SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human

Host Myra Flynn unpacks one soul food recipe: collard greens, with local and world-renowned chefs, and even her own mother. Together they explore how the history of a once undesirable food mimics the resilience, innovation, and perseverance of a once considered undesirable people.*Homegoings is a: Podcast, TV show, and event-series where no topic is off the table, and there’s no such thing as going too deep. Host and musician Myra Flynn brings you candid conversations about race with artists, experts and regular folks all over the country about their literal skin in the game—of everyday life.

Can museums and archaeology harm the dead?An Indigenous archaeologist from Brazil challenges traditional approaches to studying human bones. Her work reveals how standard practices—such as assigning catalog numbers to ancient bodies—are violent and biased. As she encounters the remains of a 700-year-old child in a university museum, their stories intertwine, highlighting issues of ethics, coloniality, and ethnic erasure. This encounter prompts a discussion on how archaeology and museums can address historical wounds and counter the silencing of Indigenous histories.Mariana Petry Cabral is a Brazilian archaeologist whose research interests focus on Indigenous archaeologies, collaborative practices, and how people produce and use historical knowledge to understand who they are. She received her Ph.D. from Universidade Federal do Pará (Brazil) and is a permanent professor of the department of anthropology and archaeology at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil). She was a visiting scholar at Brown University in 2023 and is working on a project about the relevance of archaeological narratives about the past to imagine more inclusive and diverse futures.Check out these related resources: "Finding Footprints Laid at the Dawn of Time” "Indigenous Cultures Have Archaeology Too” Museum of Natural History and Botanical Garden, UFMG "From Structures to Bodies and Beings: The Perishable Vestiges of Lapa do Caboclo, Diamantina, Minas Gerais” Follow the Indigenous archaeologist Bibi Nhatarâmiak on Instagram

As a form of popular culture, comics have provided humor, action, and entertainment to readers of all ages and across generations. But comics also intertwine art and humor to creatively make political statements, challenge media censorship, and address controversial issues of the times.This podcast episode focuses on how comics can be tools for social action and transformation by highlighting the life history of the first woman Pakistani comic artist Nigar Nazar and her character Gogi, whom she created in the 1970s. Gogi comics shed light on important themes of education, health, rights, and other critical women’s issues in Pakistan and the broader Muslim world and how they are transforming over time.Join cultural anthropologist Sana Malik and host Eshe Lewis as they talk about Gogi, the transgressive potential of comics and art, and how comics are relevant in Pakistan today amid new social movements and the social media boom.Sana Malik is a cultural anthropologist who studies women’s political agency in urban Pakistan. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Emory University. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. Sana’s dissertation draws on the anthropology of rights and social movements, social generations studies, and feminist ethnography to explore how activists and ordinary women engage in movements for social justice and rights in urban Pakistan.Check out these related resources: Gogi Studios “Aurat March: Pakistani Women Face Violent Threats Ahead of Rally” “Gogi, the Heroine Created by Pakistan's First Female Cartoonist” “Confronting Xenophobia Through Food—and Comics” “When Anthropology Meets the Graphic Novel in Thailand”

Where is your smartphone right now?If you’re like most smartphone users in the United States, it’s probably within a few feet of your reach, if not sitting in your hand. In the last 15 years, smartphones have quickly, seamlessly, and profoundly been embedded in the daily lives of most Americans. There are now few, if any, domains of modern life that are unaffected by smartphone use.This episode explores our interactions and relationships with these pocket-sized computers we call smartphones through the research of Alberto Navarro, a doctoral student at Stanford University. Drawing from inventor Steve Jobs’ view that the computer represents “the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds,” Navarro explores what computers represent for humans in evolutionary and energetic terms.Alberto Navarro is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Stanford University. He is interested in how tools allow humans to flexibly modify the structure and functions of their bodies and minds. Following in the anthropological tradition of making the familiar strange, his dissertation explores ways in which smartphone use in the United States is transforming many of the most basic features of human existence and experience. He believes improving our relationship with smartphones is one of the most impactful things we can do to enhance our everyday performance and well-being.Check out these related resources: Steve Jobs Interview, “Bicycle for Our Minds” “How People Actually Use Their Smartphones” “Do Mobile Phones Set Citizens Free?” “How Cellphones Make and Break Human Connections”

