CAPTivated

In this episode, Hanna, Sage, and Julius sit down with Mary Kate Cary, former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and, until recently, Assistant Vice President, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the University of Virginia, and director of Think Again at UVA— a student-facing initiative built around freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, intellectual humility, and critical thin...

In this episode, Julius, Sage, and Hanna talk to University of Michigan professor of Communication and Media and Political Science Josh Pasek about how people process political information in today’s digital public sphere. The conversation breaks down selective exposure and motivated reasoning, why we seek confirming news, reject dissonant facts, and rely on mental shortcuts shaped by our social c...

In this episode Julius, Sage, and Hanna talk to tech journalist, former Chief Digital Officer of New York City, Columbia University, and the Met, and founder of Digimentors, Sree Sreenivasan to discuss misinformation. The conversation traces the problem from email scams and WhatsApp forwards all the way to AI-generated "slop," it's global ramifications, and examines why Silicon Vall...

In this episode Julius, Sage, and Hanna sit down with Emmy-winning writer, actor, and comedian Ryan Ken to discuss “digital Blackface,” the use of online Black images, expressions, and likenesses for non-Black self-expression or profit. The conversation dives deep into the complex history of Blackface, from its roots in 19th-century minstrelsy to its insidious modern evolution into reaction memes...

In this episode, Sage, Julius, and Hanna hear from political historian Lily Geismer about the Democratic Party’s decades-long relationship to the tech industry. From the Atari Democrats of the 1970s to Al Gore's dinner-party pipeline with Silicon Valley executives, Lily explains how market-based thinking gradually replaced the social safety net as the party's organizing logic. Lily digs...

In this episode, Sage, Julius, and Hanna sit down with Purdue sociology professor Marcus Mann to discuss why polarization is the wrong framework for understanding our news media. Marcus explains that there are qualitative differences between right-wing and center-left news ecosystems. He argues that where center-left news reporting is largely focused on information dissemination, we can better und...

In this episode Hanna, Julius, and Sage talk to Dr. Alice Marwick, Director of Research at nonprofit research institute, Data & Society. Alice discusses the rapid expansion of AI. She explains how AI is dangerously concentrated in a handful of powerful companies whose interests are increasingly aligned with the current US administration, and how people are being pushed into using AI involuntar...

In this episode Sage, Hanna, and Julius sit down with Dave Bangert, a veteran local journalist who spent over three decades covering Lafayette, Indiana, first at the Lafayette Journal and Courier, and now through his independent Substack: Based in Lafayette, Indiana. Dave talks about what happens when newsrooms shrink from 45 people to seven, why those "boring" school board meetings actu...

Welcome to the very first episode of the CAPTivated Podcast! Hosts Hanna, Julius and Sage sit down with Dr. Nicole Hemmer, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, to explore the history and power of conservative media in American politics. From William F. Buckley Jr. and Rush Limbaugh to Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, th...

In this episode, Sage, Hanna and Julius hear from Stanford Professor Fred Turner about how personalization and commercial platforms have corrupted the “public sphere.” Fred traces the historical roots of the fantasy of a global connected conversation system back to post-WWII scientists, critiques the techno-utopianism of Silicon Valley, and underscores the importance of institutions and regulation...

Welcome to CAPTivated! In this teaser episode hosts Hanna Sistek, Sage Goodwin, and Julius Freeman at Purdue University’s Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology (CAPT) are joined by CAPT Director Professor Kathryn Cramer Brownell, to introduce their new podcast. They chat briefly about who they are, what they do, and why they’re making this podcast: to help listeners understa...