For the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring the issue of human remains collections for our miniseries, “What Remains.” Today, we want to share another excellent series that has covered some similar, but also, very different ground.

Introducing “Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard,” the latest season of Last Seen from WBUR.

In this first episode, the police find buckets of body parts in a basement in Pennsylvania. Throughout the series, WBUR reporter Ally Jarmanning tells us what happened at Harvard, and how an elite university became a stop on a nationwide network of human remains trading.

It’s an excellent series, and a perfect follow-up to What Remains. If you want to hear the rest of the episodes afterwards, listen and follow Last Seen wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode of Last Seen: Postmortem was hosted and reported by Ally Jarmanning. It was edited by Dave Shaw and Beth Healy, with additional editing from Katelyn Harrop and Frannie Monahan Mixing and sound design. Paul Vaitkus. Last Seen’s Managing Producer is Samati Joshi. Executive Producer is Ben Brock Johnson.

Also, we have something new from NHPR’s award-winning Document team. Listen to “Emilia’s Thing,” a story of survival and resilience in the wake of January 6th. To listen, click here.

A scholar and an activist make an uncompromising ultimatum. A forgotten burial ground is discovered under the streets of New York City. In Philadelphia, two groups fight over the definition of “descendant community.”

Featuring Michael Blakey, Lyra Monteiro, Chris Woods, aAliy Muhammad, Wendell Mapson, Sacharja Cunningham, Jazmin Benton, Amrah Salomon, and Aja Lans.

MORE ABOUT “WHAT REMAINS”

Across the country, the remains of tens of thousands of human beings are held by museums and institutions. Scientists say they’ve helped lay the foundations of forensic science and unlocked the secrets of humanity’s shared past.

But these bones were also collected before informed consent was the gold standard for ethical study. 19th and 20th-century physicians and anthropologists took unclaimed bodies from poorhouses and hospitals, robbed graves, and looted Indigenous bones from sacred sites.

Now, under pressure from activists and an evolving scientific community, these institutions are rethinking what to do with their unethically collected human remains.

Outside/In producer Felix Poon has informally gained a reputation as the podcast’s “death beat” correspondent. He’s visited a human decomposition facility (aka, “body farm”), reported on the growing trend of “green burial,” and explored the use of psychedelic mushrooms to help terminal cancer patients confront death.

In this three-episode series from Outside/In, Felix takes us to Philadelphia, where the prestigious Penn Museum has promised to “respectfully repatriate” hundreds of skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton, who used them to pursue pseudo-scientific theories of white supremacy. Those efforts have been met with support by some, and anger and distrust by others.

Along the way, Felix explores the long legacy of scientific racism, lingering questions over the 1985 MOVE bombing, and evolving ethics in the field of biological anthropology.

Can the institutions that have long benefited from these remains be trusted to give them up? And if so, who decides what happens next?

LINKS

• Archival tape of protests for the African Burial Ground came from the documentary The African Burial Ground: An American Discovery (1994).
• Learn more about the African Burial Ground National Monument.
• A recently published report, co-authored by bioarchaeologist Michael Blakey for the American Anthropological Association, recommends that research involving the handling of ancestral remains must include collaboration with descendant communities.
• Learn more about Finding Ceremony, the repatriation organization started by aAliy Muhammad and Lyra Monteiro.
• Read the Penn Museum’s statement about the Morton Cranial Collection and the 19 Black Philadelphians they interred at Eden Cemetery in early 2024.

You can find our full episode credits, listen to our back catalog, and support Outside/In at our website: outsideinradio.org.

A classroom display of human skulls sparks a reckoning at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. A movement grows to “abolish the collection.” The Penn Museum relents to pressure. More skeletons in the closet.

This episode contains swears.

MORE ABOUT "WHAT REMAINS"

Across the country, the remains of tens of thousands of human beings are held by museums and institutions. Scientists say they’ve helped lay the foundations of forensic science and unlocked the secrets of humanity’s shared past.

But these bones were also collected before informed consent was the gold standard for ethical study. Now, under pressure from activists and an evolving scientific community, these institutions are rethinking what to do with their unethically collected human remains.

In this three-episode series from Outside/In, producer Felix Poon takes us to Philadelphia, where the prestigious Penn Museum has promised to “respectfully repatriate” hundreds of skulls collected by 19th century physician Samuel George Morton, who used them to pursue pseudo-scientific theories of white supremacy. Those efforts have been met with support by some, and anger and distrust by others.

Along the way, Felix explores the long legacy of scientific racism, lingering questions over the 1985 MOVE bombing, and evolving ethics in the field of biological anthropology.

Can the institutions that have long benefited from these remains be trusted to give them up? And if so, who decides what happens next?

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

The Morton Cranial Collection

• The Penn & Slavery Project Symposium in 2019 included a presentation on the Morton Cranial Collection.
• aAliy Muhammad’s 2019 opinion piece: “As reparations debate continues, the University of Pennsylvania has a role to play” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
• Mar Portillo Alvarado’s 2020 opinion piece: “The Penn Museum must end abuse of the Morton collection” (The Daily Pennsylvanian)
• Paul Wolff Mitchell’s 2021 report: “Black Philadelphians in the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection”
• The Penn Museum’s 2021 press release: “Museum Announces the Repatriation of the Morton Cranial Collection”

The MOVE bombing and MOVE remains controversy

• Archival tape of the MOVE bombing came from the documentary Let the Fire Burn, and Democracy Now!
• She Was Killed by the Police. Why Were Her Bones in a Museum? (NY Times)
• In 2021-2022 three independent investigations reported on the MOVE remains controversy: one commissioned by the Penn Museum, one by the City of Philadelphia, and one by Princeton University.
• Lyra Monteiro's piece on Medium, "What the photos from 2014 reveal about Penn Museum's possession of the remains of multiple victims of the 1985 MOVE bombing."

You can find our full episode credits, listen to our back catalog, and support Outside/In at our website: outsideinradio.org.