Do Our Bodies Really Belong To Us?

What happens to a body part once it’s been removed from your body? Can you take it home? Cremate it? Bury it? Even give it a funeral? In the first episode of a new mini-series on ownership, Hannah and Michael explore a deceptively simple question: what parts of ourselves do we actually own? From amputated limbs and stolen skulls to black markets for human organs, they uncover the strange, unsettling, and often lucrative world of body ownership. Why did grave robbing help advance modern medicine? When are flesh-eating beetles surprisingly useful? Who owns your organs after you die? And what does the bizarre fate of Einstein’s brain reveal about the blurry line between science, consent, and control after death? This episode asks: do our bodies really belong to us? ------------------- For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit ⁠⁠https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/rest-is-science Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ. ------------------- Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠ ------------------- Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek Animator: Sam Benson Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe Producer: Simona Rata Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter Head Of Digital: Samuel Oakley Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Hannah Fry?

  Hello, welcome to The Best of Science. I'm Hannah Fry.

• 0:03Michael Stevens?

  And I'm Michael Stevens.

• 0:04Hannah Fry?

  We're starting today, Michael. Have you, have you held on to any body parts? You know, children's teeth, for example, would be the normal one.

• 0:14Michael Stevens?

  My daughter hasn't lost teeth yet, but my mother still has all of my baby teeth.

• 0:19Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 0:19Michael Stevens?

  In a little container in her cabinet, in her kitchen.

• 0:23Hannah Fry?

  That's, I'm somewhere between adorable and creepy.

• 0:26Michael Stevens?

  I know, right? But it's not creepy.

• 0:29Hannah Fry?

  I have kept all of my daughter's teeth, actually.

• 0:31Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 0:31Hannah Fry?

  And I'm not sure which one's which, are they?

• 0:33Michael Stevens?

  Oh, because you've got multiple.

• 0:35Hannah Fry?

  Multiple daughters.

• 0:36Michael Stevens?

  Well, don't you have separate containers for them?

• 0:38Hannah Fry?

  I probably should have done that, yeah.

• 0:39Michael Stevens?

  Because my mom has kept mine and my sister's teeth, like, labelled.

• 0:42Hannah Fry?

  Oh, that's.

• 0:43Michael Stevens?

  Now, I only have one child, so when I look and I find an old dried up piece of umbilical cord, I know that it's hers. But I've kept that. I've kept cuttings from my daughter's first haircut. Oh, you know what? This isn't a body part, but I kept a bandage from my cat. Because when I took the bandage off, the blood stain on it was a perfect heart shape. I mean, perfect, like uncanny. I'll have to show you a photo later. If I can find one, we'll put it in the episode. And I was just using some industry terms. But that's it. Oh, and of course, my bag of beard hair.

• 1:14Hannah Fry?

  Wait, tell me that you did not bring your bag of beard hair with you.

• 1:17Michael Stevens?

  I didn't bring my bag of beard hair, but I once shaved my beard off for charity. And there was way more beard hair than, like, we could, in good conscience, give a person. So, so, but I kept the rest of it because I'm like, my beard won't be this colour forever. It's turning grey. So I should keep some samples from before it turned grey. And I've just got a little Ziploc bag of it pinned on to my pegboard as like a memory.

• 1:41Hannah Fry?

  Okay. I mean, if you think that's getting towards creepy, you're not alone. But also, just you wait until what we've got lined up in this episode. I was being talking to the listeners rather than you. No, Michael, that's perfectly normal, keeping hold of all of that stuff.

• 1:55Michael Stevens?

  Thank you.

• 1:57Hannah Fry?

  It is interesting that your mum has still got your teeth because aren't they yours?

• 2:02Michael Stevens?

  That's right, they're not hers. Does she own them? I mean, she'd give them to me if I asked, but could she sell them?

• 2:08Hannah Fry?

  Hmm. Or do you own them? Do you even have rights to them? I mean, they've left your body.

• 2:14Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, what if she refused to give them back? Would a judge compel her to?

• 2:20Hannah Fry?

  Those are the kind of questions that we're going to be answering today, specifically about body parts. But we've got a bit of a, a sort of demi-series that is loosely themed around this idea of what part of yourself do you have rights to? What part of yourself do you own?

• 2:37Michael Stevens?

  And what parts of others do you have rights to? And what parts of things that aren't even on earth can you own?

• 2:46Michael Stevens?

  Pretty exciting stuff.

• 2:47Hannah Fry?

  Pretty exciting stuff.

• 2:48Michael Stevens?

  We're going to start with body parts today.

• 2:49Hannah Fry?

  Starting with body parts today, absolutely.

• 2:56Hannah Fry?

  This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

• 2:59Michael Stevens?

  Here's something strange. Your DNA contains more ancient viral fragments than genes. The genes that build our cells make up only 2% of our DNA. And for years, that is what scientists focused on. They treated the rest, the ancient viruses and stuff, as junk.

• 3:20Hannah Fry?

  But now we know that that hidden majority, sometimes called the dark genome, influences how our biology works and how diseases like cancer behave.

• 3:30Michael Stevens?

  It's a reminder that progress rarely comes as a single breakthrough. It builds gradually. Cancer Research UK plays a central role in that progress, supporting decades of research into over 200 types of cancer, work that's helped double survival in the UK over the past 50 years.

• 3:49Hannah Fry?

  For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org/the rest is science.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers, the rest is football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees.

• 4:46Speaker 02

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• 4:59Speaker 03

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• 5:35Michael Stevens?

  My teeth fell out when I was a kid, on their own natural accord.

• 5:41Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 5:41Michael Stevens?

  But if I got like an arm amputated, what happens to the arm?

• 5:47Hannah Fry?

  So I think that it's kind of up to you. So you can just leave it at the hospital. They can incinerate it, you know, with all of the other things that they cut off and out of people. A lot of medical tissue does end up going down that route.

• 6:02Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 6:02Hannah Fry?

  But you can, if you want to, you can ask for it. You can say, I want to keep.

• 6:08Michael Stevens?

  Are there, I'm sure there are a condition.

• 6:10Hannah Fry?

  This, by the way, in the UK is regulated by the Human Tissue Authority.

• 6:14Michael Stevens?

  Okay, I think the US has something very similar.

• 6:15Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, absolutely. And they say you are legally free to do anything with an amputated limb, provided it isn't a public health risk.

• 6:22Michael Stevens?

  Exactly. Right. I couldn't keep my amputated arm in order to freak out my neighbor or let it sit there and decay and mold and then spread disease.

• 6:34Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 6:34Michael Stevens?

  But could I have someone taxidermied?

• 6:36Hannah Fry?

  You could have somebody taxidermied if you wanted. You can, I mean, you can go more imaginative than this, by the way. You can accelerate the process of removing the tissue from the bones. And then you can do whatever you want with it, including scaring your neighbors. So there's some.

• 6:52Michael Stevens?

  Really? Right. Okay. So as long as it's just like a dry bone.

