This episode is "Riffing." Riffing: What is it? It's a collaborative effort minus communication, an experiment with the unknown; it's developing something creative from a minimal snippet of audio and working extremely freely within very defined parameters. It's Zeugma members developing ideas off of each other--or tripping each other up and deliberately misinterpreting each other. It's a mix of exciting, weird, and hilarious that is hard to explain. Best just give it a listen.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

In this episode of Zeugma Beck Wise explores hacking, broadly conceived as transformative practice, and the way it intersects with rhetorical teaching and research. In an audio essay, she introduces her own "Rhetoric of Hacking" class and its pedagogical approach. She also interviews Steven LeMieux about the Machinic Invention project group at UT's Digital Writing and Research Lab, which explores the rhetorical constraints and affordances of working with objects like 3D printers and single-board micro-computers.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

Have you heard the one about the Lacanian who made a podcast on laughter? They say it's hysterical.

Thank you, thank you. We'll be here all week.

In this episode of Zeugma, Jake Cowan digs into just what tickles our funny bones. To lend a hand, Jake asked Charles Rogers -- the co-writer and director of the award-winning satirical film Fort Tilden -- and Austin comedian Justin Davidson to talk about just what cracks them up.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

In this episode, Megan Eatman talks with members of the DWRL's Digital Archiving Group and a co-chair of the Rappaport Center's Human Rights and Archives Working Group to learn more about their approaches to, and struggles with, archiving. Cole Wehrle and Sarah Frank discuss the challenges of building an archive from a wide variety of digital and physical materials, and Charlotte Nunes provides suggestions for how scholars can approach archival work in a more radical way.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

In this episode of Zeugma, Axel Bohmann explores the world of sports and fan cultures. A number of fantasy sports players talk about their respective leagues, their motivations for joining them, and the way being a league member has influenced their perspective as fans. We also take a look at roller derby, which has come a long way from its humble beginnings on Austin's 6th Street to currently being the fastest growing sport in the world. Derby announcers Koolaid and Chip Queso explain how the culture of the sport has taken some decisive turns over its history and why derby is about so much more than just sports.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

Are you being watched right now? And if so, what are you going to do about it? In this episode of Zeugma, Beck Wise explores the world of surveillance, from robot baristas to naked body scanners, and the ways people respond to these increasingly prevalent, and increasingly invasive, technologies.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

Following the 2014 State of the Union address, this episode considers presidential rhetoric in its political and historical context. PhD student, Duncan Moench, interviews Jeffrey Tulis, author of The Rhetorical Presidency. Moench asks Tulis’s view of Obama’s biggest rhetorical successes and failures thus far.  

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

"You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion,” wrote GK Chesterton. As unfortunately true as that may be, people today are increasingly passionate about beards, mustaches and generally men's grooming, especially in Austin, Texas. During this second episode of Zeugma's second season, group members Andy Uzendoski and Jake Cowan take on the technology and visual rhetoric surrounding facial hair in honor of Movember.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

Welcome to the second season of Zeugma, the podcast hosted by the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. In the season's first episode, Frightening, producer Michael Roberts looks at the role of sound in horror films. We start off with live footage from two horror film conventions, where participants describe their favorite horror sounds and the effects these sounds have on them. Next is an interview with Spencer Hickman, founder and head of Death Waltz Records, a label dedicated to pressing old horror movie soundtracks to vinyl. We conclude the episode with a review and discussion of the film Berberian Sound Studio, in which a sound engineer loses his mind over a horror film production. All of these segments engage the question what it is about certain sounds that at once chills our bones and at the same time draws us to them.

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.

This episode of Zeugma focuses on the rhetoric of food, taking the prodigious food and restaurant scene of Austin, Texas (the podcast's hometown), as a starting point. We talk with a University of Texas instructor who taught a class on the rhetoric of food, an Austin-based food podcaster, and the executive chef of Contigo, an Austin restaurant. In all these interviews, we consider the way food gets rhetorically framed, constructed, discussed, and consumed. In short, what do we talk about when we talk about food?

You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.