Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

UnDisciplined: The Cultural Anthropologist And The Population Health Analyst

We're talking about the ways warfare can build bonds in tribal societies, and how air pollution can have devastating effects in our modern world. 

We're joined first by Shane MacFarlan, who studies the ecology of cooperation and conflict in small-scale societies at the University of Utah. Joining us also is Claire Leiser, a Utah native who is now a research analyst at the Utah Population Database at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. 

Each week on UnDisciplined, we bring together two researchers from different fields of study to tell us about their latest findings.

Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.