Postmortem, Ep. 5: A reckoning

In Episode 5 of Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard , reporter Ally Jarmanning digs deeper into the "legitimate" realm of body-parts collecting ⁠— museums ⁠— and asks the burning question: How different is this from the world of Jeremy Pauley in his basement or Cedric Lodge seizing a financial opportunity at Harvard's morgue. At the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, she takes us through displays of skeletons and sometimes-troubling human specimens. What comes up here and at museums around the country ⁠— did the people who used to belong to these bodies ever imagine themselves in a jar, or on a shelf? Did they give permission for decades of gawking? After all this reporting, Jarmanning examines the ethics of it all, probing how we should treat the dead, and who gets to decide. And she returns us to Harvard, where hardly anyone, except Lodge, has been held to account. If you have questions, comments or tips about this story, you can reach us at LastSeen@wbur.org .

You can listen to Postmortem, Ep. 5: A reckoning online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Postmortem, Ep. 5: A reckoning is an episode from Last Seen by WBUR.

This episode is 00:28:42 long.

This episode was published on May 1, 2024.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Last Seen when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.