ICYMI

Encore: Someone’s Selling Human Bones on TikTok?

A look into the legalities of the human skeleton market.

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Episode Notes

Today, we’re revisiting one of our early favorite episodes from August 2021 about selling bones on TikTok.

In the episode, Rachelle Hampton and Madison Malone Kircher try to figure out if it’s legal to buy and sell human remains. They’re joined by Tanya Marsh, a professor at Wake Forest who specializes in funeral and cemetery law, to find out what the legal system says about the human bone market, the ethical questions surrounding such a market, and why we still have rights even after we die. If you’d like to know more about the history of the human bone trade, check out this video, “Can You Legally Buy a Real Human Skeleton?”

Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John.

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About the Show

Join Rachelle Hampton twice a week as we gaze deep into the online abyss—and tell you what’s gazing back.

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Hosts

  • Rachelle Hampton is a culture writer and reporter at Slate and co-host of ICYMI. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian Magazine, and In These Times. She still hasn't recovered from Tumblr’s demise.

  • Madison Malone Kircher is a senior writer at Slate and co-host of ICYMI. She was previously a staff writer at New York magazine, where she covered internet culture and edited New York’s Approval Matrix. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Vulture, and the Cut. Madison lives in Brooklyn, where she regularly drops her phone on her face watching TikToks in bed.