This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rosana Castro can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/hippocrates-against-protocols-experiments-experience-and-evidence-based-medicine-in-brazil/. About the post: This episode addresses the processes in which science is being claimed, shaken, disputed, and unpredictably rearticulated in Brazil's medical field. Specifically, It considers denialist practices and movements during the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on an ethnographic approach to a variety of actions by medical groups and institutions that are critical of vaccination against Covid-19 and instead defend the use of drugs (considered ineffective by others) for the “early treatment” of the disease, this episode seeks to highlight how their practices rearticulate, transform, and dispute new meanings, values, and practices of science, rather than simply reject it. (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 Angelina Chamuah, Hema Vaishnavi Ale and Vikrom Mathur can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/ai-climate-adaptation-and-epistemic-injustice/. About the post: Acknowledging the cultural, relational, and contextual dimensions of climate change is crucial in the realms of science, policy, and practice. While the deployment of AI has the potential to aid decision-making processes, it must be approached with caution to prevent exacerbating underlying injustices.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Spencer Kaplan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/tokens-voids-and-archives-locating-berlins-nft-projects/. About the post: Berlin joins cities like Los Angeles, New York, Lisbon, and London as a hub of blockchain ventures. Yet Berlin’s NFT projects, Immersion­ included, stand out in an important way. Projects elsewhere are typically detached from their physical places of origin, taking on a generic, if not sanitized, aesthetic. In sharp contrast, projects launched in Berlin tend to incorporate their local origins, taking on the city’s famously gritty and countercultural ethos. Some projects even seek to build entire virtual environments in a Berlin style, creating opportunities for virtual avatars to explore, experience, and sometimes even purchase pieces of a virtual Berlin, present or past.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ayesha Shahid can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/ways-of-knowing-lessons-on-agroecological-transitions-from-a-pothwari-farm/. About the post: As a researcher and self-identifying ‘citizen planner,’ I was curious if new methods of agriculture could make the sector remunerative enough to counter the desire to convert agricultural land into real estate. Since I was familiar with the emerging significance of agroecology and regenerative agriculture  in climate adaptation, I was motivated to understand what it would take to help us transition towards practices closer to agroecology. (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 Rebecca Carlson, Emil Rieger and Sarah Thanner can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/a-vocabulary-for-junk-in-four-movements/. About the post: Trash and uselessness are related but not the same. Trash is problematic and needs to leave our ideological boundaries, useless things we still view in terms of former or potential use. They are not quite trash precisely because they are defined through their lack of use, which requires continuous evaluation not discarding from our thoughts (revisit from time to time > Confirm: Yep, still useless. Trash: Too late, it’s already gone).

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rebecca Carlson can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/07/junk-anthropology-a-manifesto-for-trashing-and-untrashing/. About the post: But what does something like “junk” have to do with mice ear punches, chemical transmutation and mundane laboratory failures? Garbage experiments are routine in scientific practice after all. But as any scientist might tell you, failure can be its own kind of productive.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Clarissa Reche and Érico Sant Anna Perrella can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/earth-air-fire-water-and-entropy-internet-and-synthetic-biology-pioneer-randy-rettbergs-story-on-how-information-was-forged/. About the post: When questioned by us about the origins of the concept of information, Randy alternates between great historical facts, such as the second world war, memories of his work in laboratories, and intimate family memories. (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 Zoe Boudart and Catherine Borra can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/making-bioethnographic-teams-work-disciplinary-destabilization-generative-friction-and-the-role-of-mediators/. About the post: The making of truly interdisciplinary knowledge often requires overcoming epistemological paradigms through disciplinary destabilization. Mediators both manage interdisciplinary tensions and foster the generative friction that emerges, allowing for new kinds of knowledge to be produced together.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Janelle Curry and Alexandra Widmer can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/how-microbes-became-friendly-visualizations-of-the-microbiome-in-public-media/. About the post: We take up these insights and examine one way that these ontologies of body and environment circulate in public ways by analyzing how the human body is depicted in relation to microbes and environments through public visualizations of the human microbiome. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

In this podcast, Ana Carolina talks to Dr. Tanja Ahlin about her work in the anthropology of health, data, and AI - as well as about the implications of new AI technologies on the work developed by anthropologists. This is a necessary conversation for all those concerned about human-machine interaction in anthropology. Transcript available at https://blog.castac.org/2023/06/platypod-ep-seven-an-anthropology-of-data-ai-and-much-more/