How to Talk About Hair Like a Scientist

Humans have scalp hair. But why is human scalp hair so varied? As a college student, Tina Lasisi wanted to find out. Eight years later, Tina is one of the few biological anthropologists in the world studying the evolution and morphology of human scalp hair.

While completing her PhD at Penn State University, Tina developed a better system for describing hair — rooted in actual science. On today's episode, the postdoctoral researcher breaks down her system, how hair typing brings up harmful racial categories and beauty standards, and her vision of hair science for the future.

To hear more from Tina, check out these webinars:

• "Why Care About Hair?" with the Leakey Foundation
• How Hair Reveals the Futility of Race Categories, as part of the Smithsonian's "HOT (Human Origins Today) Topics" series

And to dive deep into Tina's research, we recommend the following:

• The constraints of racialization: How classification and valuation hinder scientific research on human variation, for the American Journal for Physical Anthropology
• High-throughput phenotyping methods for quantifying hair fiber morphology, for Scientific Reports
• Tina also co-authored a chapter, The Anthropology of Human Scalp Hair, for the textbook Dermatoanthropology of Ethnic Skin and Hair

Today’s episode was edited by Sara Sarasohn, produced by Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Tyler Jones, who also pitched this episode and did research throughout. Special thanks to Remy Barnwell. The audio engineer for this episode was Natasha Branch.