Social Impact Episodes

Are balance and movement something that can be culturally shaped? Why aren’t female rats being used in drug studies? In this episode of This Anthropological Life we team up with Vivekanand Pandey Vimal to talk about his research that explores how people learn to balance when their sensory systems are taken away. We then relate studies on balance and movement to anthropology and discuss the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration. Show notes by Nina Oria-Loureiro. Listen to this week’s pod...

Join us for another listen of TAL Conversations favorites on Multi-species and Non-Human Centered Anthropology. Originally aired December 2013, with a follow-up conversation coming soon! Do you have a pet? Do you talk to your pet? How about your house plants? Ever thought about where those vegetables you use as food and bought at the grocery store came from? Like, really came from? “Human Nature”, Anna Tsing writes, “is an interspecies relationship”. It’s never been just about humans; life on t...

Do you find yourself increasingly frustrated at the lack of real conversations between candidates and politicians? Are you confused about why someone who doesn’t walk to the beat of your life claims to represent the whole of your interests and everyone you know? This episode is not about the candidates, we’ll leave the bashing to them and other pundits. Rather, with this episode we aim to expose some of the mechanisms driving American politics and show different social truths about political sys...

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...

Special guest podcast from our friends at the Food Futures Podcast Corinna Howland interviews Adam Gamwell about experimental games, or field experiments, which NGOs and economists use to measure when, why, and how people make different kinds of choices. This data, in turn, is used to inform public policy and generate development projects. As part of Adam’s work in Peru, he ran a series of experimental games with Andean farmers for the NGO Bioversity International, to understand what kinds of i...

Join TAL’s Ryan Collins and Aneil Tripathy as they interview Emily Jane Murry about her work as a publicly engaged archaeologist in Northern Florida with the Florida Public Archaeology Network. Most of us don’t even consider that the world around us is an archaeological treasure trove, with worlds of diverse cultural experiences overlapping in the layers right beneath our feet. As a champion of this cause, bringing archaeology to the public’s attention, Emily works to foster a sense of stewardsh...

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...

Join TAL’s Aneil Tripathy and Ryan Collins as they interview Ana Mariella Bacigalupo of SUNY Buffalo. Ana’s discussion of her research on Mapuche shamans takes us on an exciting journey, full of emotion, struggle, hope, and passion that keeps you wanting more. For the Mapuche, shamanism is as much a part of daily life as farming and state politics in Chile. Like cultures the world over, the Mapuche understand that there is power in words, in history, in how the past is given life. Yet, Mapuche u...

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...

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

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 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 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...

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...

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