A 'Postmortem' postmortem: A behind-the-scenes look at the making of WBUR's latest podcast

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If there’s a long road between you and your Memorial Day Weekend destination, you’re going to want something to queue up in the car to keep boredom at bay. Luckily, we’ve got a podcast you can binge that’ll keep you awake for the drive — and possibly up at night.

Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard, takes a look at the gruesome black market of human remains and the people who buy and sell body parts (including former Harvard Medical School morgue manager Cedric Lodge, who — along with his wife, Denise — allegedly sold and shipped parts from bodies donated for scientific research across the country).

WBUR reporter Ally Jarmanning, the host of Postmortem, gave me a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like researching for this five-episode podcast. Here’s our discussion on unconventional hobbyists, the ethics of keeping human remains and macabre history that didn’t make it into the final cut. (You can listen to Postmortem wherever you get your podcasts.)

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Hanna Ali: What was one of the most shocking things you encountered putting together Postmortem?

Ally Jarmanning: I would say the most shocking interaction I had was when I went to the home of this lovely couple in Delaware, Justin Capps and Sonya Cobb. They refer to themselves as “rescuers” of human remains. Their whole thing is, “Some people rescue puppies and kittens. We rescue human remains. We think they deserve to be respected, and this is our way of doing that.”

I had dinner with them — a lovely dinner — and they showed me around their house. They had seven full-size skeletons in their living room, plus a 36-week-old fetal skeleton — an almost full-term fetal skeleton. It was so small.

From my reporting, I knew stillborn fetuses had been bought and sold illegally as part of this human remains trade. And I don't think that Justin or Sonya’s fetal skeleton was stolen, but it was just striking to think, “Where did this fetus come from? What was the plan for it?’ It's just one thing I will never be able to get out of my brain.

HA: How does someone "get into" collecting human remains? I can't imagine you wake up one day and decide you'd like an eyeball on your shelf.

AJ: There are a lot of reasons why people are interested. There are some people that are really interested in it from the medical history perspective, almost like an antique. Another guy I talked to wanted a skull because if you looked at any old portrait of a smart, learned man, they hold a skull, like Hamlet. It was like a mark of class. I also talked to a lot of people who were like, “I'm a goth person. Owning a skull is the ultimate goth flex. It’s cool and creepy and weird.”

It's easy to empathize with Amber Haggstrom, the woman whose mom donated her body to Harvard. She doesn't know if her mom's head is on someone's mantle now. [But] I really tried to approach it with a very open mind, like “this hobby that I don't really understand.” One guy I interviewed asked me if, by the end of this reporting, I’d have a skull of my own. I think the answer is no. I just — I can't not think about whoever that person was.

I also don't think people realize how common human skeletons were in the marketplace, either. For a really long time, if you were a doctor going to medical school, you had to buy a skeleton for your studies — and that would be a human skeleton! If you needed a skeleton for a play or a movie or something like that, you bought a human skeleton. It wasn't easy or cheap to make a plastic skeleton. There was no 3D printing. You had to get a real one.

HA: It also seems like how someone’s acquired the item is a gray area.

AJ: Yeah. Most people agree you shouldn’t buy something like parts from a body donated to Harvard. But to give an example [of what would actually happen]: Somebody would be buried in, like, 1890. And the anatomy class at a medical school would need bodies to work with. So they’d go, dig one up, and dissect them. Let's say somebody keeps that skull, and it's passed down through that doctor's family for generations, and it ends up in an antique or estate sale or something like that. That person who was buried didn't necessarily want their skull to end up in an estate sale or an antique shop. But is that any better or worse? We almost have this statute of limitations in our mind, “Oh, if it's old enough, it's fine.”

HA: That’s my thing. I own a vintage fur and leather coat — and it’s real, but since it’s vintage, I think to myself, “Eh, this animal would have been dead by now anyway.”

AJ: That example is so interesting. You're like, “I'd never buy this new.” But there are only so many of those vintage furs out there. So seeing your fur might make someone desire a fur that they can't get, so they purchase a new one.

In a way, it’s the same with human remains. There are only so many historical medical specimens out there. And I spoke to so many people who were like, “Well, this thing is old. It’s already there.” But then you might have someone on the internet looking for their own skull and they're like, “I can get one from this guy and it's not that much money.”

So does the act of some people owning historical medical specimens — or a place like the Mütter Museum, where remains are on display — get people interested and create a demand? Then you have somebody like Cedric Lodge at Harvard who, allegedly, creates a supply because they see there's this interest out there.

HA: Medical schools have been using cadavers for instructional purposes for years, but you learned that it was only recently that institutions have begun to treat donor remains with a level of respect. What caused this shift?

AJ: I think it’s the same shift we’ve seen in our world when it comes to consent in general. It’s kind of uncomfortable still for people to think about consent, especially for dead people. But it’s individual professors, individual leaders in the field of anatomy, who are trying to talk more about how [donor bodies] are former human beings. And maybe we should treat them more [like humans] than just like a piece of wood or a piece of meat.

The other thing is bioethics, which only became a thing in the ‘70s. The whole idea of being [ethical] with living patients is relatively new. So there’s a bit of a lag when it comes to the dead.

HA: What's one story that got left on the cutting room floor you wish could have made it into the podcast?

AJ: Mike Drake is this fascinating guy who lives in New York City. His apartment is not big, but it is chock full of stuff — glass eyes, false teeth. And he actually worked in the skeleton trade for a time, so he had this historical wealth of information.

Back in World War II, soldiers would send their girlfriends or wives skulls that they had collected on the battlefield as a souvenir. They would write the address on the skull itself and just stick it in the mail. I was like, “I don’t believe that.” And then [Drake] showed me a Life Magazine article from 1944. There’s a photo of this woman with her chin in one hand, and she's holding a pen in the other, and she's gazing down at the desk longingly at this skull that is just sitting there, while penning a note to her beau or whoever sent it to her.

I said to Mike, “I'm trying to put myself in the mindset of that woman.” And he's like, “Well, just think about it. All your friends are getting skulls in the mail. And if you didn't get one, you'd be like, what the heck?”

There's a lot of racial implications, too — the Life Magazine article mentions that this was a Japanese skull, so there's a lot of heavy stuff there.

HA: What's one question you're still left with after doing this investigation? 

AJ: A lot of people have asked me whether they should donate their bodies to science.

It's really complicated, because there are vanishingly few rules about when a person dies, what is done with their body. Once it’s donated to a company or a university, you really have to trust the organization that has your body.

My husband and I just went through the wording of our will and there was a line basically that said we would allow our body, organs and tissues to be donated for transplant or research. But this reporting just has shown me how broad and unregulated the “research” part is that I just didn't want to do it.

P.S. — In case you're also mulling over that last question: Our health team compiled a list of five things you should know before you donate your body to science. You can read it here.

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