Claim OwnershipPlatypod, The CASTAC Podcast
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© 2026 CASTAC
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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. (Jingle by chimerical. CC BY-NC 4.0)
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This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Eva Steinberg can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/03/love-at-first-sprout-wild-peanuts-and-mars-plan-for-climate-security/. About the post: Despite the toxicity and the chromosome doubling and the botanical reality of peanut reproduction, Mars’s portrayal of peanut breeding as an all-natural gendered family unit contrasts the stability of the nuclear family with the instability of climate change. In doing so, the commodity, in this case Mars candies, becomes an essential safeguard against total climate and societal collapse–a world without peanuts.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Meenakshi Mani can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/03/engineering-through-stuckness/. About the post: In this first addition to our series on Stuckness, Meenakshi Mani shows that the everyday work of typically well-paid tech professionals—whether that be within specific domains like EdTech or within Big Tech—are by no means without frustration. As actors within an organization and a social network, these seemingly powerful workers find themselves constantly having to navigate hierarchies and make compromises. These moments of stuckness help illuminate the structural forces and material conditions that constrain the range of possibilities involved in technology building. By tracing stories of tech workers from India and the U.S, Meenakshi suggests that in the shared experience of stuckness, there are perhaps alliances to be conceived between different types of tech work and tech workers, across the Majority and Minority worlds.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jonathan Givan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/03/hip-hop-sampling-and-the-akai-mpc-as-a-platform-for-spatiotemporal-discourse/. About the post: This analysis moves away from exploring Hip Hop as a particular Black political action taking sonic form and towards an ontology of Black American Hip Hop production. This shift is valuable because the sonic underpinning of the beat is what contextualizes and informs the lyrical production done in real time by the emcee during the process of writing and recording their lyrics. In doing this contextualizing work, Hip Hop music producers redeployed the sampler as not just a musical instrument but as a platform on which new forms of dialogue were able to blossom.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Michelle Venetucci and Shoko Yamada can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/03/series-theorizing-stuckness-in-science-and-technology/. About the post: What might we learn by studying science and technology through the lens of stuckness? Scientific and technological practice has long been associated with notions of progress as a linear development, linked to key moments in history and developments that have led to our present moment. In this new series on Platypus, scholars who work directly with scientists and technological experts instead foreground moments of thwarted expectations and material constraints, highlighting that experts themselves do not necessarily experience their work as congruent with these notions of progress. By attending to moments when experts face obstacles to their work and feel stuck, the essays in this series draw out how people construct meaning out of these moments of becoming stuck, which then follows them into future decision-making.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rachel Lim can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/02/there-is-a-climate-emergency-and-its-called-colonialism/. About the post: In this piece, author and artivist Rachel Lim highlights how the climate crisis is not a sudden "emergency" but the cumulative result of centuries of colonial dispossession and extraction. Lim critiques "crisis language," noting it often sidelines Indigenous sovereignty and favors capitalist expansion over genuine accountability. By drawing on academic scholarship and solidarity work with land defenders from the Wet’suwet’en to the Amazon, Lim highlights how "green transitions" can replicate colonial violence if they ignore Indigenous jurisdiction. The piece serves as a call to move beyond fear-driven rhetoric toward a framework of reciprocity and history. Accompanied by Lim's illustration, "Rooted in Our Heart," the article demands that climate action addresses colonialism as its root cause to achieve true justice.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by William F Stafford Jr can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/02/a-promise-of-safety-for-everyone-anywhere-any-time-the-panic-button-the-city-and-the-box/. About the post: As a system which depends on the coordination of complex technologies and infrastructures of communication, commerce, and bureaucracy, the panic button is exposed to a wide range of potential failure points.