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.

The Very Modern Problem of Human Slavery

An estimated 40 million people are enslaved around the world. Raising awareness will help people move from victims to survivors.

Are Trophy Skulls Evidence of Civil War Among the Classic Maya?

Macabre artifacts hint at regional conflicts around the time of the Maya civilization’s disintegration.

How Geocachers Navigate Fear in the Urban Woods

An anthropologist’s study of a mobile digital game highlights the stereotypes that dictate who is seen as sexually threatening or vulnerable in urban spaces.

When Black Female Victims Aren’t Seen as Victims

In Peru, rampant stereotypes about Afro-Peruvian women as aggressive and hypersexual leaves many women unwilling or unable to seek support as victims of abuse.

Do Guns Possess the Power to Change Us?

A story of three deaths in Haiti has a lesson to teach the U.S.

Issuing Trigger Warnings in an Age of Mass Shootings

Once upon a time, the most important classroom warnings prepared students for potentially upsetting or traumatic content. Now they’re about bullets.

For One Forensic Anthropologist, Resilience Is Bone Deep

From medieval villages in Transylvania to war-torn countries in South America and North Africa, evidence of human endurance and strength is everywhere—even in the midst of devastation.

Why Are So Many Guatemalans Migrating to the U.S.?

As poverty and violence force Guatemalans to leave their country, one anthropologist reflects on her work with Indigenous peoples in the highlands—and shows how the U.S. is implicated in its own “migrant crisis.”

The End of the World as We Know It

How do our societies change in the face of apocalypse, and what can we do to ensure our survival?

Can Child Sex Offenders Be Rehabilitated?

Society tends to see child molesters as incorrigible. But therapy can and does effect change in many individuals. It should be both a duty and a right of such offenders.