Platypod is the official podcast of the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing. We talk about anthropology, STS, and all things tech. Tune in for conversations with researchers and experts on how technology is shaping our world.
Read the transcript here. Dr. Luis Felipe R. Murillo is a brilliant author and anthropologist. I sat with him to chat about his new book Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures published in 2025 by Stanford Press, and was deeply impacted by the richness of perspectives he describes in the book, and during our interview. (read more...)
Read the transcript here. This was meant to be a podcast about making podcasts. But in the end, this podcast is really just a conversation between two people who used to be close friends. It rambles and meanders. It doesn’t always stick to a coherent point. I wondered then whether it could also be academically useful. Relevant to conversations in anthropology? Or even interesting to anyone other than me? This podcast is a conversation with Thuy Nguyen, founder of the Berkeley Community Acupuncture clinic and licensed TCM practitioner who has her own podcast, You Are Medicine. We first started talking about what it’s like for her to make a podcast back in March, on a long drive together from Bakersfield, California to Window Rock, Arizona. Thuy runs acupuncture pop-up clinics and is training interns as part of her Navajo Healing Project there and she invited me to spend a weekend (read more...)
View/Download the transcription for this episode. For this episode of Platypod, I interviewed space anthropologist Savannah Mandel about her new book Ground Control: An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration (Chicago Review Press, 2024) where she writes about commercial space exploration in the US based on her ethnographic fieldwork with SpacePort America in New Mexico, and with space policymakers in Washington DC. (read more...)
Download the transcript for this episode. This podcast episode talks to three anthropologists, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Rine Vieth, and Kara White, scholars working in three different parts of the world who use multimodal methods in their teaching and research. It is not a history of multimodal methods, or even a really detailed review of them; instead, it is a consideration of some of the issues they raise or resolve for ethnography. Whatever Tim Ingold has or hasn’t said about ethnography, he inadvertently offered what I think is the most compelling definition when he wrote: It is where we, “join with things in their passage through time, going along together with them, working with them, and suffering with them” (24, 2020). I’m tweaking the first part of this sentence to make it work here, as he’s actually describing the Latin prefix co- and his idea of “the gathering,” but it works for (read more...)
Download the full transcript of this episode. The 2023 edition of CASPR: CASTAC in the Spring discussed digital ethnography and its multiple facets. The event was moderated by Dr. Baird Campbell, who, along with guest speakers Dr. Ilana Gershon, Dr. Nicole Taylor, and Dr. Patricia G. Lange, shared their experiences and valuable insights based on their many years of interactions with digital ethnography—much before the recent spike in interest in this method due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some critical insights from the event: On the online-offline divide, guest-speakers pointed out that this division will not matter in the future as interlocutors are increasingly interconnected. Speakers were skeptical about how much this topic still matters now, coming to the conclusion that this separation is largely artificial. The speakers mentioned how digital technologies, social media platforms, and other technological products would indirectly be part of future ethnographies, even if the researcher had (read more...)
Download the transcript of this interview. For this episode of Platypod, I talked to Dr. Tanja Ahlin about her research, work, and academic trajectory. She’s currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and her work focuses on intersections of medical anthropology, social robots, and artificial intelligence. I told her of my perspective as a grad student, making plans and deciding what routes to take to be successful in my field. Dr. Ahlin was very generous in sharing her stories and experiences, which I’m sure are helpful to other grad students as well. Enjoy this episode, and contact us if you have questions, thoughts, or suggestions for other episodes. (read more...)
Download the transcript of this interview. On the morning of Friday, March 10, 2023 Nick Seaver and I met over Zoom to talk about his new book Computing Taste: Algorithms and Makers of Music Recommendation, which was published in 2022 by the University of Chicago Press. In that meeting, we recorded an episode for the Playpod podcast, which is available at the link above. (read more...)
This episode presents a recording of CASPR 2022, or the CASTAC in the Spring 2022 event, which took place on May 10, 2022. CASPR 2022 was organized to encourage dialogue on breaking down binaries that have separated academe and industry. Angela VandenBroek (TXST), Melissa Cefkin (Waymo), and Dawn Nafus (Intel) discuss their work in leading socially-informed research in industry contexts. (read more...)
In this episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Baird Campbell (Rice University) and Ilana Gershon (Indiana University Bloomington). They discuss the politics of connection and disconnection via social media in Chile and the US. (read more...)
In this episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Elizabeth Roberts (the University of Michigan) and Sophia Jaworski (the University of Toronto). They discuss the complexities of corporeal life in toxic environments. This episode was created with the participation of Elizabeth Roberts (the University of Michigan, speaker), Sophia Jaworski (the University of Toronto, speaker), Svetlana Borodina (Columbia University, host, producer), Gebby Keny (Rice University, host, sound editor), and Angela VandenBroek (Texas State University, CASTAC web producer). The transcript of their conversation is available below. We thank Sophia Jaworski for her work on editing the transcript for comprehension. (read more...)