• 6:56Hannah Fry?

  Exactly.

• 6:56Michael Stevens?

  That isn't a health risk, even if it's a mental health risk, because if I opened my door and my neighbor's bones were on my front porch, I might be like, yum. Or.

• 7:07Hannah Fry?

  Or you might find it quite funny.

• 7:10Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, right?

• 7:10Hannah Fry?

  It depends on, depends on the way that they, the way that they intend it.

• 7:13Michael Stevens?

  There's gotta be like some public decency laws around this.

• 7:16Hannah Fry?

  I'm not sure there are, you know, because, okay, so there's one amazing story that I found. This is Christie Loyall from Oklahoma. So she had cancer, this, this really, this really rare type of, it's called epithelioid sarcoma. And it's, it's this soft tissue cancer. So she had to have her leg amputated. This is in 2011. And so what she did, she took her amputated leg, the, the sort of foot and like the, just above the ankle. And she took it to a company called Skulls Unlimited.

• 7:46Michael Stevens?

  Hmm.

• 7:47Hannah Fry?

  Right? Wonder if you can guess what they do? They use flesh eating beetles to strip it down to the bone.

• 7:53Michael Stevens?

  Oh, so she fed some beetles?

• 7:55Hannah Fry?

  She fed some beetles. And then she's got this like fully articulated skeleton foot that was part of her body. And she posts pictures of it to Instagram. And they are amazing, these pictures. And they're very, very funny. Can I show you some of them?

• 8:09Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, please.

• 8:10Hannah Fry?

  Okay, so.

• 8:11Michael Stevens?

  Does she pose it?

• 8:12Hannah Fry?

  She does pose it.

• 8:12Michael Stevens?

  Like here it is kicking a soccer ball.

• 8:14Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, absolutely. Here's, here's a couple of them. If you want to describe some of these.

• 8:18Michael Stevens?

  So one is a photograph of, it looks like it's the bones of her foot on one side. And then next to it is a living human foot, I'm assuming her remaining foot. In a sock that's designed to look like the bones of the foot. Oh, now here, so she's got her leg going down into sand.

• 8:37Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, she's lying on a beach.

• 8:38Michael Stevens?

  She's lying on a beach and her leg like kind of below the knee is under the sand, but then poking up a little further on are the bones of her foot.

• 8:46Hannah Fry?

  Where they ordinarily would have been.

• 8:47Michael Stevens?

  Where they ordinarily would be. Oh, and here is her foot and ankle skeleton inside a transparent shoe. So you can look through the shoe material and see that there's bones inside. That's, it's amazing how different it is psychologically to see a like plastic foot skeleton versus a real one.

• 9:10Hannah Fry?

  Knowing that it really came from a person.

• 9:12Michael Stevens?

  Because I don't know what my bones look like. I've never seen them, but they're in there.

• 9:17Hannah Fry?

  They are.

• 9:17Michael Stevens?

  And they've been me, of course, they've changed over time, but they've been with me forever. Like I owe so much to them and yet I don't even, I wouldn't recognize them if I saw them on the street.

• 9:26Hannah Fry?

  No, no. And, and this idea of the psychology of it, I think when it comes to people who go through amputations, the, you know, amputation can really trigger this, this profound sense of grief in people. You know, it's, it's a trauma that's a sort of comparable to the bereavement of a loved one.

• 9:41Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 9:42Hannah Fry?

  In a lot of ways. And there are some studies that say if you have control over the, over what happens to your limb, then actually you, it's much easier to have this sort of positive experience. I mean, you're never really going to have that much of a positive experience if you're going through an amputation, but it helps you kind of grieve the, the passing of your limb.

• 10:00Michael Stevens?

  Oh, for sure. I can totally see that. I can see how some people might grieve better if they just never see it again.

• 10:05Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Michael Stevens?

  But if someone wants to have a funeral for their amputated hand, let them, right?

• 10:11Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:13Hannah Fry?

  And if you don't want to have a funeral where you are burying it in your garden, you know, or having a bonfire or whatever it might be, if there's something a bit grotesque about you, you burning your own limb, there is now a, a dedicated burial site for amputated limbs in the UK.

• 10:27Michael Stevens?

  Oh, really?

• 10:28Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, where you can go and you can basically have a funeral exactly as you described for the part of you that.

• 10:33Michael Stevens?

  That seems nice. Like I might actually do something like that because I think if I had, say, my arm amputated, I'd really want to show it respect.

• 10:42Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 10:42Michael Stevens?

  It was my arm. It did a good job, you know? It didn't do anything bad against me. It let me control it forever, like.

• 10:50Hannah Fry?

  Yeah. I have a very good friend who is Islamic and she told me that there's this, this, this, this idea where when you die, all of your body parts testify against you, right?

• 11:04Michael Stevens?

  Oh.

• 11:05Hannah Fry?

  Okay, but that sounds a bit, I, I'm.

• 11:07Michael Stevens?

  What you mean is like, if I've committed a sin with my hand, it will rat me out.

• 11:12Hannah Fry?

  Or it's more like, so my understanding of it, okay, is that when you're walking around in life and you say, oh, my damn knees, they're really annoying, they're just not strong enough, I hate them, whatever. And then after you die, your knees are there testifying against you and saying, look at all of those stairs I carried her up. Look at her baby who I helped her carry for nine months and then all the times where she sort of carried her child and I was there supporting her. And then she spent the rest of her life slagging me off, you know, like this is really unfair.

• 11:42Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 11:42Hannah Fry?

  But there's something actually quite beautiful about that, this idea that you have to have genuine gratitude for all of your body parts, for the support that they give you while you're alive, because after you're dead, they'll, they'll.

• 11:53Michael Stevens?

  Testify against you if you were not a good steward of them.

• 11:57Hannah Fry?

  Yeah. Now, I have to say, I'm not a scholar of Islam. So people, please let us know in the comments if I have misunderstood that.

• 12:05Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 12:06Hannah Fry?

  But I think there's something quite beautiful about that.

• 12:07Michael Stevens?

  It really is beautiful. So what, I mean, what, what restrictions are there? You said in the UK, you can have your own amputated parts so long as there's no public health risk.

• 12:18Hannah Fry?

  I mean, kind of. You can't cremate it. That is one thing you can't do.

• 12:23Michael Stevens?

  Wait, tell me more.

• 12:23Hannah Fry?

  You can't, so you can put it in a bonfire in your own garden.

• 12:26Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Hannah Fry?

  As long as it's not a public health risk, as long as you do it safely. But you can't take it to a, a, you know, a cremation site. You can't take it to a company that does cremation for you and ask them to do it. And that's because of the rules within the sort of cremation industry.

• 12:42Michael Stevens?

  Ah.

• 12:43Hannah Fry?

  You can't legally have it cremated at a crematorium while you're still alive. And that is because crematoriums, this feels like a good rule, legally require a death certificate in order to operate. So, you know, if you're, if you're still there handing over your limb, they're not allowed to do it.

