The Humanist Hour #183: Dr. Dan Everett—Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes

In this episode, Bo Bennett and Peggy Knudtson speak with author Dr. Daniel Everett. Dr. Everett is an American author and academic best known for his study of the Amazon Basin's Pirahã people and their language. He serves as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. Daniel L. (Dan) Everett holds a ScD and a Masters of Linguistics from the Universidade Estadual in Campinas (UNICAMP), both based upon years of field research among the Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon jungle. He taught as an instructor and later Assistant Professor at UNI-CAMP, 1981-1986, until leaving Brazil to return to the USA. He next was appointed full professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also chaired the Department of Linguistics until 1999. At that time, Dan moved to the Amazon to live the majority of the next three years in the jungle among the Pirahãs. He left the jungle when the University of Manchester, England, offered him the position of Professor of Phonetics and Phonology.