Episodes

Holly Walter’s joins TAL in the studio to share her experiences and insights into Shaligram stones! Her fieldwork took her from Kathmandu to Mustang on a pilgrimage, following in the footsteps of trekkers, tourists, and pilgrims. Braving rivers and traveling treacherous mountains all with limited wifi, Holly recounts her experiences and plans to return. Tune in to find out more! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/messageSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisa...

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...

Sometimes ethnographic investigations are pretty straight forward. Sometimes, its like getting submerged in a ball pit with the task of sorting all of the colors, figuring out which ones are older than the others, and grappling with any surprises (and there will be surprises) that come your way. Join us as we talk with Anthropologist Holly Walters on her dissertation work at Muktinath, Nepal and learn about the sacred stones that draw people in as well as spreading out across the globe. --- Se...

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/messageSupport 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/messageSupport 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/messageSupport 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/messageSupport 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/messageSupport 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/messageSupport this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/support

With the yearly release of new mobile phones, companies like Apple and Samsung have to sell the idea that we need a new device. With the release of wearable peripherals like Google Glass and Apple Watch, information communication technologies (ICTs) are becoming seemingly more personal. But are they? Will Near Field Communication (NFC) tech change how we exchange information, pay for food, or play games? How are different ICTs adopted, contested, altered and adapted across the world? How does te...

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/messageSupport 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/messageSupport this podcast: https:...

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 8...

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 abou...

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/messageSupport this podcast: https...

Episode 34, Season 3 This week Aneil and Adam tackle Space in all of its complexity and multi forms, from the universe to the space between atoms we will dive into the numerous connotations of space. We explore outer space, inner space, city space, atomic space, and even cyberspace. How is it that the idea of space can be so flexible yet still retain the power to define and shape our thinking?--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/messageSupport this podcast: https://...

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/messageSupport 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 outsi...

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 ...