and not outside at a cafe.

[Casting Lots theme music plays]

C: Welcome back to Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast. And our guest today is Linnea. Linnea would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself and your personal connection to cannibalism?

Linnea: Sure. My name is Linnea Hartsuyker. I’m an author of historical fiction. I have a trilogy out from HarperCollins in the US and Little Brown in the UK and some other countries as well. The first book is The Half Drowned King and it’s about Viking Age, Norway. And while there is not cannibalism in it, I have long been a fan of either maybe fans the wrong word? I have been fascinated with stories of survival and people freezing to death, especially. And oftentimes, cannibalism comes into that. So especially when I discovered the literature of Arctic exploration, I became even more into this wonderful grisly subject. And I’ve been a huge fan of Casting Lots Podcast for a long time, and I’m thrilled to be able to be a guest here.

A: We’re very happy to have you here while you said that in your trilogy, you do not have any cannibalism.

L: I’m afraid not.

A: It is, it is a tragedy. But there’s always next time.

L: Exactly.

C: We’ll forgive you.

A: Cannibalism is something that is becoming more and more prevalent- there was a wonderful New York Time that sounded wrong. But it’s become more and more prevalent in popular culture. There was a New York Times article a few weeks ago, which for our listeners, considering this podcast will come out at some point in end of October/November, was around mid-August, early August, mid-August, The New York Times came out with this article about how cannibalism is on the rise, and was talking about cannibalism and media, in television and pop culture and in historical fiction. Sadly, we didn’t get a shout out although I do appreciate everyone who tweeted us and said that we should have got a shout out by the New York Times, which is a very long winded way of coming around to talk about survival cannibalism in historical fiction.

L: Yes, and I am working on a project that does involve some survival cannibalism. Hopefully, someday it will see the light of day but I’ve been thinking I should just write about the things that fascinate me and that is one of them. But it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. Because oftentimes, in fiction, when you have something like really terrible happen to people, it’s really hard not to kind of see the hand of the author in it very much. And that’s why two of my favourite books of fiction that have instances of survival cannibalism in them are historical or semi historical, and based on a real subject. So, one of those is The Terror by Dan Simmons. It’s, it’s a classic of the genre for a reason. I read the entire 700 pages in one sitting.

C: Wow.

L: Yeah, it was I was kind of stuck in a hotel room in a city I didn’t particularly want to be in. So that’s why but it was, it was like it was quite a day. And by the end like it gets, it gets real gruesome, more gruesome than the TV show gets. And I was reading quite fast to get through some of the instances of people being forced to cannibalise themselves and things like that that happened. And it it gets real gruesome. A lot of the stuff in it that happens is sort of has been attested to. And so or at least there’s there’s some idea that, that it happened and did get extremely gruesome from Inuit testimony. And so you can’t really necessarily say like, ‘Oh, it’s just the author making things as gross as possible’, being sensational. And then another book that I really enjoyed that had cannibalism, survival cannibalism, and it is Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson. And that’s kind of a slice of life of prehistoric shaman, I think living in maybe northern Canada and that’s sort of just like, there’s some superstition associated with it. But at one point, the main character and the people he is travelling with, it’s a difficult journey, one of their companions dies, and they take the body with them, and consuming the body helps them finish the journey.

And in that case, it also made sense from a perspective of that would have been a way that they needed to survive at the end of winter. Their community was near starvation, and at the end of every winter, there was always like, what are we going to have to do to make it until spring and plants start growing again, and animals come out of hibernation, so it made sense from that perspective. Otherwise, I It’s like, we’re trying to write it myself. I’ve kind of felt like, like it needs to have a really good, good reason for it to happen and be foreshadowed and be not just something that I’m doing because I find survival cannibalism fascinating. I was thinking about sort of what my favourite stories have been from the podcast and from the history of survival cannibalism, and I’m just a sucker for Victorian men going to places they shouldn’t be [C: Yep] dying horribly from being there.

[Laughter]

A: Now that is a classic of the genre.

