This Anthro Life

Welcome listeners to the first installment of our Diversity and Inclusion crossover series, bringing together This Anthro Life with Brandeis University. For those of you who are new to the show, This Anthro Life (TAL) was launched as a scholar-practitioner program designed to bring anthropological and social science research and thinking to interdisciplinary and public audiences. The original idea behind the podcast was to use our skill sets and toolkits  as anthropologists to translate and socialize data, cultural patterns, and research into accessible open format dialogues and conversations that provided solutions for social impact and actionable insight.With the Diversity and Inclusion  Series, we are opening a semester long podcast series about diversity  and inclusion in higher education and beyond. Here, our inspiration  comes from anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s  claim that anthropology’s job is to make the world a safe place for  human differences. One small step in doing so is to have conversations  on tough topics, and that is precisely what we aim to start with this  series.Conversations matter. This  conversation is about opening questions on, what does it mean to engage  diversity in an academically grounded way, in the context of critique?  What do students need in order to do this well? For Dr. Janine de Novais, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, some answers come from her dissertation research which demonstrates the power of conversations in classroom settings. She focused broadly on the dynamics and possibilities of learning about race in the classroom by comparing two different courses on the subjects of slavery and black political thought. What she concluded was that students “became more intellectually brave, and displayed greater interpersonal empathy” when classrooms settings were safe to express intellectual issues even on difficult and emotional subjects.Read more of the story here--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

In this Conversations episode, This  Anthro Life hosts Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins are joined by author  Andrew Rowen to discuss his new novel, Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold. Coming in the months trailing the 525th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s  (or Cristobal Colon’s) voyage to the America’s, Rowen’s novel seeks to  add some much needed depth to the modern myths on the subject.  Encounters Unforeseen doesn’t start at the (in)famous voyage, or even in  Europe. Instead, The drama alternates among three Taíno  chieftains—Caonabó, Guacanagarí, and Guarionex—and Bakoko, a Taíno youth  seized by Columbus, Spain’s Queen Isabella I of Castile, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Columbus. Some text from the Press Release:  After 525 years, the traditional literature recounting the history of  Columbus’s epic voyage and first encounters with Native Americans  remains Eurocentric, focused principally—whether pro- or  anti-Columbus—on Columbus and the European perspective. A historical  novel, Encounters Unforeseen: 1492 Retold now dramatizes these  events from a bicultural perspective, fictionalizing the beliefs,  thoughts, and actions of the Native Americans who met Columbus side by  side with those of Columbus and other Europeans, all based on a close  reading of Columbus’s Journal, other primary sources, and anthropological studies.Read more on thisanthrolife.com--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

In this Conversations episode of This  Anthro Life, Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins explore the subject of  sensory ethnography –  a focus in anthropology that tends to deemphasize  the written word to explore visual, acoustic, and other sensory  perceptions. Today, researchers explore senses increasing in the media  through virtual simulations, visual and auditory stimuli that cause  different reactions (fostering disorientation or meditative states), and  of course art. But, how we perceive the world around us can also be  influenced by culture and our surroundings, from music, to dance, to  collective effervescence. After all, viral examples in recent years  (like the infamous dress),  demonstrate that human perception varies visually from person to person  (often in the recognition of more or less recognized colors in the  light spectrum). Individual distinctions aside, as humans we’re limited  in our generally ability to sense and see the world around (infrared and  ultraviolet light are imperceptible to us, for example). Yet, tactile  sense is intrinsic to our relatively unique to our ability to produce  and use tools. Though it tends to overlooked and under recognized in  most anthropological settings, sense is critical to the human  experience. This episode explores just a few examples of projects  related to sensory ethnography and how they take us beyond our everyday  experience of the perceived world around us. What is Sensory EthnographySense and perception has always been part of ethnographic work, but it hasn’t always been emphasized. According to David Howes,  studies focused on sense perception have been documented as early as  the 16th century, when smell, auditory, and visual perceptions were  emphasized. In 20th Century ethnography, however, the senses took a  backseat. Switching again in recent years, with broadly accessible  digital video and auditory technologies, the senses have once again come  back into focus.Read more about sensory ethnography here--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

