Culture Episodes

In January 2021 armed rioters stormed the US Capitol in a harrowing and politically fomented insurrection. It was an apex of years of divisive and condemnable rhetoric and fear-mongering used to stoke insecurities and desperate action. How do we ensure this never happens again? Or how do we dismantle the social structures that feed hate, fear, and contempt? What this event, and on the flip side, our celebration of Martin Luther King jr. Day (when we recorded this episode 1/18/21), reveal is that...

Language warning. We use the word sh*t a lot in this episode, since it is, in fact all about poop. To wrap up this crappy, some may even say shitty year, host Adam Gamwell and intern Elizabeth Smyth discuss the origin of the word shit, how the way we defecate is culturally constructed, what our poop reveals about us, and so much more in this New Year’s Eve mini-episode of This Anthro Life. Farewell 2020, it’s been real. In this episode we dig into: What poop tells us about culture and our biolo...

In this episode we meet Dr. Stan Thangaraj, an anthropology professor at the City College of New York whose research includes immigration in the U.S, being interviewed by Vyjayanthi Vadrevu, a business anthropologist and ethnographer. Together, the two discuss basketball, community, identity, race relations and so much more. Stay tuned with us as you learn about why race relations are so important and the answers to the following questions: What does sports and their global popularity reveal...

Do you have a sense of how much time you spend each day on social media and smartphone? Whether you can live with them or you can't live with them, we know for most of us, these are ingrained parts of our everyday lives. In this episode, we will uncover the life in the age of social media and smartphones, featuring Dr. Daniel Miller and Georgiana Murariu from the University College of London. Stay tuned as you learn about the ‘Why We Post’ project, ‘Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing, ...

This Anthro Life is based on lifting up the voices and value of anthropologists and human scientists in all fields through sharing their stories, thought leadership, struggles, and winding paths. Today we've got something special, where we turn the mic around on our host, Adam Gamwell and hear some of his story on how he is building a career as an anthropologist. TAL's Adam Gamwell recently guested on fellow business anthropologist Keith Kellersohn's new YouTube series Anthro Perspectives, where...

When most people think of forensics or forensic anthropology the first thing that comes to mind are TV shows like CSI or Bones, or maybe in Six Feet Under. This may sound overly obvious, but people die every day. And this means that every day someone has to deliver dealth notifications to next of kin, especially when people live apart. Often times coroners are the ones who deliver these notifications. Coroners are elected or appointed public officials whose primary duty is to determine and certi...

It's no surprise that many of us find ourselves increasingly on mobile devices or the internet. We shop online with ease, connect with friends and family on social media, check the news, and play games. And especially during the era of COVID millions, more people are figuring out if they can work remotely. In this episode, Adam sits down with Dr. Julie Ancis, one of the world's leading cyberpsychologists to talk about how digital technology in life online is impacting the ways we think and in...

Ever wonder why certain new ideas stick while others don’t? We often hear a lot about innovation when it comes to new ideas, but really that’s only part of the equation. Psychology, marketing, neuroscience - and yes - anthropology can help us make sense of why some new ideas stick while others fall flat. On this episode Adam Gamwell talks with neuroscientist Dr. Matt Johnson and Professor of marketing Prince Ghuman about the fascinating role neuroscience plays in our evolving consumer lives. ...

What is it about coffee and tea - two simple drinks - that both transcends culture and is intimately bound up by it? In this episode, Adam talks with Independent documentary filmmaker and coffee anthropologist Brooke Bierhaus about her film "The Connected Cup" which explores the heart of coffee and tea as global human connectors across cultures and backgrounds. For the film Brooke traveled to over 9 countries to film and capture intimate moments, stories, and portraits of human life around the c...

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a next-generation observatory currently under development that has created a watershed moment for the scientific community and Hawaiian society. This is because of its planned location on Mauna Kea… the most sacred mountain in the Hawaiian religion. But the case of TMT and Mauna Kea is not an outlier because mountain summits often have profound meanings to both indigenous cultural practitioners and technology developers. For example, Kanamota is another sacred...

Gigaom CEO, publisher and author of "The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity" stops by virtually to chat with Adam and guest host Astrid Countee to help us make sense of just what Artificial Intelligence is, what are its promises and limits, and what this means for the possibilities of conscious computing and smart robots. Byron breaks down the philosophies behind our ways of thinking about AI in way that gives us new social tools to approach the deep techno...

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a next-generation observatory currently under development that has created a watershed moment for the scientific community and Hawaiian society. This is because of its planned location on Mauna Kea… the most sacred mountain in the Hawaiian religion. Dr. Mindshare been studying this issue from their perspective as a cultural anthropologist for over a decade. This prelude offers a brief history of the controversy. TMT reveals the value of systems thinking — or ...