L: It really is. It really is. And I think it’s partially because like they’re getting, there’s, there’s a lot of symmetry to that story whenever it happens, because they’re suffering from their own hubris. That’s yeah, it’s awful, but in some ways, a little bit satisfying when they’re forced to resort to cannibalism.

C: I think those are always the episodes that are the most enjoyable for us to do. Are these sort of, oh no, did the colonisers starve to death and have to eat each other? Boo-hoo.

A: Again?

L: Again. Yeah, and I mean, it’s I think it’s important to talk about the the, you know, more horrible instances of politically motivated starvation that have led to mass cannibalism, like the famines in Ukraine that Stalin caused, but those are just like, they’re, they’re depressing and horrible, and people did awful things.

A: I do have to give the warnings to my friends. ‘I’m really sorry. I’ve not started the podcast yet. I really want to but…’ Right, okay, you want to listen to the Medusa, the Andes, you want to avoid Russia, China, and North Korea, you want to avoid these ones. These are the funny light hearted ones that will work as your sort of entry into the concept. If it’s something that you struggle with, the more modern and the ones that have been enforced, rather than self-inflicted, they really are the ones that can be quite heavy when we’ve come out of recording sometimes.

L: Yeah, that makes sense. And I always appreciated that you’ve taken those subjects kind of more seriously, and dealt with them with respect. I mean, I think you’ve done that for all your subjects. But yeah, it’s I think it’s important to take those ones more seriously. I really the- the Raft of the Medusa episode is one that I really like, and also not an instance that I was familiar with before. So it made me so happy. I think I reached out to you when I was finally watching The Terror on AMC. And, and Captain crosier makes a joke about the Raft of the Medusa, before anything terrible happens. And I was like, I get it, I get the joke.

A: And that, my friends is the beauty of foreshadowing.

[Laughs]

C: Do you think then that the appeal of these ones where it’s because of their own hubris, and there’s this sort of tale of downfall, that this is what appeals as an author, when there’s this clear sort of story, and it’s almost like you’re saying, it’s like real life foreshadowing it feels like a plot coming to a satisfying resolution for the characters, in quotes, because they’re real people who sort of behaved and existed in the world. It feels like a novel in itself. A lot of these ones I find.

L I think so too. And that’s, that’s kind of why I like my favourite books that have survival cannibalism in them are either about fictionalised accounts of real things that happened, or just journalism or historical writing about things that really happened. As an author, you can kill a character at any time in any horrible way you want to, but it’s much more satisfying for a reader if it feels like it’s happened for a reason that there’s been a chain of cause and effect leading to it, rather than just something awful happening.

C: Yeah, definitely.

L So one of the things that I’ve also always been really interested in is mythology and folklore. And I have some wonderfully grisly collections of folklore from all over the world. And something that was really fascinating around stories of cannibalism is that they often really speak to the anxieties of the culture.

C: Hmm.

L: And in certain ways, I feel like even in real stories, cannibalism is never just cannibalism, it has like a meaning. It’s an incredibly potent symbol. And it doesn’t happen unless a lot of other things have gone horribly wrong. So, like there’s Inuit stories about cannibalism, where someone who’s tasted who’s even who’s done cannibalism for – done a cannibalism – for purposes of survival will then be kind of have an insatiable desire for human flesh thereafter. And I think there’s kind of a, an implied lesson in that where if you’re willing to use a human for that once, what are you capable of doing in the future? I’m not an expert and it’s just one story from one tradition, there’s a wide range of Inuit traditions and from the historical record and or the archaeological record, there have been plenty of instances of survival cannibalism in those cultures. So but then, so then I was comparing that to, like in Greek tragedy, there’s in the House of Atreus there’s a lot of cannibalism, not survival, cannibalism, the Greeks weren’t generally starving to death. But in that case, it’s a lot more to do with kind of breaking that taboos of family obligations and angering the gods. And so, it just the way it shows up in different folklore, I think, speaks to the preoccupations of the culture, and probably the way I enjoy Victorian men dying horribly has a little bit to do with some, you know, guilt and being descended from them and, and benefiting from colonisers but then also just liking to see them get there comeuppance that you can’t just try to take over the world without having something bad happened to you.

