¶ Introduction and Ivy's Anthropological Journey
🎵 Music
My name is Ivy Boyd.
I am Taysha Coster.
And welcome to Odd Anthropology, a podcast all about not just anthropology, but everything else that comes with. This includes archaeology and the unearthing of people and their stories and how this can all relate to different folklores and beliefs. Knowing Taysha and I were gonna throw in anything to do with ghosts whenever we can. Basically, if you like history and bones and ghosts, This is the podcast for you.
Absolutely. I don't think it would be us, uh, without that. And I mean, we haven't really known each other for super long, but we definitely have a lot of pretty much all those things in common.
So a little bit of background on myself. I enrolled recently into and was accepted into Washington State University to pursue a degree in anthropology, that I'm hoping to also apply towards a career in archaeology someday. Some people listening might recognize my voice if it sounds familiar. I have had
other podcasts in the past, which were primarily about the paranormal. I did dedicate most of the last few years of my adult life uh to pursuing my paranormal and supernatural interests. But here I am now to share even more of my deeper love of things like anthropology and archaeology. And I think some people might question my transition from paranormal investigator to pursuing anthropology. And there is so much overlap between these.
I think a lot of people don't even realize is there because for me and a lot of my paranormal interests, those stories aren't just. Ah, a scary ghost, you know? Not only do I love diving into the history of locations which we have deemed haunted, but there's so much more that interests me. Why do we believe in ghosts? Why do so many different groups of people spanning centuries and entirely different continents?
all have similar stories of paranormal and supernatural beings and phenomena. I think that's really cool. And what might the prevalence of certain types of ghosts tell us about ourselves as humans? We use ghost stories to give messages of warning, for example, to keep kids. And this applies to a lot of folklore too, but We tell kids scary stories about creatures and spirits in the woods so that they don't go into the woods and potentially get hurt.
We use ghost stories to train keep people from living a life of crime or bitterness and greed and things that could turn you into this mean, vengeful spirit after you die. And we also use ghost stories to grieve. There's so many ghostly legends where these specters act as death omens and it helps us to explain, for example, sudden deaths. And using the supernatural, the paranormal, to explain elements of nature of things that we don't understand is a bulk and such an important part of
Peoples. So to me, having such a passion in the paranormal and anthropology, it makes sense. So sorry I just rambled for like five minutes about myself.
¶ Taysha's Diverse Path to Anthropology
Taysha, tell us about yourself. Why are you here? What got you into all of this in the first place?
Yeah, um well I probably will be able to beat you. I'll sure I'll ramble for way more than five minutes.
We'll see. Start start the timer. Start the timer.
So I guess for me, anthropology has been Well, okay. So anthropology is the study of humans. Anthro, humans, topology, study of. And that's one of the things I really loved about it is I mean, it covers so much. Anything people do is covered under anthropology and it spans from the very ex start of humanity until this exact second and that second and that second and um And and everything in between, anything that a human does is anthropology and
Um, growing up my dad and my stepdad were both in the military. Um, I unfortunately didn't get to have any overseas adventures, um, but we did move around a lot on um in the United States. Um
mostly just we were up in Alaska and then we went to the east coast and um lived in Washington D C. Um but I have moved around a lot. I've had to kind of change not change myself to fit in, but um, you know, take in what's around me and adapt to different I don't want to s necessarily say cultures, but just subcultures, I guess, in a way, you know, going in a to a elementary school and being the new kid and saying book bag instead of backpack and
What a free
Right. Um and then you know moving to Minnesota and being completely different there and having to readjust myself, I kind of was already developing anthropological skills that I didn't realize observing and trying to have unbiased opinions about these new cultures I was experiencing, even though they're just different states.
You're an incredibly aware child.
I don't know that I was aware about it then.
Yeah. Um fair.
So when it came time to go go to school, um I was actually started out as an art major and in my first year you were supposed to do a portfolio review and I got terrified that I wasn't good enough to actually do anything in the art field. So I was like, okay, what else can I do? and took a hot second detour to criminology, but I didn't want to be a corrections officer or
I didn't know that. That's that's a piece of tacia lore.
program that they had at my school, um, their like kind of career options it really led to like police officer or correction officer. And that wasn't really what I wanted to do. So I I don't know if you remember the show Bones.
Yes.
I really loved that show and I thought it was just super cool that you could learn so much from a skeleton. And I know you and I had kind of talked before, or maybe it was just something that you had posted, like how much of our experience gets imprinted on our bones without us realizing.
Yeah.
There's such a story there and I thought that was so beautiful and so I ended up switching to anthropology and I did kind of focus more on like the biological anthropology side of things, studying like human evolution and um I wanted to be a forensic anthropologist. It didn't work out.
It's all good. Um, but more recently in my life I have been more interested kind of in the cultural side of things, um, the folklore and how humans believe what we believe and like you had said, how it every culture has their own story, but there's so many similar aspects and, you know, in paranormal, in religious belief. um, you know, like every culture has a flood story and like how we are all so similar.
