It’s been 3 months and 15 days since I graduated from college, which means that for roughly 107 days, I have been telling anyone who will listen that I am starting a video project where I discuss topics in anthropology that I find interesting and break them down for a non-anthropologist audience to enjoy and see how cool anthropology can be, presented in the form of silly little drawings.

“Sounds great,” you say. “So where do I find these videos?”

A crippling silence fills the room. Emerging from the stillness in the space between our bodies, the silence responds on my behalf: nowhere. My gaze clings to a speckle of dust left on the floor, too weak to confront your eyes stained by disappointment.

. . .

Over the past several weeks of trying to get this project off the ground, I have come to a profound discovery: it’s kinda hard to make stuff inside your brain make sense in someone else’s brain. But earlier this week, as I was wallowing in defeat over the continued nonexistence of my video project, my partner—who has a personal research blog of his own, and who is much better about posting regularly than I am—suggested that we strike up a deal: we must both commit to posting an update on our projects every Sunday, and hold each other accountable, no matter what. Even if we have only a tiny morsel of progress to report, we must post something.

I don’t wanna say I’m a competitive person . . . But few things are more intolerable than having your pride wounded by someone who has outlived a deal longer than you, right? So that is what has brought us here, to my very first update.

I am still in the research + scriptwriting phase. All I have to show for the hours I have poured into this project is the screenshot below, of the five drafts of this script I’ve created (four of which I have abandoned and none of which have yet to see the light of day):

Since I don’t have the actual video to share with you just yet, today I am posting a play-by-play of how the video will turn out. It’s kind of like how movie studios release the trailer way before they’ve finished making the film, probably just so that they no longer have the option to back out of the project and pretend like the idea was never born. So grab your popcorn and put on those 3D glasses and enjoy this poorly outlined teaser for my new series, anthrodoodles!

Anthrodoodles #1: The Nature-Culture Divide

• A jaunty jingle performed on the ukulele and edited on Garage Band begins to play in the background
• The title appears in big bold letters: the nature-culture divide!
• Act I: The origin story (aka “the inciting incident”)
  Descartes, the gift that keeps on giving
  The film’s central characters, “nature” and “culture,” are introduced
  Haeckel’s beef with amoeba sheds light on the shortcomings of Western positivism
• Act II: An unexpected obstacle
  A big twist results in a battle of epistemologies!
  A bitter confrontation with the inescapable fate of humankind in the 21st century leaves the audience feeling stranded at a point of no return
• Act III: Resolution
  New perspectives lead to new pathways
  An emotional journey brings the audience home
• Fade to black
• fin

That’s all I have for now—a fetus of a dream. But I’m gonna make it happen. I’m going to work as hard as I can to make it happen, and I will have an update here every Sunday to show for it. But let us keep our expectations under moderation. In the wise words of my wise friend Chadwick: Dreams take time.

I will see you next Sunday.