C: There’s definitely this common theme isn’t there in like in the ones that you reference and in some of the real life cases that we’ve had, where there’s this idea that once you, as you said earlier, ‘done a cannibalism’ you become a cannibal. And it’s seen as something that inherently changes you. And I’m sure that, obviously, any experience with survival, cannibalism will inherently change a person because of the trauma, but it’s not the actual eating of human flesh. In real life, cannibalism is something that you do not something that you are, but there’s a cultural preoccupation with it. It’s something that transforms your, I guess, into a cannibal. And that’s who you are now?

L: Yeah, definitely. And I think also part of the fascination with it for people and for me, and with all survival stories is like, what if I were in that circumstance? Would I be able to do that? Or would I would I choose to, to perish instead? And then what is looking at that? How does looking at that changed my opinion of myself?

A: I think there’s also something about the morality because I know that we’ve been talking and Linnea the way you were saying about how well maybe these Victorian men getting their comeuppance flew cannibalism is some sort of bitter irony. But we do have this focus, I know that we try in the podcast that anthropophagy isn’t something that has its own moral weight. And I don’t know how much this comes through in literature and fictitious representation of cannibalism, but there does always tend to be that very moralistic black or white, if you choose to eat you’re bad if you choose to die pure, you’re good. And, I mean, I also have my big thing about how, you know, there’s no moral value to surviving via cannibalism. Brackets, we’re not talking about if you murder people, close brackets, that’s a bit different. But there does seem to be an there’s a lot more of a relationship between morality and food when it comes to cannibalism, rather than maybe any other diet? So I do think in I don’t know where this thought is going, but it’s going somewhere.

L: No, I think that’s really interesting, because I think there’s a lot of a morality around food, regardless of whether you’re cannibalising or not. And, and, and when you’re talking about cannibalism, you’re, you’re heightening all the ideas around morality of consuming food. But that also reminded me of I hadn’t, for whatever reason, I hadn’t really read much about the Andean disaster also, in some ways, I know that, you know, hopefully, I have many years ahead of me, and there’s only so many cannibalism stories in the world, and I’m saving them for when I really need to.

[Laugher]

L: So I haven’t read that much about them yet. But I really appreciate it in your podcast episode about a talking about how everyone wrestled with and then found peace with the morality of it, and were absorbed by the Catholic Church. And, and I thought that was really interesting, because in a lot of other stories, you don’t hear too much about the aftermath or becomes a shameful thing. And I like that focus and that story.

A: That’s where I’m wondering with how in fiction, whether there’s this idea to subvert the traditional cannibalism equals bad person narrative, because I know, for example, especially in the TV version of the Terror, it does stick to those more traditional values, as it were.

C: With our Hickey, the bad guy, he’s the one who starts the cannibalism. Yeah.

L: Right. Yeah, I agree. And I really, really liked the TV version of it. I mean, it has flaws, but I think it tries to improve on some of the flaws of the book.

C: Yeah.

L: And a lot of the acting is really spectacular, but actually feel like the show runners were not that interested in cannibalism, except as to what it had to say about Hickey. And I feel like the whole project of that show was trying to show the different ways that people chose to approach their deaths or were forced to approach their deaths. And yeah, and so yeah, the cannibalism became a pretty strict morality play of you’re either good or bad for, for doing it. And that’s probably why it didn’t. I’m really glad it didn’t. But why it didn’t dwell on the the fate of a lot of the other members of the party who probably did and engaged in all kinds of just purely survival based cannibalism near the at the end of their lives.

A: Because obviously, from my perspective, I’d have wanted to see more of it everywhere. But I, I can see that there may have been a few issues with the narrative that it was telling.

