Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast

13:40

My Unemployment in the Time of AI

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/10/06

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Anna Huntington can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/10/my-unemployment-in-the-time-of-ai/. About the post: AI has widened the liminal space of unemployment, and the “limitless” capability of AI job-seeking tools has also exploded. This all felt like putting out a fire with a bucket of fire—and finding my way out required a very different kind of network.

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13:16

Softmaxxing Skepticism: How Looksmaxxing Culture...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/10/02

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Tiffany Prendergast can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/10/softmaxxing-skepticism-how-looksmaxxing-culture-recruits-the-mainstream/. About the post: Because institutional medicine offers no real answer to aesthetic anxiety, the underground is able to fill the gap using rhetoric anti-vaccine influencers have already normalized. Peptide vendors and biohacking gurus borrow directly from that playbook: "Big

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16:52

Imagined Geographies: From Urban Expertise to Rural...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/30

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Luisa Madrigal Marroquín can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/imagined-geographies-from-urban-expertise-to-rural-health-intervention/. About the post: This post looks at how health interventions designed in Guatemala City do more than travel to communities across the country. The author argues that they also produce an imagined geography in which urban spaces become associated with expertise, innovation,

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18:59

Beyond Deficit: Toward a Strengths-Based Approach to...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/28

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Juan Camilo Ospina Deaza can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/beyond-deficit-toward-a-strengths-based-approach-to-male-infertility/. About the post: Concerns about declining sperm quality and male reproductive capacity have become increasingly prominent in scientific, clinical, and public discussions of fertility. Yet infertility has historically been located within women’s bodies and treated primarily as

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12:05

Transnational Solidarity: Exploring Alternate Global...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/23

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Lucy Pei can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/transnational-solidarity-exploring-alternate-global-imaginaries-of-work/. About the post: What is the significance of gig worker activists’ claim on the global scale in relation to reclaiming the futures of work? Following Anna Tsing, I consider scale to be “not just a neutral frame for viewing the world” but instead as something that “must be brought into

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15:16

Time, Virtuality, and the Digital Sacred

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/18

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Fatima Tariq can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/time-virtuality-and-the-digital-sacred/. About the post: The above scene from Ramy (Season 2, Episode 7) depicts an absurd yet moving moment featuring characters Mo and Ahmed performing umrah through VR headsets. As Mo embraces the virtual Ka’aba, he tearfully breaks down; we see a performance of embodied devotion through his digitally mediated umrah

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11:54

Beyond Delivering Food: Networks, Risk, and the...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/16

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ambar Reyes can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/beyond-delivering-food-networks-risk-and-the-hidden-infrastructure-of-gig-work/. About the post: Delivery workers do not merely use communication platforms; they inhabit and transform them into sociotechnical infrastructures of collective life. Through these arrangements, knowledge, social relations, moral authority, and identity are actively produced and

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16:50

Strategies and Tools for Knowledge Generation in...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/14

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Emmanuel Anguiano-Hernández can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/strategies-and-tools-for-knowledge-generation-in-art-science/. About the post: To what extent do measurements from an electroencephalography headset provide evidence of the aesthetic contemplation state of the person wearing it?(This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

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22:33

Kilitl: Living with a Green Part of the World. Edible...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/09

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Aldo Federico Palafox Hernández can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/kilitl-living-with-a-green-part-of-the-world-edible-greens-language-knowledge-and-territory/. About the post: 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

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Reclaiming the Future of Work: Series Introduction

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/07

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Lucy Pei, Joy Ming, Kim Fernandes and Rosemary Steup can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/reclaiming-the-future-of-work-series-introduction/. About the post: Global South, global majority, and decolonial lenses help us to break out of dominant points of view. Taking on a range of methods, the empirical and conceptual works draw lessons from workers’ embodied experiences and relationships to one another and

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13:13

Venture Capital’s Due Diligence, or Ethnography’s...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/04

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Al Lim can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/venture-capitals-due-diligence-or-ethnographys-adversarial-twin/. About the post: Anthropologists have long framed studying up as a problem of access: how to get inside institutions that do not want us (Nader 1972; Souleles 2018). My problem was different. Having spent time doing both ethnographic fieldwork and leading several venture investments, my problem was

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17:18

Silt, Sea and Coastal Engineering

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/09/02

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Sridhar Raghavan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/silt-sea-and-coastal-engineering/. About the post: In 1870, the Vedaranyam canal is built connecting the Salt Pans nearby Palk bay coasts 5 to Nagapattinam – serving twin purposes of cheap transport of salt to Nagapattinam for trade, as well as deepening the river channels slightly upstream of the Port. A permanent wharf was constructed from some of the

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22:26

A Horse in the Archive: Notes on Incompleteness in...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/08/31

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by kayah can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/a-horse-in-the-archive-notes-on-incompleteness-in-biometric-infrastructures/. About the post: An essay on incompleteness as a constitutive property of biometric infrastructures. Beginning with the removal of two wisdom teeth — a piece of the body that leaves it once but whose record may keep circulating — it traces how bodies are decomposed into data, archived,

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8:10

The Kids Are AI-right

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/08/26

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Manar Naser can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/the-kids-are-ai-right/. About the post: My students were actively evaluating AI's role and utility rather than absorbing it uncritically. This complicates the assumption that children are passive recipients of a technological future being built for them. Education policy is actively being shaped by the potential of an education in and conducted by AI rather

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17:30

In the Pensive Pause of Supervision: A Footnote on...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/08/20

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Tanu Biswas can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/in-the-pensive-pause-of-supervision-a-footnote-on-citing-santos/. About the post: Overcoming the separation of ethics, metaphysics (including ontology), epistemology, and aesthetics that is possible in Western philosophical traditions, but not in non-Western traditions, lies at the heart of scientific work aimed at cultivating decolonial

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12:45

From Candle to Dilator: Treating Vaginismus in Turkey

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/08/18

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Neslihan Sen can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/from-candle-to-dilator-treating-vaginismus-in-turkey/. About the post: Vaginismus as a medical diagnosis, and its associated therapy, give women the legitimacy to experience their bodies and sexualities in a way that was not acceptable before the diagnosis. Sexuality becomes central in these women’s lives. (This episode is available in additional languages

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18:09

Networks of Knowledge Sharing: Becoming-With...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/08/13

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jennifer Foley can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/networks-of-knowledge-sharing-becoming-with-mushrooms-in-academia/. About the post: The experience of becoming with mushrooms and being a part of the Mushy Collective changed how I understand and engage with knowledge production. Knowledge is not a finite product waiting to be harvested for display or consumption.

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13:16

Microbiome Monitoring: Smart Toilets, Precision...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/08/11

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Megan MacGregor can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/08/microbiome-monitoring-smart-toilets-precision-medicine-and-the-post-genomic-bowel/. About the post: 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

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10:25

Automating Language, Losing Relationality: Feminist...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/07/28

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mpho Primus and Siri Lamoureaux can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/07/automating-language-losing-relationality-feminist-reflections-on-african-language-ai/. About the post: A grandmother pauses before answering a child. The meaning of her response lies not only in the words she chooses, but in tone, shared history, relationships, context, and even silence. Yet these are precisely the elements that today's

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19:54

The Hotspot as a Sociotechnical and Political Object:...

Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast ·

2026/07/24

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Katharina Rynkiewich can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/07/the-hotspot-as-a-sociotechnical-and-political-object-frontline-healthcare-professionals-and-public-conversation-alongside-the-intensification-of-a-u-s-measles-outbreak/. About the post: The post examines the utility of the term "hotspots," used to identify spatial clusters of infectious diseases, by looking at how it is taken up in the public

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