Welcome to a new and exciting Podcast called ANATOPOD designed to teach anatomy. ANATOPOD aims not just to teach anatomy well to a high and practical level but also to introduce the history of anatomy and dissection of the cadaver. I appreciate that anatomy is a visual tradition but it wasn't always like that. In the Renaissance, anatomy was taught from textbooks written by the Greek Galen in the first century A.D. Perhaps it might seem unusual to revert anatomy teaching to an aural basis but it is recognized too that in this modern age anatomy departments in universities all over the world are dispensing with their raision d’être, the cadaver, replacing it with surrogates and models. We still do not know the effects of this change on the care of our patients but what we do know is that the cadaver is part of our death culture as much as it touches so many other aspects of society at large.