The gold industry, alongside nation-states, has marginalized the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector for decades, but now things seem to be changing. The industry has realized that engaging with the ASM sector could be more beneficial for their reputation than excluding it. While once ASM was viewed as a risk, now it is seen as an opportunity. Anthropologist Giselle Figueroa de la Ossa spent more than 20 months studying the gold value chain and the actors involved in it. In this episod...
May 27, 2025•35 min
Milpa is an ancestral way of farming in Mexico and other regions of Mesoamerica that involves growing an assortment of different crops in a single area without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. This provides people in the region with a wide variety of foods and a balance of nutrients. In recent years, with the introduction of farming based on synthetic herbicides, milpa has changed, and land is used to grow just a single crop. This change in agriculture has led to the rise of ultra-processed...
May 20, 2025•25 min
In the last two decades, an unprecedented wave of Chinese investment and migration to Africa has transformed many economies on the continent. But this has also provoked a storm of controversy, as some criticize the situation as exploitative neocolonialism. Others defend this migration as development assistance and an act of solidarity between regions jointly victimized by European colonialism. In this episode, anthropologist Justin Lee Haruyama takes us to Zambia, where Chinese investment is bri...
May 13, 2025•30 min•Season 8Ep. 7
While researching the history of parole in South Africa, a lawyer and anthropologist discovers the origins of the N2 road, which she drives everyday. Now interested in this highway’s history, she explores how this and other roads were used to expand territory and exploit people during South Africa’s colonial periods under Dutch and British rule, and how they kept people separate during the country’s apartheid government from 1948 to 1994. In the present, she learns of a new highway project that ...
May 06, 2025•29 min•Season 8Ep. 6
In existence for more than 70 years, the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is the site of the longest ceasefire in the world. What can this region teach us about the long, intended—and unintended—consequences of this form of a truce? In this episode, sociocultural anthropologist T. Yejoo Kim uncovers how residents have been surviving through decades of sonic violence and propaganda, and explores recent developments in such long-lasting psychological warfare. She also details how a former excavatio...
Apr 29, 2025•34 min•Season 8Ep. 5
In this episode, social anthropologist Luis Alfredo Briceño González talks about his experiences as a foreign researcher in Chile. During his fieldwork, he met Marta, a Venezuelan woman residing in an informal settlement on the outskirts of Santiago. Marta and her family held a mock election to protest not being able to vote in their home country during the presidential elections in 2024. Through her story, Luis discusses the enduring emotional and political ties that migrants often have with th...
Apr 22, 2025•32 min•Season 8Ep. 4
When it comes to the division of labor in hunter-gather societies, the stereotype is generally that men hunt and women gather. But when a recent study claimed that women in hunter-gather societies hunt just as much as their male counterparts, the finding made news around the world. But why does gender equality in the past matter so much today? This episode focuses on the complexities of work, gender, and power throughout human evolution. Evolutionary anthropologist Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias guide...
Apr 15, 2025•38 min•Season 8Ep. 3
Since its emergence in 1960s Harlem, the LGBTQ+ “ ballroom scene ” has expanded into a transnational subculture. For outsiders, understanding how a ball functions can take time. Join linguistic anthropologist Dozandri Mendoza as they “walk” us through a night at a kiki ball in Puerto Rico. They introduce us to DJs, commentators, performers, and the Boricua Ballroom children who are refashioning the techniques of their trans-cestors. Dozandri guides us through both the expectations of those on th...
Apr 08, 2025•39 min•Season 8Ep. 2
The United Fruit Company was a U.S. multinational corporation and at one time, the largest landholder in Central America. To maintain authority in this part of the world, the company stamped out labor reform, collaborated with U.S.-backed coups, and, oddly enough, invested in archaeology. Why? In this episode, anthropologist Charlotte Williams explores the company’s role in preserving the past. She discusses United Fruit's botched conservation project at the Maya site of Zaculeu and the ongoing ...
Apr 01, 2025•34 min•Season 8Ep. 1
Culture is a force that makes us who we are. It drives social interactions and relationships, shapes beliefs and politics, ignites imaginations, and molds identities. Cultural conflicts are at the heart of many crises facing the world—increasing inequality, persistent bigotry, ecological collapse. In this season of the podcast, we’re investigating these intersections of culture: how past flashpoints echo into today, how present flashpoints are forging our futures. Through the lens of anthropolog...
Mar 25, 2025•1 min•Season 8Ep. 1
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, ...
Oct 03, 2024•36 min•Season 7Ep. 14
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 add...
Jul 24, 2024•37 min•Season 7Ep. 13
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...
Jul 17, 2024•30 min•Season 7Ep. 12
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 th...
Jul 10, 2024•26 min•Season 7Ep. 11
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 a...
Jul 03, 2024•29 min•Season 7Ep. 10
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 communiti...
Jun 26, 2024•26 min•Season 7Ep. 9
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, f...
Jun 19, 2024•24 min•Season 7Ep. 8
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 als...
Jun 12, 2024•30 min•Season 7Ep. 7
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 th...
Jun 05, 2024•35 min•Season 7Ep. 6
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 ...
May 29, 2024•30 min•Season 7Ep. 5
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 explore...
May 22, 2024•34 min•Season 7Ep. 4
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 ...
May 15, 2024•35 min•Season 7Ep. 3
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...
May 08, 2024•32 min•Season 7Ep. 2
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 emp...
May 01, 2024•35 min•Season 7Ep. 1
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 arou...
Apr 24, 2024•1 min•Season 7Ep. 1
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....
Dec 14, 2023•30 min•Season 6Ep. 8
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 SAPIE...
Dec 05, 2023•31 min•Season 6Ep. 7
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 anthropo...
Nov 28, 2023•29 min•Season 6Ep. 6
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...
Nov 21, 2023•38 min•Season 6Ep. 5
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 f...
Nov 14, 2023•24 min•Season 6Ep. 5
