What’s That Noise?!

By Tommy Cooke & Allan Coombs

Society & Culture Technology Social Sciences

What's What’s That Noise?! about?

What’s That Noise?! The podcast about confusion! Tune in for marginally intelligent discussions on a variety of topics with academics, researchers, community leaders, musicians, and noisemakers of all kinds. Follow us on Twitter @WTNcast and @whatsthatdata.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

What’s That Noise?! episodes:

05.29.2024
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 8 - The Value of an Indigenous Lens on Tech, Innovation & Collaboration
In Episode 8 Tommy and Lawrence chat with the venerable James Delorme, VP of Community Development at Salish Elements. James is one of our most fun yet most insightful guests. He brings a wealth of knowledge and insight into helping...
09.08.2023
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 7 - Protecting and Promoting Culture through Technology
In Episode 7 we speak to Melissa Giles-Hardy, owner, President, and CEO of ORIGIN - a company that design, develops, and delivers technology experiences to drive employment while also protecting and promoting culture for Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. It's no...
06.15.2023
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 6 - Navigating Indigenous Digital Spaces
In Episode 6 we speak to Matthew Norris, Senior Policy Analyst at the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations, and President of the Urban Native Youth Association. As a former candidate for Vancouver city council and a PhD student in...
04.18.2023
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 5 - Award-Winning Filmmaker on Narrative Sovereignty
In Episode 5 of One Feather Two Pens we speak with the award winning actor, director, producer, writer, and storyteller, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. Member of the Kinai First Nation as well as Sámi from Norway, Elle-Máijá joins us to discuss her...
03.01.2023
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 4 - Netflix Filmmakers on Indigenous Media
In our latest episode on One Feather, Two Pens we have the privilege and honor to chat with Mary Teegee and Matt Smiley, the Directors of For Love on Netflix. As an Indigenous woman and non-Indigenous man, Mary and Matt...
01.16.2023
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 3 - Inclusion in tech industry
We are very excited to have Josh Nilson, Co-Founder of East Side Games, recent winner of the BC Tech Association's Person of the Year Award (and a Producer of one of Tommy's all time favourite games, Company of Heroes!), to...
12.14.2022
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 2 - Reconciliation in the digital space
In our second episode of this new special series, we are honoured to be joined by Chief Dr. Robert Joseph, OC, OBC. Dr. Joseph is a hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation, is Ambassador for Reconciliation Canada where he...
12.14.2022
One Feather Two Pens: Episode 1 - The key to digital collaboration
Once upon a time on What's That Noise?! we asked: wouldn't it be wonderful to launch a special series with their new friend and former guest, Lawrence Lewis? That time has arrived! Al, Tommy, and Lawrence are so very pleased...
09.21.2022
Episode 46: AI Regulation in Canada
Before the pandemic, AI was growing in Canada. Throughout the pandemic, AI has exploded in Canada. Through working from home and online schooling to the abundance of location, health, medical, and interaction data around us at all times, the last...
08.04.2022
Episode 45: Location Data - What Do You Mean?
Hey friends! Hope your summer is swell! It sure has been for us - perhaps a bit too good? While it's been rather tough to find time to record together, we're really pumped to finish off the summer with two...
06.22.2022
Episode 44: From the Radio Booth to the Classroom
More than ever people are questioning whether or not their job is the best fit. How many of us have found themselves in this position, particularly during the pandemic? How many of us have wondered what it takes to change...
06.06.2022
Episode 43: Indigenous Digital Identity
Tommy and Al are excited to bring a fantastic piece filled with both confusion and clarity around a tremendously important subject: Indigenous Digital Identity. What's That Noise?! is honoured to speak with Lawrence Lewis, Founder and CEO of OneFeather: an...
04.21.2022
Episode 42: Why Borders are Confusing
Almost immediately after the #warinukraine began, the Western world told Ukrainians: "our borders are open". When a humanitarian crisis unfolds, such as the largest exodus of a population occurs since the end of world war two, it's logical that a...
04.05.2022
Episode 41: What’s That Slap?!
Fact: for the week of March 28, the top 20 global Google search trends do not include the #pandemic, the #warinUkraine, #residentialschools. Will Smith, Jada Smith, Chris Rock, and celebrity reactions dominated. Why? What happened to the rest of the...
03.16.2022
Episode 40: Neurotechnology Part 2
Part 2 of our chat about neurotechnology delves a bit deeper... If people have fluid identities, can neurotech capture them? What does it mean to enhance a body and a mind that are constantly changing? What happens when people are...