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Malcolm Katrak, Anushree Gupta and Debopriya Shome can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/02/transnational-translations-an-interdisciplinary-dialogue-on-platforms-and-labor/. About the post: This post is an Interdisciplinary dialog on platforms and labor. We are a group of scholars and researchers who work with gig and platform worker unions in India in various capacities. We form the India chapter of the labor deck research network. We have been meeting regularly from across the globe to share cross-sectoral organizing strategies, track the political landscape around gig and platform movements, and discuss research and reflections from our place-based engagements. Our work sits at the critical intersection of scholarship and activism. It involves amplifying workers’ voices, supporting unionization efforts, and supporting workers in their struggles to lead more dignified and just working lives. Our discussions have inspired us to put together this blog series on the politics of writing about platform workers’ organizing.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Anna Wood can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/02/seed-cycling-toward-a-crossroads-menstrual-positivity-and-hormone-practices-under-right-wing-regimes/. About the post: A constellation of women’s health advocates, right-wing influencers, and lay experts have helped to proliferate negative information around hormonal contraceptives, including testimonials about side effects and doubts about their safety. This has unfolded alongside a renewed embrace of non-pharmaceutically suppressed menstruation.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ambika Tandon, Debopriya Shome and Kaveri Medappa can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/01/writing-about-with-platform-unions-the-role-of-culture-politics-and-history/. About the post: Platform work has exposed larger numbers of workers, especially younger workers with little memory or experience of organising, to mobilise against capital and to do so using innovative means and campaigns. Through three vignettes, we bring the everyday together with the cultural, political histories and contexts of three metropolitan Indian cities – Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata, cities in which we have lived and engaged in research and activism with platform workers. Spanning between 2019 and 2025, these vignettes reflect the political landscape in India. They shed light on the capital–state nexus that limits the power of workers, unionization efforts built on foundations of loyalty and often exclusionary hypermasculine politics. What are the tensions and contradictions that we confronted while doing research with ‘gig’ worker unions? To inhabit that space in between is to acknowledge t
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Chen Shen can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/12/the-lung-tumor-we-know-exists-yet-that-we-cannot-see/. About the post: “The lung tumor we know exists yet that we cannot see” is a found footage essay film that assembles publicly available medical materials and original footage to explore how lung cancer is rendered visible—and remains invisible—through clinical regimes, and to reflect on how visibility operates as an epistemic practice that might be mobilized otherwise.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Daniela Manica and Fabiene Gama can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/12/what-not-to-do-if-you-are-accused-of-harassment-the-case-of-boaventura-de-souza-santos/. About the post: In this text, we intend to revisit the well-known case of the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos, following its unfolding since the accusations that surfaced after the publication of this book "Sexual Misconduct in Academia" in 2023. We summarize the main events since then, focusing on developing a counter-manual that didactically organizes the regrettable way in which the intellectual responded to the accusations and systematically retaliated against the victims. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Marilou Polymeropoulou can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/12/from-the-grid-to-the-field-visualizing-the-chipscene/. About the post: I was introduced to chipmusic and its scene: online communities, netlabels, visual performers, musicians and sound artists, a whole network of creatives which would often physically materializse in events across the world, such as Error Code. That night I returned home and went straight online on my computer to catch a glimpse of the chipscene: 8-bit graphics and sounds flooded my brain and I started wondering what does the chipscene world look like – both online and offline. Years later, I recognizsed the feeling of wanting to explore the digital social in Flynn’s words: what does the chipscene ‘grid’ look like and how can I get in?
