The Human Scaffold with Josh Berson

That Anthro Podcast

Welcome to the podcast Dr. Joshua Berson, an independent researcher, author, and former Berggruen fellow who received his PhD in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Josh has penned three novels, Computable Bodies, The Meat Question, and The Human Scaffold.

https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520380493/the-human-scaffold

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/computable-bodies-9781472530349/

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/meat-question

We gush about our love of paper books and how we miss spending hours reading at bookstores. I ask how or if this affected the way he has written to his audience, knowing they most likely wouldn’t be picking up the book in a store. This leads him into speaking about the process and thoughts put into his first book Computable Bodies.

Next we touch on his second publication, the Meat Question, again diving into process and how the book formed over many years. He describes the goal of this book as to put the idea of what it means to be human and to consume animals in broader terms than just arguments for health and environment. Josh guides us through each step of inspiration, revision, and the review process in detail. Even describes what the face of meat looked like to him. Ultimately it was a paper he wrote “The Charisma of Meat” that sparked the substance of the book.

The paper that inspired the Human Scaffold, his most recent publication was a 2004 paper by Joseph Henrick, and the discourses it launched. Josh enjoyed the technical questions it proposed, but wanted to examine empirical archaeological data from Tasmania for a new take. He also explains the takeaways he hopes readers get from reading the Human Scaffold.

My sincerest thanks to the Berggruen Institute for working with me!

https://joshberson.net/

https://www.berggruen.org/people/joshua-berson/

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