02.27.2022
Episode 39: Ukraine - How We Can Help
Our hearts are with Ukraine. The situation is incomprehensibly horrific. As the world watches, many of us feel helpless. There's a ton of confusion around what it means to be a passive observer. Even if you wanted to help, could...
02.15.2022
Episode 38: Neurotech Part 1
What do you get when you combine "nervous system" with "technology"? Confusion, evidently! What is neurotech, exactly? Sure, it is technology that is attached to the body's neural activity... But what part of the body? Does it affect the body,...
02.01.2022
Episode 37: AI & Advertising Part 2
What is the connection between bedsheet-related incidents and the consumption of cheese? Hopefully none. That would be confusing, and weird. However! There might be a correlation between those unusually paired items! Correlations, correlations. Part two is about the wonderfully bizarre world...
01.17.2022
Episode 36: AI & Advertising Part 1
Today we chat Dr. Dillon Mahmoudi, Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County about his confusion with AI and advertising! Join Tommy, Al and Dillon in this first episode of a two-part series that...
01.03.2022
Episode 35: Welcome to the show, Al!
Happy New Year, everyone! I am so grateful for two things! First, we have a new co-host! It's truly my pleasure to introduce my dear friend, Al Coombs to you. Al is a seasoned radio broadcaster who hosted and co-hosted shows in...
05.30.2021
Episode 33: PredPol
This latest episode is a special one. Tommy has wanted to explore predictive policing for a while. He had the opportunity to do so as a sample case study for one of the classes he teaches at Queen's University: AI,...
03.09.2021
My Shadow is My Skin Episode 3: The Politics of
In association with the University of Texas Press, the third instalment of the My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora special series features, Prof. Mehdi Tavana Okasi and Dr. Roger Sedarat. Mehdi is Professor of Creative Writing...
09.21.2020
My Shadow is My Skin Episode 2: Errand
In this second instalment of our special series, in association with the University of Texas Press, Tommy speaks with Dr. Babak Elahi, Head of Department, Liberal Studies at Kettering University. Dr. Elahi is a special contributor to My Shadow Is...
08.23.2020
Episode 32: Competing Perspectives on Data, Privacy & Ethics
From the vault of unpublished episodes comes with a fascinating conversation with Desmond Cox, an IT and software development professional who has a fresh and often competing take on Tommy's understandings and perspectives about data, privacy and ethics. During a...
07.01.2020
My Shadow is My Skin Episode 1: the Iranian Diaspora
"In the four decades since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iranian-Americans have made sense of their lives and reconciled their sense of belonging and not belonging through writing, first through poetry and memoir in the immediacy of migration and exile,...
04.02.2020
Episode 31: From Bucharest, to Dachau
A story of enduring hardship through love and commitment as a young Romanian family resettles in Dachau, Germany.
03.03.2020
Episode 30: Quality vs Quantity of Life with a Terminal Diagnosis
Thank you for joining us on the most important episode we've published to date, and perhaps will be the most important episode we will publish - for more reasons than we could possibly articulate here in written text. In this...
01.06.2020
Episode 29: Culture Industry, Media Fuel, and Celebrity Privacy
Happy New Year, everyone! Derek and I are excited to bring you our first episode of 2020. Today's chat is a follow-up to the last episode of 2019. If you haven't heard it yet, you'll want to go back and check...
12.18.2019
Episode 28: Kawhi Leonard and the Expectation of Privacy in the Public Sphere
After the Toronto Raptors won their first championship in franchise history, attention quickly shifted from celebration to discussions of whether or not the team’s star player and finals MVP, Kawhi Leonard, would resign with the team. What ensued was commonly...
11.11.2019
Episode 27: A Life in Labs
Imagine spending 24.5 years in a specific laboratory. And then imagine switching, to seemingly start all over again. In this show Tommy chats with Dr. Karen Rees-Milton, a veteran bench scientist who is expertly versed in protein biochemistry, enzyme kinetics,...
10.07.2019
Episode 26: Mission Creep and Domestic Border Surveillance
In this episode, we continue discussing a long-standing theme of the show: how government develops, mobilizes, and uses surveillance technologies abroad and at home. More specifically, we focus on a program called the "Real Time Regional Gateway," a secretive data...
09.15.2019
Episode 25: Japan, America, and Whistleblowing
Tommy sits down with Dr. Midori Ogasawara, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa, and one of the premiere investigative journalists on surveillance in Japan. For nearly twenty years, Midori has researched the legacy of surveillance in Japan, and...
09.01.2019
Episode 24: Representation and Authority