• 13:00Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, I get why they would need a death certificate, because otherwise it could be a really great hack to get rid of a body that you've murdered. Like, oh, hey, here's my aunt Flo. Could you please dispose of the evidence? I mean, cremate her respectfully?

• 13:18Michael Stevens?

  Right, okay.

• 13:19Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Michael Stevens?

  Certainly, that law could probably be changed to also require a certificate of amputation or something.

• 13:25Hannah Fry?

  Or maybe, maybe the, yeah, the authority of the individual to whom it once belonged.

• 13:31Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:32Hannah Fry?

  But, I mean, apart from that, really, you can sort of go, "Well, you can sell it if you want to."

• 13:36Michael Stevens?

  Okay, that's where I wanted to go next, because that woman's foot looks really cool.

• 13:40Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Michael Stevens?

  The skeleton of her foot bones and ankle, like, could she sell that to me?

• 13:46Hannah Fry?

  Yes, absolutely. And you can buy, so I had a look at this yesterday, you can buy all kinds of body parts, particularly the bones, you know, basically as easily as buying a book.

• 13:56Michael Stevens?

  Now, hold on a second, because I've looked into this.

• 13:59Hannah Fry?

  Uh huh.

• 13:59Michael Stevens?

  I've been wanting a human skeleton my whole life.

• 14:03Hannah Fry?

  A whole skeleton.

• 14:03Michael Stevens?

  A whole, real, human skeleton. Here's the problem, the ethics of it. Most human skeletons that are available for purchase are of dubious provenance. They're usually like, "Yeah, this is from a person who lived in India in 1897." Probably didn't totally consent to this. It probably wasn't their dream for you to display their skeleton, but it's here. And we can no longer just do what people did in the 19th century. So, here's what I want to do, and you can tell me if this is going to be more possible. I would love a human skeleton, but I want it to be Jeff Bezos's skeleton.

• 14:42Hannah Fry?

  Specifically?

• 14:43Michael Stevens?

  Specifically his.

• 14:44Hannah Fry?

  Have you written to him and told him this is your plan?

• 14:47Michael Stevens?

  No, but let's say that this is my official declaration to Jeff Bezos, "Give me your skeleton." And here's why, him, or maybe someone like him. It needs to be someone who isn't super sympathetic, so that if someone comes into my house and they see a human skeleton and I've got a silly hat on it, and they're like, "Dude, that's disrespectful," I can say, "It was Jeff Bezos." Like, "He had a bunch of money in life, he's fine." Like

• 15:14Hannah Fry?

  He can deal with a hat.

• 15:15Michael Stevens?

  I don't want the skeleton to belong to like an innocent person.

• 15:18Hannah Fry?

  Uh huh.

• 15:18Michael Stevens?

  Who, even if they fully consented to like, I want you to exhibit my skeleton forever. I still would feel like I deserved a certain amount of respect that I might not always want to give it. So I want someone's skeleton that could be put into funny poses.

• 15:34Hannah Fry?

  What if it was someone who just had a really, really good sense of humor? Like, what if you went for a famous comedian?

• 15:40Michael Stevens?

  Well, yes. Okay, here's an even better example. Like, I would be totally happy to give my wife or my daughter my skeleton after my death. And they can do whatever they want with it. They can make me pick my butt. They can make me do whatever, because that's my sense of humor, right? In fact, here's another declaration, and my wife refuses to do this. But instead of a grave stone, I want a toilet that is like a bench. But it's a toilet that has like in memory of Michael Stevens and people can sit on it and look at the view. But she doesn't want a toilet to be my tombstone.

• 16:15Hannah Fry?

  Wait, sorry, I misunderstood. Why do you want a toilet to be your tombstone?

• 16:20Michael Stevens?

  Because it's just funny. It's just a bit.

• 16:23Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 16:23Michael Stevens?

  It's just like a, hey, why is there a toilet in the cemetery? Now, maybe that's disrespectful to the other people buried there.

• 16:30Hannah Fry?

  Because suddenly you turn the cemetery into a bathroom.

• 16:32Michael Stevens?

  I turn it into a bathroom. So maybe it's more like a public park puts up a memorial toilet for me.

• 16:37Hannah Fry?

  I do like the idea of having a bit for after you die. You know, Spike Milligan is very

• 16:42Michael Stevens?

  Yes.

• 16:43Hannah Fry?

  amazing British writer, comedy writer. On his tombstone, he had, he insisted that he had inscribed, "I told you I was ill." Which I really like.

• 16:52Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, that's really good. And I just, I like not taking it all too seriously. My idea for having a memorial toilet for myself comes from this artist's installation in the UK for a memorial to Joseph Grimaldi, the clown, where the artist put these like coffin-shaped musical tiles on the ground. So you could dance on the grave of Grimaldi to make music. And being as he's a clown, and it all felt like it actually kind of all fit. But yet it feels a bit disrespectful to be dancing on a grave. Now, he isn't actually buried underneath them, but I liked a silly Oddball memorial.

• 17:33Hannah Fry?

  There is somebody who who has donated their skeleton to be displayed forever, though.

• 17:37Michael Stevens?

  Who?

• 17:38Hannah Fry?

  Jeremy Bentham.

• 17:39Michael Stevens?

  Oh, of course, yeah.

• 17:40Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 17:40Michael Stevens?

  I've never seen it, but you've seen it.

• 17:42Hannah Fry?

  I've seen it. I've oh, I've seen it.

• 17:43Michael Stevens?

  And is it a skeleton or is there still like dried flesh on it?

• 17:46Hannah Fry?

  Oh, there's dry. Well, OK, so there's there's a couple of different parts.

• 17:49Michael Stevens?

  Hmm.

• 17:50Hannah Fry?

  Big gruesome. So we should just say Jeremy Bentham's the he's the the father of utilitarianism, this this philosopher. But he also was one of the founders of the university, which I did my PhD in, was a professor for for a number of years. This is like 1830s was when he died. And he wanted to donate his body to science. He was like, I think that actually a great act would be to have a public dissection of my body. You know, let us let people see, you know, and and I want it to be on display. I want my body to be on display. So they did the dissection.

• 18:21Michael Stevens?

  Was this for like the public's knowledge? Or was it that he found it kind of titillating, like it was an exhibitionist thing?

• 18:28Hannah Fry?

  I think it was for public knowledge.

• 18:30Michael Stevens?

  OK, I guess we can't prove what was really in his mind.

• 18:32Hannah Fry?

  Well, what happened to his head is a bit more gruesome.

• 18:34Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, I've heard it got like turned into a soccer ball or something.

• 18:37Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, it's pretty gruesome. So one of the that they decided the flesh on his bo- on his body was dissected. And his skeleton has been packed into a suit, sort of like it looks like a waxwork figure, like a Madame Tussauds type thing. So he's kind of like sitting there in this pose. He's got all his clothes on. It's on display permanently.