L: Well, and I love to read about this stuff, but I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to seeing it on my screen. So that’s I’m just selfishly blind I bet they kind of cut the horror a little a little short for that. I have not seen Yellow Jackets yet, although I should watch it at some point. Have you seen it?

C: Yes, I, you know, it starts strong with some scenes of cannibalism, but then that isn’t really the focus. It’s the mystery of how they get to that point. I really enjoy it. Yeah, could do with more cannibalism.

[Laughs]

A: We say that about most media were engaging with.

C: We do.

L: Actually I was fascinated to learn recently about biblical cannibalism. In the Book of Kings, there’s a siege of Samaria by the Arameans. And there is a very frank discussion of two women who I think have have traded their sons to cannibalise them. And it’s one of those interesting things in the Bible where it’s like, I mean, it’s predicted as a horror but not moral, not that they’ve committed that much of a moral sin it is they were forced to a really, really awful circumstance. And it’s an illustration of how just how awful the circumstance they were in was, so that that one reminded me more of the Chinese cannibalism and the Ukrainian cannibalism where it’s just people in awful circumstances.

A: Siege warfare, almost always results in survival cannibalism.

L: Leah, that actually reminds me of another book that we’re cannibalism is not a main feature. But it’s a book set during the siege of Leningrad, City of Thieves by David Benioff, who went on to be one of the writers of the Game of Thrones series for HBO-

A: I thought I recognised the name.

L: Which I’ve mixed opinions about but the book is, I taught it when I taught a creative writing class, it’s pretty gruesome. Nowadays, I would have given a trigger warning for some of the stuff that happens in it but there is cannibalism happening in kind of in the background of the city because it’s under siege by the Nazis, and everyone’s starving to death. But it’s also a extremely well-constructed novel in terms of everything that’s set up in the beginning of it coming back at the end, almost to a point where it’s a little it’s like too much, but it’s I taught it because I felt like it did such a good job of being a novel, and that anyone as a creative writer could take a lot of lessons from it in terms of setting the scene and in terms of the characters and their journeys. And the way that events had happened in the beginning of the book are connected to the end, how it all wraps up in the end. Yeah, that’s City of Thieves by David Benioff, but if there’s only some like cannibalism off screen, and you didn’t want to go wandering around alone, if you didn’t want to end up in someone’s stewpot. And you probably shouldn’t buy meat at the market these days.

A: But it’s, it’s nice to have a bit of scene setting cannibalism, because I know, we’re coming back to me on my morality, black and white. But if it’s something that’s happening out of necessity, and something that is part of a background character’s life, that grounds what is quite often difficult to envisage a situation into something that is just very ordinary.

L: Yeah, yeah. It reminds me a little bit about what you had to say about I think one of the mediaeval famines where people kept on looking for it to be some sort of Christian metaphor or something like that. How you also see that in discussions of homosexuality in the past, how people look for any sort of metaphor, rather than No, no, they were sleeping together and kissing each other a lot. No, no, people were starving and eating each other and out of necessity. It’s not a metaphor for Christianity and Christ’s body, it’s just what happens.

C: But what does it really mean?

A: And this is where we’ll drop the reference to one of our favourite articles, Lovers of human flesh, homosexuality, and cannibalism and Melville’s works.

L: Oh, my goodness, yes. Now I remember you mentioning it.

A: Brings everything beautifully full circle.

L: And they were on a ship and Victorian era men doing well. Maybe not quite Victorian era but nineteenth century men being where they shouldn’t. That was reminding me about how you introduce me to the term ‘gastronomic incest’, which I do not get a chance to use very often, but well, I guess those women in the siege of Samaria swapped their sons so that they would not have to commit gastronomic incest.

A: Once you start looking for it [Laughs] there’s an excuse to say gastronomic incest everywhere. We did decide against putting gastronomical incest on any of our merch.

[Laughs]

L: That would be a tough t-shirt slash mug to explain to people. I think they also might have come to your attention because I was very upset about the Raft of the Medusa and how quickly they went to cannibalism.

C: Yes.

