#289 The Dead Bodies in Your Favorite Museum w/ Tanya Marsh

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Two things you probably don't know: 1) your favorite museum probably holds human remains and 2) it's completely legal to sell human bones on the internet. Not surprisingly, those two things have caused a lot of controversy. In this episode, Tanya Marsh joins Ben for a conversation about recent developments in the legal-social-political nexus of dead bodies; the controversy surrounding the acquisition and treatment of human remains in American museums and what we'll simply call "the Harvard morgue case."

Tanya Marsh is Professor of Law at Wake Forest University, where she specializes in the law of human remains. She is the author of The Law of Human Remains (2015) and co-author (with Daniel Gibson) of Cemetery Law: The Common Law of Burying Grounds in the United States (2015).

This episode was edited by Ben Sawyer.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

Zachary Small, "Facing Scrutiny, a Museum That Holds 12,000 Human Remains Changes Course," New York Times, Oct. 15, 2023.

Alyssa Shotwell, "Activists Took Over Museum After Victims' Bodies of the 1985 Philadelphia Bombing Found," The Mary Sue, Sept. 15, 2023.

Abby Patkin, "Group indicted for allegedly stealing and selling body parts from Harvard morgue," Boston.com, June 15, 2023.

Tanya Marsh, "Is it Illegal to Sell Human Remains," The Conversation, June 30, 2023.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now.
0:08.9	And today our guest is a regular on the show over time.
0:13.0	She's one of the people that comes back and keeps on giving us more information.
0:16.6	And she'd probably be back more if I didn't feel like I don't want to hoist burdens on her.
0:20.1	Because every time I talk to my friend here in person, I find out more I want to talk about on the show.
0:25.3	Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show.
0:27.4	Tanya, how you doing?
0:30.0	Oh, great.
0:30.7	Thank you for having me, Ben.
0:32.0	And I can never be on too much.
0:36.1	I'm always available to talk about these questions.
0:39.4	Yes, and you guys might know that name if you've read anything about what we're going to talk about today.
0:44.8	Tanya is regularly interviewed by the press anytime the topic of human remains comes up.
0:51.0	So I want to, in legality, I should say, but I want to just give you a brief
0:55.2	introduction, Tanya, people who have been listening to this show for a very long time know who you
0:59.2	are, I think, because you've been on several times. But this is going to be your first appearance
1:03.0	since we've joined Sirius XM. And I want to make sure that people understand what you do
1:08.3	because you do something that is fascinating, you're like one of the only
1:12.8	people that has done it and you kind of made yourself an expert in this field. So I'll just say
1:18.8	your simple title is you are professor of law at Wake Forest University. And I will let you
1:26.0	explain to everybody your specialty.
1:29.2	Well, my specialty is I researched the status, treatment, and disposition of human remains.
	...

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