If These Bones Could Talk

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

Museum, Air And Space, Society & Culture, National Museum, Tony Cohn, Sidedoor, Natural History, African American History And Culture, Postal Museum, History, American History, History Of The World, Exhibits, Art19, Pop Culture, Smithsonian, The Smithsonian, Science, Washington, National Zoo, Zoo, Dc, Exhibit

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 January 2018

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

While we’re hard at work on some exciting new things, we wanted to start the new year off with one of our favorites from 2017: If These Bones Could Talk. Explorer, scholar and 19th Century Smithsonian darling Robert Kennicott seemed destined to lead a full and adventurous life. Then, at the age of 30, on an expedition to Russian Alaska in 1866, Kennicott was mysteriously discovered dead by a riverside. Rumors of all colors circulated about the cause of his death, although, it wasn’t until 135 years later, in 2001, that two Smithsonian forensic scientists cracked the case.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey team, I wanted to wish you all a very happy new year. Right now we're busy reporting new
0:04.9	side door stories that will be coming to you in 2018 and trust me, you're going to love them.
0:10.1	But in the meantime, we wanted to rebroadcast an episode from earlier in the season that we think
0:15.6	you're really going to like. It's this mind-boggling mystery more than a hundred years in the making.
0:21.5	So enjoy, and we'll be back with a fresh episode soon.
0:32.9	This is Side Door, a podcast from a Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:38.2	I'm Tony Cohen.
0:44.3	One day this spring, I visited Kari Brollhide at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History here in Washington, D.C.
0:51.2	She's one of the Smithsonian's leading anthropologists.
0:53.9	She studies bones and figures out the stories that they have to tell.
0:57.5	And we like to think of our work as not only being an advocate for the people who we study,
1:05.6	but as solving a mystery, telling the human stories.
1:09.6	And we're with Kari to visit a man named Robert Kennecott in the museum's new objects
1:13.8	of wonder exhibit.
1:14.9	And, you know, when we started the project, I didn't even know who Kennecott was, which
1:19.8	is the amazing thing because he did so much not just for the Smithsonian, but, you know,
1:26.6	the work that he did was responsible in part to our purchase of Alaska.
1:31.3	So this is Kennecott.
1:33.3	Oh, there he is. Wow.
1:37.3	His skeleton is in beautiful condition.
1:40.3	And, oh yeah, Robert is dead.
1:43.3	He has been for 151 years. He used to be one of the Smithsonian's
	...

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