The Dirt Podcast

The Dirt Podcast

By The Dirt PodcastScienceSocial SciencesEducationNatural Sciences
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The Dirt Podcast episodes

  • These Boots Were Made for Talking: A Very Brief History of Footwear

    Anna and Amber rummage around on the floor of history's closet to bring you a brief history of shoes from around the world! Learn why caves in the southwestern USA are full of shoes. Find a shoe museum near you for some sole-searching. Enjoy a description of Anna's favorite goofy historical fashion statement. All this and more!

    33 min
  • What Spake Zarathustra?

    It's almost officially springtime in the Northern Hemisphere, and the vernal equinox brings with it another reason to celebrate: Nowruz! Commonly known as Persian New Year, Nowruz has its roots in a millennia-old religion founded by a man named Zartosht whose ideas had a profound impact on the world. Anna introduces fire temples and what ancient writers had to say about Zoroastrianism, while Amber hypes the Bronze Age in Central Asia and suggests some ways in which Zoroastrian ideas have affected other religions.

    1 hr 2 min
  • Piltdown and Out

    It's been hectic over at The Dirt HQ! Rather than leaving your feeds dark for a month, here's a Patreon-exclusive episode from earlier this year:

    Last month, you joined us on a tour of human evolution, and our many ancestors therein. We also shared a bit from Dirt After Dark about pseudoarchaeology and its racist underpinnings. For this month’s Deep Cuts, why not a bit of both? We present to you the Piltdown Man, the most contentious human ancestor there never was.

    26 min
  • Lady Statues and Prehistoric Matriarchy

    Kick off Women's History Month with a show all about some of the earliest representations of women in art! Anna introduces us to the Venus of Willendorf and her curvy comrades, and shares a research study with very modern take on ancient art. Meanwhile Amber bursts our bubble about the matriarchy and goddess religions in Old Europe, and discusses goddess worshippers of past and present at Çatalhöyük in present-day Turkey. Or, as Amber would insist we call it this month, Her-key.

    54 min
  • The Unsettling Business of Curating Human Remains
    Here at The Dirt, we talk a lot about the things that people leave behind, but we’ve not spent much time talking about what’s left behind of the people themselves. That changes this week, when Anna and Amber discuss excavating, storing, studying, and selling archaeological human remains, and take a look at some of the legal and ethical challenges involved. Content note: this episode contains descriptions of violence done to deceased people and discussion of trafficked human remains.
    52 min
  • Beyond Avocados: Megafauna Fruit
    It's another sponsored episode! This week, we bring you the fascinating (and sometimes delicious) topic of evolutionary anachronisms. What happens when two species co-evolve to support one another, but one goes extinct? What's up with that obscure, hipster fruit, the paw-paw, and why is Amber mad at NPR? What can blue jays tell us about human impulsivity? All this and more!
    43 min
  • A Dating Show
    Valentine's Day is upon us, and love is in the air-- love for relative and absolute dating methods, that is! Anna brings the science with C14 dating and its gang of radiometric friends, boggles minds with flipped magnetic poles and the last time archaeological material saw the sun, and finds some hot tree-ring takes in California. Meanwhile, Amber goes on a bit of a jag about ancient imperialism, makes a lot of jokes that even she hates, embraces the nihilism of climate change, and attempts to explain the law of superposition via cake. So, the usual— but that’s why you love us!
    56 min
  • The Big Game!
    Every year, the American football season ends with the Big Game, but this week, Anna and Amber are superfans of a much bigger game: the 3500-year-old Mesoamerican ballgame. From its Olmec origins to the athletes keeping it alive today, learn all about how to play, why you might not want to (ouch), and what makes it so significant to past and present communities.
    27 min
  • [Poop Joke Here]: Coprolites and the Value of Fossilized Feces
    We all do it. We've done it for millions of years. This week, we bring you the Poopisode, a Very Special Sponsor pick! Anna and Amber discuss coprolites (archaeological poo), and some of the surprising things we've learned from it. Anna's pun game has rarely been stronger, and Amber...well, Amber survived this episode.
    52 min
  • This is Anthropology 5 - From Academia to Industry (with Rachel Ceasar)
    Consultant and multi-faceted researcher Rachel Ceasar walks us through her journey from student in medical anthropology to her present career as a health and technology anthropologist. She discusses introducing ethnography to industry, doing anthropology outside the university sphere, what skills she’s picked up along the way, and she reminds us of the importance of sharing anthropological research’s potential for valuable contributions to an organization.
    This five-part interview series was made possible by the American Anthropological Association, and all interviews took place during the 117th Annual Meeting, held November 14-18, 2018 in San Jose, CA. Check out the rest of the AAA podcast library to find even more great stories from anthropology! https://www.americananthro.org/
    20 min

About The Dirt Podcast

From the publisher's feed

Join Anna and Amber; friends, archaeologists, and big nerds, for an exploration of the lives of people in the past.