Culture Episodes

Ever wanted to know what its like to be an archaeologist? Can you really dig a whole and interpret the past with the materials you find? Is anything about Indiana Jones accurate? Tune and listen to host Ryan Collins talk about his experiences with Archaeology and research in Ancient Mesoamerica as part of our TAL Fieldwork series! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Join us for our 50th episode! Return guest host Ben Gebo joins Adam, Aneil, and Ryan as we uncover the human quest to endure, and to push ourselves to the limit. From marathons to surviving evolution, we tackle time and space to bring you an incredible story of the human will to find, and surpass, our own limits. Episode 50 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

It’s winter time here in the northern hemisphere, and in New England that means snow… a lot it. What can we learn from it? Join Aneil and Ryan as they dive (or attempt to unbury) the human connections between snow, weather, and humanity during the days of frost. Episosde 51. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Today we dive into the world of food! Come hungry as we introduce the world of food studies and explore the changing roles and meaning food has had over the millennia, and how we can explore ways to fight local hunger and global food insecurity, all...

How do humans cope in the face of uncertainty, challenges, and trauma. Join your friendly neighborhood co-hosts Adam and Ryan as we explore coping across time, scales and space! From the individual to the cosmos, we find connections and gaps in how we as humans find ways to cope with the unknown, the troubling, and the traumatic – from food to storytelling to anger to climate change – this is a globe (and time!) spanning episode you don’t want to miss! Episode 46 --- Send in a voice message: h...

Ryan and Adam explore genderless gingerbread cookies in Australia – do these cookies reveal something about shifting gender paradigms? Also, we explore a bit about how and why we wear costumes. It may not be Halloween here in the United States, but this doesn’t mean we only wear costumes once a year! Episode 47 Part of our new series Alt_Anthro --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Join us for part two in our series on Ebola. This episode we discuss recent moves and displays by journalists and media outlets to cover various parts of the Ebola epidemic, the use of Ebola as a trope in political culture, and fear and hope in the face of a global virus. Ebola and Virology, part 2, Episode 47 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Smile! What is the relationship of happiness to place? What is the where of happiness? In part one of our series on happiness, we explore happiness as a place-based phenomenon. Episode 44 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Join Amy, Ryan, Aneil and Adam and special guest Delande Justinvil for an important episode of This Anthropological Life as we take head-on the complex issues of race in the United States, security, law enforcement and police brutality. Episode 40 Police Militarization, Violence, Race, Trust and Ferguson, MO w/ Delande Justinvil. Recorded 9/3/14 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Join us for our funnest episode yet! Amy, Aneil, Ryan and Adam Exploring humans as a playful species through the world of gameshows, trivia, and popular culture – from TV to Movies and Music. Michael D’Angelo is the writer, producer, host, and star of the hilarious Old School Game Show which is a mixture of gameshow, alt trivia, pop culture reference show, dance routines, comedy and music! oldschoolgameshow on Facebook Episode 42, Season 4 Recorded 9/17/14 --- Send in a voice message: https:...

Join us for our first ever extended conversation, part of our new “This Anthropological Life After Hours” extended episode series. On occasion we will keep the conversation going well after our regular show time to bring you even more in depth content, conversation, and context. Ben was kind enough to be our first guinea pig, and we had a great conversation going deeper into the world of Burning Man, architecture, preparation for the experience, sensory deprivation, and more! You don’t want to m...

Episode 41, Season 4 Join Adam, Aneil, and Ryan with returning guest expert and commentator Ben Gebo as we dive into the rabbit hole of Burning Man. Ben recently returned from the Burn, and we recount his experiences with you and explore notions of how we as humans make culture, counter-cultures, alternative socialites, and more! Aired 9/8/14 Check out some of Ben’s photos from Burning Man Below! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: htt...

