In his book Letters of Stone professor Steven Robbins tells the deeply moving story of his quest to find out what happened to the family members he only knew from a picture on the wall of his childhood home in South Africa.

In this interview Steven reveals the surprising connections between his family members murdered in nazi death camps, the race science done by people like Rudolf Pöch in the Kalahari and the connections between struggles of land and identity across time and space. All of which is connected to the sleepy town of Williston in the middle of the Karoo.

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This is the first in our new episode format: ARC Interviews — conversations with people whose stories and work challenge the way we see the world.

We begin with Brain Miennies — community leader, activist, and a key voice in Unburied. After sharing the episodes of Unburied with Brain, we sat down with him to reflect on the series, the ongoing struggle for the repatriation of Indigenous ancestors, and why this work is about more than returning bones. It’s about forgotten history, dignity, and ultimately— justice.

Unburied is a production by ARC in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Written, produced and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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As Rudolf Pöch prepared to leave Southern Africa in 1910, he left behind a legacy of exhumed graves, stolen bones, and silenced voices. But he also left behind a trail — one that leads, unexpectedly, to a small cemetery in Kuruman and a moment of reckoning.

In this final episode, Unburied follows the remains of Klaas and Trooi Pienaar, two ordinary people caught in an extraordinary story. Thanks to the disturbing decisions of Pöch’s assistant Mr. Mehnarto, their bodies — packed in barrels of salt — were preserved and labeled. Unlike the hundreds of others, their names survived.

We follow the global effort to return their remains: from a conference in Vienna that turned into a reckoning, to a ceremonial reburial we are reminded why this matters: “As long as they don’t rest, we can’t rest.”

Unburied is a production by ARC in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Written, produced and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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In the 1970s, a bookish young man was sorting shelves in a dusty library in apartheid South Africa. He noticed something strange — the way books were classified looked eerily similar to the way people were categorized outside. Years later, he would link that system back to a name few in his community had heard: Carl Linnaeus.

In this episode, Unburied follows the legacy of racial classification from Sweden to the Kalahari, and into the hands of Austrian anthropologist Rudolf Pöch. With insights from Nama crowned prince Samuel Dawids, anthropologist Alan Morris, historian Ciraj Rassool, and researcher Anette Hoffmann, we trace how systems of knowledge were used to rank, reduce, and collect human beings — all in the name of science.

Unburied is a production by ARC in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa. Written, produced and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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Inside an archive in Vienna, the grooves of old wax cylinders hold forgotten voices. These are the sonic remains of Rudolf Pöch’s expedition to the Kalahari in the early 1900s.

In this episode, we follow the distorted “language samples” Pöch left behind and the people whose lives — and deaths — they documented. From the field expertise of Xhosi Tshai to the frustrated warnings of Kxara the Elder, we finally get a glimpse into a perspective other than the anthropologist’s.

With historian Anette Hoffmann, we confront the limits of colonial archives by paying attention to the echoes.

Unburied is a production by ARC in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Written, produced and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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In 1907, an Austrian anthropologist rode into the Kalahari on an oxwagon and left with bones from more than 170 human beings. This episode begins our investigation into Rudolf Pöch — the man who (unwittingly or not) helped pioneer race science, the communities he studied (and exploited), and the legacy of human remains kept in museum boxes today.

We follow Pöch’s trail through the red dunes of the Kalahari, to the archives of Vienna, and into the lives of those living with his legacy. Featuring interviews with community activist Brian Mienies, Rietfontein resident Willie Philander, and historians Walter Sauer and Sophie Schasiepen, this episode asks: why did Rudolf Pöch take all those bones from the Kalahari?

Unburied is a production by ARC in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Written, produced and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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Unburied Season 1: Built from Bones

Season one of the Unburied series retraces the footsteps of Dr. Rudolf Pöch, an Austrian anthropologist who traveled through the Kalahari in the early 20th century.

The series investigates how Pöch dug up graves and took the remains from more than 170 indigenous people and used the bones for race science, to justify white supremacy.

Unburied seeks to understand what happened in the Kalahari and how those events have shaped the lives of the indigenous communities in the Kalahari and the world at large.

Unburied is a new series by ARC coming out very soon. Subscribe now so you don't miss it.

Produced in partnership with Iziko Museums of South Africa.

Written, produced, and sound designed by Rasmus Bitsch and Neil Liddell.

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We've got news: Sound Africa is becoming ARC. A new name for a new vision, but the mission stays the same. Independent, non-profit documentary storytelling.

Check out: https://www.arcdocs.org/

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