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_outlineThe Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, or NAGPRA, is supposed to curb the illegal possession of ancestral Native American remains and cultural items. But a year after it was passed by the U.S. federal government, a significant African burial ground in New York City was uncovered. And there was zero legislation in place for its protection. Dr. Rachel Watkins shares the story of the New York African Burial Ground—and what repatriation looks like for African American communities.
- (00:00:44) Enter the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology and its NAGPRA controversy.
- (00:03:19) A discovery in Manhattan is not covered by NAGPRA.
- (00:05:19) Intro.
- (00:05:44) Dr. Rachel Watkins, the New York African Burial Ground Project and Michael Blakey.
- (00:11:40) Dr. Rachel Watikins meets the Cobb Collection.
- (00:23:44) Exploring Repatriation for the New York African Burial Ground Project.
- (00:28:26) The issue of repatriation for the Cobb Collection.
- (00:34:02) Revisiting season 4.
- (00:40:49) 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.
Thank you this time also to The Harvard Review and their podcast, A Legacy Revealed for permitting us to use a clip from Episode 4 I Could See Family in Their Eyes, hosted by Raquel Coronell Uribe and Sixiao Yu and produced by Lara Dada, Zing Gee, and Thomas Maisonneuve.
Additional Sponsors:
This episode, and entire series, was made possible by the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, UC San Diego Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology, the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology, the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology at Brown University, UMASS Boston’s Fiske Center for Archaeological Research, UC Berkeley’s Archaeological Research Facility, and the Imago Mundi Fund at Foundation for the Carolinas.
Additional Resources:
- From SAPIENS: Why the Whiteness of Archaeology Is a Problem
- Craft an African American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
- New York African Burial Ground
- The Mismeasure of Man
Guest:
Rachel Watkins is a biocultural anthropologist with an emphasis on African American biohistory and social history, bioanthropological research practices, and histories of U.S. biological anthropology.