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.