Five Highlights From the 2023 RAI Film Festival

This March, SAPIENS is partnering with the Royal Anthropological Institute’s RAI Film Festival to celebrate anthropological documentaries. ✽ The art…

What Do Archaeologists Do?

Archaeologists use a wide variety of methods to explore a fascinating range of topics about human history, culture, and behavior.…

A Tree’s Tongue

A Nigerian poet-anthropologist witnesses the powerful rising up of ancestors through the revival of a tree in the Igbo village…

Indigenizing What It Means to be Human

SAPIENS offers a curated collection of poems and stories that center Indigenous values, worldviews, and insights, creatively reimagining anthropology and…

What Commentators Get Wrong (and Right) About North Korea

An anthropologist argues that unfair portrayals of North Korea as a hopelessly irrational hermit state has huge implications for policy…

What Is Linguistic Anthropology?

Linguistic anthropologists study language in context, revealing how people’s ways of communicating and expressing themselves interact with human culture, history,…

Why AI Will Never Fully Capture Human Language

Researchers in artificial intelligence have made extraordinary strides in mimicking human language—but they still can’t capture the parts that truly…

Derogatory Place Names Need Indigenous Revision

Changing offensive place names on public lands is a strong move toward decolonization. But to heal relationships and address ecological…

What Is Cultural Anthropology?

Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the dizzyingly diverse ways people live today, including how they think, act, create, struggle, make…

What Is Anthropological Poetry?

SAPIENS’ poetry editor and inaugural poet-in-residence break down what makes certain poems anthropological and explore how poetry has the potential…