Main Topic: Food and Horror
To live is to require sustenance. Food is not only nutrition but usually a source of pleasure. But our relationship with food is complicated and filled with potential horror. Can we trust that what we eat is not tainted? What happens when our relationship with food becomes dysfunctional? Should we blind ourselves to the horrors of where our food comes from? And how do we react when humans are on the menu?
We touched on some of these issues in episode 182, on Disgust and Body Horror.
Content Warnings
After our look at gore, we had requests for content warnings when we mention extreme or potentially upsetting subject matter. In this episode, we discuss contaminated food, coprophagy, factory farming, disordered eating, body dysmorphia, bullying, cannibalism, brain diseases, and parasites. There will probably also be other aspects that may be upsetting in ways we haven’t anticipated. Be warned.
Our Guest Host
We are delighted to welcome Cuppycup back to the Good Friends!
Cuppycup is the creator and producer of Ain’t Slayed Nobody and Push the Roll with Ross Bryant, both part of the Push the Roll umbrella. His work in actual play has earned an ENnie Gold Award, Golden Lobe, AudioVerse Awards, and a place in the EN World Actual Play Hall of Fame. Across his shows, Cup blends horror, comedy, and sound-rich production, with a special love for Call of Cthulhu and stories where bad decisions only make things better.
He can be heard as a player on Push the Roll with Ross Bryant. Find him on pushtheroll.com or via Instagram or Bluesky.
You can also hear Cup on other episodes of the Good Friends:
Links
Things we mention in this episode include:
- Hannibal Lecter
- Food science
- Food marketing towards children
- The Stuff (1985)
- Corned beef in the UK
- Parasite (2019)
- Angel Heart (1987)
- Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg
- The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
- Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
- Plateau of Leng
- Paul Rozin’s research on disgust
- Horse meat in frozen lasagne
- Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
- Spirited Away (2001)
- “The Devil and Homer Simpson”
- The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
- Se7en (1995)
- Dawn of the Dead (2004)
- Mounjaro
- Thinner by Stephen King
- Gut biome
- Y’all of Cthulhu
- Lines and veils
- Alive (1993)
- The Platform (2019)
- Ravenous (1999)
- Prions
- Kuru
- Lab-grown meat
- Factory farming
- To Go for Unknown Armies
- No Country For Old Men (2007)
- “The Killing Floor” from The Magnus Archives
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- “The Midnight Meat Train” by Clive Barker
- “The Rats in the Walls” by HP Lovecraft
- Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
- Warhammer 40,000: Imperium Maledictum
- “The Meat Trade” from World War Cthulhu: London
- Into the Darkness
- “Blackwater Creek” from the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Screen Pack
- Berlin – The Wicked City
- Peter Kürten
- Beyond the Mountains of Madness
- “The Lengian Job” on Ain’t Slayed Nobody
- “Saturnine Chalice” from Dead Light and Other Dark Turns
- The Two-Headed Serpent
- Midsommar (2019)
- “Life Ceremony” by Sayaka Murata
- Tapeworms for weight loss
- My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
- American Horror Stories
- The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
- Faecal transplants
- The Blasphemous Tome
- “La Cena” from Kult: Screams and Whispers
- The Menu (2022)
- Hannibal
- “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti
- The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- “Phantasms” from Star Trek: The Next Generation
- “One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish” from The Simpsons
- “Four Hours to Reno” by Graeme Patrick
- Raw (2016)
- “Transistor” from This’ll Make Things a Little Easier by Attila Veres
- Pica
- Swallow (2019)
- Yellowjackets
- Break Today for Unknown Armies
- The Boys
- Poltergeist (1982)
News
Thanks for A Weekend With Good Friends
As we wrap up another Weekend With Good Friends, we would like to thank all the lovely people who made it happen. The convention organisers and staff did a staggering amount of work behind the scenes to ensure everything went smoothly, and we’d like to thank the individuals involved.
PT, Sue and Mike handled the organisational and technical work that underpins the entire convention, creating and maintaining code that handles everything from game signups with localised times to the lottery system that assigns places in games. Without their efforts, the convention simply would not have happened.
Miranda and Nate organised and ran the panels, wrangling guests, handling the technology on the day, and ensuring it all made it onto YouTube. This year, these panels included two live episodes of the Good Friends, which will go out in edited form on the podcast feed in July, and we couldn’t have streamed them without Miranda’s help and expertise.
Our wonderful volunteers and moderators helped tirelessly throughout the weekend, ensuring people got into games and that vacancies were filled quickly. Thank you to Dave, Wishmoon, AnalogFrog, Martin, Mav, Chris, and anyone I may have missed for answering tickets, offering advice, and generally providing moral support.
And I would also like to thank all of you who joined us this weekend, whether as a GM, a player, a panellist, or if you read a story on the bar stage. A convention is only as good as the people who attend it, and this was as wonderful a collection of attendees as we could have wished for.
Tools of the Trade
The book that cost Matt many sleepless nights and at least 1D20 points of Sanity has been announced! Tools of the Trade will be out later this year, containing the fruits of countless hours spent picking through old catalogues from the classic Call of Cthulhu era and converting the entries into gameable items. If you encounter Matt at a convention, please thank him for his efforts, commiserate for the toll they took, and wait patiently for the thousand-yard stare to leave his eyes.
For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls
Scott recently did a reading for our good friends at the Titterpigs podcast, relating Scott Joest’s sanity-blasting burrito experience at Chaosium Con 2026. Check it out below or on their podcast feed. You may never see a tortilla the same way.
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