• 18:53Michael Stevens?

  Can you see the bones or are they covered in wax?

• 18:56Hannah Fry?

  They're covered in wax.

• 18:57Michael Stevens?

  Ah.

• 18:58Hannah Fry?

  He sits in this glass cabinet in the cloisters of of UCL permanently. So you can just go past and just see his dead body at all times. But his head, what they wanted to do, there was this technique that people were trying, which was to dehydrate the head, sort of like a mummification technique. And so his head, it's I think it didn't really work very well. I think they didn't get the mixture right. So it's sort of this like grotesque, leathery raisin, right? It's it's really not very nice at all. So that's kept separate from the body. You kind of so the the.

• 19:29Michael Stevens?

  Oh, wait. So it's stored to to be seen with no head?

• 19:33Hannah Fry?

  No, it's got a wax head on it.

• 19:35Michael Stevens?

  Oh, and there's no skull inside the wax head?

• 19:37Hannah Fry?

  No skull inside the wax head, yeah.

• 19:38Michael Stevens?

  Because the head is kept, the real skull is kept separate.

• 19:40Hannah Fry?

  It's still. I think is on display. I've certainly seen it. So I think it's on display sometimes, but not all of the time. And the thing is, that hair is right, is obviously this this great object of reverence and importance to UCL. And so there have been times when the rivals of UCL, King's College London, have broken in, stolen it, used it for ransom. There was one story about them in the cloisters of of using it as a football. You know, just like really not cool Victorian shenanigans going on here. But I should also say that his body, while it is on display, he also still attends the the meetings that they have.

• 20:22Michael Stevens?

  Oh, cute.

• 20:23Hannah Fry?

  Kind of big, important meeting.

• 20:24Michael Stevens?

  They bring his bones in.

• 20:26Hannah Fry?

  Bring his bones in. And then they always record in the minutes that Jeremy Brentham was present but did not vote.

• 20:34Michael Stevens?

  I love that. And that's what he would have wanted.

• 20:36Hannah Fry?

  That's what he would have wanted.

• 20:37Michael Stevens?

  So then that's great.

• 20:38Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 20:39Hannah Fry?

  And and that's what you can do too.

• 20:40Michael Stevens?

  He was like, over my dead body, do stuff. And they are.

• 20:45Hannah Fry?

  And that's that's, I mean, the thing is, this is like 1830, he died, 1832, I think.

• 20:49Michael Stevens?

  So it's becoming 200 years.

• 20:51Hannah Fry?

  Right. And I think this is it, you know, you or your idea of giving your your skeleton to your your daughter and your wife. So you can, they can pose you however you want. You're gonna, your skeleton will outlast their lifetimes really significantly.

• 21:05Michael Stevens?

  Right. So who gets it after them?

• 21:06Hannah Fry?

  Who gets it after and who gets after and after? I mean, this is like a big question. Tell you what, let's come back to that properly after the break, actually, about what you do with people after they've died. But just on that whole idea of amputation of of body parts first. Because while this idea of selling them or taxidermying them are kind of normal things to do. There is one story about a young man who had his foot amputated in a motorbike crash. And he managed to successfully navigate all of the legal loopholes. To take his severed limb home and instead of burying it, he took a bit of his own anterior muscle, cooked it with onions and peppers and served in fajitas to ten of his friends. His friends knew what was going on.

• 21:51Michael Stevens?

  Okay, yes, okay. I was going to ask this before the break. I'm like, hold on a second. You can take it and you can cremate it and you can display it, but can you eat it?

• 22:00Hannah Fry?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:01Michael Stevens?

  Tell me.

• 22:02Hannah Fry?

  Absolutely fine.

• 22:02Michael Stevens?

  That was fine.

• 22:03Hannah Fry?

  Absolutely fine.

• 22:04Michael Stevens?

  So feeding it to other people consensually with their knowledge is allowed to. That's a, that's like a a loophole to be able to eat human flesh.

• 22:12Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Michael Stevens?

  So what did it taste like?

• 22:14Hannah Fry?

  I, I don't know.

• 22:15Michael Stevens?

  Surely he ate some of it without the onions and whatnot because I want to, I would want to get the real flavor. I did an episode years ago about what does human taste like? And I hadn't heard of this motorbike incident. Did that happen after I made the episode? Because I had to go back pretty far to a guy who got some meat from a cadaver and said that human meat most closely resembled veal.

• 22:36Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 22:37Michael Stevens?

  But this motorbike story.

• 22:40Hannah Fry?

  Okay, some, some people have asked, how would you describe the taste on a scale of one to 10? And he said, give it a solid 6.5, better than hot dog or regular burger. Maybe equal with regular bacon, but nowhere near as good as butter served scallops or a rare souffle tenderloin seared in grape seed oil and cast iron pan.

• 23:00Michael Stevens?

  Well, that's a pretty good review, better than hot dogs and burgers. I'm surprised because, you know, we're not talking about a choice cut of the animal.

• 23:09Hannah Fry?

  No, we're not.

• 23:09Michael Stevens?

  Like, we're talking about, what, a muscle from like the ankle or the foot?

• 23:13Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Michael Stevens?

  Like, that's not a famously tender cut of meat. When did this happen?

• 23:18Hannah Fry?

  This is seven years ago.

• 23:19Michael Stevens?

  Ooh, hey, I made my episode 12 years ago, so I should do an update.

• 23:23Hannah Fry?

  You do, you need to.

• 23:24Michael Stevens?

  I should have been invited to that fajita party. I'm a bit upset.

• 23:28Hannah Fry?

  I frankly.

• 23:29Michael Stevens?

  Do you think he still has some?

• 23:30Hannah Fry?

  Shall we message him and ask?

• 23:31Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, I'll message him after the show because I would love to try some of this meat.

• 23:35Hannah Fry?

  He says, tastes like buffalo, but chewier, super beefy and little fat.

• 23:40Michael Stevens?

  Beefy. Yeah, there'd be little fat.

• 23:41Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 23:42Michael Stevens?

  What you really need, has anyone ever had their, I was gonna say, have they ever had their like loins or chest amputated? I don't think there's a lot of chest amputations, but that, I'd love like a human rib, but that's never gonna happen.

• 23:54Hannah Fry?

  No, but awful. I mean, I had my uterus amputated effectively. Like, I should have, if I'd have known about this at the time, I could have had some. Awful uterus. Placenta. I mean, people eat placenta.

• 24:06Michael Stevens?

  People eat placenta. Apparently, it's not like a traditional thing. That it really only became a thing in the seventies, eating your own placenta.

• 24:14Hannah Fry?

  I think it's not a real thing, yeah. I think it's it's not a traditional thing.

• 24:17Michael Stevens?

  I think there are reasons why in in the animal world, outside of humans, it makes a lot of sense. When nutrition is hard to get by and you've got to breastfeed, you need that nutrition. But in the human world, it's rarely necessary.

