Dig Where You Stand

Announcing a new project from DWYS hosts Peter and Ben: The HEIST podcast. For a few months now, we've been working on HEIST , a new worker-owned news platform for Berlin - and now we're launching its podcast, featuring stories from Berlin you won't get anywhere else. We launch on 6 July with three episodes at once: Hebh Jamal on life as a Palestinian in Berlin after October 7; Ben Miller on the A...

“An event never before experienced in the history of medicine worldwide is realized here.” Episode 3 of Dig Where You Stand picks up the story where we left off. By examining a recent significant discovery of ancestral human remains in Berlin - when pits filled with human bones were found in 2014 - we continue the story of how German scientists harvested human bodies in the name of racist and unet...

Why can’t we give them back? Episode two of Dig Where You Stand examines one of the darkest chapters of German colonial history: The genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in German South West Africa. In 2011, Germany finally returned 20 skulls from its collection of stolen ancestral remains held at Charité hospital - and the result was a diplomatic scandal. This episode is about the politics beh...

In between episodes 1 and 2 of Dig Where You Stand, here is our conversation with Cece Mlay and Agnes Lisa Wegner, directors of the new documentary The Empty Grave. The film follows two families in Tanzania as they demand the return of their ancestors’ remains from Germany. Follow them @the_empty_grave_film . A transcript of our conversation is available to our subscribers here . Follow us on...

We’re introduced to the topic of ancestral remains through the ongoing search for Mangi Meli’s head - removed after his murder in 1900, and missing ever since. How did these remains get to Berlin, and where are they being held? Who collected them? And we explore the lasting impact on the affected families and communities today.   Peter’s article on this topic is the cover story in the cu...

The first episode of Dig Where You Stand will be released on April 29, 2024. Subscribe to the feed now so you’ll be notified when it comes out.  Follow us @digwhereyoustandshow and visit us at digwhereyoustand.show , where you can sign up for the material we'll release in the newsletter. DWYS is created by Ben Schuman-Stoler and Peter Matthews. It’s produced by Kollo Media, Ben Schuman-Stoler...