L: And so one of the interesting things about all these stories, I think, is who gets there faster or not and in The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, which is about the Donner party, which is is one of my favourite recent books I’ve read about an incident of survival cannibalism, he really goes into how they resorted to cannibalism rather quickly on their journey, like five days after leaving their camp or something like that. But there’s good reasons because they not only felt like they wanted to survive for themselves, but they were a rescue party.

C: Hmm.

L: And so other people’s lives were depending on them. So they went to cannibalism rather quickly in order to give themselves the energy they needed to bring help to others. I thought that was interesting the Raft of the Medusa. It’s longer ago. We have less sources about it, but it seems like they were just real drunk.

C: Yeah.

[Laughs]

Well, I mean, the best one is the 99.9%. Not true, but still reported. Elizabeth Rashleigh where they still have potatoes on board, but immediately just go straight for the member of the crew. It is almost certainly not the case. But everyone just loves it as an account so much that it becomes the Elizabeth Rashleigh, the potato boat.

L: Well, as someone who’s given the subject quite a bit of thought, I think I would think of cannibalism early and be prepared. But I’ve also put myself forward as a cannibalism etiquette opinion haver and three days is too soon. If you have potatoes, it’s too soon. And granted on Yom Kippur war, I fast for like 23 hours and would eat anything at the end of 23 hours. [Laughter] I haven’t yet you know, I like to think that I would have a little more restraints.

C: I mean, it’s easy to judge from the safety of our own homes…

[Laughs]

L: And they were really drunk on the Raft of the Medusa, just so drunk.

[Laughs]

A: The average is 10 days. So, starvation rations all the way that’s fine. After the end of starvation rations, it’s normally about 10 days of eating nothing by the time the decision is made, whether that decision is vocalised, or acted on, it’s 10 days of starvation, when you’re malnourished, and then, then you’ll know.

L: And I also I wonder how much it has to do with whether you have a body sitting around also, because if you have to decide to murder someone to feed yourself, that’s a different calculus than if there’s already a dead body there.

C: Eyeing them up, is it? Is it time?

L: I can safely say it would take me less than 10 days, there was just a dead body. I will I will admit to that I’m get hungry very easily. And they’re just going bad.

C: I mean, there’s always the one that frustrates Alix, if you’re on a boat, why don’t you just fish with them?

L: This is true. Yeah.

A: Or at least go halfsies, you’re not going to eat the hands, you’re not going to eat the head, you’re not going to eat the feet. You know what will sharks.

L: Yeah, you may as well try.

A: If you’ve got the ability to cut up a body, you have the ability to at least attempt to stab a shark.

[Laughs]

A: As the common saying goes.

[Laughs]

A: So God bless the Peggy who actually fished for their survival. {L: Indeed] She tried.

C: I think perhaps bringing it back to stories and fiction, it might be a slightly less exciting narrative to then just have months of people fishing on a boats? But maybe not. That not what Moby Dick is?

[Laughs]

A: And that’s a classic.

L: You could always not be able to catch enough fish.

C: That’s true.

A: Or you’re at first successful and then someone does the classic drink seawater goes mad and throws fishing rod the board.

C: Yeah that does happen.

L: Yes, indeed. In fact, I say as a reader of fiction, I think I would be disappointed if they didn’t try even though we have many examples of people not trying. But then I think I always like to make my characters a little more rational than people are in real life.

C: Yeah, the reader is going to be asking, why aren’t they fishing first?

A: The reader just being Alix screaming the book, ‘Don’t you know about the Peggy?’

[Laughter]

A: Although that sorry, it’s just sort of occurred to me. Thinking- Especially with the examples that you’ve been bringing up Linnea and the ones that I know of, they will tend to be land based the historical retellings of true survival cannibalism cases, I’m struggling to think of a maritime one.

C: I mean, The Terror-

A: That’s ice.

C: Yeah, there on a ship, but it’s not. They’re walking-

L: And they’re on Prince William Island. By the time the worst of the cannibalism was going down. But I guess that I appreciate how you divided up things between land, water and ice being the different places that you can be forced into survival cannibalism.