Bill Fleming stops by to chat with Adam about branding, marketing and design. Bill is a Boston-based Independent Brand & Marketing Strategist, and Business Consultant for Designers. On this episode we talk about what brands are, how the cultural work of branding has changed in recent decades with the advent of new and easier to use technologies, and how we can think about brands as conversations - not just between businesses and customers but also between businesses. Transcript of this epi...

A happy New Years! Enjoy this mini-episode with Adam and Dr. Ryan Collins exploring happiness and the good life according the Aztecs. New Years is a great time to reflect on where we've been, where we're going, and what's it all for. We find some answers and surprising wisdom with the Aztecs. Purcell - The Aztecs on Happiness Carrasco - Daily Life of the Aztecs --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/suppo...

Special guest podcast! - Adam Gamwell guests on Trending in Education with Mike Palmer. For this week’s extra, Mike is joined by Design Anthropologist and Podcaster, Dr Adam Gamwell, to explore how robots, science fiction, and anthropology are interrelated. In a free flowing and imaginative conversation, we explore how the narratives and secular myths of pop culture and our collective consciousness provide insights into how we understand what it means to be human, how we engage with the Other...

in this episode, Adam and guest host Leslie Walker talk with visual anthropologist and film producer Chris Chan, producer of the 100 Years of Beauty series on YouTube. If you haven't seen this series (or some of the spinoffs from companies like Vogue and Allure, definitely take a few minutes to enjoy). As an ethnographer, he also makes a wonderful behind-the-scenes series that documents the research he and his team does for each country called Chanthropology. We cover the development of t...

In this special interview, TAL's Ryan Collins talks with scholar, activist and artist Jason de Leon about the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border. In addition to these roles, de Leon is a MacArthur Fellow and National Geographic Explorer. He uses his platforms to create public dialogue, exhibitions, and media about undocumented migration, the human costs of the US immigration policy known as 'deterrence through force.' This very human conversation reveals the emotional toll, and ...

For this episode, we're doing something a little different. I'll be your guest. I got interviewed by the wonderful Sarah Dunigan on her podcast Anthro Dish, a weekly podcast about food identity and culture about design anthropology and some of the research I did on quinoa production and conservation in Peru for my PhD. I'll let Sarah intro the episode and run it unedited on my end. Just wanted to drop in and let you know we're here and in the spirit of helping our fellow anthro podcasters cross ...

Storyslamming Anthropology Series, Story 2. Written and Performed by Taylor Genovese In recent years, the terms Public and Anthropology have been paired with more frequency. Yet, what this seemingly suspect partnership is, how it could function, and what goals it could have are still in relative formation. Today, public anthropology might mean several different things ranging from jargony lectures that are “open to the public”, digital media (like blogs, videos, or podcasts) that are generally ...

Adam and Andrea continue the conversation with Julie Lesnik, author of Edible Insects and Human Evolution, but this time they’re going prehistoric. Oh, and they’re talking about gorillas and chimpanzees too. Learn how to fish for termites, why we wish we had more baskets, and why any of those things matter to understanding human evolution. Edible Insects, part 3 Check out discussion questions here: https://www.thisanthrolife.com/insects/ More about Julie: https://www.entomoanthro.org/about-jul...

Think you could eat a cricket? What about a spider? In this episode of TAL Adam Gamwell and guest host Andrea Eller are chatting with Julie Lesnik about her new book, Edible Insects and Human Evolution. Listen in as they discuss why Americans tend to be so grossed out by bugs, and if it’s always been that way. Edible Insects, part 2 We know many of you are educators, and some are already using TAL in the classroom. Great! To help support the educational impact of TAL, we are including some disc...

Edible Insects part 1. Will crickets ever catch on as an alternative source of protein in the United States? How about cockroach “milk”? Why do people in so many parts of the world NOT eat insects? Where does that disgust for or against eating certain things come from? Adam is joined once again by guest host and biological anthropologist Andrea Eller to dig into edible insects, what just might be a new marketing idea for McDonald's, and how insects reveal underlying cultural trends of disgust, e...

Part 2 of The Social Life of Robots, with Emma Backe. In this episode hosts Adam Gamwell, Ryan Collins and Emma Backe tackle sex and gender norms underlying digital voice assistants like Siri, Cortana and Alexa, the history and gendering of science and technology studies (STS) and what this means in an era of AI and robots, and third, theories of rights such as the right to work, the right to sex and how robots clarify and confound these issues. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/t...

Welcome to CultureMade: Heritage Enterprise in a World on the Move, an audio collaboration between the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the American Anthropological Association, and This Anthro Life Podcast. In this fifth and final episode, Adam Gamwell, Leslie Walker, and Ryan Collins focus on cultural survival, a complex subject framed by migration, misconceptions over language and identity, as well as by resilience of the human spirit across borders. With a subject like cultural survival, the ...