PJ Vogt

You're, I would say, chronically open-minded to the point where presented with most rules, particularly most social rules, you're the person I know who's liable to ask questions

Why?

How come?

Are we sure?

Does that seem like a fair characterization?

I think that's a fair characterization.

So then, before we even begin, I just want to make sure that I know what page we're starting on.

Like, what is your feeling about people eating people?

Okay, so caliphate being caliphate is already a step ahead of me, defining some of our categories here.

But I do have a plan for how this is going to go.

Well, not a plan, a menu.

Today, I'm going to serve you three stories of cannibalism.

The amuse-bouche is a historical story, possibly the origin story of our modern fear of cannibals.

For the main course, I have a contemporary story of a person eating a person.

And for dessert, a mystery set in remote Papua New Guinea.

Okay, so the first story I told to Keltha, The Conquest.

Okay, so okay, this story happens alongside the Western entry into the Americas, and I think it is where we got the modern meme of cannibalism, like the ubiquitous cartoon image that Hannah and I talked about, this guy with a bone in his nose cooking an explorer in a steaming cauldron.

That image, like the origin story of that image, I think I have a story of that for you.

Yes.

Okay.