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.

Raising Up African Paleoanthropologists

Generations of scholars from around the world have converged to study human evolution in East Africa. Now a new training program seeks to bring more African students into the field.

Lessons From Mars—and Jamaica—on Sovereignty

The billionaire space race thrives on romantic ideas of colonizing “the last frontier.” An anthropologist looks to Jamaican histories of colonization to show why such narratives are so dangerous—and offers an alternate vision of Black freedom in the Sovereign State of Accompong.

Five Questions About Writing the African Diaspora

In this free live event, anthropologist and SAPIENS poet-in-residence Justin Wright, answers five questions about the African Diaspora poetry and prose project.

The Resistance and Ingenuity of the Cooks Who Lived in Slavery

Archaeologists are investigating foodways and re-creating meals prepared by enslaved people who lived in North America and the Caribbean to better understand their everyday lives and fill gaps in the historical record.

Animating Stories of Global Migration

A short film uses evidence-based research to explore how migration connects humans everywhere.

Kenyan Mothers Take on Police Violence

In Nairobi, members of the Mothers of Victims and Survivors Network, who have lost family members to police violence, are turning their grief into determined activism.

Archaeologists Should Be Activists Too

More and more archaeologists are working to uncover the voices of groups that were marginalized in the past.

“The State” Is a Story We Tell Ourselves

After a nail-biting election that dragged on for weeks, officials have finally named Peru’s next president. An anthropologist explains the country’s recent upheavals and shows how nation-states are “ideological artifacts” that attribute morality to the amoral goings on of the government.

And You Watch as We Make Woodwater Again

SAPIENS poet-in-residence Justin D. Wright speaks to the elemental craft of Black survival, photosynthesis, and sweet tea making in an anti-Black racist society.

When “Voluntary” Return Is Not a Real Option for Asylum-Seekers

An anthropologist explains why successful integration into Austrian society—long argued to be a condition for acceptance—is not enough to guarantee asylum-seekers and migrants a safe home in the country.