Caring Across Distance—One Call at a Time
An anthropologist explores how a phone call home may seem simple but carries layers of meaning for migrating nurses and their families in India. ✽ SOON AFTER I…
An anthropologist explores how a phone call home may seem simple but carries layers of meaning for migrating nurses and their families in India. ✽ SOON AFTER I…
Utterances like “um,” “wow,” and “mm-hmm” aren’t garbage, they keep conversations flowing. This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine and has been republished under Creative Commons. …
Walk with a linguistic anthropologist through the sounds, politics, and fabulosity of a kiki ball in Puerto Rico. Since its emergence in 1960s Harlem, the LGBTQ+ “ballroom scene”…
An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical…
The speaker in this broken sonnet form utters disobedience for structures that extract care in the Anthropocene. “Broken Sonnets for the Anthropocene” is part of the collection Poets…
On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations to study science and ancient history. ✽ GROWING…
An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.…
It’s so easy to see our enemies as — well, enemies. What does it take to re-see them as human? Late in life, Erika Jacoby and Ursula Martens…
The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation. “Passing Notes” is part of the…
An anthropologist explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight—reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and disrupt. ✽ WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I tended…
In a themed collection, poets trace contours of power to critique colonialism, environmental destruction, and social violence while transforming the landscape of possibilities. ✽ A detainee prays in…
A language scientist delves into historic and current efforts to catalog the planet’s 7,000-plus languages, uncovering colorful tales and Herculean challenges. ✽ As a scientist who has researched…
As toxic polarization deepens in the U.S., some global conflict prevention experts are now addressing political violence at home. An anthropologist shares three key insights from a community…
Beginning in 2016, the Turkish government accused anyone with the messaging application ByLock of terrorism. An anthropologist investigates the risks of this kind of digital evidence. ✽ Summer…
SAPIENS is seeking poetry submissions for a curated collection that will publish next year. Deadline: September 1, 2024. ✽ SAPIENS Anthropology Magazine invites creative works for the upcoming…
Three anthropologists sit to talk about the evolutionary purposes of gossip. What role does gossip play in human societies? In this episode, Bridget Alex and Emily Sekine, editors…
An anthropologist uses courtrooms in Turkey as his field site to understand how digital evidence is shifting legal practices. Today most people around the world are using digital…
An anthropologist sets out to better understand the experience of a deaf migrant. Why do people migrate from one country to another, leaving behind friends, family, and familiarity…
Meet Anuli Akanegbu, the host of the BLK IRL podcast and a doctoral candidate researching Black creatives who are contract workers in Atlanta, Georgia. Anuli Akanegbu is the…
In the seventh season of the SAPIENS podcast, listeners will hear a range of stories about how technology—in a variety of configurations—shapes humanity. Since the dawn of our…
An archaeologist with expertise in human origins assesses the accuracy of a 2022 film about Homo sapiens who encounter Neanderthals. This article was originally published at The Conversation…
The Mead-Freeman controversy draws to a close, with some answers to who was right and who was wrong. But, in the end, can anyone ever really understand cultures…
Monsieur Hulot encounters a massive office culture in Jacques Tatit’s 1967 film Playtime Amber Case is author of Calm Technology and a Research Director at the Metagovernance Project. A…
A series of short videos captures a rare view into the lives of wild chimps through the eyes of a researcher. ✽ Some see chimpanzees as invariably belligerent…