• 24:31Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 24:32Michael Stevens?

  But as I keep saying, I feel like I've said this like now three times on the podcast. The placenta is vegan.

• 24:37Hannah Fry?

  It is vegan.

• 24:38Michael Stevens?

  Because the animal has voluntarily abandoned it. If they haven't eaten it themselves, like, dig in.

• 24:44Hannah Fry?

  Hey, so is this foot. Those were vegan fajitas they were eating.

• 24:47Michael Stevens?

  That's right. Yeah, he voluntarily cooked it up and gave it to his friends.

• 24:52Hannah Fry?

  Yeah. So if any of you have an appetition coming up and want to invite Michael around for lunch.

• 24:58Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, please invite me. And as a bonus, I would really love to be the one to cook it. I I I.

• 25:04Hannah Fry?

  Just smoke it.

• 25:04Michael Stevens?

  It's one of my hobbies. It's like one of the few things I can do that doesn't feel like work. Even if I'm watching a movie, I still I feel like, hmm, this might inform some episode about society or whatever. But cooking, I do that for my family all the time. I cook all of our dinners and it's just like, I love it. So I'd love to be able to cook human meat and say, here's the thing about human meat, you know, you gotta you gotta stew it. Or here's the thing, you gotta smoke it, you gotta use apple or cherry, don't use hickory. I would love to just have knowledge like that.

• 25:33Hannah Fry?

  Hold on, though, that does not, that makes your smoking thing part of work then, immediately, if you're doing it for human meat. And then talking about it afterwards.

• 25:41Michael Stevens?

  Okay, if I talk about it on the podcast, that's different than if I use it in a Vsauce episode. I feel like here, this is where I share my life. This is where I share my tips and tricks on eating people. But I wouldn't do that outside of this podcast.

• 25:54Hannah Fry?

  Would you consider doing that? Would you consider having a bit of flesh removed for this purpose?

• 25:58Michael Stevens?

  That is a really good question because I don't think that I would if it wasn't necessary. I still feel too much of a like obligation to my body to like respect it and. I can't think of why I would deliberately have muscle removed so I could eat it. I'd feel guilty, like, I'm sorry, you know, butt cheek, that I trimmed you down. I guess if I did, like, liposuction, if I had liposuction, could I keep the fat?

• 26:30Hannah Fry?

  I'd drink it.

• 26:31Michael Stevens?

  Well, I would, like, render it first. And then I could, like, poach some, you know, scallops in it. Ooh, human fat. I wonder what that would taste like. Is it more like lard or tallow?

• 26:46Hannah Fry?

  I'm surprised. I'm surprised that it's beefy, you know? I would have guessed it would be more piggy.

• 26:50Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, what determines whether some, something is beefy or piggy?

• 26:56Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 26:57Michael Stevens?

  I know that there's been reports from hundreds of years ago where people ate human meat and said that it was like veal or pork. And now veal is beefy. But unlike a cow, humans don't eat grass. Like, our diet is more like a pig's diet. It's omnivorous. So I would think that that would cause us to taste more like pork, since you are what you eat. I can't, and I think it would also really depend on where you cut the meat from.

• 27:23Hannah Fry?

  I think you're right. I think that would make a big difference. You know, if you're, if you're eating ankle muscle, I mean, I don't think you get a good sense of what the overall thing tastes like.

• 27:32Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, yeah. Ankle, shin, those are famously bad, tough pieces of meat.

• 27:39Hannah Fry?

  You need to slow cook that stuff, not put it in a feta.

• 27:41Michael Stevens?

  Oh, well, it depends. If you put it in, like, a slow cooker and let it just stew there with a bunch of seasonings, it could get nice.

• 27:47Hannah Fry?

  Could get nice. Okay, I tell you what, I think let's go for a break. And then, I mean, up until now, this has mostly been about people who are alive deciding what to do with their own body parts. After the break, I want to talk about what happens to your body parts after your death and who they belong to.

• 28:04Michael Stevens?

  Great.

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• 29:19Hannah Fry?

  Welcome back. So there's quite a tragic story that I want to tell you about that I think really indicates this idea of ownership of your own body, particularly after your death. So there was a woman who was 21 years old. She was called Laura and she had a little girl, two and a half year old. But her mother called Rachel, she had this, this kidney failure, right? So you've got three women, basically three, three. Three generations. Three generations, right? Grandmother, mother, daughter. The grandmother has kidney failure, really serious kidney failure that was actually triggered by diabetes that she'd had when she'd been pregnant with her daughter. Okay. So it's all kind of connected. Yeah. And Laura, the, the, the daughter.

• 30:02Hannah Fry?

  The twenty one year old was going to donate her kidney to her mother.

• 30:06Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Hannah Fry?

  So at that point, when you say, I'm alive, I'm going to give you my kidney, you have complete ownership over your own organ.

• 30:13Michael Stevens?

  Makes sense.

• 30:14Hannah Fry?

  You get to decide what happens to it. But unfortunately, before any of the paperwork could be could be sorted, Laura just so happened to suffer this massive fatal asthma attack. Okay.

• 30:26Michael Stevens?

  Whoa, okay.

• 30:27Hannah Fry?

  So now.

• 30:28Michael Stevens?

  So she hasn't, she she died.

• 30:31Hannah Fry?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:32Michael Stevens?

  Before she signed the paperwork officially giving her kidneys to her mother.

• 30:36Hannah Fry?

  Correct. But even if she had had the paperwork before she'd been alive, as soon as she was dead, she can donate her kidneys and her family consent on her behalf to donate her kidneys. But she has no say in who that kidney goes to.

• 30:52Michael Stevens?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:53Hannah Fry?

  So the the Human Tissue Authority, the the people who regulate all this stuff, they had to step in to to to basically enforce these really strict laws that we have about bodily ownership. And the the legal stance of this is, you know, she was donating her organs, fine, but she couldn't say that they would go to her mother because a corpse cannot be property.

• 31:17Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 31:18Hannah Fry?

  Like, humans are not objects. And so if they are not objects, if they are not property, they don't belong to anybody.

• 31:25Michael Stevens?

  In life, she could make the decision to give my kidney while I'm alive to this specific person.

• 31:31Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 31:31Michael Stevens?

  But once she's dead.

• 31:32Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 31:33Michael Stevens?

  Now, you say a corpse isn't property, but I can own an amputated hand, for example.

• 31:39Hannah Fry?

  You can.

• 31:40Michael Stevens?

  And buy and sell it.

• 31:41Hannah Fry?

  You can, yes, you can buy and sell it, which is like a bit of a weird gray area. But in terms of organs, the organ removal then went to the the person who needed it the most.

• 31:51Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 31:51Hannah Fry?

  Which in that case wasn't the mother. You had, and this is a really tragic story, right? You had the transplant coordinator who was literally crying in the hospital. And nonetheless, the kidneys had to be given to these anonymous strangers who were on this national waiting list. And the real tragedy of this is that the grandmother, Rachel, who was denied this organ transplant, actually then very sadly passed away before she could get another kidney.

