The Dirt Podcast

Alisha Winn sits down with Anna and Amber to discuss her path through anthropology and how it brought her to working as an applied cultural anthropologist in blighted historic African-American communities. Winn tackles the thorny topic of gentrification, the subtle yet powerful ways that power and agency are communicated between groups, the importance of determining who benefits from diversity initiatives, where anthropology needs to go in order to be successful in its diversity, advice for those interested in her line of work, and Zora Neale Hurston’s importance as a pioneer of anthropology and the unhealed wounds that still remain from the 1928 Storm described in Their Eyes Were Watching God.

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/

Our new favorite teacher David Homa joins us for a conversation about the necessity of incorporating anthropology in at all levels in classrooms, what he and his students love about learning anthropology, and the life-changing successes he’s had with bringing the world to his students without stepping foot off campus.

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/

Association for Queer Anthropology co-chairs Casey Miller and Gregory Mitchell join us for a conversation about the importances of mentoring for junior and established scholars, the increasing presence of intersectionality within research and representation in the discipline, and how informal mentoring has been crucial for the survival of queer anthropology since its early days.

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! www.americananthro.org/

We open this series with a distinguished figure in American anthropology, Alice Beck Kehoe, who provides an illuminating, albeit blunt, history of the social and intellectual environment out of which the discipline of anthropology emerged in the United States. She discusses the roots of anthropological study in American military expansionism, the contributions of anthropologists like Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, her thoughts on the current state of American anthropology, and a particularly scintillating impetus for a teenaged Alice being attracted to the field.

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/

In this episode, we conclude our journey along the human timeline with a look at the genus Homo, of which we are all card-carrying members. Amber also contributes a brief study of human butts-- what's up with them?

Were the pyramids the work of extraterrestrials? No, of course they weren't, but why do some people and internet memes seem to think otherwise? Turns out there's a simple answer and a more complex answer, and Anna and Amber get into all of it, starting with a look at Erich von Däniken, author of Chariots of the Gods? and literal criminal. Anna looks at the violence done through denying that people produced the pyramids (like, any of them), and what's going on with Amarna period art in Egypt.

in an extra-long episode over on Patreon, Anna gets into the Nazca lines and Ata the "alien" mummy, while Amber looks at what real Sumerian sources say about the planet Nabiru and the Annunaki, and gets very, very real about the short walk from the ideas put forth by Zecharia Sitchin to antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Anna heads further up the family tree (as Amber lags behind, gasping), and introduces us to our Australopith and Paranthropus relatives. You can always rely on us for our australo-pithiness: Anna gives us the scoop on Lucy's new neighbor Selam and tells us about why babies have such grabby little hands, while Amber grapples with the prospect of a world before people and realizes she might have met an extinct hominin at a party once.

Anna and Amber work their way up the trunk of our shared evolutionary tree, tackling the thorny issues of identifying our earliest mammal, primate, and hominin ancestors. We learn about the early development of bipedal walking, and really struggle (as usual) with the question of deep time, but this week it escalates to wondering how anybody knows anything. All we know is, we didn’t come from no monkey.

In a very special mid-week release, Anna and Amber take a look at the handful of rad archaeological discoveries that happened in 2018 that they're resolving to learn more about in 2019. From that juicy sarcophagus in Alexandria, to the bajillion newly detected Maya structures in Guatemala, to the itty bitty bones of the newest addition to our hominin family tree, there's so much research coming our way!

Anna and Amber are keeping the festive mood alive this week with a wine and cheese platter for your ears, and boy howdy, is it a silly one... and we weren't even drinking! Learn about the world's oldest wine gunk and the many (many!) sizes of wine bottles, and then we'll discuss the difference between wine and "wine," and nibble on some stories about very, very aged cheese.