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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.
Episodes
Tuesday Apr 18, 2023
Tuesday Apr 18, 2023
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 Rogers Audience Award winning documentary, Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy. The powerful film is an intimate and reflexive portrait of her community and the impact of substance abuse and opioid epidemic. Elle-Máijá is a remarkable wisdom and self-awareness facilitates a truly insightful conversation about representation, authenticity, and narrative sovereignty in Indigenous media. Join us as we explore what it means to truth, history, paternal politics, unlearning bias, and of the challenges and opportunities that emerge when navigating voice, privilege, and power. Elle-Máijá also raises important questions for Canadians seeking to assist and collaborate with First Nations peoples, such as: Who is the right person to tell a story? What does it mean to represent Indigenous life? And what happens when non-Indigenous narrators take up space without being aware of doing so?
Gila’kasla!
Follow us on Twitter: Wtncast
Follow your co-hosts: Tommy | Al | Lawrence
A very special thanks to Compulsion Soundlabs for sharing their musical talent, which you are hearing as the intro and outro music in this series!
Wednesday Mar 01, 2023
Wednesday Mar 01, 2023
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 have worked closely together since before their powerful piece Highway of Tears. The two reflect on their journeys, learnings, and discoveries together, which leads to a fascinating and important set of realizations and offerings about the promise of Indigenous media.
Gila’kasla!
Follow us on Twitter: Wtncast
Follow your co-hosts: Tommy | Al | Lawrence
A very special thanks to Compulsion Soundlabs for sharing their musical talent, which you are hearing as the intro and outro music in this series!
Monday Jan 16, 2023
Monday Jan 16, 2023
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 talk about the value and importance of reconciliation through the inclusion of Indigenous peoples in the tech sector.
Josh shares his fascinating professional journey, beginning in the world of culinary arts and then successfully transitioning into video game development where he produced some of the most popular Apps around, including The Office, Star Trek Upper Decks, Ru Paul's Drag Race, Trailer Park Boys and more. Josh reflects on the importance of learning, and especially on what's at stake for Canadian businesses to start thinking seriously about what Indigeneity does and does not mean and include.
Gila’kasla!
Follow us on Twitter: Wtncast
Follow your co-hosts: Tommy | Al | Lawrence
A very special thanks to Compulsion Soundlabs for sharing their musical talent, which you are hearing as the intro and outro music in this series!
Wednesday Dec 14, 2022
Wednesday Dec 14, 2022
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 has guided the Canadian Federal government through their residential school response. Dr. Joseph is a survivor of St. Michael’s Residential School.
Dr. Joseph guides Tommy, Al, and Lawrence through the importance of creating safe space to converse and listen deeply in order for reconciliation to move forward. Dr. Joseph believes that technology, and platforms like podcasting, can be vehicles for moving reconciliation forward - specifically by giving opportunities for unheard voices and experiences from Indigenous peoples. This episode is full of practical advice to any listener, particularly for Indigenous and Canadian entrepreneurs who are looking to innovate and collaborate in this digital space.
Gila’kasla!
Follow us on Twitter: Wtncast
Follow your co-hosts: Tommy | Al | Lawrence
A very special thanks to Compulsion Soundlabs for sharing their musical talent, which you are hearing as the intro and outro music in this series!
Wednesday Dec 14, 2022
Wednesday Dec 14, 2022
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 to present One Feather Two Pens, a special series that interviews Indigenous thought and technology leaders about functioning and co-existing with Indigenous peoples in this digital space.
We kick off the series in episode 1 by laying the terrain for what this new series is about, what it's goals are, and what it hopes to contribute by means of creating a safe, inclusive dialogue for sharing the stories and lessons of Indigenous people across Canada who are carving out and navigating Indigenous digital sovereignty.
What does it mean for Canadians and Indigenous peoples to work together online? What values and principles should be prioritized? What does reconciliation mean and look like on the Internet? What does success look like here, exactly - and how will we even know that we've been successful?
Stay tuned for more episodes, releasing on the 15th of every month!
Gila’kasla!
Follow us on Twitter: Wtncast
Follow your co-hosts: Tommy | Al | Lawrence
A very special thanks to Compulsion Soundlabs for sharing their musical talent, which you are hearing as the intro and outro music in this series!
Wednesday Sep 21, 2022
Wednesday Sep 21, 2022
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 half decade truly has witnessed institutions moving rapidly toward AI to make money, increase efficiency, trim fat, and perhaps even assist in finding new cures and vaccines.
And as you might imagine, there are serious rights, liberties, justice, ethics, and equality issues that pop up along the way. So, how does a country insulate itself from such dangers? Through regulation, but easier said than done...
