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…
[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…
[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…
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…
[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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
[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…
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…
[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…
[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…
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…
[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…
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…
[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…
[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…
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…
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…
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,…
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.…
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…
Storm clouds over Minas Gerais. Photo by Mariela Guimarães (Pedro Rocha Franco and Jefferson Delbem 2020). The January 2020 floods in Minas Gerais, Brazil were catastrophic for the…
This image shows various views of the pinky bone of a Denisovan-Neanderthal hybrid found in Siberia. Thomas Higham/University of Oxford Denisovan Deluge This year brought a host of…