The Hidden World of Sh*t (a farewell to 2020)

Explicit content warning

01/01/21 • 28 min

Language warning. We use the word sh*t a lot in this episode, since it is, in fact all about poop.
To wrap up this crappy, some may even say shitty year, host Adam Gamwell and intern Elizabeth Smyth discuss the origin of the word shit, how the way we defecate is culturally constructed, what our poop reveals about us, and so much more in this New Year’s Eve mini-episode of This Anthro Life. Farewell 2020, it’s been real.
In this episode we dig into:
What poop tells us about culture and our biology
Whether to sit or squat?
Poop’s superpower for healing gut microbiota and potential energy source
How poop in space might tell us if we are, in fact, extraterrestrials ourselves
Also check our new blog Voice and Value where we dive deeper into all things human: Voice and Value – Medium
Articles referenced:
The History of Poop Is Really the History of Technology
Poop Worlds: Material Culture and Copropower (or, Toward a Shitty Turn)
Poop (Somatosphere)
How Fossilized Poop Gives Us The Scoop on Ancient Diets
Watching What We Flush Could Help Keep a Pandemic Under Control https://nyti.ms/2J2MJaa
Human feces from the developing world could power millions of homes
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Music: Epidemic Sounds
No Regrets - Guy Trevino
Basmati - Farrell Wooten
Episode Art: Liz Smyth
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Previous Episode

More than a Game: Sports, Race, and Masculinity in Diaspora w/ Vyjayanthi Vadrevu and Stanley Thangaraj

In this episode we meet Dr. Stan Thangaraj, an anthropology professor at the City College of New York whose research includes immigration in the U.S, being interviewed by Vyjayanthi Vadrevu, a business anthropologist and ethnographer. Together, the two discuss basketball, community, identity, race relations and so much more. Stay tuned with us as you learn about why race relations are so important and the answers to the following questions:
What does sports and their global popularity reveal about race relations in the US?
What can we learn from the merging transnational identities?
How has the “Black Lives Matter” Movement impacted the nonwhite and nonblack communities?
What are the politics within the diasporic communities?
Why is it so important to continue research and teaching about these communities?
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And check out Matt and Prince’s episode on neuromarketing on This Anthro Life https://www.thisanthrolife.org/a-neuroscientist-and-marketer-walk-into-a-bar-neuromarketing-and-the-hidden-ways-marketing-reshapes-our-brains-with-matt-johnson-and-prince-ghuman/
Check out our new Medium Blog "Voice and Value": https://medium.com/missing-link
collaborative provocations and stories that get us closer to human and deepen our perspective on society, culture, and our future.
Stanley Thangaraj is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the City College of New York (CUNY). His interests are at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. He studies immigrant and refugee communities in the U.S. South to understand how they manage the black-white racial logic through gender, how the afterlife of colonialism takes shape in the diaspora, and the kinds of horizontal processes of race-making.His monograph Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity (NYU Press, 2015) looks at the relationship between race and gender in co-ethnic-only South Asian American sporting cultures.
Vyjayanthi Vadrevu is an ethnographer/ design researcher and strategist with a background in anthropology, business development, and nonprofit administration. She works on social impact design projects as well as corporate technology projects, delivering insights to help clients better serve their end users and beneficiaries. Vyjayanthi is also a trained bharatantyam dancer, with additional experience in Odissi, Kuchipudi, Kathak, and West African dance, and uses movement and choreography to connect to the deepest parts of the human experience.
Music: Epidemic Sound
Show notes: Xin Yao Lin, Elizabeth Smyth
Episode art by: Sara Schmieder
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Next Episode

How to Manage Social Conflict, Communicate Effectively and Find Common Ground with Jeremy Pollack

In January 2021 armed rioters stormed the US Capitol in a harrowing and politically fomented insurrection. It was an apex of years of divisive and condemnable rhetoric and fear-mongering used to stoke insecurities and desperate action. How do we ensure this never happens again? Or how do we dismantle the social structures that feed hate, fear, and contempt? What this event, and on the flip side, our celebration of Martin Luther King jr. Day (when we recorded this episode 1/18/21), reveal is that understanding what leads to social conflict and how to manage and resolve conflict is more essential than ever. Today Adam Gamwell and Astrid Countee talk with conflict management expert and author Jeremy Pollack about healing a divided nation by learning to talk with our neighbors more. We dig into:
Why humans need help managing conflict
Cognitive and perceptual biases that prevent us from communicating clearly with one another
How to communicate clearly around fears and intentions to find common ground
How to understand and disarm Worldview defense
That we need to start talking to our neighbors more!
The importance of local leadership in modeling intergroup communication and shared goals
Jeremy Pollack is the Founder of nationwide conflict resolution consulting firm Pollack Peacebuilding Systems and author of the new book Conflict Resolution Playbook: Practical Communication Skills for Preventing, Managing, and Resolving Conflict. Jeremy is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Conflict and Negotiation, and an expert on human conflict with an academic background in social psychology, evolutionary anthropology, negotiation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremypollack1/
https://www.facebook.com/pollackpeacebuilding/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3K6m_0bO31lD7JUc0th_vQ/featured
https://pollackpeacebuilding.com/
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