kuru
DisorderWikipedia
19
MENTIONS
13
EPISODES
13
PODCASTS
Search complete. 19 mentions across 13 episodes found for "kuru".
Sep 15, 2026
Gene DecodeGUEST
They continue to do this.
Gene DecodeGUEST
They've stopped quite a few, like the Kuru body that was in LA that they removed, that would've started a Z- a Z world.
Gene DecodeGUEST
And then the nuke that was in Seattle, I believe it was.
Gene DecodeGUEST
And but one, another one in La Palma that would've wiped out the east coast of the Americas.
speaker_0NARRATOR
That cause had a name.
speaker_0NARRATOR
And that name, by the time Anne's hand began to shake, was kuru.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Kuru was not just a sickness.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Kuru was what happened when an unknown sorcerer, who lived somewhere in the forest, turned his power against you.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The Fore believed in five distinct souls residing in every person.
speaker_0NARRATOR
One of them was called the kwila, the soul of flesh and decay, the most dangerous of the five.
14 MINS LATER
speaker_0NARRATOR
The tissue from the 12-year-old's brain, injected into a chimpanzee, had transmitted the disease.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The chimpanzee developed kuru.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
Through the mid-20th century, members of the community would, if possible, make their funerary preferences known in advance, sometimes requesting that family members gather to consume the body after death.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
Tragically, though these rituals honored the deceased, they also spread a deadly disease known as Kuru through the community.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
Between the fictionalized stories, verifiable practices, and big gaps that still exist in our knowledge, there's no one history of cannibalism.
Addison AndersonNARRATOR
But we do know that people have been eating each other, volunteering themselves to be eaten, and accusing others of eating people for millennia.
Cammie CurtinGUEST
Traditionally, people actually ritualistically consumed the brains of dead relatives.
Cammie CurtinGUEST
And unfortunately, in this case, led to an epidemic of a deadly prion disease called Kuru in that population.
Cammie CurtinGUEST
So, you know, even specifically maladaptive norms may persist.
Richard WestcottHOST
Tim, you've talked a little bit about how the Greeks adapted when the Roman Empire basically took control.
Dave WhiteHOST
Just in the regular grocery store.
Dave WhiteHOST
That's how you get Kuru.
Dave WhiteHOST
Mm-hmm.
Dave WhiteHOST
Well, I think you have to eat people for that.
speaker_1NARRATOR
The most startling moments came when they discussed New Guinea.
speaker_1NARRATOR
Diamond described endocannibalism, ritualized eating of dead relatives, and the spread of Kuru, a fatal prion disease.
speaker_1NARRATOR
Babies were exposed through brain tissue during funeral rites.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Rogan must have been horrified.
Tom DrakeHOST
It's the most inconvenient terminal, including England, that I've ever been in.
Tom DrakeHOST
But what interested me is, well, who's Kuru? Who is K-U-R-U? Never heard of them.
Tom DrakeHOST
Never heard of them.
Tom DrakeHOST
It's a privately held American footwear company.
Tom DrakeHOST
It's just this guy, Brett Rasmussen.
Tom DrakeHOST
And he did...
Tom DrakeHOST
Company did a study and got free publicity because now we're talking about the study and we're talking about Kuru, K-U-R-O.
Tom DrakeHOST
They are supposedly the most comfortable sneakers in the world, according to they say that.
Alison HorrocksHOST
36 were in the United States.
Alison HorrocksHOST
These were people who had been treated as children Some died decades later as adults of a disease they were given by a medicine made out of dead people And here's the thing about prion disease It is transmitted by consuming or absorbing infected nervous tissue That is the same mechanism by which Kuru spread among the Foray people of Papua New Guinea in the 20th century through funerary practices involving the bodies of their dead, and a foray became for decades the example everyone cited when they wanted to talk about cannibalism.
Alison HorrocksHOST
In the United States, there is a legal, largely unregulated market in donated bodies for non-transplant use.
Alison HorrocksHOST
The body broker industry, in which a body donated by a grieving family under one understanding can be divided and sold under quite another.
CourtneyHOST
It's kind of associated with rabies in humans.
Jada SellersHOST
Yes, and Kuru, which I learned very recently.
Jada SellersHOST
And I just think that that's highly fascinating because it's an actual thing.
Jada SellersHOST
This has been proven that this isn't just a cryptid.
Mike RobertsonHOST
mean, we've already had the cannibals.
Mike RobertsonHOST
Then she would have had Kuru, the cannibals disease.
Mike RobertsonHOST
Or me, Jack Rambo.
Mike TaylorHOST
That's funny.
3 more episodes mention kuru.
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