Table of contents
Connecting Local Communities to Paleoanthropology in Kenya

On Rusinga Island, a grassroots group is celebrating the field assistants who helped find famous fossils and inspiring future generations…

The First Space Launch for Mauritius

An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal…

Passing Notes

The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during…

The Strange Power of Laughter

An anthropologist explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight—reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and…

Poets Resist, Refuse, and Find a Way Through

In a themed collection, poets trace contours of power to critique colonialism, environmental destruction, and social violence while transforming the…

Tackling the Impossibility—and Necessity—of Counting the World’s Languages

A language scientist delves into historic and current efforts to catalog the planet’s 7,000-plus languages, uncovering colorful tales and Herculean…

Playing Rock, Paper, Scissors Across the Red-Blue Divide

As toxic polarization deepens in the U.S., some global conflict prevention experts are now addressing political violence at home. An…

When a Message App Became Evidence of Terrorism

Beginning in 2016, the Turkish government accused anyone with the messaging application ByLock of terrorism. An anthropologist investigates the risks…

A Call for Anthropological Poems of Resistance, Refusal, and Wayfinding

SAPIENS is seeking poetry submissions for a curated collection that will publish next year. Deadline: September 1, 2024. ✽ SAPIENS…

Chatter That Matters

Three anthropologists sit to talk about the evolutionary purposes of gossip. What role does gossip play in human societies? In…