The Deep Roots of Navajo Country Music
[no-caption] Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIENS What is it about certain musical traditions that cause them to take root in communities far away from where they originated? Anthropologist Kristina…
[no-caption] Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIENS What is it about certain musical traditions that cause them to take root in communities far away from where they originated? Anthropologist Kristina…
Anthropologist Roger Lohmann sees a ghost in a dream while working in Papua New Guinea. Even though he knows it’s just a dream, he’s scared long after he…
Mujeres activistas, incluida la autora (derecha), marchan en contra de la violencia de género y feminicidios en Lima, Perú, en noviembre de 2016. Fotoholica Press/Getty Images Clara* colg…
Simon [1:00] begins our chat by asking what happens to your identity when you become a dependent spouse; that is, when your partner is supporting the household financially…
While Myanmar’s recent ethnic cleansing of its Rohingya minority, which saw 800,000 people driven into Bangladesh, has brought the community’s oppression to the world’s attention, it has also…
Native Country Band at Windy Mesa Bar in Page, Arizona. Left to right: Errison Littleben, author Kristina Jacobsen, Tommy Bia, LeAnder Bia, Arlondo Bia. Doug Reilly When I…
Martha La Alteña (right) and Susana La Bonita (left) wrestle in El Alto, Bolivia. Aizar Raldes/Getty Images This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republis…
DNA sequencing is now used extensively in medicine, forensic science, and explorations of ancestry. Andrew Brookes/Getty Images When the structure of DNA was first revealed in 1953, it…
In Samoan communities, men traditionally receive a pe’a tattoo from mid-torso to knees as a marker of maturity. Sandra Mu/Getty Images In the 1800s, a chief in the…
A natural pharmacist at a complementary medicine clinic in Trujillo, Peru, displays a plant tincture. Jane Palmer Under the clear, moonlit sky of Friday, July 13, 2018, Elide…
Caro in the terrace of her house in Havana, 2001. Ruth Behar When my cellphone rang on the morning of December 12, 2018, and I saw the call…
Nahaan, a Tlingit-Inupiaq-Paiute tattoo artist, inks a woman’s face. Nahaan To celebrate her graduation from the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Native Studies program in 2012, Mar…
Rami Malek claims “we’re longing for stories like” the one he won an Oscar for. Are we? On Sunday, Rami Malek won an Academy Award for portraying Freddy…
[no-caption] Bill O’Leary/Getty Images Sitting in a packed hotel lobby café in Washington, D.C., in 2009, I leaned closer to the literary agent I was interviewing for my…
As part of the Enduring Voices project, Abamu Degio (left) listens to a recording of herself singing a traditional Koro song, with linguist David Harrison (right). Jeremy Fahringer,…
How pop music videos perform a simultaneously Lahu and modern identity. As the music video begins, we see a young man waiting anxiously, peering through a gate. A…
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS How does an immigrant become an “American”? How does any newcomer join any group? SAPIENS host Esteban Gómez shares the story of Morwari Zafar, an…
Surprise! As a special holiday treat, the SAPIENS team is presenting this unedited conversation between SAPIENS host Chip Colwell and acclaimed science journalist Carl Zimmer about DNA, identity,…
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Some athletes seem larger than life. They are revered and imitated—and they seemingly hold a lot of power. But whether they feel empowered in their…
Intersections of Tourism, Archaeology and Heritage in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico Figure 1. Tourists admire the “El Castillo” pyramid at the site of Chichen Itza in Yucatán,…
Heute bin ‘ich’ ein auktorialer Erzähler in einer Geschichte einer möglichen Zukunft, die ich erzählen möchte. Wie jeder Futurismus ist es eine noch fiktive Geschichte. Ich wähle dieses…
What is home? Is it a physical space, a set of relationships, or a state of mind? SAPIENS host Esteban Gómez follows Amy Starecheski, a researcher who has…
[no-caption] kokouu/Getty Images Humans celebrate many things—from rites of passage to religious events to groundhogs. One of the most intriguing, anthropologically speaking, is Halloween…
[no-caption] Andrew Brookes/Getty Images I have never understood why anybody would think humans are by nature violent, warlike creatures. True, we have all surely had arguments turn sour…