We're All Infrastructure Nerds

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For the second episode of the Culture Study podcast, we’re diving into the nerdy and awesome and frustrating world of the infrastructure that surrounds us. Why are sidewalks so bad in so many places? How do we undo car dependencies? What’s the deal with a power company in Vermont distributing a huge battery to every customer? What are we going to do about all these ready-to-fail water treatment plants? If we can have air conditioners in our STEERING WHEELS why can’t we have good trains?

Deb Chachra, author of How Infrastructure Works, joins the pod to talk about the wild and fascinating systems that shape our world. Also: septic systems.

This is the podcast version of a "just trust me," so even if you don’t think you’re an infrastructure nerd, you’re going to love it. I love it enough to release it ahead of next week’s Taylor Swift deep dive and the following week’s deeply funny episode about Paw Patrol, so that’s saying something.

If you like the episode, it is SO HELPFUL for our fledging pod if you can share it with others. Send it to your nerdy friend or parent who’d love it. Post it on social media. Follow or subscribe to the pod on your podcast app, and/or write us a quick review on iTunes. You’re the best and we literally could not make this pod without your help.

If you want to support the show financially, and get some cool perks, check out our Substack.

Got a question or idea for a future episode? Let us know here.This week, we’re looking for your questions for future episodes about:

-We could still use a few questions re: The Mean Girls Trailer!!!-Celebrity Philanthropies (weird ones, good ones, why do they exist, etc.)-“Little treat” culture-Cold Plunging-Moms for Liberty-Very Contemporary Architecture Trends (like ‘modern farmhouse’)

You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here.

To hear more, visit culturestudypod.substack.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey everyone. Thank you so much for listening to episode one of the culture study podcast. So this is just a
0:06.2	reminder that you can get reminders for each week's episodes and show notes and prompts for our
0:12.8	great discussion threads and a lot more by going to culturestudypod.substack.com. That's also where
0:20.2	you can become a paid subscriber. It's a really
0:22.6	tough world out there for podcasts right now, but subscribers like you make it possible for us to make
0:27.4	this show as weird and nerdy and interesting as we want. And it pays, you know, for all of the
0:34.4	editing and production, all of the stuff that goes into this show. If you'd rather just
0:38.5	listen in your podcast app, that's amazing. Make sure to follow the pod so that you get new episodes
0:43.2	in your feed. And it's also so helpful, like so helpful if you rate and review the show.
0:49.4	All right. Enough of that. Let's do episode two. I feel like a lot of people have written about infrastructure and a disproportionate number of them have been white men who live in North Carolina and, you know, who just, just don't see it in the same way.
1:07.0	They don't sort of focus on it the same way as I do.
1:12.7	So yeah, so it's like, obviously, I think it's a thing that is of broad interest. But I think it's we have been trained to think of
1:17.3	it as, oh, it's just the engineers, the technologists, you know, the city planners. Like anyone
1:23.0	like an MA and urban studies. Like that, yeah yeah but at the same time like we're
1:30.2	all we understand that it's political too right like we're outraged when we hear about Flint we say
1:34.8	things like well those you know they're Americans like how can they possibly be treated that way so
1:39.0	so we totally understand that affidavit and it's just thinking about how to put those pieces together
1:47.0	I'm Anne Helen Peterson, and this is the Culture Study Podcast.
1:50.6	I'm Deb Chachra.
1:51.7	I am a professor of engineering at a small engineering college outside Boston.
1:56.7	And I am the author of how infrastructure works inside the systems that shape our world.
2:01.5	Tell us about your new book.
	...

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