Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast

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Full Episodes

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.

Worrying over Speaking and the Pretentiousness of Podcasts

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...)

Cover for Ground Control: : An Argument for the End of Human Space Exploration by Savannah Mandel.

Space Anthropology with Savannah Mandel

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...)

The Many Modes of Ethnography

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...)

Decorated image used as an invitation for CASPR 2023

Platypod, Episode Eight: CASPR 2023

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...)

Platypod, Episode Seven: An Anthropology of Data, AI, and Much 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...)

Platypod, Episode Six: An Anthropology of Algorithmic Recommendation Systems

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...)

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Platypod, Episode Five: CASPR – CASTAC in the Spring 2022

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...)

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Platypod, Episode Four: Connections and Disconnections on Social Media

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...)

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Platypod, Episode Three: Disability, Toxicity, and the Environment

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...)

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Platypod, Episode Two: Ableism in Anthropology and Higher Ed

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...)

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Platypod, Episode One: Technologies and Politics of Accessibility

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...)


Platypus on Platypod

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.

A photograph of a summer festival in a grassy field, with a black chainlink fence and several parked police cars between it and the viewer.

Dreaming of Security through Lanyards and Bollards

A perimeter is always porous, to certain people. Managing how it is perforated is a kind of professional work. In my fieldwork at a casino, a guard all in black sheepishly hands out blank visitor IDs that we wear only in a closed room. He collects them on our exit to the floor and accompanies us up to the lobby bar because of regulations. In the discussion, a man expresses his exasperation at an embassy’s request for an ambulance during a US National Special Security Event. I don’t understand why he makes an ambulance sound so ominous—he says he didn’t sleep for days—until someone later explains to me that he was worried the ambulance would be filled with explosives and allowed to slip through security lines. In The Filing Cabinet, Craig Robertson describes how information architecture via office furniture soothed clerks of “the particular anxiety produced by the knowledge that paper records create an alternative paper-based reality to which officials defer” (pp. 253). With two tools, the lanyard and the bollard, I consider how security work engenders and manages similar anxieties about the inherent instability of persons and property. (read more...)

Collage made with photographs of indigenous Karipuna women

Reflections on a Feminist Anthropology or a Mutirão Anthropology: Karipuna Girls and Women

I am an Indigenous woman from Karipuna people and an anthropologist living in Belém, one of the largest cities in the Brazilian Amazon in the state of Pará. However, my Indigenous community is based elsewhere. The Karipuna people live in the Uaçá, Galibi and Juminã Indigenous Lands in the municipality of Oiapoque, in the northern part of the state of Amapá, on the border between Brazil and French Guiana. The Palikur, the Galibi Marworno and the Galibi Kali’na people also live here. This context is important for understanding the themes I will explore. My identity as an Indigenous woman and anthropologist informs my writing, offering insights into the connections between Indigenous Karipuna women, anthropology, empowerment, the women’s movement, and feminism. (read more...)

Digital Colonialism as “Progress”: What Will Convince You to Swap Your Guitar for an iPad?

​“I don’t think I could ever be convinced to use an iPad as a replacement,” said Elisabeth Dorion , a songwriter, composer, and musician based in Toronto, in response to Apple’s ‘Crush’ advertisement (Dorion 2025). Elisabeth’s reflection on the physical pain of seeing pianos, sacred tools of artistry, smashed into oblivion in Apple’s flashy tech advert was a raw gut-punch: ​​​“It hurts me physically to see these things being crushed.” (read more...)

Female "memory expert" recalling entries from China’s Xinhua Dictionary during the 1989 Spring Festival Gala hosted by China Central Television.

A Feeling for Information: Technological Potentiality and Embodied Futures in Post-Socialist China

One sunny afternoon in March 2024, I walked into a flea market in Chengdu, China — a labyrinth of book stalls, shadowed corridors, and a handful of solitary customers. The vendors were largely absent, or perhaps stationed on stools in darkened corners, their faces illuminated by the glow of mobile screens. Each stall overflowed with dust: old magazines, documents, books, and well-worn notebooks that formed towers of forgotten knowledge. I pulled one volume after another from these stacks, hoping to find archival materials about a forgotten episode in the history of information technology in China. For a moment, I found myself yearning for some extraordinary sensory gift that would allow me to scan and locate relevant archival materials in this sea of information with greater precision and speed. (read more...)