In this episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Laura Heath-Stout (Brandeis University) and Rebecca-Eli Long (Purdue University). They discuss their research and experiences of ableism in academia, anthropology, and higher ed, in general. This episode was created with the participation of Laura Heath-Stout (Brandeis University, speaker), Rebecca-Eli Long (Purdue University, speaker), Kim Fernandes (University of Pennsylvania, host), Svetlana Borodina (Columbia University, host), Gebby Keny (Rice University, sound editor), and Angela VandenBroek (Texas State University, CASTAC web producer). The transcript of their conversation (edited for comprehension) is available below. (read more...)
In its opening episode, Platypod presents a conversation between Cassandra Hartblay (University of Toronto) and Zihao Lin (University of Chicago). They discuss their research on accessibility cultures, politics, and technologies. This episode was created with the participation of Cassandra Hartblay (the University of Toronto, speaker) and Zihao Lin (the University of Chicago, speaker), Kim Fernandes (University of Pennsylvania, host), Svetlana Borodina (Columbia University, host), Gebby Keny (Rice University, sound editor), and Angela VandenBroek (Texas State University, CASTAC web producer). The transcript of their conversation is accessible below. (read more...)
The bonus episodes below are the most recent readings from Platypus, The CASTAC Blog. Look for more readings in the Platypus archives or find them on your favorite podcast app.
In Mexico, quelites refers to uncultivated edible plants. The word has a Nahuatl origin derived from kilitl, a term referring to these edible weeds. The earliest dictionaries of colonial Mexico translated kilitl as “vegetable”, an equivalence that obscured the fact that they were collected (not cultivated), and interpreted them as any other green crop. There is an ongoing trend to revaluate quelites as a way to counter their gradual disappearance from national diets. These efforts involve universities, governmental and private institutions, civil associations, and organized communities. (read more...)
Debates about the future of work often center around adapting the workforce to fit capitalist proposals of what work should look like. Pre-digital examples include scientific management, just-in-time production, and de-skilling of industrial labor in favor of more mechanized and automated processes. Recently, capitalist proposals of arrangements of work have centered on digital platforms, algorithmic management, pervasive surveillance, and the deskilling of white-collar work through aggressive adoption of large language models (generative AI). In the face of these changes, workers are expected to accept their new, typically more controlled, unstable, exploitative work arrangements, re-train and re-skill to find employment in different or new types of work or face un- and under-employment with whatever safety net might be available. Underlying these changes to work arrangements is a drive for efficiency and profit. (read more...)
On a crypto builders’ night in late September 2023, I lingered in the crowd after the event. It was hosted in a crypto company’s newly renovated office in the center of Bangkok. Skipping the cold pizza (mostly due to my lactose intolerance), I made my way towards a friend who worked in that company, one of the only people I knew in the packed room. He made a few introductions before disappearing back into the crowd, leaving me beside a local Thai founder in his early 30s, Noon (a pseudonym), building a decentralized finance (DeFi) product for futures and margin trading. (read more...)
This picture from Vellapallam on the Bay of Bengal coast tells a story. While the obvious one is a story on the invisible gendered labour aspects of fishery, this essay will focus on another observation from the picture – Why does the fish end up needing so much cleaning in the first place? The fish, the net on the yellow tarpaulin, the fisherman’s shirt, all seen covered with clayey silt. What is the story of this tiny silt and its role in making the coasts? (read more...)
A few months ago, I underwent four surgeries to remove two wisdom teeth. Long and painful, they took from me solid parts with strange shapes — a friend, on seeing one of the pieces, said it looked like a shark’s tooth! It was a slow, drawn-out experience: after each surgery, I had to recover before starting the next stage of the same process. During each one, I heard the dentist and her assistants discussing how stubbornly that tooth was attached to my skull. (read more...)
I was clicking through a game studio’s website when an image caught my eye. In a warm, cozy office, several people sit in front of their laptops, heads slightly tilted, listening carefully through headsets and taking notes. In the background, cartoonish banners on the walls display the phrases “Leave a comment” and “After hearing the players’ voices, what are your thoughts?” in large font. People gather to stick their notes onto the wall or read the ones written by others. The accompanying text reads: “Through all the challenges, it is the support and companionship of our customers that has fueled our pursuit of dreams… Our team sat in the player experience hall, where we carefully listened to the voices of our players.” (read more...)
In January of 2026, I found myself as an instructional assistant in a fifth-grade English Language Arts class, where I would work with small groups to improve students’ writing. I developed a system where I would reward my students with one piece of candy in exchange for one essay. The system worked out great, but it soon reached a point where students would ask me for candy in the halls without an essay. One day, Kay , a strong yet uninterested writer, asked me for a Jolly Rancher. I asked if she had an essay for me. Kay giggled and asked, “Can I use ChatGPT to write it?” Her tone conveyed sarcasm, implying that if she used ChatGPT to write the essay, she would not have to do the work to get the reward. By telling this joke, she already knew what my answer would be. I was taken aback. How does a fifth grader already know about ChatGPT and its social problems? It seems obvious now, but at the time, I just said “no, you are not allowed to use AI to write your essays.” Kay giggled and skipped away, confirming that she knew using ChatGPT was never an option in the first place. (read more...)
