This Anthro Life

Andrea Eller is a biological anthropologist driven by a question of how do our bodies continue to react to things today? In other words, how does evolution continue to impact us and why is this important? To address this, Andrea Eller looks at how bodies respond and adapt to circumstances of chronic stresses. The stresses that Eller looks at, however, are both physiological and social. Not only does Andrea postulate explanations to account for change over time in relation to more visible circumstances like ecology, tool use, and disease. But, Andrea also considers less visible issues like, class, race, and gender as critical factors that also impact our physiology over time.

Evolution Responds, it does not React

One of the compelling predicaments that Eller discusses with Adam has  to do with current data on primates. For example, data from captive  primates are excluded from wider studies. In part, the problem is that  there is a growing population of captive primates. With more an more  primates being born into captivity, there is a concern that adaptation  is occurring in many primates. As Eller notes, the pressures to adapt in  one environmental setting or another (called selective pressures) will  be different. That means looking at the same species of primates  requires context. Whether coming from different settings, the wild,  scientific laboratories, or zoos, data on primate adaptations will  differ.
Similarly, humans use clothing as a tool for adapting to different  environments. Down or wool coats would seem out of place at Miami beach  just as scuba gear would not be an appropriate choice for reaching base  camp at Mount Everest even though each of these clothing options  reflects different human adaptations.
Mindfulness Training – Outreach and Engagement
One of the most captivating aspects of Eller’s conversation was her  genuine passion for public outreach. For Eller, it is an ongoing  struggle to help get the public to see evolution in a different light.  Too often she sees a perspective of humans being the masters of the  planet, rather than one group of participants within it. However,  combating this perspective (among others) requires outreach and  engagement. For Eller, this begins with engaging kids. “Kids haven’t had  all of the primate educated out of them,” she says. They are more open  to experience awe and be captivated out of curiosity when seeing  examples not only of our evolutionary past but the present as well.

Read more: https://www.thisanthrolife.com/andrea-eller/

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About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

When TAL first interviewed Hamilton Morris, it was shortly after he and his production team had finished season 1 of Hamilton’s Pharmacopoeia. Now, Morris has completed two seasons of his critically acclaimed show on VICE. This time on TAL, Morris has a more reflective tone.
With Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins, Morris shares his experiences as a filmmaker in traditional and counter-culture environments. These experiences have given Morris a unique window into psychedelics, underground pharmaceutical research, and the ethics of sharing information. The last point hits home for many anthropologists and social researchers, who also must be wary of the unintended consequences of sharing information. Depending on what is at stake, information can endanger informants and friends. Similarly, journalists and ethnographers are confronted

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About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

When TAL first interviewed Hamilton Morris, it was shortly after he and his production team had finished season 1 of Hamilton’s Pharmacopoeia. Now, Morris has completed two seasons of his critically acclaimed show on VICE. This time on TAL, Morris has a more reflective tone.

With Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins, Morris shares his experiences as a filmmaker in traditional and counter-culture environments. These experiences have given Morris a unique window into psychedelics, underground pharmaceutical research, and the ethics of sharing information. The last point hits home for many anthropologists and social researchers, who also must be wary of the unintended consequences of sharing information. Depending on what is at stake, information can endanger informants and friends. Similarly, journalists and ethnographers are confronted with the challenge of presenting multiple sides of a story while safeguarding underrepresented voices.

On this episode, Hamilton Morris opens with an anecdote on Douglass Sharon and San Pedro and Peruvian cactus shamanism. Sharon, an anthropologist, ethnobotanist, and shamanism scholar is a figurehead in Peruvian anthropology. However, Morris notes Sharon’s recent reluctance to talk about shamanism. In part, his reluctance results from ethical considerations for the communities Sharon had worked with during his extensive career. From that anecdote, Morris set the tone for the episode: shamanism, healing and ethics. We were in for a journey.

Authenticity, Ethics and Psychedelic Experience

Morris’ work rests at the  intersection of cultural perceptions of psychedelic experience, healing, and tourism. As Morris notes, an American tourist going to Peru to experience a healing ceremony probably has an idea of what a psychedelic experience is like. They know how it feels, what to expect, and what they want. Yet, when that outsider experiences traditional healing by way of a shaman in a remote setting they might be surprised. Morris notes one example where a tourist he encountered was shocked by their experience in a Peruvian setting. They exclaimed, “That’s not a psychedelic experience.”