Join us as we chat with the distinguished Dr. Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa, an award winning author, a recognizable expert across numerous Canadian media outlets - and a fantastic Ad Lib'er to boot.
As you'll hear, the move toward regulating AI in Canada has been anything but clear... Tune in to hear more!
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Email Tommy and Al: wtncast@gmail.com
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Thursday Aug 04, 2022
Thursday Aug 04, 2022
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 new episodes. Today's chat is with Tommy's dear friend, Fernando Leiva - an analytics developer at the Centre for Advanced Computing at Queen's University. Tommy and Fernando have worked together for the past 3+ years to investigate location data-related privacy issues on smartphones. Today, we ask a simple but complicated question: location data - what do you mean?
What we see in Google Maps is vastly different than what flows behind the scenes. GPS coordinates and mailing addresses represent a mere fraction of what corporations are able to collect from our devices. A big portion of these other, discrete data are in the format of NMEA 0183 - a standard data type that is produced by hardware in our smartphones as they intercept navigation satellite signals.
What is inside NMEA 0183? Why do companies harvest it, and for what reasons? Many questions, much confusion, and so little time! If you are privacy or data ethics nut, this episode is for you!
Tune in for Al, and more - apparently!
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Follow Tommy and Al on Twitter!
Email Tommy and Al: wtncast@gmail.com
Follow What's That Noise?! on Apple Music and on Spotify
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
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 ship, how much courage would be required to do so - and whether or not the grass is truly 'greener' on the other side?
In this episode we hear from our beloved co-host Mr. Al Coombs about his professional journey, one which began with a short stint in insurance, to over a decade as a popular AM daytime radio show host on the Telemedia, Standard, Astral, and Bell media networks - to newly minted public school teacher. Every confusion, every curiousity, and every pain-and-gain that you might imagine are all things that Al reflects on. The biggest? Energy. How much energy does one burn before what makes sense blurs into confusion and ambiguity?
We also address another confusion: an accusation from another podcaster that we have been targeting and attacking his show and attempting to steal their listeners. Tommy and Al explain the backstory, which begins with another host from the USA who uses our name: What's That Noise?! - verbatim. Our show precedes his, by more than a year - which is why Apple's legal team pulled his show from their content listing. We certainly never meant harm to this other podcaster, but the law is law - is it not?
Tune in for Al, and more - apparently!
Subscribe for updates!
Follow Tommy and Al on Twitter!
Email Tommy and Al: wtncast@gmail.com
Follow What's That Noise?! on Apple Music and on Spotify
Monday Jun 06, 2022
Monday Jun 06, 2022
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 Indigenous technology company that designs specialized software solutions for Indigenous peoples across Canada.
Lawrence joins us to talk about the messiness that is "Digital Identity" and "digital identity". That's right, there's two. One has capitals in "D" and "I" in it, and the other does not. The latter refers to a concept - digital identity, as in 'who we are' online in terms of how governments and corporations define and represent us. The second, Digital Identity, is a technology. It is the one that we've seen governments around the world develop throughout the pandemic as a digital alternative to, for example, your driver's license... Imagine a passport you keep on your phone.
What makes both versions particularly confusing is that both have tremendous implications for Indigenous peoples, albeit with very different but equally important stakes. Come listen to the solutions and efforts put forth by Lawrence and his company OneFeather to make both versions - digital identity and Digital Identity - meaningful, accessible, proactive and a hopeful avenue for relationship building between Indigenous communities and Canada. Lawrence has opened a door for Canada to commit to reconciliation in the digital space - how will we reciprocate?
Subscribe for updates!
Follow Tommy and Al on Twitter!
Email Tommy and Al: wtncast@gmail.com
Follow What's That Noise?! on Apple Music and on Spotify
Thursday Apr 21, 2022
Thursday Apr 21, 2022
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 country would open its borders to those in need, no? Not so fast. The world's borders - how they are made, how they are managed, and how they affect the lives and geographies around them - as our returning guest and dear friend Dr. Benjamin Muller tells us, are confusing. Since well before 9/11 but particularly after it, borders and borderlands have been created to try and secure life in the image of those who build them. As you'll hear, securing life through borders and bordering practices is anything but clear, obvious or even helpful to the people that live near them. When we study borders critically, we don't find clarity - only more confusion.
Tune in for a fantastic chat with a brilliant researcher!
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Follow Tommy and Al on Twitter!
Email Tommy and Al: wtncast@gmail.com
Follow What's That Noise?! on Apple Music and on Spotify
Tuesday Apr 05, 2022
Tuesday Apr 05, 2022
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 world? Where did it go?
