How Elders Make Us Human
[no-caption] Matthias Zomer/Pexels On March 23, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick sparked controversy and outrage by suggesting that older people in the United States might be willing to…
Tag: Death
Is Celebrity Attention Helping or Hurting Amazonian Peoples?
Indigenous peoples in Brazil are dying from COVID-19 at twice the rate of the rest of the country’s population. Here, Indigenous nurses accompany an elderly woman for testing…
Turkish Cemeteries for the “Unknown” — #Afterlives
I first heard about the Cemetery for the Unknown from a friend, Ceyda, while returning from the funeral of her friend, Sibel. Sibel was a trans woman sex…
Venice’s Black Death and the Dawn of Quarantine
The island of Lazzaretto Nuovo, shown here, was one of the isles where the city of Venice quarantined plague-stricken individuals. Archeoclub d’Italia Sede di Venezia Just beyond th…
Animal Grief Shows We Aren’t Meant to Die Alone
A mother gorilla cradles her dead baby at a zoo in Germany in 2008. Rolf Wilms/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images As the SARS-CoV-2 virus rocks the world, a haunting aspect of…
Ep #56: Imagined Communities, Freedom, Death and not blaming Capitalism: This month on TFS
Given the recently instigated social distancing rules in Canberra, this week we bring you a special “online” episode! For the safety of everyone, and especially in line with…
Coronavirus and Coping With Death
While sheltering in place in California during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my graduation day—but not because it was particularly…
The Problem of Imagining the Real
As the novel coronavirus sent China into lockdown, my wife and I started to carefully follow the news. China was far away, and it was hard to imagine…
What Will Italy Become Without Its Elders?
The author’s first daughter shares time with her great-grandfather Giuseppe, born in 1925 and recently deceased. Daniela Valsecchi Our elders are dying one by one, oak trees struck…
Is It Ever OK to Publish Photographs of Human Remains?
[no-caption] Jonas Androx/Pexels Ask SAPIENS is a series that offers a glimpse into the magazine’s inner workings. Death is an experience that binds all of humanity. Everyone dies.…
Digging up the Dead
The Slavia Field School in Mortuary Archaeology in Drawsko, Poland, unearthed a 400-year-old cemetery. Joanna Pearce Excavating a 17th-century cemetery in the small town of Drawsko, Polan…
Waste is not “matter out of place”
Douglas’ theory of matter out of place is about power. Something in the wrong spot, something poisonous, is not matter out of place. Unless it threatens power.
Yes, Genocide (a primer on the term) #MMIWG
For Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term, genocide was the effort to destroy a group as a group. #MMIWG
Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat
A Twitter essay by Mary Annaïse Heglar: Sorry, Y’all, but Climate Change Ain’t the First Existential Threat
What Migrants Leave Behind
A child’s backpack abandoned on a migrant trail in the Tumacácori Mountains suffers the ravages of time. Gabriella Soto “Oh my God. Did you see this backpack?” a…
Not all marine fish eat plastics
The Gulf Stream, which curves along the southern shore of Newfoundland, is saturated with plastics. Fish that feed from the surface waters, where plastics tend to accumulate, are…
Science with heart
Conservation biologist Alex Bond on dealing with pollution, harm, and suffering as a scientist.
How to Care for the Dead
Scientists have thought about burial—the act of interring a dead body—as a distinctly human behavior. So what happened when a group of paleoanthropologists discovered a primitive hominid that…
Burning down the house: When crisis becomes daily life in early-onset dementia by Silke Hoppe
For my doctoral research, I interviewed family members living with a loved one with early-onset dementia, a diagnosis that one receives under the age of 65. Jans, not…
“I do want euthanasia, but not now.” Timing a request for euthanasia with dementia in the Netherlands by Natashe Lemos Dekker
Sitting on orange seats in the corridor, Ms Verbeek, her niece Hannie and I are waiting for the general practitioner. Ms Verbeek seems a little restless and is…
Did Ancient People Die Young?
Edward the Confessor, one of the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, died when he was in his early 60s. This illustration depicts the deposition of his body in…
Cats, Computers, or Doctors: Who’s the best at predicting death?
In society, there are many omens associated with impending death. Some may say they had a dream about death while others may associate death with the portrayal of…
Are Selfies Worth the Risk?
What would you do for the perfect selfie? The emergence of the front-facing camera has revolutionized the way we make memories and document our lives. We can’t go…
Unearthing Knowledge: Forensic Anthropology and Technologies of Memory
What is commonly known as the Colombian conflict refers to more than six decades of enduring violence. During these years, a number of peace agreements have been signed…