María Pía Tavella is an Argentine biological anthropologist and science writer. In conversation with host Eshe Lewis, María shares a snapshot of the multiple hurdles the scientific community is facing in Argentina and reflects on the role of science communication. How is scientific research related to our daily lives? In what ways are science contributions so valuable to our societies that we shouldn't cut spending on them, even in times of economic crisis?María Pía Tavella received a Ph.D in anthropology from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) and is an assistant professor in human evolution in the same institution. María Pía’s dissertation sheds light on pre-Hispanic population dynamics in central Argentina through the study of ancient DNA. She works for the National Scientific and Technological Research Council of Argentina as a science communication and outreach officer. María Pía is also interested in bioethics and the social implications of genetic research.Check out these related resources: “‘Despair’: Argentinian Researchers Protest as President Begins Dismantling Science” “Argentinians Stage Nationwide Strike Against Javier Milei’s Far-Right Agenda” “‘The State’ Is a Story We Tell Ourselves” “Can Protestors Humanize the Police?” “A Radical Recentering of Dignity”

Discussions about the impacts of dams around the world are often focused on the displacement of communities due to the creation of reservoirs and the submergence of towns and cities. What happens when a dam affects more people downstream than it displaces upstream? How does a dam impact humans living downstream?In this episode, Parag Jyoti Saikia shares how the Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project, one of India’s largest dams under construction, will impact the lifeways of Indigenous communities living downstream of the dam. The dam will not displace them. Instead, it will change the ways in which the river currently flows. Delving into people's relationship with the river and their understanding of its flows, Parag describes the dam’s environmental, sociocultural, and political consequences for communities living downstream.Parag Jyoti Saikia is studying the construction of a hydropower dam in India to understand how infrastructures in the making shape everyday life, the environment, and geopolitics. He is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His research is supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and the Social Science Research Council’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship. For nearly a decade, Parag has been associated with grassroots organizations working on dams, rivers, and the environment. He has been writing about these issues in English and Assamese, his mother tongue.Check out these related resources: “Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam” “The UNESCO Site That Never Was” “Damming the Northeast” “Arunachal’s Unfinished Lower Subansiri Dam Could Be Tomb for India’s Giant Hydropower Projects” “Bhupen Hazarika Setu and the Politics of Infrastructure”

Funeral traditions around the world involve a range of rituals. From singing to burying to … eating. Why is food such a common practice in putting our loved ones to rest?In this episode, Leyla Jafarova, a doctoral student at Boston University, examines the role of funeral foods in different cultural contexts—from the solemn Islamic funeral rites of the former Soviet Union to the symbolic importance of rice in West Africa. Food rituals help with bereavement because they carry cultural symbols, foster social cohesion, provide psychological comfort, and contribute to the expression of collective grief and remembrance within communities. Through food, human societies navigate the universal experience of death and mourning.Leyla Jafarova is a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at Boston University. Her doctoral research focuses on the emergence and development of humanitarian ethics of care for the unidentified dead in post-war Azerbaijan and the production of knowledge in this regard. Leyla also explores how families of missing persons in post-war Azerbaijan construct their personal truths and navigate their experiences of loss and healing. She is examining how their alternative truths often exist alongside and are sidelined by dominant humanitarian regimes of truth that exclusively rely on forensic scientific evidence. This research has been supported through a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant and by a Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship through Boston University.Check out these related resources: Dying to Eat: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Food, Death, and the Afterlife, edited by Candi K. Cann Ways of Eating: Exploring Food Through History and Culture by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft and Merry White “Who First Buried the Dead?”

