PJ Vogt

In India, where my editor Shruti grew up, a lot of people are born and raised vegetarian.

They've never eaten a bite of meat.

Can you imagine how gross meat would be if you'd never eaten it?

Or what inhospitable ideas you might harbor about the ropey, wet texture of animal muscles towards the people who compliment crispy skin?

Shruti told me in the school lunchrooms there, she'd often see a kid react to their neighbor eating chicken the way a kid here might react to their neighbor eating balut.

Disgust, the real disgust you feel in your stomach, doesn't feel like it comes from culture.

Our disgust feels hardwired.

But that's just not true.

If it were, Otto would have just been born knowing he can't eat people.

Instead, it's a rule he's being taught.

And a rule he'll soon understand is so important, he'll forget that he ever had to learn it at all.

Otto, thank you for coming in to ask your question.

Hannah, thank you for coming in and bringing Otto.

Otto, you're free.

There's something about eating a person, even if they're already dead, that we've all agreed is something to avoid.

And we are not contesting that rule.

But we are interrogating it.

We're just asking questions about it.

After the break, three stories about cannibalism, at least one of which I think will complicate your certainty about the anti-cannibalism feelings that you think you were born with.

We'll see.