SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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