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  • Ben Snyder on Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment

    Ben Snyder on Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment
    2025/06/16
    In this 100th episode (!!!) of Peoples & Things, host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Benjamin H. Snyder, Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College, about his recent book, Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment (University of California Press, 2024). Spy Plane examines how the city of Baltimore, Maryland, came to adopt a corporate-run surveillance program using aerial surveillance planes that could supposedly photograph and track every person in public. Snyder bases his account on incredible access and direct observations inside the for-profit tech startup that ran the program. He also examines the complex reactions of community members in the neighborhoods that were surveilled and how the program eventually fell to pieces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 2 分
  • Beth Linker on Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America

    Beth Linker on Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America
    2025/06/02
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with historian Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science, about her recent book, Slouch: Postural Panic in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2024). Slouch examines the history of conceptions of “bad posture” as they arose over the course of the 20th century. The book is a beautiful example of taking a perhaps seemingly small topic and showing how it connects to many, both surprising and well-known, themes in history. The pair also discuss a few of the potential projects Linker may be turning to next, all of which sound fascinating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 24 分
  • Helen Thompson on Disorder and the Analysis of Contemporary Geopolitics

    Helen Thompson on Disorder and the Analysis of Contemporary Geopolitics
    2025/05/19
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University and co-host of the great podcast, These Times, about her approach to geopolitical analysis and the centrality of energy geopolitics in that approach. The pair start by talking about Thompson’s book, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century (Cambridge UP, 2023), her background and training, and how she came to develop the distinctive style of geopolitical analysis she deploys, including on episodes of These Times. Vinsel and Thompson also discuss a number of topics, including military conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and the global energy geopolitics of Net Zero, as a way of exploring Thompson’s way of thinking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 16 分
  • Jessica Smith on Engineering and Public Accountability in Energy Industries

    Jessica Smith on Engineering and Public Accountability in Energy Industries
    2025/05/05
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Jessica Smith, Professor in the Engineering, Design, and Society Department and Dean’s Fellow for Earth and Society Programs of the Colorado School of Mines, about her work on engineering and public accountability in energy and mining industries. The pair discuss Smith’s long-held interests in mining and extractive industries, including her roots in coal country; her book, Extracting Accountability: Engineers and Corporate Social Responsibility (MIT Press, 2021); her current work on the social and community dimensions of carbon sequestration projects; and many asides about what it takes to study the social dimensions of engineering, including in humanities and social sciences cultures that contain many negative stereotypes of engineers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 16 分
  • Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry

    Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry
    2025/04/22
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on the political, economic, and environmental politics of big data infrastructures. They focus on some of Bridges’ work on the disconnect between the promises made to localities around digital transformation and the realities of data center power demands and other material factors. They also discuss Bridges’ other projects, including “Geographies of Digital Wasting,” a global collaborative project, which Bridges was co-PI on, tracing the global flows and practices of digital wasting throughout the tech supply chain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 15 分
  • Jeremy Braddock on "Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums"

    Jeremy Braddock on "Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums"
    2025/04/07
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Jeremy Braddock, Associate Professor of Literatures in English and Coordinator of the Media Studies Initiative at Cornell University, about his book, Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums. The book explores themes of media and technology through nine albums made by Firesign Theatre, an experimental, surrealistic comedy troupe formed in the mid-1960s that created art across several media forms. The theme of “technology” comes into the story in several ways, but the two major ones explored in this episode are that Firesign routinely experimented with new media technologies and that the troupe regularly explored how technologies, especially media technologies, were affecting society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 10 分
  • Jeffrey Lee Funk on Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles

    Jeffrey Lee Funk on Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles
    2025/03/24
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with retired professor, consultant, Discovery Institute fellow, and a winner of the NTT DoCoMo Mobile Science Award, Jeffrey Lee Funk, about his recent book Unicorns, Hype, and Bubbles: A Guide to Spotting, Avoiding, and Exploiting Investment Bubbles in Tech (Harriman House, 2024). The book provides readers with fundamental tools for exploring technology markets and spotting financial bubbles, which have been recurring at a high rate in recent decades. In addition to talking through the basic perspectives the book provides, Vinsel and Funk also talk through examples of recent technology bubbles, including the likely current bubble centered on generative AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    59 分
  • Eleni Kalantidou on Design, Repairability, and Cultures of Repair

    Eleni Kalantidou on Design, Repairability, and Cultures of Repair
    2025/03/10
    Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Eleni Kalantidou, Assistant Professor at the Queensland College of Art and Design, about the volume of essays, Design/Repair: Place, Practice, and Community (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), which Eleni co-edited with Abby Mellick Lopes, Alison Gill, Guy Keulemans, and Niklavs Rubenis. The volume examines both the relationship of design practices to repair and repairability and the kinds of cultures needed to develop sustainable repair practices the world over. Eleni is also the author of the recent book, Introduction to Design Psychology. Eleni respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the Yugara and Turrabal land on which she lives, and pays her respects to Indigenous Elders, past and present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間