Friend of Neuroanthropology, Dr. Ginger Campbell, has a new podcast up on the evolution of language. It’s free to download (audio mp3 or through iTunes).

Dr. Campbell’s stuff is great. I tend to load the podcasts onto my little iPod shuffle and listen to them while I’m riding around on the tractor (got a new 4-wheel-drive tractor this week!) and while running the ‘whipper snipper’ (what Yanks call a ‘weed whacker’ or, less prosaically, a ‘line trimmer’). We have a 4 cylinder whipper snipper, and it gets to be a rough ride, so I always enjoy listening to a good lecture while I’m I’m tearing through the unruly grass around the farm. Ira Bashkow, my former writing group mate from Chicago, now on the faculty at University of Virginia (and author of the 2007 Victor Turner Award winning, The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World), turned me on to the podcast-lecture-listening-while-doing-physical-work when he told me that he works out in the gym to them. I’ve put a bit of a farm-related wrinkle on the whole process. But I digress…

The bottom line is that the Brain Science Podcasts are a great resource for anyone interested in Neuroanthropology. In her interviews, Dr. Campbell reminds me a lot of Anne Fausto-Sterling, one of my intellectual heroes (just her enthusiasm, willingness to learn, and humility in spite of knowledge). As soon as I get the slasher (Yanks: mower) on the back of the new tractor and the pastures dry out a bit, I’ll no doubt have stack of the podcasts I haven’t yet had a chance to listen to loaded on the iPod.