Barbara J. King
Barbara J. King is a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. She is a Chancellor Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary. With a long-standing research interest in primate behavior and human evolution, King has studied baboon foraging in Kenya and gorilla and bonobo communication at captive facilities in the United States.
Recently, she has taken up writing about animal emotion and cognition more broadly, including in bison, farm animals, elephants and domestic pets, as well as primates.
King's most recent book is How Animals Grieve (University of Chicago Press, 2013). Her article "When Animals Mourn" in the July 2013 Scientific American has been chosen for inclusion in the 2014 anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing. King reviews non-fiction for the Times Literary Supplement (London) and is at work on a new book about the choices we make in eating other animals. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work in 2002.
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British paleontologist David Hone set out to write a book that stresses what isn't yet known about dinosaurs — as much as what is known. -
In his debut book Evolution Gone Wrong, Alex Bezzerides mixes the technical anatomical stuff we need to know with vivid examples and humorous phrases — in offering us some answers.
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Harvard University's Daniel Lieberman looks at exercise from an evolutionary point of view, concluding that we evolved to limit our physical activity where possible, saving it for survival activities.
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The anthropologist and physician teaches that the world needs not only medicine, but something more — a rejection of global racial inequalities and serious investment in the care of all people.
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Are playgrounds in the U.S. too sterile and risk-averse to help our kids thrive? Anthropologist Barbara J. King considers play and child development in evolutionary perspective.
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Would you eat beef, chicken, even foie gras grown from animal cells in the lab? Anthropologist Barbara J. King takes a look at new food technologies.
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Empathy for people diagnosed with an anxiety disorder can come about by reading first-person accounts and by knowing the facts from science, says anthropologist Barbara J. King.
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When it comes to finding and preparing food, we're a continually inventive species. Anthropologist Barbara J. King asks: What are the food trends of the future?
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It's all well and good to cut down on eating animals, but aren't our bodies designed to require meat in our diets? Anthropologist Barbara J. King takes a look at a new book saying the answer is "no."
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It's a popular idea, that there's a gift embedded in a diagnosis of cancer. Commentator and cancer patient Barbara J. King considers — and rejects — this notion, finding resonance instead in the words of two other women with cancer.