The image shows a hand clearing a bunch of green leaves. In the middle of the photograph are unripe green cantaloupes.

Collaborating Bodies: Community Gardens and Food Forests in Central Texas

Almost every aspect of life on earth interacts with soil. Soils are old. Soils take time to develop from their parent material. Soils embody life itself. Yet, the concept of soil varies depending on the epistemic culture applied to define what soil is. Often soils exist in states of naturalness or unnaturalness. For example, Minami (2009) describes the Chinese compound character for agricultural soil 土壤 (tǔ rǎng), the first character (tǔ) represents soil in its natural state, and the second character (rǎng) represents soil once it has been broken up for agricultural purposes. Here, an interesting dichotomy presents itself: soil as it is and soil as it is once altered by human intervention. This dichotomous classificatory system describes changes that result from soil processes interacting; however, curiously, soil in only one category is the product of perceived human interaction. (read more...)

It is an image of a text, part of my doctoral proposal, with a rotoscoped drawing of a walking person on top.

Feeling Adrift in the Ethnography of a Laboratory

This semester, I officially began my fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation in the city of Bogotá. As part of an ethnography, I will be wandering through different neuroscience laboratories in Colombia, observing some of their studies as well as certain outreach activities they prepare. My questions aim to understand the academic and non-academic ties that enable the consolidation of research networks, and how these networks are also articulated with other spaces. (read more...)

Screenshot from a video of the Supercoach App

Can We Make Space for Technique?: Politics and Play in Digital Coaching

In Sweden, youth soccer is expected to be fun –but in a specific way. Rooted in the 19th-century idealization of amateurism over professionalism, fun in Swedish youth soccer has come to emphasize spontaneity, inclusion, and teamwork (Bachner, 2023). Over time, these amateur ideals have been woven into a broader political agenda in which youth sport is understood as a vehicle for public health, social integration and the cultivation of social capital (Doherty et al., 2013; Ekholm, 2018). (read more...)

Chiquita Canyon Landfill in 2017

Odors, Leakage and Containment: The Story of a Southern California Landfill

In Val Verde, California, an unincorporated community just a few miles north of popular amusement destination, Six Flags Magic Mountain, it is possible to glimpse the top of the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster – The Superman-  from nearly anywhere. Another, less popular, but arguably as important site lies even closer. Chiquita Canyon Landfill, claiming the designation of second oldest landfill in Los Angeles county, has its official property boundary less than a mile from the western edge of Val Verde. When I lived there in 2013, Six Flags Magic Mountain and Chiquita Canyon landfill were landmarks, one towering in the distance and one burrowing beneath, both at the edge of perception. (read more...)

An image of the RAFeCT logo, containing text in purple and a design next to it. The text displays the acronym and its full form in Portuguese.

For the Flourishing of Feminist Sciences: Distributing Seeds from the RAFeCT Network

For at least four decades, feminist researchers have been questioning science, laying the foundations for a critique that is proving increasingly fundamental and urgent. In a political and scientific landscape that is becoming ever more arid, tense, and hostile to the struggles for transformation and social justice, it is with great joy and enthusiasm that we present this series of four posts written by Brazilian feminist anthropologists and intended for academic readers specialising in STS, as well as for readers in broader feminist networks and activist/grassroots communities. (read more...)

Eight adults stand in a circle on a field with brown soil visible underfoot.

The Politics of Translation Across Policy, Grant Proposal, and Agricultural Landscapes

On Monday, April 14th, my stomach sank as I read an e-mail from the principal investigators of a large-scale, multi-institutional project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that supported half of my livelihood as a postdoctoral research associate. Following that day’s press release from the USDA—“USDA Cancels Biden Era Climate Slush Fund, Reprioritizes Existing Funding to Farmers”—the email transformed the cloud of uncertainty that loomed over all federally funded scientific inquiry into concrete dejection. (read more...)