Authenticity is a term wrapped up in perception, expectation, and experience that anthropologists love to debate. How one experiences the authentic is through the lens of their own worldview. As a result, what is authentic to one group may not be authentic to another. Authenticity is therefore complicated by tourism. Where individuals venture out to experience the authentic, they are often greeted by an experience they did not anticipate.

Seeing Donkeys with the Evil Cactus

Cactuses are such a fun part of this episode. As Adam notes, Morris once said that if he had a religion it would be this [psychedelic San Pedro] cactus. Listeners, my words cannot do justice to the conversation on cacti in this episode. You’ll need to tune in to learn more. Also watch Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia. But, what we can take away from this is that how we treat (or consume) a plant carries an immense amount of cultural baggage. Whether snorting tobacco (no typos there), parsing out the benevolent from the evil cactus, or fervently debating the taste of cilantro,

Dr. Tricia Wang sees her work consulting as sitting at the crossroads of data and social justice. As a global tech ethnographer, Dr. Wang is obsessed with how technology and humans shape each other. In her own words, she wants to know, “How do the tools we use enable us to do more of what humans do, like socializing, emoting, and collaborating? And how do human perspectives shape the technology we build and how we use it?” 
Said differently, Dr. Tricia Wang’s expertise inhabits a gray space between industry and the academy. A space where many social scientists do not find easy comfort. Yet, Dr. Wang’s very candid enthusiasm is enough to draw in even the most ardent skeptics. In her own words, Dr. Wang has “always been between worlds” seeing the best in both. Though academics tend to value known discovery methods, and excel, they are less likely to engineer new prototypes. 

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About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

Welcome back listeners! Adam and Ryan have taken some time away as of late to finish and defend their dissertations. Now that Ryan is done, and Adam defends in just one week (so close!), TAL is getting back into gear with new content in the development and production stages. Now, another key detail, several episodes recorded earlier this spring are also on their way. Some of these are guest interviews (including a second interview with Hamilton Morris of HBO’s VICE and Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia) as well as the remainder of our Story Slamming Ethnography episodes (we haven’t forgotten about those). All that is to say, there is an extensive repertoire of content coming your way, including an upcoming collaboration with EPIC. Speaking of…
With this episode of This Anthro Life, we are joined by Dr. Alexandra Mack and collaborative guest host Matt Artz. Together we interview Alex and explore her story. What makes our discussion with Alex so distinct is her breadth of research and applic

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About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

Thanks to the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) for having Adam Gamwell and Matt Artz of This Anthro Life present at the annual meeting in Philadelphia. We presented as part of the New Methods, Interventions And Approaches session.

Our paper title was Consulting Podcasters: Prototyping a Democratic Tool for Multiple Voices, Storytelling and Solution Finding. You can read it here. 

The session was recorded for the SfAA Podcasting project.

The simple idea behind the notion of consulting podcasting is that we  are using the podcast format to intentionally bring together  professionals to co-create meaningful conversations that provides expert  advice through the anthropological paradigm of the emic and etic.  Consulting podcasting applies the flexible, digital recording techniques  of podcasting with a process of in-the-moment of real-time discovery.  To that end we askew rigid preconfigured narratives or storyboards in  favor of an open-format conversation that mimic the methods of  semi-structured interviews. We allow room for the conversation to  breathe.
With openness we let guest stories speak and allow them to unfold  along their own path, on their own terms, without imposing our own  worldviews or narratives. In the process, we learn of a speaker’s  insider perspective, their motivations, and methods. We then compliment  the insider perspective with our outsider perspectives – as voices that  encourage deeper reflection and context building around issues of key  importance to the guest, to co-create a larger meta-narrative that makes  up the consultative engagement.
Check out Adam's and Matt's Creative Consulting and Production work at Missing Link Studios

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About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

On this episode of This Anthro Life, hosts Ryan Collins and Adam Gamwell are joined by TAL correspondent and guest host Astrid Countee and by a very special guest, Valorie Aquino. They joined us to talk about the 2017 March for Science. Valorie is one of the key organizing 30’s something scientists who helped make the 2017 march a reality. As she conveys in this episode, doing so was no easy task. This required countless late nights, missed social occasions, hours of frustration, and unfortunately, the all to occasional naysayers. Yet, Valorie’s story is one complete perseverance, rooted in a deep passion for science that began at an early age

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Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

Welcome listeners to the second installment of our Diversity and Inclusion crossover series, bringing together This Anthro Life with Brandeis University. For those of you who are new to the show, This Anthro Life (TAL) was launched as a scholar-practitioner program designed to bring anthropological and social science research and thinking to interdisciplinary and public audiences. The original idea behind the podcast is to use our skill sets and toolkits  as anthropologists to translate and socialize data, cultural patterns, and research into accessible open format dialogues and conversations that provided solutions for social impact and actionable insight.