What role does gossip play in human societies? In this episode, Bridget Alex and Emily Sekine, editors at SAPIENS magazine, chat with host Eshe Lewis to explore gossip as a fundamental human activity.They discuss gossip’s evolutionary roots, suggesting it may have developed as a form of "vocal grooming" to maintain social bonds in groups. It also helps enforce social norms, they argue, offering a way to share information about people’s reputations and control free riders. Their conversation also touches on how gossip can aid in navigating uncertainties and expressing care.Bridget Alex earned her Ph.D. in archaeology and human evolutionary biology from Harvard University. Supported by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and other awards, her research focused on the spread of Homo sapiens and extinction of other humans, such as Neanderthals, over the past 200,000 years. Prior to joining SAPIENS, Bridget taught anthropology and science communication at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena City College, and Harvard University. Her pop-science stories have appeared in outlets such as Discover, Science, Archaeology, Atlas Obscura, and Smithsonian Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @bannelia.Emily Sekine is an editor and a writer with a Ph.D. in anthropology from The New School for Social Research. Prior to joining the team at SAPIENS, she worked with academic authors to craft journal articles and book manuscripts as the founder of Bird’s-Eye View Scholarly Editing. Her anthropological research and writing explore the relationships between people and nature, especially in the context of the seismic and volcanic landscapes of Japan. Emily’s work has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Society of Environmental Journalists, among others, and her essays have appeared in publications such as Orion magazine, the Anthropocene Curriculum, and Anthropology News.Eshe Lewis is the project director for the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Program. She holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Florida and has spent the past 10 years working with Afro-descendant peoples in Peru on issues of social movements, women’s issues, Black feminism, and gender violence. Eshe is based in Toronto, Canada.Check out these related resources: "What Is Linguistic Anthropology?" "Why Envy Might Be Good for Us" "Why Do We Gossip" 

Today most people around the world are using digital gadgets. These enable us to communicate instantaneously, pursue our daily work, and entertain ourselves through streaming videos and songs. But what happens when our past digital activities become evidence in criminal investigations? How are the data that mediate our lives turned into legal arguments?An anthropologist searches for answers.Onur Arslan is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Davis, who works at the intersections of science and technology studies, visual anthropology, law, and social studies. He graduated from Istanbul University with a B.A. in political science and international relations, and from Bilgi University with an M.A. in philosophy and social thought. For his Ph.D. research, he is investigating how digital technologies reshape the production of legal knowledge in terrorism trials. Through focusing on Turkish counterterrorism, he examines cultural, political, and technoscientific implications of evidence-making practices. His field research is supported by the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and American Research Institute in Turkey.Check out these related resources: “The Power of Criminal Prosecutors” “How Bureaucracy Conceals Obligations to Afghan Refugees” “How Rumors Tap and Fuel Anxieties in the Internet Age”

Many of our primate relatives use tools. How do they use them? And why?And what do these skills mean for understanding tools across the animal kingdom, including for us humans?In this episode, host Eshe Lewis delves into a conversation with Kirsty Graham, an animal behavior researcher. Kirsty explains how primates such as chimpanzees use tools to forage. Such innovative methods to access food reflect the basic yet profound necessities that drive tool innovation. Contrasting these findings with tool use in Homo sapiens highlights a vast range of purposes tools serve in human life.Kirsty Graham is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of St Andrews in the U.K. Their research focuses on the gestural communication of wild bonobos. They conducted fieldwork in Indonesia, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before their Ph.D., they worked as a field assistant at Wamba, Democratic Republic of Congo, for the Max Planck Institute and studied at Quest University Canada, specializing in research at the Caño Palma Biological Station in Costa Rica.Check out these related resources: "Tools of the Wild: Unveiling the Crafty Side of Nature" "How Apes Reveal Human History" "Meet the Ancient Technologists Who Changed Everything" "The First Butchers"