It is the third of our four days at the 2026 ST&HV Science and Technology Studies (STS) School. We file past laboratories populated by white-coated researchers and take our seats in a classroom in Seoul National University’s (SNU) College of Natural Sciences. “Look – real scientists!” someone jokes as we sit down. (read more...)
Author’s editorial prelude: In what follows, I open up insight into a micro-moment of everyday scholarly life which shows itself through the body; like that slightly deeper breath which follows while one is thinking through a problem that occupies the mind. Such fleeting moments pass unnoticed, yet they are part of the labour and effort of what counts as teaching and supervision ‘work’. I believe there is value in turning attention to and staying with such moments as they quietly shape how one thinks, reads, judges, writes, teaches, supervises and such. My request to the reader is to stay present with the moment, the internal self-talk, and recalls that I describe in this piece. A request that places a demand on the reader to perform the sometimes-tedious task of curbing the desire to go beyond the moment that is the subject of analytical attention. (read more...)
Aysel brought out her candles wrapped in stretch wrap and put them on the coffee table in the middle of our interview. She was very proud of showing her progress to me through these home-made candle dildos. When she brought them out to the living room, I was still sipping my tea and my half-eaten piece of cake she baked for me was now sitting next to her candles on the coffee table. She made these dildos herself with the help of her sister-in-law, her elti, in her kitchen by shaping them, melting them thinner, and combining them together for different sizes so she could use them as apparatuses to treat her vaginismus, the inability to engage in penile-vaginal intercourse. (read more...)
This piece is one branch of Becoming-With, a multispecies collective autoethnographic project developed with Dani Dilkes, Mandy Penney, and our four mushroom companions (Lion, Pearl, Blue, Pink); from here forward known as the Mushy Collective. Together, we explore what it means to “become-with” mushrooms by thinking through mycelial structures while cultivating fungi and imagining more generative futures for academic spaces. Within this project, my post will explore my personal journey reconsidering resource sharing, writing, care work, and decentralized collaboration through fungal logics. I will turn attention toward the hidden infrastructures that sustain the academy while often remaining undervalued. (read more...)
Imagine that every time you poop, your hygiene routine involves depositing your used toilet paper into a toilet-side receptacle. As you wash your hands, the device mixes, processes, and extracts microbial DNA from your stool. It sequences the microbial DNA for a real-time readout of your microbiome (the microbial genomes from within your gut, or at least the ones that made it to your stool), automatically sending the information to a large-scale microbiome database that integrates it into its data, algorithms, and analytic programs. The program connects to an app on your phone, telling you that based on your personal version of a healthy microbiome, today your microbiome is looking a little low in the bacterial species Akkermansia municiphila and high in some risky metabolites (the molecular outputs of some of your gut microbes). It recommends that you eat extra polyphenol- and fiber-rich foods today, and asks if you want a recipe for a berry- and seed-laden oatmeal for breakfast. The vision I describe here is a technoscientific imaginary: a shared vision of a future, mediated by science and technology (Marcus 1995). Technoscientific imaginaries are always embedded in historic and cultural contexts and narratives, which shape what future visions we find possible, desirable, and relevant. In this post, I examine how this technoscientific imaginary draws on narratives about promise and precision medicine inherited from genomics, as well as newer ones based in new understandings of the human microbiome and its powerful associations with many aspects of human health. (read more...)
Small drops form on my forehead. Slowly, they make their way down along my temples. The weather app on my phone shows a red alert. For days, I have been caught in the so-called heat wave that swept across Europe in June of this year. Unfortunately, what slowly drips from the edge of my chin is neither refreshing rain nor cool water – it’s my own sweat. Yet, I am not the only one struggling under the weight of the heat. The servers and chips inside the data centers are suffering, too. (read more...)
Elliðaey Island, in the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago off the coast of Iceland, hosts one of the world’s largest populations of Leach’s storm-petrels (Hydrobates leucorhous), a small seabird species. Nearly 90% of the individuals breeding in Iceland nest there, yet knowledge about this species, listed as globally vulnerable on The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List since 2016, remains largely limited (Hurling, 2021). (read more...)
This article is the fifth and final post in a series about gig and platform worker unions in India written by members of the Labor Tech Research Network . Read the introduction to the series here, the second post in the series here, the third post here and the fourth post here. Collectivization, unionization, and resistance by platform workers form prominent themes in emerging scholarship on platform work, with exciting new collaborations taking place between researchers, platform workers, and gig worker unions. As more researchers join these ranks, we are attentive to the risks of research fatigue and exhaustion faced by gig workers and organizers, who receive numerous requests for interviews and other forms of data collection. When practiced non-extractively, this space opens up possibilities for researchers to collaborate and co-create resources that are useful to unions and workers in their mission to win basic work rights and establish dignity of work. (read more...)