• 32:15Michael Stevens?

  Jeez.

• 32:15Hannah Fry?

  A really awful story, leaving the the two and a half year old daughter without a mother or a grandmother.

• 32:19Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 32:20Hannah Fry?

  And the laws have changed as a result of.

• 32:22Michael Stevens?

  I was gonna say, I feel like it would be fair to say, if you're gonna donate your organs after death, a relative who needs them.

• 32:30Hannah Fry?

  Hmm.

• 32:31Michael Stevens?

  Who has a use for them could take precedent over who's at the top of the waiting list.

• 32:35Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, yeah. So that does now happen as long as there isn't a super urgent case on the waiting list.

• 32:42Michael Stevens?

  Okay.

• 32:42Hannah Fry?

  Within 72 hours, I think, of the donation.

• 32:46Michael Stevens?

  Got it, okay.

• 32:47Hannah Fry?

  So now a family member does take precedent.

• 32:49Michael Stevens?

  Well, because we've got two kidneys. And they could have given one to someone at the top of the list and the other to the grandma.

• 32:58Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, but I think that there's this really interesting philosophical question that comes into all of this, because this isn't the first time that bodies not being property and therefore not belonging, you know, it's not something that you can say, this is my.

• 33:12Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 33:12Hannah Fry?

  Because if it was a will, right, if it was her house or her car or whatever, of course she gets to dictate in very strict terms where it should go to.

• 33:19Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Hannah Fry?

  Because it belonged to her body rather than, it was a different type of ownership. You know, everything kind of goes out the window. This is actually because of these ancient church laws that we have, you know, the idea that it's called res nullis, meaning it belongs to nobody, right, this body. But this was also the reason, or a great cause of all of the grave robbing that happened in the 1800s when dissection became really popular.

• 33:46Michael Stevens?

  The notion that the body doesn't belong to anyone meant that finders keepers.

• 33:50Hannah Fry?

  Yep, finders keepers. So it meant that you couldn't be legally charged for stealing a corpse, but you could be charged with a really serious felony if you stole the clothes that the person was buried in. So then this additional indignity, this is like 1800s, right, professional body snatchers would take the bodies out of the grave and then meticulously strip them naked.

• 34:11Michael Stevens?

  Strip them new, yeah.

• 34:11Hannah Fry?

  Before stealing them and then make their getaway, which is just absolutely insane, that stealing a human, fine, but a cheap linen shirt and you get sent to Australia.

• 34:24Michael Stevens?

  Right, right, right, yeah. Stealing a naked body, that's fine.

• 34:27Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Michael Stevens?

  Stealing one in clothes, you're a clothing thief. So what, that's been changed?

• 34:32Hannah Fry?

  That has, well, I don't know whether that has properly been changed.

• 34:35Michael Stevens?

  Like, if I went and I dug up a grave right now, I feel like I'd get in trouble for trespassing and destroying property and defiling a dead body, which is like scandalous to the public, even if I wasn't charged with theft.

• 34:50Hannah Fry?

  I think there's also, what would you do with it? Where would you go with it? How would you profit off it? Because one of the big reasons why grave robbing was such a big thing was that there was incredible demand from scientists and medics and doctors who wanted to understand how the body worked, right? Dissection was this really big thing going on. And that all changed in eighteen thirty two when they brought in a new law that says the medical dissection of unclaimed bodies was completely fine. So if you were, I mean, it's basically, it's code for extremely poor. If you're extremely poor, then you were fair game.

• 35:30Michael Stevens?

  And so while a body cannot be owned, it can be claimed.

• 35:33Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, right.

• 35:34Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Hannah Fry?

  Exactly.

• 35:35Michael Stevens?

  I think that distinction makes sense. I think owning someone's body after they're dead sounds a bit odd, but I can bequeath my bones to my daughter. And she can own them, but she can't own the whole body? Or she can't own organs?

• 35:52Hannah Fry?

  Right, so I've just looked it up because it does feel like a big contradiction, doesn't it? That you can, a dead body isn't property, but you can own a skeleton.

• 36:01Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 36:01Hannah Fry?

  And apparently the short answer is that it becomes property when somebody applies work and skill to it.

• 36:08Michael Stevens?

  Okay, right. So if they amputate my foot.

• 36:12Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Michael Stevens?

  That's like some work that's been done.

• 36:15Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Michael Stevens?

  But just someone dying, it's not up for grabs.

• 36:20Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 36:21Michael Stevens?

  Right, if I saw someone have a heart attack at the store, I couldn't be like.

• 36:24Hannah Fry?

  Mine.

• 36:25Michael Stevens?

  Mine. But if they died, a hospital could harvest their organs and give them to me if I'm like on the list.

• 36:32Hannah Fry?

  Not quite.

• 36:33Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 36:33Hannah Fry?

  So if you just, if you just amputate it, that doesn't count, that doesn't meet the threshold for work and skill. You've got to do something else to it. You've got to feed it to beetles.

• 36:41Michael Stevens?

  Okay, okay. But the hospital, can they send my amputated limb home with me? Or does it have to be like? Packaged up or cleaned before I can take it home.

• 36:54Hannah Fry?

  I think it definitely has to be in a, in a special bag.

• 36:57Michael Stevens?

  It's probably gotta be in a special bag.

• 36:58Hannah Fry?

  I don't think you're allowed to carry it on your hands.

• 37:00Michael Stevens?

  My wife had a tooth removed and I asked if we could have it. And the doctor said, uh, the problem is they hadn't just like pulled it out. They'd had to crunch it up. So it was all in like pieces. And she, so I think she had like already thrown it out, but could have given us the pieces. I've got a lot of cat teeth. We had a cat who needed teeth removed and I'm like, can I have them? And they were like, sure. Yeah. And they're pretty awesome. I feel like a witch with my little like cat tooth jar. And I'm like, oh yes, I need a little cat tooth for this love potion.

• 37:35Hannah Fry?

  Powdered cat tooth.

• 37:36Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Hannah Fry?

  And a heart shaped blood stain.

• 37:39Michael Stevens?

  I think there is a lot of gray area around the body stuff.

• 37:41Hannah Fry?

  That idea though, of owning somebody's body after they have died. I mean, you brought up the ethics of skeletons earlier. I mean, there are some really dark stories, some really nasty stories. I think possibly the most grotesque I heard about, and then I looked into it. This college in Oxford where at the end of dinner, they would drink from a skull.

• 38:05Michael Stevens?

  Hmm.

• 38:06Hannah Fry?

  Right?

• 38:06Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Hannah Fry?

  Absolutely true.

• 38:08Michael Stevens?

  Whose skull?

• 38:09Hannah Fry?

  Well, this is the really dark thing about it. So no one is quite sure, but this was a decades long tradition. They don't do it anymore. They turned it into a dessert bowl after it started leaking, which is just even more grotesque. But the, the cup was donated to the college in, in 1946 by a eugenicist.