Why do people migrate from one country to another, leaving behind friends, family, and familiarity in search of another life elsewhere? And how might their experiences look different if they are deaf? Ala’ Al-Husni is a deaf Jordanian who moved to Japan five years ago, where he still lives with his deaf Japanese wife and their family just outside of Tokyo.Reported by Timothy Y. Loh, a hearing anthropologist who researches deaf communities in the Arabic-speaking Middle East, this episode explores the joys, pains, and unexpected gains of Ala's journey and the meaning of deaf migration in a globalizing world.Timothy Y. Loh is an anthropologist of science and technology, and a Ph.D. candidate in history, anthropology, and science, technology, and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. His ethnographic research examines sociality, language, and religion in deaf and signing worlds spanning Jordan, Singapore, and the United States. His research has been published in Medical Anthropology, SAPIENS Anthropology Magazine, and Somatosphere, and he has received support from the Social Science Research Council, the Royal Anthropological Institute, and the National Academy of Education and Spencer Foundation, among others.We thank Annelies Kusters, Laura Mauldin, and Kate McAuliff for advice on accessibility for this episode.Check out these related resources: The MobileDeaf Project, Heriot-Watt University “Building the Tower of Babel” and “Deaf cosmopolitanism” Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India by Michele Friedner "How Deaf and Hearing Friends Co-Navigate the World" Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes for Human Diversity edited by H-Dirksen L. Bauman and Joseph J. Murray

At the Abri du Maras site in southern France, archaeologists recovered twisted plant fibers dating back 50,000 years, suggesting Neanderthals had knowledge of plant materials and the seasonal cycles necessary for making durable string. This finding challenges a view of Neanderthals as simplistic and inferior to modern humans, highlighting their sophisticated use of technology and deep environmental knowledge. In this episode, Bruce Hardy discusses with host Eshe Lewis the oldest piece of string on record and how it reshapes our understanding of Neanderthals.This story not only delves into the technical aspects of making ancient string but also underscores the broader implications for appreciating Neanderthal ingenuity.

These days, a mention of cyborgs often conjures images from a science fiction future: robot arms and legs, infrared eyes, and other modified humans. However, we don’t need to look into the future to find cyborgs. In many ways, people today are already cyborgs. We are deeply intertwined with technology—from the clothes we wear to the structures we live in. But when did our relationship with technology start? Who was the first cyborg? These questions take us from the present to the deep past, with host Eshe Lewis joining Cindy Hsin-yee Huang, a Paleolithic archaeologist, on a journey to ponder cyborg anthropology, tool use, and the relationship between our ancient hominin ancestors and their technologies. Cindy Hsin-yee Huang is a doctoral candidate in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University and affiliated with the Institute of Human Origins. Cindy is a Paleolithic archeologist, with a focus on stone tools and cultural evolution. Her research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, uses stone tools in the archeological record to investigate large-scale patterns of innovation and cultural diffusion during the ancient past. This work helps us understand how technology impacted, facilitated, and reflected human evolution, migration, and social interactions. Check out these related resources: Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence by Andy Clark A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century by Donna Haraway “Tools of the Wild: Unveiling the Crafty Side of Nature” Amber Case: We're Already Cyborgs A Different Kind of Animal: How Culture Transformed Our Species by Robert Boyd