This episode is centered on the theme of representation and authority in the public sphere. Can we trust what authorities tell us about how we use our digital technologies, or how laws and public policies are developed and mobilized? How...
08.15.2019
Episode 23: The NMEA
It's been so long! But we're back! Derek and I have reconnected and we've got a great run of new content coming your way. Today, we begin by touching base - to see where we've been to figure out where...
04.25.2019
Episode 22: language, language, language
An episode to begin the term, and one to close off. Thank you so much, and our deepest apologies, for our hiatus! It has been a great calendar year thus far, and also an exceptionally busy one. In today's episode,...
01.15.2019
Volume 21: Kinesiology and Interdisciplinarity
Happy New Year, everyone! We're so very excited to share our first episode of the New Year, feat. John Hannant-Minchel, a Masters student of Kinesiology at Queen's University. After meeting at a local breakfast hotspot in the beautiful city of Kingston,...
11.26.2018
Volume 20: The law, language, and data
In Volume 20, Derek and Tommy sit down with Cale Sutherland, an Associate Lawyer practicing injury and health law at Lerner's LLP in the beautiful city of London, Ontario, Canada. Mr. Sutherland helps our co-hosts not only debunk some preconceived...
10.08.2018
Volume 19: iOS, Android, and Application Privacy
In this week's episode, Derek and Tommy chat about application privacy on iOS and Android. New technologies such as the Samsung Galaxy, Pixel, and iPhone have become so heavily relied upon for communication that it is almost unfathomable to be...
09.24.2018
Volume 18: A Day in the Life of Data
Tommy is back! After a summer spent researching data privacy in Bochum, Germany (and traversing the Swiss alps with his newly-engaged parter), Tommy is back in studio to chat with Derek about his research project on visualizing data flows in smartphones....
08.09.2018
Volume 17: Queering Families with Dr. Carla Pfeffer
The ASA annual meeting is almost upon us! In our final pre-ASA episode, Derek chats with one of his own mentors, Dr. Carla Pfeffer, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina (Derek's alma...
08.06.2018
Volume 16: Blowin' Up! with Dr. Jooyoung Lee
Welcome to the second episode of our little University of Toronto mini-series! As we ramp up for the ASA annual meeting this weekend in Philadelphia, Derek chats with Dr. Jooyoung Lee (PhD UCLA), Associate Professor in the Deparment of Sociology...
08.06.2018
Volume 16: Blowin’ Up! with Dr. Jooyoung Lee
Welcome to the second episode of our little University of Toronto mini-series! As we ramp up for the ASA annual meeting this weekend in Philadelphia, Derek chats with Dr. Jooyoung Lee (PhD UCLA), Associate Professor in the Deparment of Sociology...
07.30.2018
Volume 15: On the Limits of Whiteness with Dr. Neda Maghbouleh
Following a few weeks off, we are finally back in the groove in the leadup to the American Sociolocial Association's annual meeting in Philly! In this week's episode, Derek sits down with a long time twitter-friend Dr. Neda Maghbouleh (PhD University of California),...
07.23.2018
Volume 14: Reunited and It Feels So Good
In this long overdue episode, Tommy and Derek finally reunite to reflect upon the podcast's first episodes while chatting about the past, present, and future direction of What's That Noise. We also have some REALLY, REALLY BIG NEWS to share...
06.18.2018
Volume 13: From Bulgaria, to Bochum
In our second episode from Germany, co-host @thomasncooke planned to chat with a new friend and colleague about her summer research project at the Centre for Advanced Internet Studies (@CAIS). That will have to wait, as our guest @julirone - a recent Social and Political...
06.11.2018
Volume 12: Right-Wing Extremism
Over the past few years we have experienced the notable reemergence of a white nationalist movement within the public sphere. From the Emanuel AME shooting to Charlottesville, VA and beyond, white nationalism seems to be undergoing a rebranding of sorts...
06.04.2018
Volume 11: CAIS, Interdisciplinarity, and Life in the Ruhrgebiet
Volume 11 marks the beginning of a unique side series for @WTNcast, as Tommy conducts numerous interviews during his summerlong Fellowship at the Centre for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum, Germany. In this episode, Tommy sits Max Brenker to learn...
05.28.2018
Volume 10: (Re)Framing Disability in Pop Culture
On this week's episode, Derek chats with Dr. Jeff Preston, Assistant Professor of disability studies at King's University College, to discuss his work on representations of disability in popular culture. From Jimmy Brooks (a.k.a. Drake) in Degrassi to Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale)...
05.21.2018
Volume 9: Radicalization
In another very special episde, Derek travels to Winnipeg to sit down with Dr. Jeffrey Monaghan, Assistant Professor in the Institute for Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University, and Fahad Ahmad, PhD candidate in public policy at Carleton, to...
05.14.2018
Volume 8: Freedom of Information
In today's very special episode, Derek travels to Winnipeg to sit down with Dr. Kevin Walby, Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Winnipeg, and Alex Luscombe, PhD student in the Centre for Criminology at the...

