Stephen Merritt's guest appearances

Stephen Merritt

Meet The Masters

Memorial Art Gallery Audio files

In Sight Out

AnthroHealth

Jonathan Merritt

Thurston Moore

Jacob Lawrence

John DiMaggio

Jean Dubuffet

Alex Grey

Kelly Starrett

Jack Elliott

Daniel Davis

Tori Amos

Olivia Kim

Michael Robinson

David Higgins

Michael Miller

John Ashbery

OwlTail

This podcast is a mirror of the story of human evolution, it is both varied and somewhat complex. Stephen and I get into the following;Should humans be following the diet trends of our ancestors?What does ancestral really mean?Did early humans persistence hunt? Or did they hunt more like wolves?What role has human evolution and anthropology played in our ideas of race and cultural differences today?A bit on barefoot running.This podcast easily could have gone on for hours, we'll try to get Stephen back on the show soon!"My research explores the ecology and evolution of ancient humans' tool-assisted carnivory. Eating animals and using tools to butcher is an important intersection between diet and technology. The ecological contexts surrounding this change in foraging behavior have likely influenced major trends in human evolution — like brain size expansion and increasing complexity of food production and consumption. In the contemporary world, diet is an important lens for examining culture, human health, and poverty; by examining industrialized food production, it is easy to appreciate the tremendous technological power that humanity wields as it produces more abundant, nutritious, cost-effective foods. Precisely because of the unprecedented ecological power our technology affords, humanity must act responsibly as we control other species’ genotypes, ensure equitable access to nutritious foods around the globe, and mediate the human footprint on the earth. BioThe important ways in which diet and technology are intertwined in the modern world brings up questions about their origins. How did we come to be the top consumer in all of the world’s ecosystems? To answer questions about the paleoecology of tool-assisted carnivory, I conduct fieldwork at Koobi Fora, in northern Kenya, where the deep history of human carnivory is encoded in archaeological assemblages of butchered bone that date approximately 1-2 million years ago. At this time in human prehistory, Oldowan stone tool technology was involved in a dietary shift toward large mammal carcass consumption, an ecological transition that put our ancestors in direct competition with ancient Carnivore guild members. As a zooarchaeologist and paleoanthropologist, I use information generated in carefully constructed modern-day experiments to reconstruct the role ancient humans and carnivores played in the formation of fragmentary bone assemblages."Show NotesMerritt 2012 cut mark cross sectionMerritt 2016 cut mark cluster geometry and equifinality in replicated early Stone Age butcheryMerritt 2017 investigating hominin carnivory in the Okote Member of Koobi Fora, Kenya with an actualistic modelMerritt and Davis 2017 diagnostic properties of hammerstone broken long bone fragmentsPatterson et al 2017 Ecosystem evolution and hominin paleobiology at East Turkana, northern Kenya between 2 and 1 Ma

This podcast is a mirror of the story of human evolution, it is both varied and somewhat complex. Stephen and I get into the following;Should humans be following the diet trends of our ancestors?What does ancestral really mean?Did early humans persistence hunt? Or did they hunt more like wolves?What role has human evolution and anthropology played in our ideas of race and cultural differences today?A bit on barefoot running.This podcast easily could have gone on for hours, we'll try to get Stephen back on the show soon!"My research explores the ecology and evolution of ancient humans' tool-assisted carnivory. Eating animals and using tools to butcher is an important intersection between diet and technology. The ecological contexts surrounding this change in foraging behavior have likely influenced major trends in human evolution — like brain size expansion and increasing complexity of food production and consumption. In the contemporary world, diet is an important lens for examining culture, human health, and poverty; by examining industrialized food production, it is easy to appreciate the tremendous technological power that humanity wields as it produces more abundant, nutritious, cost-effective foods. Precisely because of the unprecedented ecological power our technology affords, humanity must act responsibly as we control other species’ genotypes, ensure equitable access to nutritious foods around the globe, and mediate the human footprint on the earth. <h1>Bio</h1>The important ways in which diet and technology are intertwined in the modern world brings up questions about their origins. How did we come to be the top consumer in all of the world’s ecosystems? To answer questions about the paleoecology of tool-assisted carnivory, I conduct fieldwork at Koobi Fora, in northern Kenya, where the deep history of human carnivory is encoded in archaeological assemblages of butchered bone that date approximately 1-2 million years ago. At this time in human prehistory, Oldowan stone tool technology was involved in a dietary shift toward large mammal carcass consumption, an ecological transition that put our ancestors in direct competition with ancient Carnivore guild members. As a zooarchaeologist and paleoanthropologist, I use information generated in carefully constructed modern-day experiments to reconstruct the role ancient humans and carnivores played in the formation of fragmentary bone assemblages."<h2> Show Notes</h2>Merritt 2012 cut mark cross section Merritt 2016 cut mark cluster geometry and equifinality in replicated early Stone Age butcheryMerritt 2017 investigating hominin carnivory in the Okote Member of Koobi Fora, Kenya with an actualistic modelMerritt and Davis 2017 diagnostic properties of hammerstone broken long bone fragmentsPatterson et al 2017 Ecosystem evolution and hominin paleobiology at East Turkana, northern Kenya between 2 and 1 Ma

#24 - Stephen Merritt, PhD - Paleoanthropologist 

Stephin Merritt is no typical memoirist. In April, the Magnetic Fields singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist sat down with Pitchfork Senior Staff Writer Marc Hogan for a conversation in front of an audience at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Though the Magnetic Fields’ new album, 50 Song Memoir, consists of a song for each of the first 50 years of his life, Merritt isn’t a tell-all artist; in interviews, he has long been known for his acerbic reticence, often marked by lengthy pauses. Over the course of an hour, however, Merritt waxed wise and witty, reflecting on the nature of art, the challenges for a notoriously anti-autobiographical performer in finally telling his own life story, and the evolving meaning of the Magnetic Fields’ classic “The Book of Love.”

Stephen Merritt speaks about his work in the 64th Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery, July 14-September 8, 2013.

Stephen Merritt speaks about Cairn Study

He is a Past President of the Florida Podiatric Medical Association and currently chairs the Quality Assurance Committee. He served as Chairman of the Podiatry Department of Methodist Medical Center since 1990 and currently for Shands (University of Florida) Medical Center.. He is a Faculty Member of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery of the University […]

Stephen Merritt, DPM