Featured Archived
Seasons Episodes
Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Announcement

After ten years of exploring humanity in all its diversity, SAPIENS has concluded its publishing chapter.

While the magazine has closed, its living archive endures—open to all and preserving the many ideas, voices, and discoveries that deepen our understanding of what it means to be human.

Wildfire Archaeology and the Burning American West

Archaeologists in New Mexico are pioneering surprising research methods—involving tree rings, pottery, and blasts of light—to explain why wildfire suppression doesn’t work.

Will U.S. University Students Spread COVID-19?

Universities are planning to open across the United States with strategies based on fantasy documents and magical thinking.

Being Clear-Eyed About Citizen Science in the Age of COVID-19

An anthropologist explores the network of citizen monitoring capabilities that developed after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011 for what they might teach all of us about such strategies for the covonavirus pandemic.

The Problem With Abstract Threats

In this episode, anthropologists consider what the novel coronavirus reveals about how humans negotiate crises that seem too big to be real.

Haitian Deportees Face an Unconscionable Crisis During the Pandemic

For Haitian nationals who are being deported from the U.S. amid the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustices and health inequities run deep, to tragic effect.

Can Archaeology Explain the Bread Baking Craze?

An archaeological look at the history of cuisine changes illuminates why the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted America’s new bread obsession—and whether it will last.

How Elders Make Us Human

An anthropologist responds to the suggestion that older people sacrifice themselves for the sake of the economy in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is Celebrity Attention Helping or Hurting Amazonian Peoples?

As stars around the world petition Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to protect Indigenous peoples from the COVID-19 pandemic, anthropologists debate whether the call for action reproduces longstanding racist claims.

Could the Coronavirus Pandemic Be Good for the Environment?

Archaeological research into environmental impacts of the Black Death in Eurasia and historic pandemics among Native Americans during European colonization may provide answers to possible impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.

Rethinking Easter Island’s Historic “Collapse”

Controversial new archaeological research casts doubt on a classic theory of this famous island’s societal collapse.