This week on our Curious Objects podcast, host Benjamin Miller is joined by Marina Wells to discuss scrimshaw. Whalebone, teeth, and other products of the sea adorned with nautical scenes and remembrances of home, scrimshaw is a portal into the lives and daydreams of whalers confined for months at a time aboard bobbing, blood-and-blubber-spattered boats. Under discussion in this episode are a pair of sperm whale teeth bearing depictions of what look like female pirates.

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