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Renee Yu Jin can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/12/touch-to-make-an-index-fingers-path-into-the-sculpture-factories-in-china/. About the post: How do digital platforms reconfigure the ways we come to know sites of artistic labor before we ever enter the workshops? What began as a simple search for sculpture factories near Beijing became an encounter with how algorithmic recommendation, platform aesthetics, and factory self-promotion organize visibility for contemporary sculpture production. As clips foreground technological capability and optimized workflows while workers remain partially obscured, a layered form of mediation emerges, one that frames the factory as a digital formation long before it becomes a physical place. Tracing how my own scrolling shaped this encounter, this piece examines how touch, vision, and labor move across screens and shop floors, revealing how digital circulation both illuminates and abstracts the embodied work of sculpture making in China.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Irene do Planalto Chemin, Geovana Luna dos Santos, Kauan Alves da Silveira Aristides, Raylane Souza de Moura, Samara Lopes de Oliveira and Veronica Martins Da Silva can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/11/doing-research-between-adolescence-and-cyborgs/. About the post: Cyborgs and adolescence have historically coexisted and have a love-hate relationship. Daily connected, their bodies inhabiting poorly demarcated boundaries between online and the offline. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Sakari Mesimäki can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/11/renouncing-and-returning-to-shareholder-value/. About the post: Are global environmental problems most likely to be solved through businesses that operate at scale? As Finnish national politics have moved towards austerity measures, progressive causes are gravitating towards entrepreneurial spaces. Exploring how progressive actors are narrating their entrepreneurial aspirations as a way to access resources to address global-scale environmental concerns, this piece explores how new progressive narratives are rehabilitating the concept of shareholder value without any meaningful structural challenges to shareholder primacy.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by xinyi wu can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/11/space-for-the-departed-bone-ash-apartments-as-an-alternative-to-cemeteries-in-urban-china/. About the post: The Bone Ash Apartments are at a grey zone of policy because turning residential units into burial sites is not allowed. As per the civil affairs official, "It goes against the residential function of housing and public norms." But in reality, the state is under-invested in accessible, meaningful funerary alternatives that are low in price. Bone ash apartments therefore are a private solution to a public infrastructure failure—a way for people to stay connected to their dead in a system that has prioritized efficiency over intimacy. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Denis Sivkov can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/11/space-selfie-rethinking-scalarity-between-orbit-and-home/. About the post: By attempting a space selfie, ham radio enthusiasts are not expanding their home to the size of the universe, nor are they simply connecting home and places in the outer space. As Dmitry notes in his account of regular switching between being part of the global expanse and pursuing his everyday responsibilities, they practice scaling, whilst staying attuned to the incommensurability between a small home and the huge outer space. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Isha Bhallamudi and Anushree Gupta can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/11/series-introduction-the-politics-of-writing-about-platform-workers-organizing/. About the post: We are a group of scholars and researchers who work with gig and platform worker unions in India in various capacities. We form the India chapter of the Labor Tech Research Network collective, and have been meeting regularly from across the globe to share cross-sectoral organizing strategies, track the political landscape around gig & platform unions, and discuss research and reflections from our place-based engagements. Our work sits at the critical intersection of scholarship and activism. It involves amplifying workers’ voices, supporting unionisation efforts, and supporting workers in their struggles to lead more dignified and just working lives. Our discussions have inspired us to put together this blog series on the politics of writing about platform workers’ organizing.
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Martina Di Tullio can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/10/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-the-internet/. About the post: In the Andean cosmovision, constellations are not formed by connecting the dots of stars, but rather from the spaces of darkness in the night sky. The most important one is the Yakana, shaped like a llama —the most essential animal for life in the Andes. What might be seen as void, then, can reveal as much as, or even more than, the brightest star. This brief text reflects on the relevance of attending to those spaces, moments, and situations that remain undigitized in order to understand the social role of digital technologies and how they shape our lives. Much like the dark voids that give form to Andean constellations, these intervals can illuminate dimensions of existence that are otherwise overshadowed by the glow of the screens. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)
This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rogelio Scott-Insua can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2025/10/freud-among-the-geneticists/. About the post: Rather than striving to reinscribe their discipline in the right side of the scientific demarcation, psychoanalysts are creating a tertiary terrain between the radical science/non-science separation. It is not about becoming a science or rebating the epithets of pseudo-science. Instead, “being with science”, “not being a non-science”, or “helping science” are the signifiers that circulate. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)
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