TC Talk

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 Braver Angels. (n.d.). Our Mission. Braver Angels. Retrieved October 21, 2024, from https://braverangels.org/our-mission/ Burke, K. (1969). A Grammar of Motives. University of California Press. Compassionate Listening Project. (n.d.). History. CompassionateListening. Retrieved October 21, 2024, from https://www.compassionatelistening.org/history Foss, S. K., & Griffin, C. L. (1995). Beyond persuasion: A proposal for an invitational rhetoric. Communications Monographs, 62(1), 2–18. Gearhart, S. M. (1979). The womanization of rhetoric. Women's Studies International Quarterly, 2(2), 195–201. Heller, C. (2015, March 9). Life Inside Jabba the Hutt: Toby Philpott Explains How Puppeteers Operated Jabba the Hutt. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/387298/life-inside-jabba-the-hutt/ Inman, M. (n.d.) "Piggers are going all the way this year." The Oatmeal. https://theoatmeal.com/pl/minor_differences2/locker_room Jarratt, S. C. (1991). Feminism and composition: The case for conflict. Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age, 105–123. Organizing and protest security culture. (2022, March). [Audio recording]. The Poor Proles Skillshare. https://open.spotify.com/show/2Xb99VLft9T9ObBLFJkj3n Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1973). The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. University of Notre Dame Pess. Quintilian. (1987). Quintilian on the teaching of speaking and writing: Translations from books one, two, and ten of the Institutio Oratoria (J. J. Murphy, Trans.). SIU Press. Ratcliffe, K., & Jensen, K. (2022). Rhetorical Listening in Action: A Concept-Tactic Approach. Parlor Press LLC. Talking radical politics with Dr. Ayesha Khan. (2022, March). [Podcast episode]. The Poor Proles Skillshare. https://open.spotify.com/show/2Xb99VLft9T9ObBLFJkj3n Talking Sense: Navigating relationships across political divides. (2024, September 5). MPR News. https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/09/04/talking-sense-navigating-relationships-across-political-divides Weil, Z., & Goodall, J. (2024). The Solutionary Way: Transform Your Life, Your Community, and the World for the Better. New Society Publishers. WeRateDogs (Director). (2024, September 30). Tim Walz and His Rescue Dog Scout | WeWalkDogs [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spiwlde4kys Music credits:  Opening theme:  S: Disco Funk Loop by SergeQuadrado | License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 Julius Fučík (1897) "Entrance of the Gladiators" op. 68 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: “Cult rhetoric.” https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/techcommtalk/episodes/Cult-rhetoric-e1b1gpi/a-a70h9n0 “Tech comm from outer space: More lessons from alien movies.” https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/techcommtalk/episodes/Tech-comm-from-outer-space-More-lessons-from-alien-movies-e1md55n/a-a8cdbc1 Wikipedia articles mentioned: “Recycling” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling “Sustainability” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability “Microplastics” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics “Greenwashing.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing “Wishcycling.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishcycling Music credits: Opening theme:  S: Disco Funk Loop by SergeQuadrado | License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 Ensemble. (2008). “So they say” [Song]. On Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog Soundtrack [Album]. Mutant Enemy. Wheatus. (2000). “Teenage dirtbag” [Song]. On Wheatus [Album]. Columbia. Image credit: Siera Wild, “Recycling sign green.png.” CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons 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/

Audience is arguably the most central concept in the fields of rhetoric and tech comm. What have theorists been asking about audience from centuries ago up until the modern day, when social media has exploded the reach and interactivity of audiences? What does the evolution of audience mean for technical and professional communicators? And what is the best episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000? Books discussed include Involving the Audience by Lee-Ann Breuch and Update Culture by John Gallagher. For transcripts and sources, visit https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

Part 1 established how social justice is relevant to technical communication; Part 2 follows up with a parade of social-justice-oriented projects from technical communication scholars. We draw specifically from the edited collections Citizenship and Advocacy in Technical Communication by Agboka and Matveeva, and Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work by Walton and Agboka. In discussing the chapters, we touch on topics including the Hawai'i false missile alert, tarot cards for tech, ranked choice voting, and Benton's high-voltage senior design project. We hope you come away inspired by the ways people are enacting social justice in their research, teaching, and practice. For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk

Tech comm may have a reputation for being "objective" and "neutral," but that reputation has made it too easy for the field to distance itself from the real injustices it has perpetuated. In their important book Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn, Walton, Moore, and Jones show how social justice is integral to technical communication and explain foundational concepts such as privilege, intersectionality, and coalitional action. For instructors and practitioners wondering "What can I do?" this book is an excellent place to start. Plus, stick around for Fun with Fungi with Benton, our resident fun guy. For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/ [Episode image is a meme of Ina Garten with the text, "If you don't have hand-foraged wild mushrooms, store-bought is fine."]

