Videos and podcasts
The Ancient History of Board Games - interviewed on Irish radio program newstalk
You're the Expert podcast - guest on episode of comedy-science radio program on WBUR NPR Boston
Neanderthal Class Videos - short videos about our extinct evolutionary cousins, produced by my Harvard class "HEB 1200 Neanderthals & Other Extinct Humans"
Harvard Horizons talk - 5 minute public lecture on "Identifying encounters between Neanderthals and modern humans through reliable radiocarbon dates"
Microarchaeology at Ashkelon - see my in-field laboratory at the archaeology dig at Tel Ashkelon
Writing
Atlas Obscura - Loved or Loathed: Can Madagascar's Aye-Aye Survive Superstition?
Smithsonian - Why Did Ancient Indigenous Groups in Brazil Hunt Sharks?
Science News - No more cuddly selfies with our ape cousins, top conservation body warns scientists
Science News - Tooth tartar could uncover drug habits of ancient people
Smithsonian - Ancient European Hunters Carved Human Bones Into Weapons
Science News - Shrine of decapitated heads suggests violence against foreigners in ancient Mexico
Audubon - Rulers of the Upper Realm, Thunderbirds are Powerful Native Spirits
Audubon - Journey Complete, Scott Edwards Looks Back on His Cross-Country Bicycling Trip
Discover - An Athletic Evolution
Smithsonian - Monkeys' Attraction to Burned Grasslands May Offer Clues to Human Ancestors' Mastery of Fire
Science News - Sacred site reveals how Indigenous people resisted colonial forces for 130 years
Audubon - Meet the Harvard Ornithology Professor Biking Across the Country
Discover - More than Child's Play
Discover - Brew's from a Cave Grave
Discover - The Lemur and the Lioness
Discover - A Matter of Life and Death
Discover - Lots o' Motza!
Discover - Stuck On You
Discover - Getting Naked
The Conversation - Plague was around for millennia before epidemics took hold
Since September 2018 I've been writing a regular online series, covering fundamental topics & classic tales from Anthropology for Discover:
- The Modern Lives of Ancient Symbols
- Which Ancient City is Considered the Oldest in the World?
- "What's the Coolest Thing You've Ever Found?"
- The Six Most Iconic Artifacts
- The Ancient History of Board Games
- Why Ancient Toys are Elusive Artifacts
- How did Ancient People Keep their Food from Rotting?
- Archaeologists Have Long Sought - But Never Found - The Very First Wheel
- The Earliest Toilets
- How Archaeologists Know Where to Dig
- These Ice Age Humans Somehow Survived North of the Arctic Circle
- Monte Verde: Our Earliest Evidence of Humans Living in South America
- How Scientists Know Our Human Ancestors Ate Insects
- Evolution Could Explain Why Having a Girlfriend Makes Men More Attractive
- Homo heidelbergensis: The Answer to a Mysterious Period in Human History?
- The Sima Hominins: An Ancient Human Cold Case
- The Australopiths: Our Ancient, Ape-like Forefathers
- The Denisovans: New Finds are Illuminating the Mysterious Ancient Humans
- Meet Homo naledi: The Mysterious Human Cousin
- Meet Homo floresiensis: The Real-life Hobbits of Indonesia
- How Humans' Unique Cooking Abilities Might Have Altered Our Fate
- Just How Many Extinct Types of Human Did Our Ancestors Meet?
- Drunken Monkey Hypothesis: Was Booze an Advantage for our Ancestors?
- The Search for the World's Oldest Alcohol
- Prehistoric Medicine: How Archaic Humans Cured Themselves
- We May Have Domesticated Ourselves
- Humanity's Early Ancestors Were Upright Walking Apes
- Running Made Us Human: How We Evolved to Run Marathons
- The Human Brain Has been Getting Smaller Since the Stone Age
- Why Do Humans Have Wisdom Teeth That Need to Be Removed
- The Grandmother Hypothesis Could Explain Why Women Live So Long
- When Did Humans Start to Get Old
- Can Men Tell When Women are Ovulating?
- Scientists Still Stumped by the Evolution of Human Breasts
- Neanderthals Were Inbreeding. Did it Help Cause Their Extinction?
- Ancient DNA from Africa
- Why Did Darker and Lighter Skin Evolve?
- Why Humans Lost Their Hair
- Why We Still Can't Read the Writing of the Indus Civilization
- What the Earliest Texts Say about the Invention of Writing
- How Humans Invented Writing - Four Different Times
- How Did Language Evolve?
- How Language Allows Scientists to Get Inside the Head of a Chimpanzee
- What Studying Primate Communication Tells Us About the Evolution of Human Language
- The Ongoing Debate Over Neanderthal Language
- How Superstitious Europeans Scared Away Witches
- Why Are Some Religions More Popular than Others?
- The Human Brain Evolved to Believe in Gods
- How We Know Ancient Humans Believed in the Afterlife
- Chimps Know Death When They See It
- Neanderthal Brains: Bigger, Not Necessarily Better
- Ancient Pets Got Proper Burials
- When is it OK for Archaeologists to Dig up the Dead
Other Stories:
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing - Stress
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing - Monkeys
Discover - Are the Oldest Fossils Real - Or Just Rocks?
Discover - The World is Our Niche
Discover - To Sleep, Perchance to Evolve
Discover - Ancient DNA Starts Answering Archaeology's Big Questions
Discover - Drove Uncovers Ancient Irish Henge
Discover - Ancient Ice Reveals Insights into Roman Empire
Discover - Hopeful Monsters: What Defines a Species
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing - Neanderthals
Discover - Something Stirs: What Will Happen as Permafrost Thaws
Discover - The Great Aztec Temple
Discover - A Brush with a Feathered Foe
Discover - Stone Cold Science (how archaeologists study stone tools)
Discover - Unraveling a Secret (Inka khipu)
Discover online - Bronze Age Teens Ate Dogs to Become Men
Discover - Everything Worth Knowing about Ancient DNA
Discover online - Untangling the Ancient Inca Code of Strings
The Conversation - DNA dating: How molecular clocks are refining human evolution's timeline
The Guardian Science blog network - Why we're closer than ever to a timeline for human evolution
During summer of 2016 I was a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, writing for Discover Magazine. My clips:
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- Meet the Denisovans
- Flossing - What Is It Good For?
- Greenland Sharks are Old, but 400 Years Old?!
- Your Nose May Have Drugs in it, the Antibiotic Kind
- Biodiversity Below 'Safe' Limits?
- Blame Your Subpar Fitness on That Neanderthal DNA
- Super-Smeller Mice Could Detect Explosives, Disease
- Baby Cadavers Prized by Victorian Anatomists
- Neander-TAL or Neander-THAL?
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Top 100 Year In Science Stories:
- #4 - Oldest Human DNA Revises our Family Tree
- #16 - We Are All Africans
- #24 - Finding China's Great Flood
- #28 - A Bone to Pick About Philistines
- #43 - Birds Sleep During Flight, Too
- #54 - Skin Deep Evolutionary Link
- #66 - The Nose Knows Antibiotics
- #68 - Our First Date Out of Africa
- #75 - Poster Critter for Climate Change
- #80 - Greenland Sharks Can Live 500 Years and Counting
- #88 - A Fossil from the Heavens