The body. We spend so much of our lives taking care of the body, feeding it, washing it, grooming it, dressing it, dealing with all of its noises and oozes and mischief and mayhem. All that stuff the body can get up to. Sometimes we hate it because we think it's too big or too small or

shaped in funny ways. We scrape its hair off, hook it up to machines that suck fat out or inject fat in.

Sometimes we take it outside and we toast it in the sun. The body pays us back by basically acting

like a meaty spaceship, propelling our souls and consciousness,

the very usness that makes us, us through the world. And sometimes the body betrays us by getting

diseased, by causing us pain by not working the way it should. And sooner or later, always,

and with no exceptions, it shuts down.

Lights out. Do you care what happens to your body then? After you're finished with it? No? Okay.

That's very chill of you. I admire the heck out of you. But what if your body was stolen?

This is the story of a couple of Colorado corpse bandits, the most macab and morbid mother-daughter team, maybe ever.

And they got a small beam of light against the mirror.

Real, wild, weird, stuff.

Humans have been grave robbers for centuries because we're just one weird, gruesome species.

Let me give you an example.

Back in the 1700s and 1800s, stealing bodies from cemeteries and then selling them to doctors and medical schools was a booming business.

Sure, it was very nasty and definitely not legal, but you can almost forgive it.

Medical students needed to learn anatomy, and grave robbers needed to put food on the table.

Plus, this was a time when the art and science of surgery was rapidly expanding.

Students needed practice, and practice meant bodies. Lots and lots of bodies. And while you certainly didn't want your mama dug up and sold, at least it was in the service of science and not to

gratify some truly questionable fetish or perversion, right? Back then, a stolen cadaver was a hot

commodity. Why? Because the only bodies that med schools could legally snatch were the bodies of

criminals who'd been executed. Not much diversity there in terms of age, gender, physical condition, overall health. You get the

...