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On the natural history (and future) of cannibalism.

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After your body has started to consume itself, and literally that's what happens when you get to the point of extreme starvation - either you're going to die or you're going to eat the dead. I think that while that may still occur - cultural cannibalism, culinary cannibalism, cannibalism as a response to warfare - that's probably pretty well done with.

Zoologist Bill Schutt examines the long, bloody, somewhat recent history of cannibalism - as survival tactic, religious ritual, and media subject - and looks beyond pulp sensationalism to humanity's shifting values around the subject, from cannibalism's practice around the ancient world to the Greeks who took it off the menu.

Bill wrote the book Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History from Algonquin Books.

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Bill Schutt

Bill Schutt is a biology professor at LIU Post and a research associate in residence at the American Museum of Natural History.

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