• 38:30Michael Stevens?

  Uh huh.

• 38:31Hannah Fry?

  Right? Which tells you the direction this is going to go in. It was originally bought at an auction in Sotheby's in 1884. When people have done radio carbon dating on it. The skull is 225 years old and the physical dimensions of it strongly suggest that it belonged to an enslaved woman in the Caribbean.

• 38:51Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, yeah. That's usually the provenance of these kinds of things. It was someone who didn't have the the rights that they deserved to say, don't take my skeleton and sell it to some rich dude in England.

• 39:05Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Michael Stevens?

  It's usually not just like Jeff Bezos, because he's got power and he can decide what happens to his skeleton. But a person who is homeless, a person who is oppressed, that's usually the kind of thing that winds up being out there on the market. And so that's why, Jeff, you owe it to the world to give me your skeleton.

• 39:25Hannah Fry?

  So I had a look online yesterday at Skulls Unlimited, which is a place that you can you can buy and sell them. You can buy a skull for a couple of grand.

• 39:36Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Hannah Fry?

  You could buy a fetal skull as well. I mean, it's really grotesque, like a lot of this stuff, really dark.

• 39:42Michael Stevens?

  If I was a medical school, I would think that acquiring pieces like that could be helpful for continuing education.

• 39:50Hannah Fry?

  The greater good.

• 39:51Michael Stevens?

  But to put in my own home, no.

• 39:53Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 39:54Michael Stevens?

  Unless it was like, yeah, this person either wanted someone to own and display their remains, or this person deserves a little disrespect.

• 40:07Hannah Fry?

  Just here and there around.

• 40:08Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, just a little bit, just like for funsies, yeah.

• 40:11Hannah Fry?

  Lord Byron did this once, you know. He had this massive estate and his gardener was digging up in the grounds and just came across loads of skulls from monks who had who'd lived there a century earlier. Would you like to guess what Byron did with them? He was 19 years old at the time, by the way. Byron's got quite a reputation.

• 40:27Michael Stevens?

  How many? Like a lot?

• 40:29Hannah Fry?

  Um, a few, more than one, not sure how many.

• 40:34Michael Stevens?

  Uh, did he do something decorative with them?

• 40:37Hannah Fry?

  He he made him into drinking goblets.

• 40:39Michael Stevens?

  Oh, he did?

• 40:39Hannah Fry?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Michael Stevens?

  Goblets?

• 40:40Hannah Fry?

  He had them he had them polished and mounted on a silver stand.

• 40:43Michael Stevens?

  And where are they now? Do we know?

• 40:45Hannah Fry?

  You know what? His estate was purchased by a big game hunter and his wife, and the wife was a devout Christian and thought it was absolutely disgusting. She thought it was this horrible, morbid thing that Byron had done. And so she dismantled the goblet, she had the silver removed, she gave the monk's skull a proper Christian blessing, and then secretly reburied it somewhere on the vast grounds of the estate.

• 41:08Michael Stevens?

  Okay. That's kind of a nice thing to do.

• 41:12Hannah Fry?

  It's decent.

• 41:13Michael Stevens?

  Right. They did not ask for their skulls to be turned into goblets.

• 41:17Hannah Fry?

  He wrote a poem about it as well.

• 41:19Michael Stevens?

  Oh, he did?

• 41:20Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, in, uh, it was called Lines Inscribed Upon A Cup Formed From A Skull. I mean, for someone who was known for his words, that's not a particularly good title, I don't think. Wouldn't work on YouTube.

• 41:30Michael Stevens?

  It's a descriptive title. I think it could work on YouTube. It depends on what like his brand is. Goblet prank, gone skull.

• 41:41Hannah Fry?

  Anyway, he said that it was, it was better for a skull to hold the drink of gods than to be food for worms. Essentially, that's what the poem's about.

• 41:47Michael Stevens?

  I mean, it depends on what the monks wanted.

• 41:49Hannah Fry?

  I think it depends on what the monks wanted, and I think that probably the monks, you know, didn't want to be slobbered over for the rest of time.

• 41:55Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Hannah Fry?

  I think you've got to be careful about this wish to give your skeleton to your family, you know? I trust them to, I just don't trust the many generations of people to come afterwards.

• 42:04Michael Stevens?

  I mean, yeah, I don't either, but that's fine with me. Like, I know what could happen and I'm fine with it.

• 42:10Hannah Fry?

  You're okay with it.

• 42:11Michael Stevens?

  I do want my flesh to go back to the earth, though. I think that I, at least the, the stuff that the earth wants back, that earthworms and microbes will eat, they should take back. But the bones, I think, are less interesting to living things. And so it's fine, I think, for them, in my opinion, to stick around as toys or decorations.

• 42:34Hannah Fry?

  Things wearing silly hats for the rest of time.

• 42:36Michael Stevens?

  I've always thought about the privacy rights of it all. Like, we've got King Tut's body, and we've just, like, taken photographs and it's, you can see it. After a certain point in time, do people, like, lose that ownership of their own bodies and wishes?

• 42:52Hannah Fry?

  Well, I think it's basically the moment after their death, they lose it, really.

• 42:56Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Hannah Fry?

  I mean, this, this idea of body snatching or stealing body parts has happened to famous people throughout history. Einstein is a really good example of this, um, whose, his brain was stolen out of his head.

• 43:09Michael Stevens?

  Yeah, what was the story? Because I read Driving Mr. Albert when I was a kid, and I loved it. It's a book about Einstein's brain and how it, it, I don't know, someone had it in their trunk for a while? But I don't remember, so tell me.

• 43:22Hannah Fry?

  Okay, so he was really deliberate in his instructions. He did not want to become this relic that was passed around, right? He absolutely did not want that for himself. So he demanded that his entire body be cremated immediately. Right, that's what Einstein wanted. And his ashes scattered in a secret location as well. But the pathologist who was on call the night that he died, a guy called Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey decided, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this opportunity. I think Einstein's wishes are less important than science. So during the autopsy, he literally stole Einstein's brain.

• 43:58Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Hannah Fry?

  He hid it away. He didn't have prior permission from anybody. And then when the theft was noticed a few days later.

• 44:05Michael Stevens?

  How was it noticed?

• 44:06Hannah Fry?

  I'm not sure how, maybe they picked him up and were like, this feels a bit like.

• 44:08Michael Stevens?

  His head feels like.

• 44:09Hannah Fry?

  The hospital was absolutely furious, but what Harvey did was he sort of circumvented all of the bureaucrats and went directly to Einstein's son, Hans Albert, and then managed to secure this sort of retrospective blessing in order to keep the brain on the condition that it could only be used for really rigorous scientific interrogation. Okay, so that would have been great, you know, but Harvey was not this neuroscientist. He's not a person who knows how to do any of this stuff. And so he ended up, he refused to give the brain back to anybody. He was kind of holding on to it. And then he ended up going on this completely insane forty year road trip where this, this brain was cut up into little chunks. He cut it up into two hundred and forty little blocks.