Episode 38, Season 3 Amy and Adam are joined in studio again by season 1-2 host Ryan Collins, recently returned from fieldwork in Mexico. We turn our anthropological eye to the world of viruses and the recent outbreak of Ebola in three African countries. This microscopic world has potentially pandemic impacts as Ebola alters lives, communities, policies, and medicine. We untangle issues of mistrust, community build up and breakdown, international aid, infection, media coverage, and more! Aired...

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 36, Season 3, Aired 7/29/14 Urban cycling is both a global and local phenomenon. From Boston to Bombay to Beijing, bike cultures differ across the globe but bring many people together for commuting, recreation, exercise, work, activism, and pleasure. Join Adam and Aneil with returning guest Ben Gebo, an avid urban cyclist for a fascinating conversation exploring the world of urban cycling. We travel to Amsterdam, Mumbai, Boston, Beijing, Los Angeles, Bombay and more to ask questions abo...

Episode 31, Season 3, Aired 6/24/14 Gooooooooooolllllll!!!!! Today we turn our anthropological lens towards the most popular sport in the world and perhaps the most global sporting competition in human history, the World Cup, this year in Brazil. We travel from a favela decorated bar in Milwaukee to actual favelas in Brazil to tackle the commodification of culture and the divorce of culture from economic inequality based around world attention on Brazil. We discuss the local impact of regional ...

Episode 29, Season 3 Vulnerability evokes multiple feelings simultaneously-intense discomfort, respect and awe, intimacy, and fear. Why does it resonate so broadly and deeply across contexts? What should we make of it when, in one place, it’s a virtue to strive for and in another its a danger to be avoided? Join Adam and Amy as these questions as they intersect with gender and robotics, questions of universality, and the differences between feeling and practice. Aired 6/11/14 --- Send in a vo...

“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...

Season 3, Episode 26 – Aired 5/20/14 Light is all around us, but we don’t often think about it. Light comes to us as energy, as necessary for vision, as a metaphor for good and seen as counter to darkness. The sun was worshiped in many ancient societies as a deity. Prometheus’ fire stolen from the gods brought humanity fire and light. Even the name of the Enlightenment is steeped in luminosity. Light is even appropriated as a form technology and energy production. Through prisms and telescopes ...

Are nature and culture separate things? How do our definitions of land, space, and place affect how we view the environment? Trees, bees, garbage, college, and power! Join host Aneil Tripathy for a special episode with guest Alina Pokhrel. Nature, Culture, Power, pt 1. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Episode 39, Season 3 Join us this week for a trip to the ancient…present? This week Ryan, Aneil, and Adam cover the politics of difference through an unlikely lens and cutting edge research. Were Neanderthals good parents? What does new archaeological and biological research tell us about European’s genetic relatedness to Neanderthals? Putting these questions together, we turn our anthropological lens to hidden assumptions about parenting styles, ancestry, subsistence, and lifestyles, and help ...

Episode 23 Non-Human Rights Available now! Join us as we dive into the world of non-human rights centered around recent court cases dealing with the rights of chimpanzees, our closest non-human cousins (though some might say they are, in fact, human). What are rights, exactly, and who gets to choose who (or what) does and doesn’t have rights? Turning our anthropological eye to the world or rights tells us a lot about how we define others and ourselves. Tune in for an awesome season finale and ...

Join us for an ‘enlightening’ trip as we ‘shed some light’ on the world of sight, seeing, and visual anthropology. In this episode we explore the deep impact of visual culture across the globe and time from ancient Greece to the invention of photography to metaphors of knowledge, to genotypes and phenotypes, arrangement of food, and more! Aired 4/15/14 Download the podcast here --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisan...

From the farms of Central and South America and Africa to your favorite neighborhood coffee house, join us as we turn our anthropological eye towards the world of coffee! Connecting the ‘dark beverage’ from across the ancient Americas, to the change in coffee culture in the United States from the 1970s to today, plus Fair Trade, identity, and class coffee cross cuts an immense realm of human social and material life! So grab a cup of joe and join us for a ‘stimulating’ foray into the world of co...