सिंधु- गंगा के मैदान का एक चित्र जिसमें धुंध को दर्शाती एक सफ़ेद रेखा दिखाई दे रही है जो पाकिस्तान के इस्लामाबाद से लेकर भारत में दिल्ली, आगरा, मेरठ और रोहतक होते हुए बांग्लादेश के ढाका तक फैली हुई है ।

Hawa-laat: Polluted Air in Delhi, India

In 2015, I was back in India’s capital city, Delhi after two years of fieldwork in villages in rural parts of the country. On my return, the city had changed. There was something different in the atmosphere, which was leading to far-reaching, unexpected effects. For instance, during my morning commutes as I turned on the radio to one of Delhi’s most popular radio stations the radio jockey blared every hour or so, ‘Hawa-laat’! The Hindi word Hawalaat translates as a prison. If the word is broken into two parts, Hawa and Laat, it signifies a kick by the wind, as Hawa means wind or air and Laat means a kick. The radio jockey called out the word in a long and stretched manner to get the listener’s attention, slowly elongating the word ‘Hawaaaaaaaaa’ and then abruptly ending with a forceful ‘Laat!!!’, bringing out the potency of the wind (air) kick we were all getting. Following this, air pollution levels were detailed, and listeners encouraged to indulge in carpools and get their vehicular pollution levels checked. (read more...)

A delivery person dressed in a red uniform (of the company Zomato) can be seen riding on his bike past a prominent public spot (the Malkacheruvu) in the city, managed by the municipal corporation body GHMC, on a cloudy day. Cars are parked outside, and a few people can be seen in the background.

Patch-“working” the Field: Methodological Reorientations During a Global Pandemic

I began my doctoral journey right before the pandemic set in. My project was going to critically examine the notion of “technology for social good” within the hyper-charged tech startup and innovation ecosystem in a rapidly digitizing India. I wanted to examine how top-down imaginaries rooted in technocratic governance regimes were shaping emerging communities of practice and cultures of technology-based entrepreneurship. Deeply inspired by Ho’s (2009), Irani’s (2019), and Gupta’s (2024) ethnographies, I hoped to develop my research similarly through an in-depth investigation of techno-entrepreneurial cultures from within and examine their capture of the public imagination for charting pathways to economic growth and social mobility. The idea was to try and uncover the finer threads that were weaving the tapestry of neoliberal development in what would later be deemed as “pre-pandemic” India. Enter the pandemic and the paralyzing lockdown in March 2020 that brought “normal” life to a screeching halt. A sudden and totalizing isolation was mandated by the social distancing rules meant to keep the virus out. However, it didn’t keep the feeling of disaster at bay. The scenes that unfolded during the lockdown–on national television and social media screens, both closer to home as well as globally–demanded loudly and aggressively a reconsideration of everything important and urgent, and hence, worth studying. (read more...)

A bus drives into a dusty landscape with a blue sky

Technics in the Dust

One early morning in August 2024, I boarded a coach bus in downtown San Francisco. We drove over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, past Reno, and through the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation. After six hours, the bus entered the Black Rock Desert and arrived at Burning Man: an annual, week-long event where 63,000 “Burners” create a temporary city dedicated to art, self-expression, decommodification, and self-reliance. (read more...)

A smart watch worn on an older woman's wrist.

The Sovereignty of Wearables: Indigenous Health and Digital Colonialism in Taiwan

Now that I’ve mentioned it to her, Ms. Pacidal—an Amis Indigenous woman in her 80s—starts to fiddle with the watch on her left hand. It has a black, square, and boxy plastic face, on which shines a dimly lit screen that shows the date and time, location tracking services, and a daily step count. “It’s light,” she says. “In fact, almost forgettable!” It’s secured on Ms. Pacidal’s arm with a rubber strap, and she tells me that she has not taken it off for months. “It goes with me into the shower, when I cook, when I clean. And the battery lasts for almost a week. So it’s almost invisible,” she says. “So invisible,” a nearby care worker interrupts and laughs, “that it’s measuring her vital signs and she doesn’t even know!” (read more...)

Person in turquoise sweater and knit hat sitting on a chair using a mobile phone, with traditional Chinese wooden architecture and signage in the background.

“I Just Want to Be Happy!”: Singing, Scrolling, and Healing in a Chinese Senior’s Digital Life

Once considered a funny truth, Douglas Adams’s “three rules of technology” now feels increasingly outdated—especially his claim that any technology introduced after age 35 is against the natural order of things and therefore threatening. Today, millions of older adults who had little prior exposure to digital tools are not only using technology, but actively embracing the new worlds it opens up. (read more...)