Should mummies be on display?

Prosthetic legs, wheelbarrow wheelchairs and guide… children? Those were just some of the assistive technologies and body augmentations available to our medieval and early modern ancestors. In this episode, Rae Gillibrand highlights how bodily difference was understood in this pr ...  Show more

It's now often used as an adjective for anything standard, plain, and borderline boring – but the history of vanilla is anything but. Eric T Jennings – whose book Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean is among the titles shortlisted for the 2026 Cundill History Prize – te ...  Show more

What does a mummy smell like? Prof. Ann Rosalie David is a pioneering researcher in mummies and ancient pathology. Having led many studies on Egyptian bodies, Prof. David helps reconstruct the lifestyles of the past. In this interview, she helpfully answers questions about ancien ...  Show more

A mummy is a human being whose soft tissue has been preserved after death, and there are mummies around the world -- including natural mummies, as well as corpses that have been intentionally embalmed. Listen to this classic episode with Chuck and Josh to learn more.See omnystudi ...  Show more

As a kid, FT associate editor Stephen Bush loved seeing ghoulish things: mummies, shrunken heads, supposedly magical severed hands. He credits these items with teaching him curiosity and a love for museums. So when he hears the argument that human remains do not belong on display ...  Show more

Welcome to the Dark History podcast. Mummies, we know em, we’ve love em. And they are quite exclusive. Really rare. I mean everybody loses their minds whenever we find a new one. But would you believe at one time, there was a whole bunch of these bony bois lying around? Oh yeah, ...  Show more