Episodes

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...

Episode 28 Season 3 “Up in the Cloud: Computing in the 21st Century (so far)” online now! The idea of a cloud evokes an immaterial floating world of information. Adam and Aneil turn the anthropological lens towards this idea to deconstruct the hidden material world required to support the immaterial network of cloud computing. We explore the changing relationships and meanings of ownership, exchange, and materiality through the rise of cloud computing. We further delve into different uses of com...

“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 h...

For our 25th episode we bring you a special, raw moment in the show in which we turn the conversation more directly to ourselves as anthropologists. The show began as a second part to our Anthropology and Environment series, but as the conversation evolved, Amy helped steer us in a more personal direction away from the abstract challenges of climate change or radiation poisoning to how we ourselves deal with these massive issues that are too big for anyone person to approach. What many people fe...

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/messageSupport 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 d...

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 h...

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/messageSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisant...

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...

Turning 75 isn’t only a big deal for Batman, it also marks a generational tradition of using graphic media to illustrate, comment on, and showcase different aspects of our own society. Even so, comic books have their roots in ancient media from sculpture, paintings, and hieroglyphic writing. What is it about the image and text, which draw us in, get us talking, and thinking of alternative stories. Tune in to This Anthropological Life as we talk about superheroes, supergods, and spandex! #comics ...

Join us today for a very special episode with Central Asian expert Emily Canning. Today we turn our anthropological lens to the ongoing international conflict over Crimea: international relations and reactions, nationalism, language and media portrayal, sanctions, the mysteries of geography and more! Email questions or comments to thisanthrolife@gmail.com, tweet us @thisanthrolife Find us on Facebook --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/messageSupport this podcast: ht...

3/18/14 We will be discussing the world of disposable objects and material culture: garbage culture and digital dumping, polluting the (final) frontier – yes, garbage in space, and more! Podcast Available here Material Culture part 1 here Explore more with #ThisAnthropologicalLife --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/messageSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

Head on over to our Podcasts page and stream the episode or download it for a mind bending journey through the worlds of psychedelics and hallucinogenics, the effects of music on the brain, the human drive for engaging in altered states of consciousness and more with our special guest Ben Gebo! Follow This Anthropological Life on Facebook! Check out Ben’s awesome photography at Bengebo.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/messageSupport this podcast: https://ancho...

Hey y’all – we had a great show today and would love for you to check it out and hear what you think! Continuing some of the themes we’ve been building over the course of season two, we’ve traveled from beer, to locomotion, then to sleep, dreams, and now our first part on altered states. Join us as we explore the human propensity to alter our consciousness, belong to something larger than ourselves, feel creative, moral and ethical taboos, and more! We’ll be back next week with a returning guest...