Will Emojis be the death of writing? Are emojis modern day hieroglyphs? Is the increased use of emojis in textual conversations a sign of the end of language as we know it? Join us for one of our most popular conversations revisited! Your trusty hosts Ryan and Adam discuss the origin of emojis as well as the importance of actively seeking to understand the hidden biases of language.What is an Emoji? The term emoji originates from the japanese kanjis of “picture word”. Shigetaka Kurita  created the emoji in order to develop a way to send pictorial texts  using less data. Japanese phone users were sending pictures to convey  messages, but their phones were unable to handle the large amounts of  data involved in sending pictures, so Kurita created the emoji keyboard  that allowed for standard pictorial characters to be sent for the same  amount of data as a letter.Read more on thisanthrolife.com--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

In this Conversations episode of This Anthro Life, Adam Gamwell and guest host/TAL correspondent Matt Artz  explore the world of Design Anthropology with the help of Dr. Elizabeth  “Dori” Tunstall. Design Anthropology is a subject near and dear to our  hosts, who have been excited to devote an entire episode to the subject.  But, what is Design Anthropology? If you’re scratching your head, no  worries. Adam, Matt, and Dr. Tunstall have it covered and describe the  five iterations of design anthropology using examples of their use in  the field. Over the course of the episode Adam, Matt, and Dr. Tunstall  briefly cover issues of ethics within design anthropology as well as a  touching upon how to find jobs in design.   Adam, Matt, and Dr. Tunstall also make time to get into the topics of whether: the IRS is really as bad as popular culture makes them out to be. How can we avoid cultural misappropriation? And finally, how do value systems get expressed in design? “The goal of design anthropology is to create conditions of  compassion among human beings and conditions of harmony as it relates to  the natural world and all of the things that are within it” – Dr. TunstallRead more on thisanthrolife.com--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

Hey Listeners! Adam and Ryan are back from their brief summer hiatus (a time filled with fieldwork, dissertation writing, and travels abound) with new content, a fresh Patreon campaign, lined up interviews, an upcoming limited series on diversity in the university setting and much more! Support our new campaign on Patreon! Go ahead a click that nice image to visit our new page, to read about what we want to do, and how you can give securely. Just a dollar a month makes a huge difference for us!  Kicking off the new season, Adam and Ryan dive into a new FreeThink  episode, in the style and length of our Conversations. In this episode,  they continue to make the case for why the world needs anthropology and  social science thinking more than ever. They also speak in favor of  interventionist anthropology in recognition of the plethora of social  issues, subaltern experiences, cultural miscommunications, and civil  tensions which are in the media’s focus more than ever.With This Anthro Life’s new season we really want to emphasize the importance of our Patreon campaign.  Through Patreon, Adam and Ryan will engage listeners more directly  through new content, special episodes, video, and more. For the last 5  years, TAL has been almost entirely self-funded (though a huge thanks to  the few folks who have so generously contributed to the cause) and this  reality makes it difficult to produce the quality content you, our  listeners, have come to expect. But, we’re dedicated to persevering and  continuing because we believe in the anthropological focuses we discuss,  the content we produce, and in you, our listeners. We’re incredibly  humbled by the fact that we are soon to celebrate our 30,000th  subscriber and that our community continues to grow. We want to  celebrate this with you. Please take a moment to view our Patreon  page and choose which bracket is best suited for you. With any donation  you make, know that you are directly contributing to TAL and your  support means the world to us. TAL could not be produced without you and  it will continue to grow because of you.--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

