S4 E1. DINNER GUESTS – Stacy Hackner & Paul Cowdell

Are you ready for an extra bite? In this bonus mini-season, Alix and Carmella invite some special dinner guests to the table.

Today, bioarchaeologist Stacy Hackner and folklorist Paul Cowdell join us to talk cannibal ballads, coprolites and the custom of the sea.

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 Stacy Hackner and Paul Cowdell, and special thanks to Chris Wilson of the London Sea Shanty Collective for vocals.

Stacy Hackner can be found on Twitter as @stacytg, or check out her drag projects on Instagram as @professor_q_cumber.

Paul Cowdell can be found on Twitter as @PaulCowdell, and on his blog: http://humphreywithhisflail.blogspot.com/. ‘Cannibal Ballads: not just a question of taste’ was first published in 2010 in the Folk Music Journal 9(5), pp. 723-747. Read it online here: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Cannibal+ballads%3a+not+just+a+question+of+taste+…-a0213983185.

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

Logo by Ashley. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @tallestfriend.

Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network. Network sting by Mikaela Moody. Find her on Bandcamp as mikaelamoody1.

TRANSCRIPT

Alix: Have you ever been really, really hungry?

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

A: I’m Alix.

C: I’m Carmella.

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

[Intro Music – Daniel Wackett]

A: Welcome to our bite-sized Season 4. We’re expanding the menu for this mini-season by having some old friends for dinner. This episode, we’ll be speaking to bioarchaeologist Stacy Hackner and folklorist Paul Cowdell.

[Intro music continues]

C: Welcome back to Casting Lots, and today we have Stacy Hackner joining us. Stacy, would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, your connection to survival cannibalism, why you’re here today?

A: Asking for someone’s connection to survival cannibalism does sound a bit like we’ve gone very far in an interview direction I didn’t think we’d land.

Stacy: I don’t think it’s an unusual question. I am Stacy Hackner. I am a bioarchaeologist; I study dead people in archaeological contexts. Mostly I dig up bones or look at mummies, and I have always been interested in the idea of eating people, because people in my profession tend to be really weird anyway and spend a lot of time thinking about our own deaths and burials, and when I was about 15 I started asking people, ‘Would you eat your own limbs if they were chopped off in a clean industrial accident?’, and I don’t know why. And from then I kind of realised that most of the people who said ‘Yes, I would definitely do that – also I would eat yours’ were my good friends. And from then I just became more interested in it.

C: I think that those are the kind of conversations that test a friendship and prove a friendship.

A: Like, if you’ve not been wandering around on sort of a hike with friends and gone ‘Oh, yeah no we’d eat you first,’ then is it a real friendship?

S: Yes, exactly. I would happily, you know, give my limbs to someone who was starving.

A: See, I’m not sure if I’d give my limbs… But I would definitely consent for them to be eaten if I was no longer using them.

[Stacy laughs]

C: Not just,