What's What’s That Noise?! about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

What’s That Noise?! episodes:

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 8 - The Value of an Indigenous Lens on Tech, Innovation & Collaboration

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 7 - Protecting and Promoting Culture through Technology

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 6 - Navigating Indigenous Digital Spaces

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 5 - Award-Winning Filmmaker on Narrative Sovereignty

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 4 - Netflix Filmmakers on Indigenous Media

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 3 - Inclusion in tech industry

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 2 - Reconciliation in the digital space

One Feather Two Pens: Episode 1 - The key to digital collaboration

Episode 46: AI Regulation in Canada

Episode 45: Location Data - What Do You Mean?

Episode 44: From the Radio Booth to the Classroom

Episode 43: Indigenous Digital Identity

Episode 42: Why Borders are Confusing

Episode 41: What’s That Slap?!

Episode 40: Neurotechnology Part 2

Episode 39: Ukraine - How We Can Help

Episode 38: Neurotech Part 1

Episode 37: AI & Advertising Part 2

Episode 36: AI & Advertising Part 1

Episode 35: Welcome to the show, Al!

Episode 33: PredPol

My Shadow is My Skin Episode 3: The Politics of

My Shadow is My Skin Episode 2: Errand

Episode 32: Competing Perspectives on Data, Privacy & Ethics

My Shadow is My Skin Episode 1: the Iranian Diaspora

Episode 31: From Bucharest, to Dachau

Episode 30: Quality vs Quantity of Life with a Terminal Diagnosis

Episode 29: Culture Industry, Media Fuel, and Celebrity Privacy

Episode 28: Kawhi Leonard and the Expectation of Privacy in the Public Sphere

Episode 27: A Life in Labs

Episode 26: Mission Creep and Domestic Border Surveillance

Episode 25: Japan, America, and Whistleblowing

Episode 24: Representation and Authority

Episode 23: The NMEA

Episode 22: language, language, language

Volume 21: Kinesiology and Interdisciplinarity

Volume 20: The law, language, and data

Volume 19: iOS, Android, and Application Privacy

Volume 18: A Day in the Life of Data

Volume 17: Queering Families with Dr. Carla Pfeffer

Volume 16: Blowin' Up! with Dr. Jooyoung Lee

Volume 16: Blowin’ Up! with Dr. Jooyoung Lee

Volume 15: On the Limits of Whiteness with Dr. Neda Maghbouleh

Volume 14: Reunited and It Feels So Good

Volume 13: From Bulgaria, to Bochum

Volume 12: Right-Wing Extremism

Volume 11: CAIS, Interdisciplinarity, and Life in the Ruhrgebiet

Volume 10: (Re)Framing Disability in Pop Culture

Volume 9: Radicalization

Volume 8: Freedom of Information