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.

Living With the Prospect of Assisted Dying

In a culture that valorizes battling for life until the very end, a man diagnosed with ALS grapples with what it means to stop fighting.

Haunted by a Secret War

In a new book of ethnographic fiction on the lingering effects of the United States’ Secret War in Laos, the living must find ways to pacify the ghosts of those who suffered past violence.

Unmasked: Illustrating COVID-19 in Okoboji

An anthropologist and comic artist collaborated to bring to life the cultural squabbles and social complexities of the first pandemic year in Okoboji, a tourist town in northwest Iowa.

Nurturing Autism Acceptance in Indonesia

Two new films based on ethnographic research follow autistic Indonesian youth and their families as they seek and create new networks of care and support.

Transracial Adoption and the Limits of Love

A Korean adoptee and anthropologist reflects on how studying kinship made her rethink her own fraught family bonds.

Hard Water

A poet-anthropologist honors World Poetry Day with a piece that imagines alchemizing the suffering and devastation of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

What Chimpanzees Know About Giving Medicine

New observations of chimpanzees in Gabon lead researchers to wonder if the tendency to medicate ourselves and others really is unique to humans.

Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures

For those anxious about the state of the world, Mead’s celebrated work shows how anthropology can help guide alternative futures.

What’s the Appeal of Deep Voices in Men?

Low-pitched male voices are frequently seen as signs of dominance, strength, and sex appeal. Now anthropologists are sussing out whether there’s truth behind the stereotypes.

How Filipino Sailors—and Coconuts—Helped Create Mexico’s National Drink

Most people see tequila and mezcal as quintessentially Mexican spirits—but recent research has uncovered their unlikely connection with the Philippines.