Frances Larson explores the dark and varied obsessions that our culture has had with decapitated heads and skulls throughout history.
Why you should listen
Oxford anthropologist Frances Larson wrote Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found. The book, which she describes as a survey of our “traditions of decapitation,” was published in 2014, just before beheadings sadly started populating the front pages of the news once more. She previously wrote an acclaimed biography of Sir Henry Wellcome.