The Endless Hunger – Tarrare & Charles Domery

Strange Matters Podcast

Campfire Audio Productions

Science, History, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences

4.4 • 987 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2017

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Strange Matters the unique and interesting lives of Charles Domery and Tarrare are discussed. Infamously known as the hungriest men who ever lived, these two individuals were cursed with a constant feeling of starvation, and an insatiable desire to eat anything possible to satisfy their endless hunger. Capable of eating in a single meal what would normally satisfy a dozen men, there is still no answer as to what was the cause for their notorious appetite.

Both Charles Domery and Tarrare lived in Europe, born in the 1770’s. From an early age they displayed an ability to eat a tremendous amount of food. Both would go on to serve in the War of the First Coalition, where a shortage of food drove the men to eat anything they could get their hands on, from small living animals to even grazing on grass. Experiments would be done on both men to test the limits of their appetite, where they performed impossible feats of eating. Though the exact cause for Charles’ and Tarrare’s endless hunger is unknown, there are several medical explanations that may provide some clues as to what made these two men so special. Regardless, there is little doubt that these two men stand at the top of history as the two hungriest men who ever lived.

Special thanks to listener Michael Adams for sending us new Strange Matters Artwork used for this episode!

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Oh, Hello and welcome to the Strange Matters podcast where we discuss everything that is bizarre, mysterious, and unexplained.
0:45.0	I'm Sean and I will be the host for this episode.
0:48.0	In this episode we'll be talking about possibly the two hungriest men who ever lived.
0:54.8	Both were afflicted by some type of disease which constantly drove them to desire food for
0:59.8	every waking moment.
1:02.1	These two men would feel a constant state of starvation,
1:05.0	despite eating pounds and pounds of food throughout the day. Even more disturbing,
1:10.0	when food was scarce, these two men would find just about anything they could to shove down their mouths in an eternal quest to finally satisfy their hunger.
1:19.0	These two now infamous men are Tarare and Charles Domory.
1:24.6	Before we get started though, I want to give a quick shout out
1:27.0	to one of our listeners, Michael Adams,
1:29.4	for sending us in some cool new art images for strange matters, which we'll be using as the custom art on some of our
1:35.5	upcoming episodes. So thanks a lot, Michael, for sending those in. It means a lot to us and is definitely
1:40.7	a big help, especially considering my own artistic ability is limited to what I can crudely cut and paste in Microsoft paint.
1:49.0	Also I'd like to give a quick warning about this episode, some of the information in it is at times unsettling if not
1:55.1	downright disturbing at points as well and though these stories are about the
1:59.4	perhaps hungriest guys in history I would recommend that you don't listen to this while eating, or at least
2:04.6	for those listeners who are easily grossed out.
2:07.8	But with that being said, let's start with the history behind these two unique men. Charles Domery was a Polish man born around 1778,
2:17.0	who had quickly become known for his enormous appetite,
2:21.0	even from a young age.
2:22.0	Charles was part of a large family, one of nine boys, all of whom
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