C: There’s one that I can recommend at sea, which I don’t think is based on a real story, but I need to look up the author…

L: I was just thinking of the Life of Pi.

A: Life of Pi is famously a cannibalism allegory.

L: Yeah. So I feel like it goes in for some more criticism than it deserves and or at least criticism I don’t that comes from the perspective I don’t understand like people consider it in the same breath with like The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, which like they’re both allegories, but one’s an allegory for survival cannibalism and surviving against someone who really plans to eat you and the other one is an allegory for like, being your truest, best self. This [laughs] is somewhat different than focus.

C: The one that I was going to recommend is Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch. So I don’t think this is based on a true example, but informed by them. And that is a boat-based survival cannibalism case. But that’s a waiting for your friend to die so you can eat him situation.

L: Hmm. I have not even heard of that. I’ll have to add that to my TBR list.

C: I don’t think they tried to fish though. It was a while ago that I read it, so, disappointing.

L: So much of the- these disasters, like there’s hubris involved, but there’s also quite bad luck, like the Franklin Expedition encountered the, you know, a few of the worst winters that had happened in that part of the world in decades.

C: Yeah.

L: And, and so that’s, I think part of the problem for the fiction writer is, if the things that are happening, and I think I keep coming back to this, but if the things that are happening, that that get them to that situation are just bad luck, it can be not that satisfying for a reader, it has to be their fault for it to be satisfying for the reader.

C: They sort of deserved the bad luck because of something they’ve done or because of the choices they’ve made.

L: Or at least there’s like a cause and effect. And not just that, like, as happens all the time in real life stories that like a bear carried off their food or whatever. Do you at least have to see them being-

A: ‘We don’t need to have a watch for bears.’

L: Right, right.

A: ‘We know the area, we know that there are no bears around here.’ ‘But haven’t there been records of bears by the indigenous population?’ [Laughs] ‘No. What do they know? There are no bears?’

L: Right, right.

A: The only one that I have on my TBR pile I am notoriously not a big fiction reader. I’m a big nonfiction reader. But the only cannibalism book that I have on my TBR in terms of fiction is Tender Is The Flesh.

C: Ah, yes.

A: Is it survival cannibalism, or is it just heavy?

C: I don’t know whether you’re familiar with this one. Linnea.

L: I’ve heard of it. But I haven’t read it.

C: So speculative fiction in a future where I can’t remember why. But for some reason, all meat is inedible. Apart from human meat so there’s got to be human meat farms. But I mean, my point I hope the author isn’t listening, but I couldn’t get through it, because I kept going ‘well, I know that there’s a lot of other options for things to eat that aren’t meat based’. No. I just don’t think that the first the first thought would be human farms, human farms, it would be better up our peanut production.

A: Like Beyond Burgers are quite good these days.

L: Yeah, I’m not a vegetarian, but if the option we’re only human flesh or being a vegetarian, like I like portobello mushrooms, it would be fine.

A: Yeah, yeah, I’m like, as long as we can manufacture some form of cheese. I’m happy.

L: It’d be hard to do without cheese.

C: I didn’t think it was the old animals with dead I think it was just that we couldn’t eat them.

L: And to any question about whether that survival cannibalism, I wrote a very weird theory that the reason there was so much human sacrifice in the Aztec culture is because there weren’t any large animals to eat in the area. And so people were getting their nutrients from eating human flesh. But that seems very specious reasoning they had they had capybaras and alpacas and things like that and-

C: Yeah, is there much basis for that one?

L: No and well, I think that there would and also, there’s one of the interesting things about the historical cases of cannibalism is there’s pretty strong signs when a when a body has been cannibalised. There, it leaves very distinctive markings on the bones.

C: Definitely.

L: As I think as you pointed out, in your episode on prehistoric cannibalism.

C: There’s a lot of ways to tell whether a body has been eaten.

A: By today, I would say that if we’re coming across human remains that have signs of cannibalism we’re more inclined to talk about it, especially the more historical they are.

