This Anthro Life

Ryan and Adam explore genderless gingerbread cookies in Australia – do these cookies reveal something about shifting gender paradigms? Also, we explore a bit about how and why we wear costumes. It may not be Halloween here in the United States, but this doesn’t mean we only wear costumes once a year! Episode 47 Part of our new series Alt_Anthro --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisan...

Join us for part two in our series on Ebola. This episode we discuss recent moves and displays by journalists and media outlets to cover various parts of the Ebola epidemic, the use of Ebola as a trope in political culture, and fear and hope in the face of a global virus. Ebola and Virology, part 2, Episode 47   --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

Smile! What is the relationship of happiness to place? What is the where of happiness? In part one of our series on happiness, we explore happiness as a place-based phenomenon.   Episode 44 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

With the yearly release of new mobile phones, companies like Apple and Samsung have to sell the idea that we need a new device. With the release of wearable peripherals like Google Glass and Apple Watch, information communication technologies (ICTs) are becoming seemingly more personal. But are they? Will Near Field Communication (NFC) tech change how we exchange information, pay for food, or play...

Join Amy, Ryan, Aneil and Adam and special guest Delande Justinvil for an important episode of This Anthropological Life as we take head-on the complex issues of race in the United States, security, law enforcement and police brutality. Episode 40 Police Militarization, Violence, Race, Trust and Ferguson, MO w/ Delande Justinvil. Recorded 9/3/14 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisa...

Join us for our funnest episode yet! Amy, Aneil, Ryan and Adam Exploring humans as a playful species through the world of gameshows, trivia, and popular culture – from TV to Movies and Music. Michael D’Angelo is the writer, producer, host, and star of the hilarious Old School Game Show which is a mixture of gameshow, alt trivia, pop culture reference show, dance routines, comedy and music! oldscho...

Join us for our first ever extended conversation, part of our new “This Anthropological Life After Hours” extended episode series. On occasion we will keep the conversation going well after our regular show time to bring you even more in depth content, conversation, and context. Ben was kind enough to be our first guinea pig, and we had a great conversation going deeper into the world of Burning M...

Episode 41, Season 4 Join Adam, Aneil, and Ryan with returning guest expert and commentator Ben Gebo as we dive into the rabbit hole of Burning Man. Ben recently returned from the Burn, and we recount his experiences with you and explore notions of how we as humans make culture, counter-cultures, alternative socialites, and more! Aired 9/8/14         Check out some of Ben’s photos from Burning Man...

Episode 38, Season 3 Amy and Adam are joined in studio again by season 1-2 host Ryan Collins, recently returned from fieldwork in Mexico. We turn our anthropological eye to the world of viruses and the recent outbreak of Ebola in three African countries. This microscopic world has potentially pandemic impacts as Ebola alters lives, communities, policies, and medicine. We untangle issues of mistrus...

Episode 37, Season 3 Join us for a special episode with guest researcher, consultant, and author Rachel Katz for an intimate look at the lives of Chinese truckers. Rachel’s work explores and brings together an exploration of how people live and work in contemporary China. Trucking is one of the most important, but understudied, forms of transit and economy in contemporary China. Rachel climbed abo...

Episode 36, Season 3, Aired 7/29/14 Urban cycling is both a global and local phenomenon. From Boston to Bombay to Beijing, bike cultures differ across the globe but bring many people together for commuting, recreation, exercise, work, activism, and pleasure. Join Adam and Aneil with returning guest Ben Gebo, an avid urban cyclist for a fascinating conversation exploring the world of urban cycling....

Episode 35, Season 3. Aired 7/22/14 From Access Denied to Transforming Access, numerous cases of the re-appropriation of space from occupy protesters to Shock Top beer fests, cars to bikes, city spaces and pavement to guerrilla gardens, join us as we delve further into the world of space and ask tough questions about who has the right and power to claim and change space, and who does this exclude?...

Episode 34, Season 3 This week Aneil and Adam tackle Space in all of its complexity and multi forms, from the universe to the space between atoms we will dive into the numerous connotations of space. We explore outer space, inner space, city space, atomic space, and even cyberspace. How is it that the idea of space can be so flexible yet still retain the power to define and shape our thinking? ---...

