How to “Co-Live” With a Natural Hazard
Tungurahua, an active volcano in Ecuador, sits amid farming communities that have dwelled alongside it for generations. A.J. Faas As the Andes mountain range curves through Ecuador, it…
Tag: Disasters
What Makes Vaccines Social?
[no-caption] Luis Alvarez/Getty Images Now is a pressing time for vaccinating the U.S. population (and the world) against COVID-19. But there are social hurdles that need to be…
The CDC Needs Social Science
[no-caption] John Moore/Getty Images The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the primary agency in the United States that monitors, predicts, and responds to chronic disea…
Moments of Resilience Amid a Pandemic
[no-caption] Angus Krieg SAPIENS host Chip Colwell speaks with Melanie Adams, the director of the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum (ACM), about #Moments of Resilience, the ACM’s e…
Climate Change May Have Been a Major Driver of Ancient Hominin Extinctions
New research suggests some of our species’ closest relatives died out because of significant changes in climate, findings that may offer a warning for humanity today. Aliraza Khatri/Getty…
A Vaccine Will Not Be Enough
[no-caption] Angus Greig SAPIENS host Jen Shannon speaks with Agustín Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, to unpack his insight that the COVID-19 pandemic is a…
Wildfire Archaeology and the Burning American West
As I type, the American West is ablaze with more than 100 devastating wildfires. Many of these are record-setting in both size and intensity. Several, including one in…
The Making of Vizag Gas Leak Disaster: Procedural lapses or Regulatory Design?
Hundreds of tonnes of poisonous Styrene gas leaked out of the LG Polymers plant in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh on the 7th of May 2020, leaving 11 dead and…
Will U.S. University Students Spread COVID-19?
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration made plans for the orderly evacuation of U.S. cities in the event of an imminent nuclear war. Supposedly, city residents with odd-numbered…
Being Clear-Eyed About Citizen Science in the Age of COVID-19
In March 2011, one of the strongest earthquakes on record struck the Fukushima Dai’ichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan. Combined with a subsequent tsunami, the disasters triggered…
The Problem With Abstract Threats
[no-caption] Angus Greig Everyone seems to have a story about the moment when the novel coronavirus pandemic stopped being an abstract problem “somewhere out there” and started being…
Haitian Deportees Face an Unconscionable Crisis During the Pandemic
The Trump administration has deported more than 240 Haitian nationals from the U.S. back to Haiti—a country that has a weak health care system and few resources to…
Can Archaeology Explain the Bread Baking Craze?
[no-caption] Jutta M. Jenning/Flickr As coronavirus social distancing wears on, my social media feeds have changed. Travel photos, parties, and concerts have disappeared, replaced by phot…
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…
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…
Could the Coronavirus Pandemic Be Good for the Environment?
[no-caption] Angus Greig SAPIENS host Chip Colwell interviews Elic Weitzel, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Connecticut, about his recent article for SAPIENS tha…
Rethinking Easter Island’s Historic “Collapse”
A row of massive anthropomorphic statues on Easter Island. Henrykkcheung/Flickr Easter Island’s colossal statues loom large—both literally and figuratively—in the popular imagination. The…
Ventilators Alone Won’t Save Us
[no-caption] Juanmonino/Getty Images During an unusually calm shift in the intensive care unit, Barbara (a pseudonym), the experienced doctor on staff, asked me and the resident physician…
Preppers and the Pandemic
[no-caption] Angus Greig With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, the SAPIENS podcast is going viral. In this first episode of season 3, SAPIENS hosts Chip Colwell and…
Are Pandemics Good for the Environment?
Mountain goats roam the streets of Llandudno, in north Wales, in the absence of tourists. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many have noted…
COVID-19 and the Turn to Magical Thinking
The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time of unprecedented shock and trauma for many Africans. European invaders appeared, armed with guns for which African spears…
Coronavirus Is Killing the Hope of Asylum
As orders to “stay at home” swept across the globe in March and April, some questioned what those mandates meant for people without a place to call home,…
The Symbolic Power of Virus Testing
Protests against stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have occurred across the country, as shown here in front of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.…
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…