A Samoan anthropologist will co-host a podcast that will explore Margret Mead’s controversial research on the study of the coming of age in Samoa and how it has affected the image of Samoan adolescents over the years.

“The Problems with Coming of Age” podcast series will be co-hosted by Doris Tulifau and Kate Ellis to reconsider Mead’s seminal work and also hear from Samoans themselves about their views on Mead’s legacy and their lives today.

Margret Mead is a famed anthropologist who carried out her research in American Samoa to explore key quandaries about human experience; sex and adolescence, nature versus nurture and whether it is possible to fully understand cultures different from one’s own.

It will be an eight episode long podcast titled “The Problems with Coming of Age” made possible through the SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human from SAPIENS magazine who has partnered with public media organisation PRX who are one of the world’s top podcast publishers.

Their goal is to bring listeners narrative-driven story telling of the famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, her epic life, and controversial research.

Doris Tulifau, a Samoan activist and anthropology PhD student is ecstatic about the opportunity to talk on the subject being an anthropologist herself.

“I am excited for more for our Pasafika people to have interest in who Margaret Mead is and what her research was on in American Samoa, especially listening to perspectives from Samoans,” said Ms. Tulifau.

In 1928, Margaret Mead published the Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization, which investigated the sexual lives of young women on the Pacific Islands. The book was an instant bestseller, challenging Americans to rethink much of what they had assumed to be true about sex, human biology, and growing up.

Mead became the most influential anthropologist in history and one of TIME magazine’s most powerful 25 women of the 20th century. She received a U.S. presidential medal of freedom and a U.S. postal stamp was made with her picture on it. 

The Podcast will however question if Mead’s findings about Samoans were not right at all and give the opportunity for Samoans to share their thoughts and experiences around this subject.

Five years after Mead’s death, an anthropologist named Derek Freeman rebutted the central claims Mead had made in her career-launching work, sparking a media sensation and challenging the field of anthropology. The controversy that followed sparked central questions about the science of intercultural understanding and why Samoans weren’t empowered to speak for themselves. 

This special SAPIENS podcast season tells this complicated story while also exploring key quandaries about the human experience and if it’s ever possible to fully understand cultures different from your own. 

It was created in collaboration with the award-winning Samoan novelist and playwright Sia Figiel and guided by multiple humanities scholars, including professors Nancy Lutkehaus (University of Southern California), Agustín Fuentes (Princeton University), Paul Shankman (University of Colorado, Boulder), and Lisa Uperesa (University of Auckland). A university-based curriculum to accompany the podcast will be designed and Sia Figiel will contribute on air and translate Coming of Age in Samoa into the Samoan language for the first time.