Is Western society seriously this obsessed with celebrity drama? Could it be the case that #theslap highlighted complex hidden social, mental health, and racial issues? Are algorithms and filter bubbles to blame? Why are we still talking about this?! When can we move on?! And how?!?! HOW?!
Join us to help Tommy extinguish not only his confusion, but his frustration. Back to reality, please!!
Subscribe for updates!
Follow Tommy and Al on Twitter!
Email Tommy and Al: wtncast@gmail.com
Follow What's That Noise?! on Apple Music and on Spotify
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
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 uncomfortable, unconfident, and uncertain about who they are, what they are doing and where they are heading? Can neurotech help with this, or perhaps make it all more complicated?
Tommy and Al are joined by Dr. Brenda McPhail, Director of the Privacy, Technology & Surveillance Program and member of the National Security team at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Someone who knows lots about neurotechnology, but has even more questions than Tommy and Al do!
Subscribe for updates!
Follow Tommy and Al on Twitter!
Email Tommy and Al: wtncast@gmail.com
Follow What's That Noise?! on Apple Music and on Spotify
Saturday Feb 26, 2022
Saturday Feb 26, 2022
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 you? What would that look like? Is there any way to support Ukrainians in their time of urgent need beyond memes, hashtags, and profile pictures of blue and yellow flags? Tommy and Al spent the last day scanning civil society, journalism, news media, not-for-profit, and academic sources to find three ways that you can help. We hope that you'll find that donating, combatting disinformation, and connecting your neighbours will bring you a bit closer to helping those who desperately need the world to step up.
In this episode, we mention numerous charity organizations, reliable news sources, and credible journalists that we encourage you to connect with. Please take a moment this weekend to learn more about them. This listed is definitely not exhaustive. Let's keep expanding it together, friends.
Charitable Organizations
The Canada-Ukraine Foundation- a Toronto-based group that co-ordinates charitable aid for Ukraine
Doctors Without Borders- a humanitarian group that is currently mobilizing an emergency-preparedness response plan to ensure that access to health care and medicine are available to Ukrainians
Save the Children- an international NGO delivering emergency aide to Ukrainian families
Voices of Children- offers psychological support to kids affected by the war in Ukraine
Phoenix Wings - supplies the Ukrainian army with medical treatment and defensive equipment like vests and helmets
Shelter Ugolyok - an animal rescue and farm sanctuary in Ukraine, an incredibly important organization with a personal connection to Tommy's family
Outright Action International - protects marginalized BIPOC and LGBQT2+ community members, which is particularly important given Putin's legacy of antihomophobic violence
Credible Journalists
Olga Tokariuk, Sarah Rainsford, Christopher Miller, Olga Rudenko
Credible, Local News Sources
The Kyiv Independent, The New Voice of Ukraine, Ukraine World, Kyiv Post
Tuesday Feb 15, 2022
Tuesday Feb 15, 2022
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, and if so - how? Why even build this technology? Who builds, and for what reasons? And as ever, what are the social, ethical, and privacy implications of doing so? Soo many questions, and so few answers - even for experts like our wonderful guest, Dr. Brenda McPhail, Director of the Privacy, Technology & Surveillance Program and member of the National Security team at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Even a Canadian thought leader in our rights around technology is often uncertain about what exactly is going on with #neurotech. Why? There is a ton learn to learn, and all of it is worth openly talking about. So come be confused with us! Confusion has a lot to teach us, especially about what can happen to our rights and liberties if we don't ask the right questions about technology on and inside our bodies...
Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
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 of data correlations. Is it not correlations at the heart of AI and advertising, after all? That's certainly where this conversation is headed. We're delighted to resume our superbly odd conversation with our friend Dr. Dillon Mahmoudi, Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. If you haven't caught Part 1, consider heading back and giving it a listen first. It's a douzie!
<3 Tommy and Al
Monday Jan 17, 2022
Monday Jan 17, 2022
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 explores the complexities of how targeted advertisements show up in your smartphone. Even with his background in computer science, Dillon is as confused as Tommy and Al about how automated systems find ways to build profiles about who we as consumers are.
How are your preferences measured? What happens with these data? What kinds of assumptions are made about who we are?... And we all happen, of course, to be cisgender white men. What happens in automated advertising when you do not fit the majority?
You might not find many answers to these questions in this episode, but you might just find that finding answers is not always possible...
Stay tuned for episode 2 - release on February 1st!
<3 Tommy and Al
Monday Jan 03, 2022
Monday Jan 03, 2022
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 London, Ontario for over a decade. He joins us at WTNCast as a freshly-minted public school teacher, too! His warmth and interview experience is truly invigorating. It's such a pleasure to have you join the show, @thatalcoombsguy!
