Familiar Shapes

Technology and magic have a long, rich history together. Each Wednesday, filmmaker Heather Freeman guides us through this apparent paradox with technologists and historians from around the world. If you're into history, witchcraft, magic, social media, artificial intelligence, infotech, or ethics, this podcast brings them together with friendly familiars and malicious bots.

Podcasting since 2020 • 22 episodes

Familiar Shapes

Latest Episodes

1. Magnum Opus Postmortem

What do you do when Covid-19 kills the context of your feature documentary film? You turn it into a podcast, apparently. Filmmaker Heather Freeman interviews

April 19, 2020 • Season 1 • Episode 1 • 27:32

2. Tay and John Walsh

Tay is a bot-gone-wrong and John Walsh was a cunning-man accused of witchcraft. Their stories are chased with a crash course in the history of information technologies. Filmmaker H...

April 29, 2020 • Season 1 • Episode 2 • 26:45

3. Magical Networks

What did early modern people really think about magic? And how do on-line spaces differ from real-world spaces?In this episode, Heather Freeman interviews:<...

May 06, 2020 • Season 1 • Episode 3 • 31:06

4. The Cunning Folks' Commons

Who were the early modern cunning folk, and what exactly were they doing with all those books? And how do we act ethically in a community and avoid the 'Tragedy of the Commons'?In this episode,

May 13, 2020 • Season 1 • Episode 4 • 37:12

5. The Well-Intentioned Bot

We’ll look at how social bots interact with people in on-line social networks, and how sometimes people behave like, well, bots. In this episode, Heather Freeman interviews:

May 20, 2020 • Season 1 • Episode 5 • 26:02

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