​Welcome to Binge Thinking. We invite professors and experts to give lectures in bars around Boston, NYC and DC!

In a world of AI slop, doomscrolling and brainrot, Binge Thinking brings real experts into real places for nights of learning, conversation, and community.

Think Responsibly.

​TOPIC:
The Red Market: Buying and Selling the Human Body | The Ethics of Bones, Consent, and Forensic Anthropology

SPEAKER:
Emma Roach, Boston University

​Ever wonder where the skeleton in your old biology classroom actually came from? Over 60,000 documented human beings were shipped across the globe in the 18th and 19th centuries to stock medical school shelves. Most never agreed to it. They were stolen, dug up, or their grieving families talked into giving them away. Their bones are still sitting in university collections today, and nobody can agree on what to do about it. Some schools keep teaching from them. Others are pulling them from the curriculum entirely. Emma Roach studies the "red market," the trade that made all of this possible, and tonight she's breaking down how it happened, why it still matters, and what happens next.

​Topics include:

​What is the Red Market? How over 60,000 documented individuals were exported across the 18th and 19th centuries to supply medical schools worldwide

​Why it matters: the people behind the bones, who never consented, were stolen, or had families coerced into giving them up

​What institutions are doing about it now, from case studies of universities that continue the research and teaching to those choosing a different path entirely

​Where the field goes from here, and most importantly, what should actually happen to these individuals (we want to hear what YOU think)

​About the Speaker

​Emma Roach is a graduate student in the MS in Forensic Anthropology program at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, where she's part of the Forensic and Bioanthropology (FAB) Lab. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Anthropology from Northern Michigan University in 2024. Emma recently published her first paper in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, "Ethics seems like an afterthought": An argument for prioritizing ethics education in anthropology curricula.

​Agenda

7:00 PM — Doors Open (Grab a seat and drinks!)
7:30 PM — Lecture Begins
8:10 PM — Audience Q&A
8:30 PM — Drinks & Conversation
9:00 PM — Event Ends

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Join us and grab a drink as we ask who really owns the dead, and why 60,000 stolen skeletons ended up in classrooms...