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.

Allying With Parasites to Fight Industrial Oil Palm
In West Papua, industrial oil palm plantations threaten Marind people’s ways of life. Some in the community find solidarity with resilient parasite species—beetles, rats, fungi, and many more—that attack oil palm trees from within.
Can Anthropology Help Heal Puerto Rico’s Diabetes Crisis?

Anthropological studies show the potential impact of community care and creative policies in improving health care in Puerto Rico.

Chasing the Myths of Mexico’s “Superrunners”

The Rarámuri people’s ancient traditions of footracing have captured global attention. New research by a biological anthropologist and his colleagues debunks stereotypes and contextualizes the community’s famous races.

A Letter From COVID-19

An anthropologist imagines COVID-19 as a wise representative of Earth who is sharing a vital message with humans.

Unlikely Blessings

When the unthinkable happens, how do we even speak? A poet-anthropologist finds a way through a poem written during his infant son’s chemotherapy treatments, caught in the haunting terrain between hope and despair.

Death as Something We Make

An anthropologist dives deeply into how “medical aid-in-dying” is transforming the ethics and aesthetics of death.

Can Social Scientists Help Control Epidemics?

New collaborative efforts, such as the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform, are allowing anthropologists and other scholars to help align public health efforts with the on-the-ground knowledge and lived experience of people facing epidemics.

When Kinship Is Traced Through Women, Their Health Follows

A study finds that there may be health benefits when family ties are linked through mothers and women head households.

What Is Vaccination Equity?

With the COVID-19 vaccine rollout now underway, some immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers are being left behind.

Social Distancing in a Sumatra Rainforest

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orang Rimba, hunter-gatherers in Sumatra’s rainforests, are trying to preserve traditions—including isolating the sick and keeping away from outsiders—despite being displaced from much of their ancestral lands.