Though the line between the living and the dead might seem at first obvious, the medical state of brain death invites complex moral questions, as bioethicist Carl Elliott writes in our Autumn issue. Organ transplantation regularly occurs in brain-dead individuals, but why stop there? Why not, as Willard Gaylin asked in 1974, keep brain-dead subjects—which Gaylin terms “neomorts”—on life support in specialized “bioemporiums” for use in medical training or drug trials? Though one’s first reaction might be a visceral “yuck,” this commodification of the body is simply an unvarnished version of what many “organ procurement organizations” regularly do in disguising their gruesome work with sanitized language. Revisiting Gaylin’s proposal, Elliott ventures deep into the world of tissue harvesting, cultural psychology experiments, and even etymology to question our assumptions about the degradation and altruism, donation and commodity, spectacle and science.

Carl Elliott teaches philosophy and bioethics at the University of Minnesota. His most recent book is The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No.

Go beyond the episode:

• Read Carl Elliott’s essay “Welcome to the Bioemporium”
• And its inspiration: Willard Gaylin’s “Harvesting the Dead” from 1974
• For a real tangent, check out work by the founder of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists

Tune in every other week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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For a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the world, Japan has an unusual cultural export: the yakuza, members of transnational crime syndicates that can trace their origins to the Tokugawa shogunate of the early 1600s. “At one time or another, the yakuza have penetrated almost every industry in Japan,” writes Andrew Rankin, “from fish markets to geisha agencies, pachinko parlors, garbage collecting, sumo wrestling, speedboat racing, property development, and pornography.” These gangland figures get their English-language due in his new book, Yakuza: A 400-Year History of the Japanese Underworld. Despite the violence (and finger-chopping) that made them such meaty fodder for folk myths and the film industry, the yakuza are equally known for tales of chivalry and codes of honor even as they are increasingly targeted by the government, which has just as often collaborated with them. As Rankin writes, “It is not inconceivable that the organizations that ruled the Japanese underworld for the last few centuries will recede and vanish from sight altogether. But it would probably be rash to write them off just yet.”

Andrew Rankin studied and worked in Tokyo for 20 years before earning a doctorate in Japanese literature from Cambridge University. He is the author of Seppuku: A History of Samurai Suicide and Mishima, Aesthetic Terrorist: An Intellectual Portrait.

Some of our host’s favorite yakuza films include:

• Pale Flower (1964)—a moody noir following a yakuza member recently released from prison who must navigate both a new balance of power in the underworld and a reckless new love with a gambling problem—all while wearing incredible suits
• Tokyo Drifter (1966)—a stylish, technicolor dream of a yakuza member set loose after his boss closes up shop and must outrun his own assassin through the countryside
• Blind Woman’s Curse (1970)—Meiko Kaji (of Lady Snowblood fame) stars as the leader of a yakuza clan in this psychedelic film that memorably deploys dragon tattoos in everything from the fight choreography to the credit sequence
• Fireworks (1997)—a police officer stressed by a sick wife, a dead child, and a paralyzed partner starts to tumble into the underworld himself when borrowing from a yakuza loan shark leads him to rob a bank
• Giri/Haji (2019)—this British miniseries follows a Tokyo detective to London on the trail of his brother, whose alleged murder of a yakuza member’s nephew triggers the threat of a turf war; mesmerizing, impressionistic, and darkly funny

Tune in every other week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

Subscribe: iTunes/Apple • Amazon • Google • Acast • Pandora

Have suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.