On this episode, TAL hosts Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins are joined by Dr. Janine de Novais  of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to expand on the  ideas behind “Brave Community” (discussed in episode 1 of the Diversity +  Inclusion in Higher Ed series) and to understand the major hurdles she  finds with diversity and inclusion in higher education today. With her  dissertation Dr. de Novais explored the ways in which classroom  experiences in higher education do and do not contribute to deep  learning that influences students understandings of race. Dr. de Novais’  scholarship also focuses on a practice-based question: what kind of  learning about race do college students need given our racially diverse  and deeply unequal society? Her answer: Brave Community–a  pedagogy that relies on academic grounding, the distinctive culture of a  classroom, to support students. As we learned in our interview, much of  Dr. de Novais’ interests today are influenced from life experiences. 
Read more here on thisanthrolife.com

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Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

Welcome to Story Slamming Anthropology. This series features both innovative narrative and audio performance drawing on the deep toolkit and methods of anthropology.  The goal with Story Slamming Anthropology is to invoke the public  facing spirit of Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Melville Herskovits and many  others to speak to 21st century concerns from a comparative perspective  in clear language. The narratives here are based on juxtapositions,  seemingly counter- or non- intuitive linking’s of subjects, objects,  ideas, emotions, practices, or traditions that will intrigue, educate,  and delight. In doing so, the goal of these stories is to bring  anthropological storytelling to wider audiences and to demonstrate that  anthropology matters today more than ever.
This narrative, #MeToo: Stories in the Age of Survivorship, is written and performed by Emma Louise Backe. 
The reckoning of #MeToo has  ushered in a renewed politics of storytelling, one whose capillary reach  and discursive power requires critical analysis and reflexive  consideration of how we listen to and seek out stories. As an  ethnographer of sexual violence, who conducted fieldwork on a rape  crisis hotline during the Pussygate controversy and has served as a Peer  Advocate in George Washington University’s Anthropology Department to  respond to incidents of sexual misconduct, I wanted to situate and  historicize the #MeToo movement, with the recognition that the academy  must similarly grapple with the perils of harassment and assault. This  recognition of violence, particularly in light of the suffering slot,  must be accompanied by the acknowledgement that the anthropological  community contains survivors as well as perpetrators, experiences of  trauma as well as complicity and predation. By offering an ethnopoetic  approach to #MeToo, I propose opportunities to explore the gaps between  lived experience and knowledge production, one whose theoretical  intercession recognizes that a disposition towards care must also leave  room for hesitation and creative reconfigurations of listening.
Emma Louise Backe is a social justice  sailor scout working in international development and global health on  issues related to gender-based violence and women’s health. She has a  Master’s in Medical Anthropology and Certificate in Global Gender Policy  from George Washington University. When she’s not advocating on behalf  of reproductive justice and consent, she manages The Geek Anthropologist, writes for publications like Lady Science, and tweets from @EmmaLouiseBacke.
If you enjoy Story Slamming Anthropology, or are would like to share a narrative of your own, let us know!  You  can contact Adam and Ryan at thisanthrolife -at – gmail.com or  individually at adam -at- thisanthrolife.com or ryan -at-  thisanthrolife.com

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Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.

Design and anthropology have been  seen together with increasing frequency over the last few years, but how  do design and anthropology fit together in relation to industry? And,  how does this pairing create insight? Adam and Matt (a guest host at  This Anthro Life) are joined by Dr. Natalie Hanson to explore these questions and more.
Dr. Hanson has been working at the  intersection of business strategy, technology, social sciences, and  design for nearly 20 years. This gives her a relatively unique  perspective on the worlds of anthropology and design. Hanson is also the  founder of Anthrodesign, which started as a list serve and now has its own Slack channel (you could join too by following the instructions here).
Read more on thisanthrolife.com

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Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

About This Anthro Life:
This Anthro Life is your podcast for thought leadership at the intersection of culture, work, and storytelling. We bring you interviews and insights for business leaders, design thinkers, researchers, and anyone curious about how culture shapes our lives.

Explore more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at thisanthrolife.org and join our Substack community at thisanthrolife.substack.com.