Anuli Akanegbu is the host of BLK IRL, an audio docuseries. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in cultural anthropology at New York University, conducting research on Black creatives who are contract workers in Atlanta, Georgia. In conversation with SAPIENS’ podcast host, Dr. Eshe Lewis, Anuli delves into the historical and current successes and struggles of Black influencers, content creators, and artists for labor rights and recognition. Through in-depth ethnographic interviews, Akanegbu’s work emphasizes the importance of acknowledging people’s humanity behind their digital personas. It reveals the complex realities of Black professionals in creative industries. And as a result, her research challenges us to rethink our assumptions about the online/offline dichotomy—and the possibility of a joyous and unified “life ecosystem.” This episode is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship program, which provides in-depth training for anthropologists in the craft of science communication and public scholarship, funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Since the dawn of our species, the ability to make things has made us who we are. Human-made objects, large and small, have enabled and molded evolutionary forces, sparked and expressed our imagination, guided and structured social relations, transformed and destroyed the environment–and much more. This season of the podcast looks at how a wide range of technologies—from smartphones to comic books to cooking to hydroelectric dams—are intertwined with our lives. Anthropologists’ stories from around the globe reveal fascinating insights into human evolution, social organization, communication, historical trajectories, and the interface between the living and the dead. Join Season 7’s host, Dr. Eshe Lewis, on our latest journey to tackle big questions about cultures of technology and the purpose, limits, and possibilities of such material culture. ✽ SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. The executive producers are Cat Jaffee and Chip Colwell. This season’s host is Eshe Lewis, who is the director of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship program. Dennis Funk is the audio editor and sound designer. Christine Weeber is the copy editor. SAPIENS is an editorially independent magazine of the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Chicago Press. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. This episode is part of the SAPIENS Public Scholars Training Fellowship program, which provides in-depth training for anthropologists in the craft of science communication and public scholarship, funded with the support of a three-year grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Hosts Kate Ellis and Doris Tulifau explore the perils and possibilities of the kind of fieldwork that defined Margaret Mead as an anthropologist. They provide answers to the Mead-Freeman controversy but also ask the questions that remain.  In this season finale, we circle back to the problems with coming of age … in Samoa and everywhere. Season 6 of the SAPIENS podcast was co-produced by PRX and SAPIENS, and made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

We turn from Margaret Mead’s and Derek Freeman’s conflicting accounts of adolescence and sexuality in Samoa to more stories from Samoans themselves.  Author and poet Sia Figiel and activist and anthropologist Doris Tulifau are two Samoan women from different generations. Yet they share a bond and have a similar experience of terrible violence and survival.  They bravely give us a glimpse into the dynamics of power within sexuality and their heartfelt journey of reclaiming it. Season 6 of the SAPIENS podcast was co-produced by PRX and SAPIENS, and made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

After Derek Freeman publishes Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, the controversy heats up. Op-eds, documentaries, censure by a leading anthropological organization, and even a debate on the Phil Donahue Show all follow.  Was Margaret Mead, “the grandmother of the world,” wrong? Or was Freeman?  At stake was the heart of an academic discipline and the nature of being human. Mead’s own daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, launches a defense, and other anthropologists weigh in too. Season 6 of the SAPIENS podcast was co-produced by PRX and SAPIENS, and made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

SAPIENS is happy to present this bonus episode from Lost Women of Science about another path-breaking thinker. In the 1960s, a Black home economist at Howard University recruited kids for an experimental preschool program. All were Black and lived in poor neighborhoods around campus. Flemmie Kittrell had grown up poor herself, just two generations removed from slavery, and she’d seen firsthand the effects of poverty. While Flemmie earned a PhD from Cornell, most of her siblings didn’t make it to college. One of her sisters died at just 22 years old of malnutrition. And it was the combination of these experiences that drove Flemmie to apply her academic training to help improve the lives of people in her community. In the early 1960s, Flemmie decided to see what would happen if you gave poor kids a boost early in life, in the form of a really great preschool. Every day for two years, parents would get free childcare, and their kids would get comprehensive care for body and mind—with plenty of nutritious food, fun activities, and hugs. What kind of difference would that make? And would it matter later on?

The first missionary arrived in Samoa in 1832, almost a century before Margaret Mead set out to study the culture of the islands. By the time she arrived, the church had been a central part of Samoan life for generations. In this episode, Doris Tulifau explores how Christianity and colonization complicate Mead’s—and her critic Derek Freeman’s—conclusions and continue to shape Samoan identity today. Season 6 of the SAPIENS podcast was co-produced by PRX and SAPIENS, and made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.