In response to several surveys that attempt to quantify happiness, Ryan, Adam, and Aneil spend this episode of This Anthro Life exploring happiness through the lens of fetishism. They discuss Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, the film Happy, and more! They seek to answer the following questions: What kinds of things make us happy? How does happiness inhere in objects and how do we use objects to display our happiness? They end on a positive note by concluding that we have control over our happiness and suggesting a happy community may be a key part of being happy.  In the episode we use the term fetish, made famous by Sigmund Freud, to mean something that points to something else.  It masks what is there (I.e. a statue of a deity that seems to be what  people are worshipping, but it is just a material thing that is pointing  to the deity). It can be any material type of the thing that points towards an abstract idea.3 Ways Our Imagination Fails to Guide Us to Happiness Our  imagination tends to add and remove details people might not recognize  that key details are fabricated or missing from their imagined  scenarios. Imagined  futures and pasts are more like the present than they actually will be.  The future is not some far off thing. You are living the future. Imagination fails to realize that things will feel different once they actually happen. We adjust to things. Read more on thisanthrolife.com--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

This episode is a little different from our normal content. In it we feature a presentation Adam gave for Pivotal Labs in which he explores This Anthro Life’s (and his own) developing philosophy about conversations and podcasting as social technologies and what the worlds of anthropology and podcasting can do. Some topics Adam touches on include: what anthropology does in the world, conversation as “little social laboratories”, mapping the contemporary podcast ‘cosmos’, podcasters as cultural brokers, and the kinds of stories we well as Charismatic Data. During this pseudo-episode (think of it like a Conversation meets a FreeThink) Adam asks the questions: What makes conversation a social technology? And how can data be charismatic?During this pseudo-episode (think of  it like a Conversation meets a FreeThink) Adam asks the questions: What  makes conversation a social technology? And how can data be charismatic?As Adam mentions, the audio recording during the talk got messed up,  so today we’re presenting you a ‘podcasted’ version of the talk edited  for length. You can check out the original talk on YouTube here, courtesy of Pivotal Labs. The original talk also includes much more about Adam’s research and TAL.As always, remember TAL is an entirely self-funded labor of love, so  any help is always appreciated. We’ll be launching a Patreon campaign  soon for ongoing support. For now, please give securely at PayPal, every  bit makes a difference to us. Read the full story here--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

This Anthro Life has teamed up with Savage Minds to bring you a special 5-part podcast and blog crossover series. While thinking together as two anthropological productions that exist for multiple kinds of audiences and publics, we became inspired to have a series of conversations about why anthropology matters today. In this series we’re sitting down with some of the folks behind Savage Minds, SAPIENS, the American Anthropological Association and the Society for American Archaeology to bring you conversations on anthropological thinking and its relevance through an innovative blend of audio and text.In our fourth episode of the TAL + SM  collaboration Ryan and Adam chat with Dr. Kristina Killgrove about her  strategies for engaging popular audiences through writing. We start  by discussing interdisciplinary collaboration and its role in improving  writing. Then we explore Kristina’s strategies for choosing content to  cover in her blog, Powered by Osteons. We end by considering some ways anthropology has changed in terms of crowdfunding and the possibilities of open data.Read the full story here--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message

This Anthro Life has teamed up with Savage Minds to bring you a special 5-part podcast and blog crossover series. While thinking together as two anthropological productions that exist for multiple kinds of audiences and publics, we became inspired to have a series of conversations about why anthropology matters today. We’re sitting down with some of the folks behind Savage Minds, SAPIENS, the American Anthropological Association and the Society for American Archaeology to bring you conversations on anthropological thinking and its relevance through an innovative blend of audio and text.In our third episode of the TAL + SM crossover series (blog post here),  we explored SAPIENS’ approach to producing anthropological content for  popular audiences. Ryan and Adam were joined by the digital editor of  SAPIENS, Daniel Salas, to discuss the implications of using anthropology  to engage the public through journalism. The episode focused on the  questions How do you reconcile scientific and anthropological writing,  and is this mixture a new genre? Is there a balance to be found between  producing timeless “evergreen” stories versus current events focused  content for audience engagement? Read the rest here--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thisanthrolife/message