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Interplace

Interplace explores the interaction of people and place. It looks at how we move within and between the places we live and what led us here in the first place. interplace.io

science social sciences

All Episodes

9:11

Neurons, Jellyfish, and Ants: Tales of Evolutionary...

Interplace ·

2024/01/28

Hello Interactors,It’s been a while since we’ve been together. I took some time over the holiday break. We often think of parents spoiling kids upon their return from college, but I’m the one who feels spoiled.We’re squarely in the winter season up north and that means I’ll be exploring human behavior. With all the talk of AI, I thought I’d start with its root inspiration — the neuron. How did these come to be?Let’s find out.As I stand here today, the earth’s declination angle is slowly inching

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9:01

2023 Year End Summary

Interplace ·

2023/12/30

Hello Interactors,It’s been a great year hear at Interplace with subscriptions hitting (and hovering) around 1000 subscribers! Thank you! And thanks to Substack’s recommendation engine, the vast majority of those came from Steven Sinofsky’s Hardcore Software newsletter. Thank you!Sadly, the utility of this recommendation engine also means those Nazi newsletters Substack chooses to sponsor will also spread. It’s their choice of free speech as a publisher and seller. Just like this 1930s Aryan

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8:21

'T'was the Night Before Christmas': A Poor Home...

Interplace ·

2023/12/24

Hello Interactors,On the day before many around the world pull out ‘T’was the Night Before Christmas’ to read to their kids, maybe drop a little context to the origins of this tale. This is an excerpt from a longer post I did in 2021 on Black Friday. It touches on how the rising wealth in New York leading up to 1900 brought about shifts in attitudes around how the powerful elite should deal with ‘the masses’ of poor, and increasingly urban, immigrants. Included are themes emerging today like

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14:43

The Neocolonial Invasion of Techno-Libertarians

Interplace ·

2023/12/18

Hello Interactors,This is the last post on economics for 2023. Next up for winter is human behavior. This post bridges where we left off with traditional colonial nation-states by talking about how similar philosophies are motivating the formation of neocolonial micro-states. What causes people to seek freedom in new places by limiting the freedom of those found in such places?Let’s dig in…THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESSIn 2009 the venture capitalist, techno-optimist, and libertarian political activist

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14:39

The Shaky State of States (Part 2 of 2)

Interplace ·

2023/12/11

Hello Interactors,Part 2 talks about the failures of borders, some recent alarming and revealing data about America’s ‘shared identity’, and some potential paths toward embracing the shaky state of states.Let’s get into it…NEWLY PROMISED LANDSPart 1 left us at the Paris Peace Conference and Western-style cartographic geo-political mandates. Amidst these mandates was an admission by one leader that these arrangements would need subsequent alterations. Take this quote, for example:“There are many

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12:58

The Shaky State of States (Part 1 of 2)

Interplace ·

2023/12/03

Hello Interactors,There’s a lot of talk of states these days. Palestine and Israel, one state or two? Ukraine and Russia. One state or two? The United States. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one…right? What about that one D.C. federal district, or those five territories, and a bunch of ‘minor’ islands? And don’t forget the many tribal nations within the nation-state of the United States which can often spread across many state borders! I started writing about all this and it got long, so I’m broke it

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14:53

Is America's Manufacturing Boom Doomed?

Interplace ·

2023/11/17

Hello Interactors,A series of U.S. federal legislation under the Biden administration has spawned a manufacturing boom at a scale not seen in decades. Unfortunately, the country is repeating the same socio-economic, land use, and transportation policy mistakes that have lead to many of the ills we’re seeking to remedy. Are we missing an opportunity to build back better?A MANUFACTURING RENAISSANCEClearcut a forest and build a factory. Now build an even bigger parking lot around the factory for

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17:26

Hallowed Be Thy Harvest: The Genuine Gist of...

Interplace ·

2023/10/29

Hello Interactors,Trick-or-treat! It’s that time of year for Americans, and a growing population worldwide, to dawn a favorite costume and consume copious amounts of candy. It’s also a time for kids to parade for treats and for adults to decorate with ghoulish goblins, ghosts, and other frightful festoons. And excuse to cosplay without criticism.Americans will spend an ungodly amount of money on this conspicuous occasion. Like most holidays in America, it’s a chance to fire up the capitalist

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15:18

Migration's Blend and the Capitalist Brew

Interplace ·

2023/10/13

Hello Interactors,This post brings new meaning to the phrase ‘reading the tea leaves’. Watching my tea diffuse recently, I got to thinking about how humans diffuse around the globe like tea particulates in a teacup. Some migrate intentionally, others are forced, and some are lured across borders — as if by osmosis, like tea through a strainer.It’s tea time somewhere in the world, so grab a cup and let’s go… DRINKING DYNAMICS AND HUMAN DIFFUSIONI’m a tea drinker. I relish the ritual of tea-making,

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12:57

"People are a lot dumber and nicer than economists...