What comes to mind when you think of racist medical experimentation in the United States? For most people, it's the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study, during which doctors allowed Black men to die from syphilis in order to study "the natural progression of the disease," even though effective treatment existed. In her book Medical Apartheid, medical journalist Harriet Washington argues that this is just one example in a long history of racism against Black people in medical research, and that we need to face this history if we are to build trust with Black communities. We discuss key points from her book, starting in the age of chattel slavery in the United States up through Americans' collaboration with South African apartheid doctors aiming to develop racially-targeted biological warfare. This topic has implications for health communicators who are writing and designing for marginalized audiences. More broadly, awareness of this history is necessary to make sense of current health disparities by race, most recently made evident with COVID-19.

Old prejudices are often coded into new technologies, even those technologies that claim to enhance diversity and fairness. We break down the metaphors of the New Jim Code (from Ruha Benjamin) and the Digital Poorhouse (from Virginia Eubanks) to show how modern technological "fixes" discriminate against Black people and poor people, respectively. Even the best-intentioned algorithms can have disastrous consequences (not unlike Abi's cooking). We suggest some ways that designers and communicators can better account for race and poverty in their designs. In addition, we reveal the fourth rhetorical appeal from Aristotle's lost works. For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

One troglodyte to another, Abi takes Benton through the (semi-) scandalous history of technical communication and looks to its exciting future of inclusivity. We address how the field has answered the big questions of What are we? and Why are we here? We also answer less-significant but no-less-compelling questions like, What is the first rule of foraging? How do you pronounce the word "whaling"? Why does Benton need a new wedding ring? For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

Abi's communication expertise and Benton's science expertise collide as they discuss "Don't Look Up," a comedy/ disaster film by Netflix in which two astronomers try to get the world to care about a planet-killing comet. Abi touches on the film's relevance to communicating in a crisis, while Benton explains how the filmmakers got the science right. In addition, Benton describes what NASA is currently doing to prep for a similar scenario, and Abi outlines her dream space-themed writing course. For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

What skills do we, and students, need to deal with fake news and other low-quality information online? (And how have Benton & Abi applied these skills to their personal political disagreements?) And what is missing from the ways instructors have typically taught information literacy? We discuss resources that can be used in the classroom, such as True or False: A CIA Analyst's Guide to Spotting Fake News by Cindy Otis. We also discuss our favorite historical examples of fake news. For transcripts and sources, see https://faculty.mnsu.edu/tctalk/

Abi & Benton try to come to terms with the fact that information technology has not lived up to our greatest moral hopes for it. We compare our optimistic initial experiences with the internet to our pessimistic outlooks about it today. We discuss Ridolfo & Hart-Davidson's book RhetOps: Rhetoric and Information Warfare, which reveals new ways that rhetorical knowledge can be weaponized by bad actors.

Content warning: suicide. Drawing on the book Cultish by Amanda Montell, we discuss the rhetorical strategies used by cult leaders such as Jim Jones (People's Temple) and L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), and how we see similar strategies used today in less extreme but still potentially dangerous contexts like multi-level marketing and fitness crazes. We hope you come away from the episode with a better understanding of why people join cults and how to recognize your own weak spots when it comes to cultish rhetoric.

What can conspiracy theories teach us about how arguments work? Plus, Benton demonstrates that the U.S. did in fact land on the moon, Abi invents a conspiracy theory, and Benton aces a quiz on Trump's campaign rhetoric. Books discussed include Awful Archives by Jenny Rice and Demagogue for President by Jennifer Mercieca.

Short answer: Not entirely. But there is still a role for rhetoric. We talk about the book Vaccine Rhetorics by Heidi Lawrence, and how her theory of material exigence might apply to the COVID vaccine situation. We also discuss the potential of gamifying and "pre-bunking" to counteract medical misinformation. Stay to the end for bonus Schwarzenegger and Picard impressions by Benton.

We pick up our last vax comm chat by addressing historical reasons for vaccine skepticism, the split between personal experience and scientific data as evidence, and Andrew Wakefield's infamous journal article. We discuss highlights of the book The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin.

In general, what works and doesn't work when it comes to vaccine communication? How does the COVID vaccine controversy compare to past vaccine controversies?

Through a tour of Andy Weir's books (The Martian, Artemis, Project Hail Mary), Abi & Benton discuss how science fiction can enhance our understanding of tech comm.

Abi & Benton discuss their favorite strategies for getting more reading done, whether for work or for fun. Don't miss Benton's epic Gandalf impression at 8 minutes.