For this episode of TC Talk: A Tech Comm Podcast, Abi and Benton interview Dr. Rollag Yoon, a professor of English Education and curriculum editor for the Journal of Climate Literacy in Education. We talk about definitions of climate literacy, how to communicate about climate to young people, and why hope needs to be part of the message. Check out ClimateLit.org, which features tons of teaching resources.
The TC Talk webpage has transcripts and sources.
Benton and Abi agree to disagree about how to disagree.
In our "polarized" political climate, what value is there in a rhetoric that doesn't aim to change minds? Is it possible to embody empathetic listening while protecting ourselves from harmful views?
They discuss their not-especially-successful attempts to converse with undecided voters as the election nears, and how presidential debates aren't the right format for solving problems. Abi gives a quick rundown of alternatives to persuasion throughout the rhetorical tradition, culminating in the 2022 book Rhetorical Listening in Action by Ratcliffe & Jensen.
Stay to the end for Abi's most embarrassing high school debate experience.
Sources and further reading
Music credits:
Visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/ for transcript.
Recycling or trash? It's a question you may have asked yourself when faced with a gross can, a heavily-stickered art project, or some weird plastic thing. Benton hijacks the podcast to teach Abi the behind-the-scenes of the recycling process: How it works, how effective it is, the consequences of "wish-cycling," and why plastic sucks so much. He addresses what steps you can take to make recycling work better, besides just putting things in the right bin.
Sources and further reading
TC Talk episodes mentioned:
Wikipedia articles mentioned:
Music credits:
Image credit:
Transcript at https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/podcast/recycling-you-still-dont-get-it/
Benton and Abi feel bad about climate change. As they should. They talk about how to channel negative emotions into productive action, as recommended in the book Facing the Climate Emergency by Margaret Klein Salamon.
Transcript and sources can be found at http://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/
An interview with Dr. Dawn Armfield of Minnesota State, Mankato about how accessibility intersects with artificial intelligence. She shares about AI in teaching, visual AI, inclusivity, ethics, classroom technology, and her current research on virtual reality for young adults with cognitive disabilities. Find Dawn at her faculty bio or her Instagram @dawn_armfield.
Plus, what does AI have to do with fungus?
Find transcript and show notes at https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/
How to turn off your inner literature professor and create a habit of reading for enjoyment.
For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/
This is part 2 of 2 about the book IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black. In Part 1, we described how IBM, through its German subsidiary Dehomag, supported the mass extermination of the Jewish people. How do we know IBM's involvement made a difference in the scope of the mass murders? One clue comes from comparing how things went down in the Netherlands vs. France. We also talk about surveillance, ethical hacking, why the logical fallacy "argumentum / reductio ad Hitlerum" shouldn't be a thing, and what the story of IBM and the Holocaust has to do with UX design. For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/
Nazi Germany systematically identified, relocated, and murdered millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust. But how were they able to kill so many so efficiently? IBM equipment played a key role. Meanwhile, IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson got rich off of Nazi Germany and strategically escaped scrutiny for his collaboration. In this episode, drawing on Edwin Black's book IBM and the Holocaust, Abi explains how intertwined IBM and Nazi Germany were by tracing their paths through the Hitler years.
More jokes, ChatGPT-generated and otherwise, cut from the recording for the "AI is a joke" episode
We reflect on AI text generators, creativity, technical communication, writing instruction, algorithmic literacy, magic, and more. Importantly, we reveal the results of our Twitter experiment: Are we funnier than a robot? (Results were mixed.) Also, find out what happens when we drink an AI-generated cocktail recipe and ask ChatGPT to write a stand-up routine about the ethics of artificial intelligence.
This is the last of our 3-part series in which we discuss The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disaster, by Juliette Kayyem. In this episode, we talk about the importance of continually examining your systems, and learning from mini disasters instead of brushing them off. Finally, we put our newfound knowledge to the test when a baking attempt goes awry. Content warning: Gun violence.
This is part 2 of our 3-part series on disaster communication, where we are discussing the book The Devil Never Sleeps: Learning to Live in an Age of Disaster, by Juliette Kayyem. Last time, we talked about the barriers that make comprehending and communicating about crisis challenging. This time, using cases such as Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon explosion, we address how to overcome those barriers and get quality info to the people who need it. The first step is listening downward, or gathering info from people who are closest to disaster.
Many organizations focus on preventing disaster from happening, but don't have plans in place for when disaster inevitably does happen. And as climate change worsens, we need to buckle up for living in an age of disaster. What does this mean for communicating about risk, crisis, and disaster? To answer this question, Benton shares insights from the book The Devil Never Sleeps by Juliette Kayyem. Benton and Abi also discuss their own very different reactions to disaster in their own lives, as well as their favorite zombie media.
We spoke with Dr. Joseph Robertshaw about his show, The Podcast of Podcasts, and the potential that podcasting holds for everyday technical communicators: students, professionals, educators, and even homesteading enthusiasts.
For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/
We sat down with our friends Lindsey and David to talk about medical misinformation and its effects on relationships, the challenge of choosing what to trust in the swirl of constantly changing pandemic info, and the role that communication can play in increasing access to vaccines and clinical trials. Lindsey and David also tell the story of their family's participation in clinical trials for the COVID vaccines, and the surprising ways it changed their views on social media and the medical research process.
TC Talk opens its 2nd season with a special episode for the Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival 2022. We took our own (very literal) spin on the Carnival theme "Rhetoric: Spaces and Places in and Beyond the Academy" and discuss the epic communication challenge of alien-to-human contact, as portrayed in film. From Arrival to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, sci-fi movies have a lot to teach us about technical communication, audiences, and empathy. Don't forget your towel!
For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/
In this final part of the UX series, we share some ways instructors can help students to see user experience and usability as the rhetorical, human, and messy processes that they are. We also celebrate the season finale of TC Talk with a game show, Wheel of Exigencies, during which you will meet the new celebrity spokesperson for Course Hero!
What if User Experience professionals, instead of designing for a "universal" user, put their most marginalized audiences first? In this episode, we share how you can invite audiences into classic UX processes including personas, localization, visual methods, and usability. We also discuss the challenges that come with participatory design, and how technical communicators must step into their advocacy role in order to support more socially just UX.
For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/
Last episode, we focused on UX (user experience) and usability as a discipline; in this episode, we focus on UX as a practice. We discuss various stages of the UX process, from "empathize" to "ideate" to "prototype." Abi describes typical methods in UX research and testing and when to use them. To demonstrate, she springs a (poorly conducted) usability test on Benton. Finally, they discuss the typical skills and traits required of UX professionals.
Abi and Benton explore the differences between usability and UX (User Experience) through the extended example of a toaster (and share their secret for extra delicious pop-tarts). They discuss the origin of the field of usability and its overlap with technical communication.
For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/