L: Yeah.

A: I think it’s that distance that comes into how willing we are to say, yeah, these people definitely did some cannibalism.

L: That’s probably true.

C: Yeah.

L: I have one more book I wanted to mention, which is Ice Ghosts by Paul Watson, which is nonfiction book about the search for the Franklin Expedition.

C: Hmm.

L: And well, it’s kind of only mentions cannibalism in terms of the stories that the Inuit were telling and the histories they were telling about what happened to the Franklin Expedition, I have to imagine that the overlap of people interested in the Franklin Expedition, and people who listened to the podcast is a circle.

C: Yes!

L: I have to recommend it, because it’s so fascinating how they did eventually find it and how vital the Inuit testimony was to finding both ships and it really kind of puts a button on that story in an interesting way. So I really recommend it.

A: I think Franklin is just so fascinating, because it does have this true beginning, middle and end. And so it would be been a mystery for so long, that has actually finally been uncovered and wrapped up. But there’s still just enough that we don’t know.

L: And it’s so recent that I’m really hoping for some beautiful coffee table book of photographs from the from the the diving that they will have done around the ships and things like that. I’m sure if something like that hasn’t come out already something like that is in the offing. Those of us who, like polar exploration and people dying horribly in the Northern waste, pay handsomely for beautiful books about it.

A: Take a look, and Google for the museum exhibition images of Erebus’s bell. Beautiful.

L: Yeah .And the cold waters preserve everything so well, too. Yeah. So I think I’ve covered the things that I wanted to mention. And again, I really appreciate you letting me come on as more of a fan than a an expert in any way, except for hopefully an expert in making my eventual novel about cannibalism be satisfying for readers who are interested in cannibalism, and those for whom there it might not be the reason they pick up the book.

A: It might not be to their taste?

L: Ahh.

[Laughs]

C: Before Alix makes any more puns. I’m going to bring us to a close there. Thank you so much for joining us on Linnea and for sharing those recommendations which I’m sure our audience will love delivering further into. Did you have anything that you’d like to plug obviously there’s your trilogy starting with the Half-Drowned King. Was there anything else that you’d like to point our audience towards, though, whilst we have you here?

L: I think the only thing I plug is is my trilogy of um of Viking novels there. There’s no cannibalism in them, as I said, but they’re pretty violent, and-

[Laughs]

A: We’ll take that!

L: And yeah, I think the Vikings probably, whenever they just like every other human in the history of the world when they were in a survival situation, would have practiced cannibalism but I did not put them in that situation so…

A: It’s happening off-screen.

L: Yes.

C: Go read some books. That’s the message of this episode.

[Outro Music – Daniel Wackett]

A: Thank you for listening to today’s episode, featuring Ally Wilkes and Linnea Hartsuyker. Next time, we’ll be speaking to an author of speculative fiction, and a podcast duo who love a disaster.

[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]

Ally: One of my author friends who I introduced to the podcast – like, in my sort of circle of people who’ve already been published, were all very sort of like sanguine about ‘oh yeah, your book is out, blah blah blah’ – the one thing that I’m doing that she is, like, continually really excited by is ‘so you’re going on Casting Lots?’ Like, that’s–

[Carmella and Alix laugh]

Ally: That’s like her sort of ‘Oh my God, you rockstar!’ moment.

[Carmella cackles]

Ally: And I’m like ‘yep! Yep!’

A: You’ve made your debt, you’ve made your Casting Lots debut.

Ally: I know! Who amongst the horror writing community can say the same?

  continue reading

57 episoder

Alle episoder

×
 
Loading …

Velkommen til Player FM!

Player FM scanner netter for høykvalitets podcaster som du kan nyte nå. Det er den beste podcastappen og fungerer på Android, iPhone og internett. Registrer deg for å synkronisere abonnement på flere enheter.

 

Hurtigreferanseguide

Copyright 2024 | Sitemap | Personvern | Vilkår for bruk | | opphavsrett