Yes we are
¶ Universal Human Experience and Engagement
And I mean that's definitely something I feel like not to get political, but that we need to remember now.
Yeah, that's such a good point. It's like we all we all came from the same place.
Exactly. Exactly.
And so much of a is just human nature. And we've all got it.
Exactly.
I think what you just said was wonderful and as for anyone listening who has cared enough to listen and get to know us, we want to get to know you too. I mean anyone with a shared interest in these subjects I consider to be a friend, if we can if we can talk about bones. Ghosts. Um this will be a little bit of a hint to the next episode. Things like bog bodies and weird burials, then then were pals. Basically.
Absolutely.
Everyone listening has No choice. This is a Non consensual friendship. We're all friends.
We are now friends.
We are now friends. So we want to hear from you. If you're listening on Spotify, you can leave comments on the episode down below, which is a somewhat new feature that I didn't know existed until recently. And I've been podcasting for years. So I Swear I'm professional. Um please bestow a lovely five-star rating upon us.
And leave a written review. Don't forget to follow and subscribe. And you can reach out to us on social media or email through the links below in the show notes. Anything else you would like to add, Taysha?
Uh no, just thank you for uh letting us into your ear holes and um We are looking
There's certainly a way to put it. Oh we looked at it.
forward to sharing lots of stories and um Yeah, if you have anything that you would like to hear, I mean, this is this is kind of new for us, that well, this is really new for me. This is my first podcast, so I really don't know what I'm doing, just trying to say all the things that I've heard other people say at the end.
I don't know what I'm doing either.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
All right, on that note, until next time. Bye.
拜拜
¶ Childhood Archeology and Shared Discoveries
For those who have made it to the very end of this episode, enjoy these bloopers as your award.
Yep. Now see I feel like I'm rambling and not making any sense.
I mean isn't that just kind of what podcasting is, rambling into a mic for people to listen?
Especially a like an introduction episode where like there's not really a specific thing, you're just talking about yourself.
Yeah, I'm like I could like what do I get into? Like I could get into Being a kid and digging in my grandma's backyard where she my gr okay. Sidebar, not to steal the moment, but uh my gr my grandma, this is where some of the archaeology also comes into play in my life. Mm-hmm. Because I was a little tiny child archaeologist. My grandma lived in Topeka, Kansas, that's where I was born in Arizona, but raised in Topeka as well.
I was born in Arizona.
Wait, where were you born? I was born in Tucson.
I was born into a thong!
No you weren't!
🔊 Screaming
Because there's like one main hospital in Tucson.
I was born on the Air Force base.
Oh okay. I was not born on Air Force Base. That's really weird. Wait, so I feel like we could just share the same life story.
So basically Ivy and I are the same person and
That's actually like I have I have goosebumps on my arm right now.
Okay.
All right. Um, oh my god, what was I even talking about?
I was gonna say, I'm like, wait.
Cut cut the cameras, cut the cameras.
This will be the uh the bonus at the end.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh. Actually crazy. Um Ooh, okay. So since you're also from AZ, uh did you ever go out looking for pottery?
Well, so the thing is we lived there for like a couple of months and then my dad got restationed back up in Alaska. So I really don't have like much experience in Arizona. My I have family that's lived and still lives there. So like I'd go back for like summer stuff, but I don't really have
Where d where do they live?
Um I think like Chandler uh
Okay. My grandparents are in Safford and if you were gonna say Safford I was gonna be like, No, no.
Yeah. No, I mean my my grandparents on my mom's side are down there now too, but they're somewhere Buckeye, I think that's where they are, like outside of Phoenix. Um, and then my dad um spent some time growing up there, and I think it was Chandler that he lived in, and that's where more of that family is.
Okay, okay,'cause one of my early introductions also just into like being really interested in ancient human history and stuff was uh we would also go back to Arizona because my dad's grandparents still live in Safford. And we would always go hunting for pottery, arrowheads. Of course, as an adult, I've learned that the land we were doing that on is owned by the Bureau of Land Management and it's super illegal and there's like
There's so many gray areas and ethical issues with someone like myself going out and collecting this stuff. So that's not something I do anymore. But as a kid, I was all about the pottery. Oh my God, my grandma's house. That's what we're talking about.
Like where we were.
My grandma's house, because we were in Arizona'til I was like three years old and then we moved to Topeka, Kansas. And my grandma's house was on the site of a Victorian era drugstore. That had caught fire and it was raised to the ground, but it had all of its inventory still in it. And so as a kid, this was my dream. Because it was uh in her backyard, we would dig our own little trenches, me and my sisters wielding shovels and
Bug spray, not even real bug spray. My grandma didn't trust the chemicals in bug spray, so she she would buy powdered sulfur. and put it into a pantyho and you like smack it against your skin and you get sulfur dust on you. It didn't work, by the way. I got so many mosquito bites. Anyways, that's just like weird. I like I'm covered in sulfur. I'm got blisters from the shovel, but we're digging away, finding medicine bottles.
Silverware, one time I found a pair of dentures and that was really cool. So just unearthing things I desire it.