• 44:52Michael Stevens?

  Oh, geez.

• 44:52Hannah Fry?

  And then preserved them in this really rubbery cellulose. And dividing it into different jars here and there and then put them in this wooden cider box and then put it in the, in the trunk of his car. And then was like moving around the American Midwest, going and seeing people and being like, well, what do you think of this? The first paper that was actually published on this wasn't till a few decades after, thirty years after Einstein's actual death. And in terms of the, the scientific insights that we've got from this, it's almost nothing because the brain was, you know, cut up in a way that wasn't usable.

• 45:27Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 45:27Hannah Fry?

  Given to the right people.

• 45:29Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Hannah Fry?

  All of this stuff. So, so really all we know about Einstein's brain is that, ah, sort of doesn't look that different to normal brains.

• 45:36Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Michael Stevens?

  Golly. So what, he was just like driving it around to show it off to people? Was he trying to sell it or what?

• 45:43Hannah Fry?

  No, I think he, he knew he had this incredible scientific treasure. And he would kind of bring it out. He would like bring it out the cupboard and, and show friends and, you know, he would mail chunks to researchers who asked for it.

• 45:56Michael Stevens?

  Right.

• 45:56Hannah Fry?

  It's all over the place now, by the way. It's not, it's not kind of united in one place. It's just.

• 46:00Michael Stevens?

  Do you have some of it?

• 46:01Hannah Fry?

  I, would I like some of it? I mean secretly, yes, I would. I have to confess. I think it's incredibly disrespectful, but I probably still would quite like some of it.

• 46:09Michael Stevens?

  Especially given that he did not want to be a relic, which is exactly what it is now. Like all these little mystical relics are now all spread out around. I don't want to be a relic either. I want to be, at least I want to be totally given back to the earth. At most, keep parts of me around for derision and jokes, but I do not want to be venerated. Yeah.

• 46:32Hannah Fry?

  Yeah, no, definitely not. Definitely not. I belong to my family and the earth and that's it.

• 46:36Michael Stevens?

  Have you ever given anyone a lock of your hair?

• 46:39Hannah Fry?

  No, although I think I did mention on this podcast once before that there was a point when I, in my childhood, when my sister grabbed a massive handful of my hair and my mum kept it.

• 46:51Michael Stevens?

  And she kept it. Yeah.

• 46:52Hannah Fry?

  Yeah. So there, there is a lock of my hair that exists, but no, I've never given it. I think that's bluntly a little creepy.

• 46:58Michael Stevens?

  Do you? Okay. No, I, I don't have a lot of hair to give. I've also never.

• 47:03Hannah Fry?

  It's there with fingernails for me, you know?

• 47:05Michael Stevens?

  Wait, what?

• 47:06Hannah Fry?

  I think fingernails and like giving someone a lock of hair, you may as well just give them a fingernail, you know?

• 47:10Michael Stevens?

  There's a, there's a difference though. Like the hair is like, now I sound like I'm some kind of hair collecting freak. I've never wanted a lock of anyone's hair, nor, nor have I been given any. Though I do have a tiny amount of my daughter's hair from her first haircut. Her grandmother did it and I'm like, oh, I should save this, assuming that those be someday be like a museum for my daughter and her history. But I, I get how, I mean, hair is more decorative and beautiful, right? I'm trying to think of other times where there's hair besides wigs. It, it feels more clean. It's, it's like, it's like always dead stuff, right? Whereas like a piece of skin would be more weird.

• 47:52Hannah Fry?

  A scab.

• 47:53Michael Stevens?

  A scab?

• 47:54Hannah Fry?

  My daughter's first scab.

• 47:57Michael Stevens?

  I don't have my daughter's first scab.

• 48:00Hannah Fry?

  You could do though, and she couldn't have any rights to it. You know, that's what we've learned from this episode.

• 48:04Michael Stevens?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Hannah Fry?

  You essentially do not own any of yourself. Once it's not attached to your body. Once your your self is no longer attached to your body, you don't own any of it at all.

• 48:12Michael Stevens?

  So back to our first question, who owns my baby teeth? They are in my mother's home. Could I force her to give them to me legally?

• 48:22Hannah Fry?

  I don't think you could.

• 48:23Michael Stevens?

  Are you serious? Even though they're from me?

• 48:25Hannah Fry?

  I don't think you could. I think once they have left you.

• 48:27Michael Stevens?

  I mean, she owns them, right? And like, I gave her permission when I was a kid to keep them. And I have not asked for them back the whole time I've been an adult. If she refused to give them back to me, which she hasn't, by the way. I don't want people to think that my mom stole my teeth. But I'm just imagining that she really wanted to keep them and would not let me have them. Could I say, yeah, but I grew them?

• 48:47Hannah Fry?

  No.

• 48:47Michael Stevens?

  My DNA was the blueprint for them.

• 48:50Hannah Fry?

  I don't think you can. I don't think you can. I think there is not anything special about biological material that came from your body that means you have an automatic right over it.

• 48:59Michael Stevens?

  Wow.

• 48:59Hannah Fry?

  Which is a really strange idea to me. That remains a really strange idea.

• 49:04Michael Stevens?

  Yeah. But you've mixed up your daughter's teeth.

• 49:07Hannah Fry?

  I know.

• 49:08Michael Stevens?

  Could you do a DNA test on them?

• 49:10Hannah Fry?

  Probably.

• 49:10Michael Stevens?

  Would it be worth it?

• 49:13Hannah Fry?

  Hang on, this one belongs to a cat.

• 49:15Michael Stevens?

  Oh, no, what happened? This has all been really fascinating. But in future episodes, we're going to be talking about not just who owns and has rights over body parts, but who owns instructions to make body parts? What's the deal with like my DNA or yours? Or a gene that like I invent myself? Or what about an embryo? What about something that has its own DNA and can become a person? And it's very different than a foot, I would say.

• 49:46Hannah Fry?

  Right.

• 49:46Michael Stevens?

  Or what about my own thoughts? There's a lot of cool stuff to talk about. So please join us next time. And until then, hold on to your hats and your heads. Because, well, we've got a lot of cool stuff coming.

• 49:59Hannah Fry?

  We certainly do. As ever, if you would like to ask us a question, we might just answer it on our Thursday episodes. You can send that to [email protected].

• 50:06Michael Stevens?

  All right, see you next time.

• 50:07Hannah Fry?

  Bye bye.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  There we are, getting a statement from Number 10. On that flight, with 350 passengers onboard.

• 50:32Speaker 06

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 50:40Speaker 07

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russia.

• 50:46Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 50:51Speaker 06

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself: You want to play, or not? You're the Prime Minister! You've done... NOTHING!

• 51:04Speaker 05

  We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, and disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 51:15Speaker 06

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 51:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 51:22Speaker 06

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