Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rosana Castro can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/hippocrates-against-protocols-experiments-experience-and-evidence-based-medicine-in-brazil/. About the post: This episode addresses the processes in which science is being claimed, shaken, disputed, and unpredictably rearticulated in Brazil's medical field....

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Angelina Chamuah, Hema Vaishnavi Ale and Vikrom Mathur can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/ai-climate-adaptation-and-epistemic-injustice/. About the post: Acknowledging the cultural, relational, and contextual dimensions of climate change is crucial in the realms of science, policy, and practice. While the...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Spencer Kaplan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/tokens-voids-and-archives-locating-berlins-nft-projects/. About the post: Berlin joins cities like Los Angeles, New York, Lisbon, and London as a hub of blockchain ventures. Yet Berlin’s NFT projects, Immersion­ included, stand out in an important way. Proj...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ayesha Shahid can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/ways-of-knowing-lessons-on-agroecological-transitions-from-a-pothwari-farm/. About the post: As a researcher and self-identifying ‘citizen planner,’ I was curious if new methods of agriculture could make the sector remunerative enough to counter the desire t...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rebecca Carlson, Emil Rieger and Sarah Thanner can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/a-vocabulary-for-junk-in-four-movements/. About the post: Trash and uselessness are related but not the same. Trash is problematic and needs to leave our ideological boundaries, useless things we still view in terms of former...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rebecca Carlson can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/junk-anthropology-a-manifesto-for-trashing-and-untrashing/. About the post: But what does something like “junk” have to do with mice ear punches, chemical transmutation and mundane laboratory failures? Garbage experiments are routine in scientific practice...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Clarissa Reche and Érico Sant Anna Perrella can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/earth-air-fire-water-and-entropy-internet-and-synthetic-biology-pioneer-randy-rettbergs-story-on-how-information-was-forged/. About the post: When questioned by us about the origins of the concept of information, Randy alternate...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Zoe Boudart and Catherine Borra can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/making-bioethnographic-teams-work-disciplinary-destabilization-generative-friction-and-the-role-of-mediators/. About the post: The making of truly interdisciplinary knowledge often requires overcoming epistemological paradigms through disci...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Janelle Curry and Alexandra Widmer can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/how-microbes-became-friendly-visualizations-of-the-microbiome-in-public-media/. About the post: We take up these insights and examine one way that these ontologies of body and environment circulate in public ways by analyzing how the hum...

In this podcast, Ana Carolina talks to Dr. Tanja Ahlin about her work in the anthropology of health, data, and AI - as well as about the implications of new AI technologies on the work developed by anthropologists. This is a necessary conversation for all those concerned about human-machine interaction in anthropology. Transcript available at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/platypod-ep-seven-an-an...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Clarissa Reche can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/05/setting-traps-for-an-insurgent-and-joyful-science/. About the post: This text is an outline of a proposal for a feminist and decolonial strategy to be and remain working and producing techno-scientific knowledge within academic institutions. The author pres...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/05/is-this-the-real-life-is-this-just-fantasy-food-cooking-and-eating-in-videogames/. About the post: In this piece the author applies their concept of Digital Food Spaces (DFS), or "online communities and platforms dedicated to the sharing of food-ce...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Shanel Khaliq can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/05/violence-freedom-gender-and-the-politics-of-surveillance-in-public-parks/. About the post: Cities all over the world have witnessed a surge in the use of surveillance technologies, such as data-gathering phone apps, facial recognition software, and closed-ci...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jaime Landinez can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/birding-in-ruins-multispecies-encounters-and-the-ecologies-of-evidence/. About the post: This piece explores the life forms that emerge in the ruins of capitalist dreams and the production of modest forms of evidence that seek to render them visible. It see...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Claudio Benzecry can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/the-perfect-fit/. About the post: In my new book, The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry, I study the work of repair and maintenance necessary to keep the global scale going. I do so by studying the work and lives of experts in charge...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Yulany Foster-Valencia can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/the-illness-experience-of-a-forty-year-old-hispanic-woman/. About the post: Different cultural upbringings can determine a person’s illness experience. The relationship between the experience of a patient, and in turn, a course of treatment is inher...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Debora Machado can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/the-use-of-patent-information-to-investigate-algorithmic-systems/. About the post: Patents are delicate documents to study. As a technological-legal text, the patent is not written in a manner that aims to ensure easy understanding for everyone. (This episo...

On the morning of Friday, March 10, 2023 Nick Seaver and Ana Carolina 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. Transcript available at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/an-anthropology-of-algorithmic-recommendation-systems/ (This episode is available in additional languages...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Cydney Seigerman can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/04/making-forecasts-work-the-evolution-of-seasonal-forecasting-by-funceme-in-ceara-northeast-brazil/. About the post: For agricultural families in the sertão, or hinterlands, of Ceará, a forecast is wrong when it rains less (or more) in their community or mu...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Nicole Taylor and Mimi Nichter can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/03/digital-multiples-and-social-media/. About the post: Filtering the self is about every aspect of self-presentation, from the aesthetic of a person’s feed and their physical appearance to the personality characteristics and lifestyle they wan...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rebecca Carlson can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/03/transpositioning-a-hypertext-ethnography/. About the post: This is a work of hypertext-ethnography. It is based on my research of a small genetics laboratory in Tokyo, Japan where I am studying the impact of the transnational circulation of scientific mate...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/03/dining-with-the-diaspora-khmerican-digital-gastrodiplomacy/. About the post: What people are eating, how they are eating it, and why they are eating it have been debated throughout time and space. With increased engagements with food with different...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Tayeba Batool can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/02/grafting-with-care-encountering-human-plant-relations-through-experiments-with-roses/. About the post: Writing against the dominance of an object-oriented ontology in mainstream science and technology narratives, this post follows scholarship that emphasizes...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by areeya tivasuradej and AMOR MUNDI Multispecies Ecological Worldmaking Lab can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/12/little-experiments-in-worldmaking-with-amor-mundi-lab/. About the post: In this episode, Areeya Tivasuradej and Amor Mundi Lab share their journey in creating an innovative collaborative space in Ch...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Oliver Bown can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2022/12/uncovering-ethnography-in-creative-practice-research-with-machines/. About the post: This blog post comes out of a discussion with Ritwik Banerji about the ‘hidden’ role of ethnography in the work involved in creating new experimental systems for music improvi...