Episode 33, Season 3 Feeling Stressed? Join Aneil and special Guest Luke Hanlin, Psychology PhD student, as they discuss the psychology of stress and the human capacity to deal with stress in a variety of ways. Aired  7/8/14 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

Episode 32, Season 3 Special Episode on the Supreme Court’s rulings over religious freedom and freedom of speech. On this week’s episode we take on 5 recent and ongoing court cases that deal with first amendment rights of freedom of speech, reproductive rights, gender and bodies including the Supreme Court rulings that close corporations that label themselves for-profit may deny contraceptive heal...

Episode 31, Season 3, Aired 6/24/14   Gooooooooooolllllll!!!!! Today we turn our anthropological lens towards the most popular sport in the world and perhaps the most global sporting competition in human history, the World Cup, this year in Brazil. We travel from a favela decorated bar in Milwaukee to actual favelas in Brazil to tackle the commodification of culture and the divorce of culture from...

Episode 29, Season 3 Vulnerability evokes multiple feelings simultaneously-intense discomfort, respect and awe, intimacy, and fear. Why does it resonate so broadly and deeply across contexts? What should we make of it when, in one place, it’s a virtue to strive for and in another its a danger to be avoided?  Join Adam and Amy as these questions as they intersect with gender and robotics, questions...

Episode 28 Season 3 “Up in the Cloud: Computing in the 21st Century (so far)” online now! The idea of a cloud evokes an immaterial floating world of information. Adam and Aneil turn the anthropological lens towards this idea to deconstruct the hidden material world required to support the immaterial network of cloud computing. We explore the changing relationships and meanings of ownership, exchan...

“A House to Make a Home?” Season 3, Episode 27 Aired 5/27/14 We are joined by guest expert Mengqi Wang to delve into the fascinating world of housing, property, ownership, and exchange! Mengqi’s work revolves around the commodification and changing gender and exchange relations of private housing in contemporary China. We explore changing meanings of homes and housing in the wake of the housing cr...

Season 3, Episode 26 – Aired 5/20/14 Light is all around us, but we don’t often think about it. Light comes to us as energy, as necessary for vision, as a metaphor for good and seen as counter to darkness. The sun was worshiped in many ancient societies as a deity. Prometheus’ fire stolen from the gods brought humanity fire and light. Even the name of the Enlightenment is steeped in luminosity. Li...

For our 25th episode we bring you a special, raw moment in the show in which we turn the conversation more directly to ourselves as anthropologists. The show began as a second part to our Anthropology and Environment series, but as the conversation evolved, Amy helped steer us in a more personal direction away from the abstract challenges of climate change or radiation poisoning to how we ourselve...

Are nature and culture separate things? How do our definitions of land, space, and place affect how we view the environment? Trees, bees, garbage, college, and power! Join host Aneil Tripathy for a special episode with guest Alina Pokhrel. Nature, Culture, Power, pt 1.   --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

Episode 39, Season 3 Join us this week for a trip to the ancient…present? This week Ryan, Aneil, and Adam cover the politics of difference through an unlikely lens and cutting edge research. Were Neanderthals good parents? What does new archaeological and biological research tell us about European’s genetic relatedness to Neanderthals? Putting these questions together, we turn our anthropological...

Episode 23 Non-Human Rights Available now! Join us as we  dive into the world of non-human rights centered around recent court cases dealing with the rights of chimpanzees, our closest non-human cousins (though some might say they are, in fact, human). What are rights, exactly, and who gets to choose who (or what) does and doesn’t have rights? Turning our anthropological eye to the world or rights...

Join us for an ‘enlightening’ trip as we ‘shed some light’ on the world of sight, seeing, and visual anthropology. In this episode we explore the deep impact of visual culture across the globe and time from ancient Greece to the invention of photography to metaphors of knowledge, to genotypes and phenotypes, arrangement of food, and more! Aired 4/15/14 Download the podcast here --- Send in a voice...