Interplace ·

2023/10/06

Hello Interactors,Cued by shifting hues comes a call for the leaves to fall. Which means Interplace, like the weather, turns to the tumultuous territory of economics. Economics, like fall weather, is not all that predictable — both systems morph in response to layers of interconnected webs of complex systems that adapt, respond, and influence social, environmental, and political interactions.I recently heard Sean Carroll, an influential theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics,

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21:12

Awed by a Flawed Cape Cod

Interplace ·

2023/09/19

Hello Interactors,After dropping our kids at college, my wife and I spent some time on Cape Cod. She had gone here as a kid for summer family vacations to enjoy the sand and salty air, and she wasn’t alone. Now people come from all over the world to visit this soggy, sandy, stretch of land surrounded by sea. But it’s capacity is being tested, cresting waves are gobbling the coast, as warming water turns sea life into ghosts. It’s survived this long, but how long can it carry on?ON SCARGO

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14:28

Clarkson’s Farm: The Grand Tour of the Rural-Urban...

Interplace ·

2023/08/23

Hello Interactors,Our family got sucked into watching the Amazon Prime show, Clarkson’s Farm. As a suburban Iowa boy who knew just enough farmers to know how hard it is, I found this show relatable. Apart from the entertaining allure of many staged reality shows, I realized it also highlights topics I investigate here on Interplace. Especially the interaction of the ‘rural’ and ‘urban’…or lack thereof.Let me know in the comments if you’ve watched this show and what you think!I’ll be taking a little

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16:03

Spawn, Spore, Store, and Restore or Bloom, Consume to...

Interplace ·

2023/08/11

Hello Interactors,Summer is waning and nature’s energy is draining. Meanwhile, record heat and fires in the northern hemisphere remind us the sun has yet to relent. But plants know what to do to prepare.They slow down and repair. They store and restore through the winter snore for when the sun comes back for more. Why can’t we humans, and our societies, learn this rhythm of life? Maybe we’re just not as smart as plants. Yet.Hey, Interplace hit 1,000 subscribers! 🙌🏼Thanks, Interactors, for your

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17:40

Boogie, Wipe Out, and Freak Out

Interplace ·

2023/07/29

Hello Interactors,Our family took a trip to San Diego to visit friends. We got to spend some time in the warm Southern California water at a time when the news was filled with stories about sensational oceanic anomalies. Was the warm water we felt an anomaly? How certain could I be and how certain can anyone be about climatic statistical anomalies? Let’s unpack it.BOOGIE WOOGIE FREAK OUTI felt the current sucking my legs out to sea as a wave formed behind me. I struggled to hurl myself, and my

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9:53

Crayons, Touchdowns, and a Gallery of Monsters

Interplace ·

2023/07/14

Hello Interactors,My last post on fractals led me to refamiliarized myself with the man who coined the term, Benoit Mandelbrot, and his influential work on the fractal-like wonders of nature. I didn’t realize he was following in the footsteps of 19th century mathematicians critical of the absolutist purity of Euclidean geometry – themes I recently explored here and here. My journey led me to a memory of a plane landing on a plane and the complexities that surface on the surface.Please don’t be shy

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8:18

Van Gogh's Starry Night Unveils Earth's Fractal Delight

Interplace ·

2023/07/02

Hello Interactors,We’re officially in the summer season here in the northern hemisphere, and that means we transition to physical geography. Much attention has been given to the staggering heat in the U.S. lately, so I thought I’d start there.Please give me like, if you like. And share if you dare!Now let’s go…On June 19, 1889, Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother, "Finally, I have a landscape with olive trees and also a new study of a starry sky." It is largely believed van Gogh was

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13:41

The Interwoven Splatial Dimensions of Space and Place

Interplace ·

2023/06/25

Hello Interactors,We’re now into summer, but I wanted to sneak in one last cartography post. It’s a leap from last week’s post into the field of human dynamics. If you don’t want to read the whole thing (shame on you 😉), I asked ChatGPT to make a poem out it.In the realm of spatial analysis, behold the shift,From mere location's grasp to a deeper rift. No longer bound by cartographic tradition's way, We delve into place's essence, where dynamics hold sway. In the web of relational space, where

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12:12

R.E.M. Takes a Stand on Space

Interplace ·

2023/06/18

Hello Interactors,Who would've thought that R.E.M.'s hit tune "Stand" held the secrets to Western spatial thinking? This week I break it down for you. From Aristotle's "Stand in the place where you live" to Newton's "Carry a compass to help you along," it's like they were dropping knowledge bombs all along! So next time you get this '80s hit stuck in your head, remember, you're getting a crash course in geographic philosophy. Rock on!As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a

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15:57

A Geography Revolution: Complexity and Connection in...

Interplace ·

2023/06/10

Hello Interactors,I’ll admit it, the early summer weather here in Seattle has been a distraction. So, I turned to a writing companion this week to help. I took my notes from a talk I saw at the AAG conference in March, and you know what comes next…I pasted it in ChatGPT. I then took some papers referenced in the talk, grabbed their abstracts, and pasted those in ChatGPT. After a few iterations of ‘expand on this’, ‘merge these…’ and ‘shrink this to three sentences’ I had all the working components

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22:05

United We Stand or Divide and Conquer?

Interplace ·

2023/05/26

Hello Interactors,As I was preparing for my talk at Harvard last month, I was finishing a book called The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent. He explores how culture shapes values, and those values shape history. Hat tip to Kasey Klimes over at rhizome r&d for the recommendation. Lent uncovers the history and evolution of dominant Western culture through the lens of evolutionary biology and neuroscience and the role patterns play in cognitive and cultural development. He then compares it the lesser

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