Business Episodes

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) a...

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 po...

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...

This episode is a little different from our normal content. In it we feature a presentation Adam gave for Pivotal Labs in which he explores This Anthro Life’s (and his own) developing philosophy about conversations and podcasting as social technologies and what the worlds of anthropology and podcasting can do. Some topics Adam touches on include: what anthropology does in the world, conversation as “little social laboratories”, mapping the contemporary podcast ‘cosmos’, podcasters as cultural br...

Today’s D+A minisode follows last week’s powerful conversation with Jara Connell on protests and people-powered forms of resistance. In this minisode Jara offers us a nugget of wisdom to be cautious about thinking all protests are the same or that we can even evaluate them with the same criteria. TAL D+A Minisodes are short, actionable steps you can take in your everyday life to become more socially savvy, culturally competent and holistic in your actions. If you have any suggestions for D+A mi...

What does mass-protesting accomplish? Does no arrests equate success? Why is protesting disruptive? And more! In this action packed episode of This Anthropological Life, Aneil, Adam, and Ryan talk to Jara Connell about mass protesting and the strategies behind social movements. Who is Jara Connell? Jara is a PhD candidate at Brandeis University. She focuses on race, space, and policing in Saint Louis. Jara’s Master’s thesis dealt with sex and gender politics in Ferguson. When Jara is not advoc...

How can we make change easier? Do women lead differently from men? What is corporate anthropology? Ryan, Adam, and Aneil are back to answer these questions and more with Dr. Andi Simon. Change is hard, but with Dr. Simon’s toolkit of anthropological knowledge, games, and theater she is able to help businesses change a little easier. We have a copy of Dr. Simon’s great book On the Brink: A Fresh Lens to Take Your Business to New Heights to give away to one lucky listener. How do you do that? Dro...

Join Aneil, Adam and Ryan for the second FreeThink episode, where they talk unscripted about upcoming projects and potential interdisciplinary collaborations beyond the mic. FreeThink is a new series of episodes that works like a backstage pass, where we talk unscripted about what’s on our minds and hearts, the nuts and bolts of making a podcast today, and the larger projects we are working on surrounding the show. If you’ve never heard This Anthropological Life, we don’t recommend starting wit...

We’re stoked to bring you TAL’s first ever three-city episode! Join Adam (in Peru!) and Ryan (in Boston!) and special guest Vyjayanthi Vadrevu (somewhere between NYC and Austin!) for an in-depth look into the world of Anthropological Consulting and Strategy. What is anthropology like in the business world? Vyjayanthi runs an anthropological consulting company (Rasa.nyc) that draws on social science and design to help companies better communicate and connect with their customers. We dive into q...

Join TaL’s Aneil Tripathy and Caitlin Zaloom, NYU Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, as they discuss Zaloom’s research on futures markets and most recently student debt. Hear about what initially drew Zaloom to study financial markets in Chicago and London. Professor Zaloom and Aneil end the conversation with a discussion on how anthropologists should speak to our moment in history and the importance of studying powerful institutions. Anthropology’s job is to denaturalize soci...

We’re back in Peru! Join Adam and special guest Alexander Wankel of Pachakuti Foods for a conversation about the future of food production, agrobiodiversity, sustainability, and keeping traditional culture alive. All from the view point of quinoa. Pachakuti Foods is a brand-new startup focusing on creating a market for sustainable, pro-farmer and agrobiodiverse quinoa. It’s better for small-scale farmers, the environment, and for fighting climate change. Check out the project, and if you like i...

Join TAL as they explore the meaning and movements behind the buzz words that shape anthropology when it reaches beyond the classroom. Applied, Public, Design, and Open Anthropology. What are they, how do they work, and what for? Can anthropology intervene and create change in the contemporary world? On this episode Ryan, Aneil, and Adam explore ways to make anthropological thinking more public, accessible, and connected to the everyday lives and experiences that make the discipline so important...

Welcome back listeners new and old to the new and exciting season of This Anthropological Life! This season we at TAL have a lot of new content and exciting interviews ahead. To bring everyone up to speed, tune in to our first episode of the new season focused on applied anthropology. What is ‘applied’ anthropology? How can anthropology be ‘designed’ and what role does the public play? Join Aneil Tripathy, Ryan Collins, and guest host Ilana Cohen as they discuss these questions and what makes th...

Episode 37, Season 3 Join us for a special episode with guest researcher, consultant, and author Rachel Katz for an intimate look at the lives of Chinese truckers. Rachel’s work explores and brings together an exploration of how people live and work in contemporary China. Trucking is one of the most important, but understudied, forms of transit and economy in contemporary China. Rachel climbed aboard for six months, traveled with truckers, got to know their routes, their families, hardships and...

Episode 35, Season 3. Aired 7/22/14 From Access Denied to Transforming Access, numerous cases of the re-appropriation of space from occupy protesters to Shock Top beer fests, cars to bikes, city spaces and pavement to guerrilla gardens, join us as we delve further into the world of space and ask tough questions about who has the right and power to claim and change space, and who does this exclude? --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: http...

Episode 33, Season 3 Feeling Stressed? Join Aneil and special Guest Luke Hanlin, Psychology PhD student, as they discuss the psychology of stress and the human capacity to deal with stress in a variety of ways. Aired 7/8/14 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Episode 32, Season 3 Special Episode on the Supreme Court’s rulings over religious freedom and freedom of speech. On this week’s episode we take on 5 recent and ongoing court cases that deal with first amendment rights of freedom of speech, reproductive rights, gender and bodies including the Supreme Court rulings that close corporations that label themselves for-profit may deny contraceptive health care that they deem a burden to their religious beliefs, the ban on the 35-foot buffer zone out...

“A House to Make a Home?” Season 3, Episode 27 Aired 5/27/14 We are joined by guest expert Mengqi Wang to delve into the fascinating world of housing, property, ownership, and exchange! Mengqi’s work revolves around the commodification and changing gender and exchange relations of private housing in contemporary China. We explore changing meanings of homes and housing in the wake of the housing crisis in the United States, China and India. You don’t want to miss this conversation! --- Send in...