anthropology

#1163 Herman Pontzer: How to Understand Human Biological Variation: "Race", Height, Gender, and More

Oct 16, 2025

Dr. Herman Pontzer is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health at the Global Health Institute at Duke University. Dr. Pontzer investigates the physiology of humans and other primates to understand how ecology, lifestyle, diet, and evolutionary history affect metabolism and health. He is particularly interested in cardiometabolic disease and the lifestyle factors that protect against obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other noncommunicable diseases that are common among industrialized populations but rare or absent in non-industrialized societies. His latest book is Adaptable: How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us. More»
#1144 Nikhil Chaudhary: Cooperation, Social Learning, Breeding Systems, and Evolutionary Psychiatry

Aug 31, 2025

Dr. Nikhil Chaudhary is Lecturer in Human Evolutionary and Behavioral Ecology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. He is an evolutionary anthropologist interested in applying evolutionary theory to explain diversity in behavior and cognition across the entire spectrum of human societies. Currently, He is particularly focused on developing the field of evolutionary psychiatry. He is thinking about how evolutionary perspectives can advance our understanding of the etiology of mental illness. More»
#1142 Gül Salali: Social Dynamics, Culture, Mental Health and Physical Health in Hunter-Gatherers

Aug 28, 2025

Dr. Gül Salali is Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. Her research focuses on human behavior and health using evolutionary approaches. Since 2013, she has been conducting fieldwork in the Congo rainforest studying Mbendjele BaYaka hunter-gatherers. Some of her most recent research projects include: social learning and cultural evolution; evolutionary approaches to health-related behavior and mental health; and hunter-gatherer diet, health and physical activity. More»
#1139 Kristen Ghodsee: Real-Life Utopian Societies

Aug 21, 2025

Dr. Kristen Ghodsee is an award-winning author and professor and chair of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as a member on the graduate groups of Anthropology and Comparative Literature. Dr. Ghodsee’s articles and essays have been translated into over twenty-five languages and have appeared in publications such as Dissent, Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The Baffler, The New Republic, Quartz, NBC Think, The Lancet, Project Syndicate, Le Monde Diplomatique, Die Tageszeitung, The Washington Post, and the New York Times. She is the author of 12 books, including Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life. More»
#1125 Daniel Fessler: Physical Formidability, Male Muscularity, Pathogen-Avoidance & More

Jul 18, 2025

Dr. Daniel Fessler is a Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an evolutionary anthropologist whose principal focus is contemporary humans. His research currently focuses on a number of domains, including: emotions; disease avoidance; morality; prosociality and cooperation; conflict, aggression, and risk-taking; cultural transmission; food and eating; and sex and reproduction. More»
#1120 Pascal Boyer: Ritualized Behavior, Ownership Psychology, and Victim-Devaluation

Jul 7, 2025

Dr. Pascal Boyer is the Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory in the Departments of Psychology and Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Lyon, France. He’s also the author of books like Religion Explained; Memory, Mind and Culture; and Minds Make Societies. More»
#1113 Vicky Oelze: The Diets of Great Apes, and the Evolution of Human Diets

Jun 20, 2025

Dr. Vicky Oelze is an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department and Director of the Primate Ecology & Molecular Anthropology Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include mobility and dietary adaptations in archaeological human populations; African strontium isoscapes and isotopic investigations of the Atlantic and transatlantic slave trade; the dietary ecology of extant African great apes; great ape breastfeeding and weaning; and chimpanzee tool use and termite-chimpanzee interactions. More»
#1107 Donald Johanson: Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, and Homo habilis

Jun 6, 2025

Dr. Donald Johanson is the Virginia M Ullman Chair in Human Origins in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the Founding Director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. For the past 30 years, he has conducted field and laboratory research in paleoanthropology. Most notably, he discovered the 3.18-million-year-old hominid skeleton popularly known as "Lucy." Dr. Johanson has carried out field research in Ethiopia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Tanzania. More»
#1106 Kevin Hong: Magic, Divination, and Dream Interpretation Across Societies

Jun 5, 2025

Dr. Kevin Hong is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of Macau. He is broadly interested in human behavior and culture, and currently has three lines of research: magic, divination, and epistemic norms in small-scale societies; reporting biases in the transmission of instrumental practices; and theoretical modeling of the transmission of culture. More»
#1099 Manvir Singh - Shamanism: The Timeless Religion

May 19, 2025

Dr. Manvir Singh is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. His research program aims to explain why societies develop complex, recurrent traditions such as shamanism, witchcraft, origin myths, property rights, sharing norms, lullabies, dance, music, and gods, as these have appeared in all types of societies across the globe, from nomadic hunter-gatherer bands to complex, industrial, mega-urbanized states. He is the author of Shamanism: The Timeless Religion. More»