Second, the podcast has re relaunched! For the past four months, Tommy and Al have worked together to refine the show's focus. You can expect a closer dive into noise-as-confusion with our guests, and especially so when that noise becomes political. We are excited to continue bringing exciting guests on the show who will talk about times they've encountering confusion, or closely-related noisy matters, like ambiguity, distraction, and so on. We're also looking forward to hear from our guests about how their field, profession, career, colleagues, and their professional and personal worlds around them encounter and deal with noise, too.
We don't expect that you'll leave with answers, perhaps just more questions. But there's so much to learn in confusion, especially when there's no clarity... Come be uncomfortable with us, and laugh a little, too.
Thanks so much for (re)joining us, friends!
<3 Tommy and Al
Sunday May 30, 2021
Sunday May 30, 2021
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, Ethics & Society - a Masters of Engineering course where students use any media format they wish to explore the social and ethical implications of artificial intelligence systems.
And so, this episode is presented a bit differently than what you are used to - but it is still driven by matters of confusion, and certainly in the pursuit of clarity. Tommy raises some hard questions as he looks into the history of PredPol. As he outlines right off the top, PredPol is a relatively well known system by this point - as too are its social and ethical implications. But the matter of how the system came to be so problematic is an important one, too. As Tommy argues, the biases, assumptions, and limited intellectual scope of its designers implicated how the system was built, what kind of data it uses, and what kind of algorithm it used. This lattermost point is an intriguing one, precisely because the algorithm PredPol is built on has virtually nothing to do with social, cultural, or political life. Rather, it was designed to detect earthquakes...
Special shout out to João Lobato, the brilliant mind behind LASERS, whose EP you hear on this track. You can hear his incredible work here.
Follow your host: @whatsthatdata | @wtncast
Monday Mar 08, 2021
Monday Mar 08, 2021
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 at Purchase College of the State University of New York, who was born in Iran and became a refugee of the Iran-Iraq war, which led him to the suburbs of Boston. Roger is a Professor in the Department of English at Queen’s College of the The City University of New York. Roger was born in Normal, Illinois to an Iranian father, and grew up in San Antonio. Instead of talking primarily about their wonderfully powerful pieces, Tommy chats with Mehdi and Roger about what occasioned their coming together: the unexplained suspension of Katherine and Leila's Twitter account. A perplexing and confusing situation that remains unresolved after more than 6 months. Indeed, today's chat is about politicized censorship, the ironies of cancel culture, and of course, their catalysts: a pandemic riding out on the heels of the most incompetent President in American history. From the burden of hybridity, the policing of the imagination, and the absence of space for ambiguity, to the false ideal of whiteness and the commodification of lies, there’s something here for everyone. We begin by discussing the utter disappointment of Katherine and Leila’s twitter account suspension, and Twitter’s refusal to not only reinstate it, but their lack of willingness to actually investigate what happened.
Follow your host: @whatsthatdata | @wtncast
Follow our guests, Prof. Mehdi Tavana Okasi: @mokasi and Dr. Roger Sedarat: @rogersedarat
Follow Katherine, Leila and their contributors (IF THE ACCOUNT IS EVER REINSTATED): @IRANMusings
Follow the University of Texas Press: @UTexasPress
A very special thanks to Dr. Babak Elahi and The Resonant Freqs for sharing their incredible music for this special series. Dr. Elahi is also a contributor to My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora.
Monday Sep 21, 2020
Monday Sep 21, 2020
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 My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora, not only as the musical talent behind the series' music, but also as author of chapter 25: Errand. Dr. Elahi reflects on his deeply personal piece, which surrounds the days and months leading to the loss of his dear mother. In his travel back to Iran, Babak negotiates navigates cultural, emotional, political, and social tensions that, in more ways than one, offer themselves rather productively as points of reflection about his personal and professional journeys as an Iranian-American living in Flint, Michigan. Dr. Elahi is a rich source of experience and insight about identity, justice, language, honor, belonging, and mobility. Babak is a gracious, articulate, and thoughtful speaker who has a lot to share about the values of family, community, and the importance of basic human connection.
Follow your host: @whatsthatdata | @wtncast
Follow our guest, Dr. Babak Elahi: @babakelahi
Follow Katherine, Leila and their contributors: @IRANMusings
Follow the University of Texas Press: @UTexasPress
A very special thanks to Dr. Babak Elahi and The Resonant Freqs for sharing their incredible music for this special series. Dr. Elahi is also a contributor to My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora - we look forward to his interview, indeed!