SAPIENS host Jen Shannon interviews Laurence Ralph, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. Ralph is also a co-director of Princeton’s Center on Transnational Policing, the editor of Current Anthropology, and the author of the new book The Torture Letters: Reckoning With Police Violence, which exposes the Chicago Police Department’s history of torturing black men and women, and documents the community activism intent on stopping such violence. 

The poll Jen mentions in this episode was conducted by Monmouth and published on June 2, 2020.

SAPIENS host Chip Colwell interviews Elic Weitzel, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Connecticut, about his recent article for SAPIENS that considers how the global pandemic may impact climate change—for better or for worse. Weitzel is currently working on his dissertation on the environmental effects of the Black Death on 14th-century Eurasia and the depopulation of Native Americans in the wake of European colonization. Read his SAPIENS article: “Are Pandemics Good for the Environment?”

With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, the SAPIENS podcast is going viral. In this first episode of season 3, SAPIENS hosts Chip Colwell and Jen Shannon revisit a story about preppers from our first season. Jen calls Chad Huddleston, one of the anthropologists featured on that show, to find out how he and the preppers he studies are handling the COVID-19 crisis. In closing, Chip reaches out to SAPIENS columnist and anthropologist Steve Nash to discuss panic buying, toilet paper, and more.

In this season 2 finale of the SAPIENS podcast, hosts Jen Shannon, Chip Colwell, and Esteban Gómez field questions from listeners on Twitter and at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science about what it means to be human. They address human origins and self-awareness, discrimination, social media, and more!

You can follow all of our expert guests on Twitter: Augustin Fuentes at the University of Notre Dame (@Anthrofuentes); Daniel Miller at the University College London (@DannyAnth); and Barbara King, professor emerita at William and Mary (@bjkingape).

Mark Shriver, professor at Pennsylvania State University, did a study on human nose shape and climate adaptation that also informed our conversation. Finally, here's a link to the nose-picking gorilla photos mentioned in this episode.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is a part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Until very recently, Colin Turnbull was the only anthropologist who had lived and studied with both the Mbuti people of the Congo region and the Ik of Uganda. Because of his writings, one community became known for its egalitarianism and the other for its selfishness. His observations of the Ik in particular, as “inhuman” and “inhospitable,” led to them being dubbed as “the loveless people.” Then in 2009, Cathryn Townsend earned the chance to live with the Ik to study to generosity. In this episode, she shares her insights on what she found, and what Turnbull may have gotten wrong.

To learn more about Cathryn Townsend's work, follow her on Twitter @CathrynTownsend. This episode is inspired by the SAPIENS.org article “Is a More Generous Society Possible?” Learn more about the Human Generosity Project, of which Cathryn is a part.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is a part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Music for this episode includes:

Anthropologist Elisa Sobo never wanted to study the issue of vaccination. The topic was too fraught, she says, and she didn't want to touch it. But then she initiated a children’s health study at a school in California. Today her work on vaccine hesitancy offers insights into how those on opposing sides might better understand each other and work through this highly controversial issue.

For more, check out Elisa Sobo’s SAPIENS piece about her work on vaccination: “Beyond the Vaccination Rift.”

For the other vaccination-related SAPIENS article Chip mentions in this episode, see: “Why Eradicating Polio Is More Complicated Than It Seems.”

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Music for this episode includes:

What is it about certain musical traditions that cause them to take root in communities far away from where they originated? Anthropologist Kristina Jacobsen leads SAPIENS hosts Jen Shannon and Chip Colwell on a musical journey into the U.S. Southwest to understand the phenomenon that is Navajo country music. In addition to authoring the book The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language, and Diné Belonging, Jacobsen is a singer-songwriter. This episode includes one of her songs and a number of others she learned about during her time on the Navajo Nation.

Listen to more music by Dennis Yazzie and the Night Breeze Band here. For more on Navajo country music, read Jacobsen's article at SAPIENS: “Why Navajos Love Their Country Music.”

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Music for this episode includes:

How do language, biology, and culture shape an individual’s experience of color? A journalist investigates the anthropological debate about whether color is a human universal. 

Remember the meme #TheDress? Was it white and gold, or blue and black? With the help of Nicola Jones, a freelance science journalist who writes for Nature and SAPIENS, SAPIENS host Jen Shannon explores the question of color perception to find answers. She learns about the book The World Color Survey, an Amazonian tribe in Peru whose language has no color words, the biology of the human eye. 

Nicola Jones is a science reporter and journalist. Follow her on Twitter @nicolakimjones.

Simon Overall is a linguist and guest lecturer at the University of Otago in New Zealand. You can follow him at @ginsengburger.

For more on the debate about color perception, read Jones' article at SAPIENS.org: "Do You See What I See?" 

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Music for this episode includes:

Anthropologist Sabine Hyland attempts to uncover the secrets held in twisted and colored Andean cords called khipus. Thanks to the collaborative approach of anthropologist Sabine Hyland and local communities, outsiders are finally coming to understand what these khipus mean—for the people of the Andes and for the rest of us.

Sabine Hyland is a professor of anthropology at the University of St. Andrews. Follow her on Twitter @Coyagirl.

For more on khipus, read Hyland’s article about the Collata khipus at SAPIENS.org: “Unraveling an Ancient Code Written in Strings.” The book Chip mentions at the end of this episode is called Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso.

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Correction: Hyland confirmed for us that the 1783 rebellion was against the Spanish, not the Inca, as she said in one quote in the initial version of this episode. We have since removed the error.

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Anthropologist Roger Lohmann sees a ghost in a dream while working in Papua New Guinea. Even though he knows it's just a dream, he's scared long after he wakes up. To make sense of his dream, Lohmann explores the role dreams play in our waking life and how different cultures make sense of dream worlds. Do all humans dream the same? Or do the cultures we are immersed in shape our dreams? Lohmann has six cultural dream theories that offer some answers to what dreams are and what they mean.

Roger Lohmann has six cultural dream theories that offer some answers to what dreams are and what they mean. Roger Lohmann is a professor of anthropology at Trent University, where he specializes in religion, cultural change, and cultural dream theory.

Follow him on Twitter @rogerlohmann. Read Lohmann’s article at SAPIENS: “The Night I Was Attacked by a Ghost.” And for more, check out an essay about Islamic dream culture: “Do Dreams Give Voice to the Divine?”

SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.

Music for this episode includes: