Introducing: The Bioneers – Revolution from the Heart of Nature
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
The Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature is an award-winning, international radio and podcast series. Free to everyone, this series offers listeners and radio stations the opportunity to experience the conference year-round, and allows access to in-depth interviews with leading social and scientific innovators. It highlights diverse voices of grassroots leaders and voices that are often marginalized or excluded by corporate media. The programs cover a wide range of topics, including intelligence in nature, climate justice, food and farming, gender equity, Indigenous knowledge,...
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Introducing: Outside/In
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
Outside/In from New Hampshire Public Radio is a show about the natural world and how we use it. The show combines solid reporting and long-form narrative storytelling to bring the outdoors to you wherever you are. The program casts a wide net across the environmental spectrum. They do fun explorations of nature, with lots of sound design and immersive scenes; they cover climate change and sustainability, but try to keep solutions to environmental problems in the spotlight; and they do pieces that are more philosophical, reflecting on ways in which society thinks about and depicts nature. Learn...
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Introducing: Blind Plea
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
Deven Grey, a young, isolated mother in Alabama, reached a point of no return on December 12, 2017. She shot and killed her boyfriend, John Vance. Rather than face a jury, Deven accepted a “blind plea” deal. This is Deven’s story, reclaimed. From Lemonada Media, this is Blind Plea. You can listen to Blind Plea at Show notes: This series is created with Evoke Media, a woman-founded company devoted to harnessing the power of storytelling to drive social change. This series is presented by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. MCF supports leaders who work to shift the balance of...
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Finding Mrs. Jackson
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
When archaeologists excavate, they have some idea of what they will find in the ground. But in 2016, a team of archaeologists from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, was genuinely surprised when they uncovered a Victorian-era cache. In the process, they forged an uncommonly deep connection with an individual from the past. Narrated by Anya Gruber, this story shows how archaeology can humanize the past and how loss can bring us closer. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee was the editor for this piece, with help from producer Ann...
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Aneho’s Disappearing Coast
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
Aneho is a little historic West African town that is disappearing due to coastal erosion. But locals defy the sea and continue to live on the water’s edge. In this episode, we hear how their decision to stay in the face of an ever-approaching shoreline affects life along the coast and beyond. As reported by Koffi Nomedji, a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology from Lomé, Togo, we learn how as humans we variously face climate change–induced disaster. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee was the editor for this piece, with help from...
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The Conversion of Julio Tiwiram
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
Julio Tiwiram is a famous shaman in southeast Amazonian Ecuador. He is also a leading political figure among the Shuar people of Bomboiza. Growing up at the crossroads of social change and colonial conflict, his path to shamanism was anything but straightforward. As reported by Sebastián Vacas-Oleas, a social anthropologist working with the Shuar people of Bomboiza, we learn how a mysterious shamanic gathering helped Shuar people mobilize their traditional knowledge to fight for their land against settler occupation. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of...
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People of the Peppers
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
The world over people live with plants. Whether it’s in apartment bedrooms or backyards, it’s hard to find a human who doesn’t have some relationship with a plant. Enter paleoethnobotany, a field of archeology that examines plant remains to understand the historic alliance between humans and their vegetation. In this episode, host Eshe Lewis interviews archaeologist Katie Chiou to explore the spiciest human-plant affair: chili peppers. is an anthropological archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist whose include foodways in the past and present, Andean archaeology, household archaeology,...
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The Power of Criminal Prosecutors
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
Anyone who is in prison has been charged for a crime by a prosecutor. The charges are important because they determine someone’s punishment. How do prosecutors make their charging decisions? And what are the long-term impacts of those decisions? Reported by Esteban Salmón, an anthropologist born and raised in Mexico City, we learn just how powerful a charging decision can be in the Mexican criminal justice system. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of Pod. Cat Jaffee was the editor for this piece, with help from producer Ann Marie Awad. Seth...
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I Do This for You, Mom
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
Jeri Hutton Green is a mother, daughter, and advocate for survivors of domestic violence and homicide in Baltimore, Maryland. Her journey as an advocate began when her mother went missing in April 2020. A text message launched a 2-year battle for justice for her mother and other missing Black women. Reported by Brendane A. Tynes, a doctoral candidate in anthropology and an interpersonal violence survivor advocate, this episode explores what it means to survive domestic violence and police violence as a Black woman. SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human is produced by House of...
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A Story of Icelandic Skulls
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human
“Prime harvest”—that’s how one early 20th-century explorer described his collection of Icelandic human skulls. But why did he “harvest” those skulls in the first place? And what should happen to them now more than a century after they were collected? This case of the Icelandic skulls reveals an interconnected story of eugenics, international law, and the limits of current repatriation efforts. As reported by Adam Netzer Zimmer, an Iceland-based anthropologist, we hear how a community once targeted by anthropologists is now expanding our ideas of how to ethically handle human...
info_outlineFor many, archaeology means digging up historical artifacts from beneath the ground. But to some, that framework is also violent and colonial. What would it mean to leave ancestors and belongings where they’re found? In this episode, Gabrielle Miller, a PhD student studying African Diaspora Archaeology at the University of Tulsa shares a story about excavations in St. Croix. And Dr. Ayana Flewellen and Dr. Justin Dunnavant discuss how black archaeologists began uncovering sunken slave ships.
- (00:02:26) What parts of Archaeology as we know it should be preserved? And what needs to be destroyed?
- (00:02:51) Introduction.
- (00:03:24) Gabrielle Miller explains their research on the Free Black Community in St. Croix.
- (00:07:07) Meet, a ship called the Guerrero.
- (00:08:43) How Diving with a Purpose originated.
- (00:09:39) Justin Dunnavant and Ayana Flewellen create The Society of Black Archaeologists.
- 00:12:25) A guide to underwater, or maritime archaeology.
- 00:16:09) What Black Feminist archaeology is adding to the field.
- (00:21:29) How learning from artists can help stretch the academic container.
- (00:25:17) Credits.
SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human, is produced by House of Pod and supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. SAPIENS is also part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library. This season was created in collaboration with the Indigenous Archaeology Collective and Society of Black Archaeologists, with art by Carla Keaton, and music from Jobii, _91nova, and Justnormal. For more information and transcriptions, visit sapiens.org.
This episode was also sponsored by the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology at the University of California, San Diego and The Imago Mundi Fund at Foundation for the Carolinas.
For more information and transcripts, visit https://www.sapiens.org/.
Additional Resources:
- Diving with a Purpose
- Cornell University's RadioCIAMS
- Gabrielle Civil, an American performance artist
- La Vaughn Belle artist statement
Guests:
Gabrille Miller is a PhD student at the University of Tulsa studying African Diaspora Archaeology. Her current research engages the expressions and legacies of freedom and resistance in an eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century free Black community in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands in collaboration with the heritage practitioners, artisans, historians, and descendants of that community. Another extension of her work is with the organization Diving with a Purpose as an Instructor Candidate and in Youth Diving with a Purpose (YDWP)/National Park Service as an underwater archaeology intern, educator and mentor.
Dr. Justin Dunnavant is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA. His current research in the US Virgin Islands investigates the relationship between ecology and enslavement in the former Danish West Indies. In addition to his archaeological research, Justin is co-founder of the Society of Black Archaeologists and an AAUS Scientific SCUBA Diver. In 2021, he was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and inducted into The Explorers Club as one of “Fifty People Changing the World that You Need to Know About,” and has been featured on Netflix's "Explained," Hulu's "Your Attention Please" and in print in American Archaeology and Science Magazine.
Dr. Ayana Omilade Flewellen (they/she) is a Black Feminist, an archaeologist, a storyteller, and an artist. Flewellen is the co-founder and current President of the Society of Black Archaeologists and sits on the Board of Diving With A Purpose. They are an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. Her research and teaching interests address Black Feminist Theory, historical archaeology, maritime heritage conservation, public and community-engaged archaeology, processes of identity formations, and representations of slavery. Flewellen has been featured in National Geographic, Science Magazine, PBS, and CNN; and regularly presents her work at institutions including The National Museum for Women in the Arts.