This special SAPIENS podcast season, co-hosted by Doris Tulifau and Kate Ellis, tells the story of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead’s epic life and controversial research in American Samoa to explore key quandaries about the human experience: sex and adolescence, nature versus nurture, and the question of whether it’s ever possible to fully understand cultures different from your own. In addition, we hear from Samoans themselves about their views on Mead’s legacy and their lives today.
In 1928, when she was just 27 years old, Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization, which investigated the sexual lives of young women on the Pacific Islands. The book was an instant bestseller, challenging people in the U.S. to rethink much of what they had assumed to be true about sex, human biology, and growing up. Mead became one of the most influential anthropologists in history and one of TIME magazine’s most powerful 25 women of the 20th century. She received a U.S. presidential medal of freedom, and a U.S. postal stamp was made with her picture on it.
But what if Mead’s findings about Samoans were wrong?
Five years after Mead’s death, anthropologist Derek Freeman rebutted the central claims Mead made in her career-launching work, sparking a media sensation and challenging the field of anthropology. The controversy that followed sparked questions about the science of intercultural understanding and why Samoans weren’t empowered to speak for themselves.
SAPIENS is an editorially independent podcast funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and is part of the American Anthropological Association Podcast Library.
Season 6 of the SAPIENS podcast was made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Part of the production team traveled to Pago Pago, American Samoa, to begin field recordings for the podcast.
Chip Colwell
Rithu Jagannath interviewed Sia Figiel.
Chip Colwell
The Atauloma Girls School, which Margaret Mead visited in 1925, today is in ruins, consumed by the forest.
Chip Colwell
The production team visited the school where Derek Freeman taught in Apia, Samoa.
Chip Colwell
The production team recorded the ocean sounds near Vaitogi, American Samoa, where Margaret Mead lived in 1925.
Chip Colwell
Season co-host Doris Tulifau (seated right) and producer Sia Figiel (seated left) discussed their work on a television program produced in American Samoa.
Chip Colwell
Ari Daniel interviewed Andra Samoa, a former member of the American Samoa House of Representatives and descendant of Andrew Napoleon, who worked closely with Margaret Mead.
Chip Colwell
The production team interviewed Afalupetua Utai, a church pastor at CCCAS Vatia.
Rob Matau (left) and singer Malo Faamausili (right) recorded much of the music for the podcast.
Tanya Volantras
On the final day of recording, the production team attended a Sunday church service at CCCAS Petesa Tai.
Chip Colwell
Trailer: The Problems With Coming of Age
[introductory music]
Peta Si’ulepa: We need to tell our own stories. We need to articulate our reality from our own experience.
Bradd Shore: It was the single biggest media storm in the history of anthropology.
Doris Tulifau: In 1925, a 23-year-old anthropologist named Margaret Mead set sail for American Samoa in the South Pacific to study whether being an adolescent always has to be so hard.
Charles King: She wanted to be a public intellectual. She wanted to be taking on the big issues of her day.
Kate Ellis: Mead wrote about what she found in her first book, Coming of Age in Samoa, and it rocketed her to fame. She depicted a place where girls were free to explore their sexuality and challenged Americans to rethink adolescence, parenting, and big questions like nature versus nurture.
Charles: Suddenly, you dethrone your own culture, and make it just one of many ways of making sense of the world.
Doris: Decades later, controversy erupted. Anthropologist Derek Freeman said Mead had been hoaxed—and that her findings about Samoa and her insights into what it was to be human were wrong.
[people singing]
Peter Hempenstall: What he disagreed vehemently with was her sense that Samoa was this beguiling romantic paradise.
Mary Catherine Bateson: Freeman rode her fame by attacking her.
Kate: The debate captivated the public.
Paul Shankman: She had gone from public icon to cultural roadkill in just a matter of months.
Nancy Lutkehaus: The American public’s interest wasn’t so much in Samoan society and what either of them had to say about Samoan society. The Samoans got kind of lost in that discussion.
Doris: For Samoans themselves, Mead’s work has cast a long shadow.
Peta: I was affronted by the use of the word “primitive.”
Sia Figiel: And I just remember asking who’s Mead? Who’s Freeman? We didn’t know. And yet these narratives were supposed to be about us.
Tisa Faamuli: I have a problem with foreigners telling our story. They’re not telling it from our eyes and our heart. Nobody ever interviews us and asks us our opinion of ourselves, our history, who we are.
Doris: In the newest season of SAPIENS “The Problems With Coming of Age,” we do just that. I’m Doris Tulifau.
Kate: And I’m Kate Ellis. Join us as we investigate the epic life and controversial research of one of the 20th-century’s most influential scientists—and the complicated legacy she left behind.
Coming this October, wherever you get your podcasts.
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You may republish this article, either online and/or in print, under the Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 license. We ask that you follow these simple guidelines to comply with the requirements of the license.
In short, you may not make edits beyond minor stylistic changes, and you must credit the author and note that the article was originally published on SAPIENS.
Accompanying photos are not included in any republishing agreement; requests to republish photos must be made directly to the copyright holder.
