Meet the Minds: Introducing the CAPTivated Podcast with Special Guest Kathryn Cramer Brownell

Welcome to CAPTivated! In this teaser episode hosts Hanna Sistek, Sage Goodwin, and Julius Freeman at Purdue University’s Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology (CAPT) are joined by CAPT Director Professor Kathryn Cramer Brownell, to introduce their new podcast. They chat briefly about who they are, what they do, and why they’re making this podcast: to help listeners understand what’s wrong with our media, how we got here, and what we can do about it.

In upcoming episodes they’ll pick the brains of researchers, journalists, technologists, and other experts to provide listeners with tools and insights to help rethink how we engage with the media that shapes our lives. They’ll explore everything from disinformation and polarization to AI and the death of local journalism. Tune in every other week for new episodes!

Find out more about:

• CAPT
• Kathryn Cramer Brownell
• Made By History
• Sage Goodwin
• Hanna Sistek
• Julius Freeman

Some texts we refer to in this episode:

• A piece Sage wrote for Made By History
• A piece Kathryn wrote for Made By History

Thanks to Meibel Dabodabo for production help!

This podcast is part of CAPT’s efforts to encourage open and diverse intellectual exchange. The ideas presented by individuals on the podcast are their own and do not represent Purdue University, which adheres to a policy of institutional neutrality.

We would love to hear your thoughts on this episode! Send us feedback to captivatedpod@gmail.com

Transcript

In today’s nonstop digital world, trying to stay informed can feel overwhelming. We’re surrounded by disinformation, polarization, algorithm-driven feeds, and endless attention traps — all competing to shape how we see the world and each other. It’s harder than ever to tell what actually matters and what’s just noise.

That’s where CAPTivated comes in. Created by the Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology at Purdue University, this podcast takes a closer look at what’s gone wrong in our information environment — and what we can do to make it better. Each episode brings together researchers, journalists, and technologists to unpack the forces shaping our digital public sphere and explain how we got here.

But it’s not just about the problems. CAPTivated also explores how we can build healthier relationships with the media we consume. Guests even share their own “media diets” — what they read, watch, avoid, and how they reset when the noise gets too loud. The goal? To help listeners cut through the chaos, find the signal, and feel more confident navigating the media that shapes our lives.

Find out more about:

• CAPT
• Kathryn Cramer Brownell
• Made By History
• Sage Goodwin
• Hanna Sistek
• Julius Freeman

Some texts we refer to in this episode:

• A piece Sage wrote for Made By History
• A piece Kathryn wrote for Made By History

Transcript:

[00:007:00] Sage Goodwin:
Welcome to CAPTivated. This is a podcast where we ask the experts what’s wrong with our media and what can we do to make it right. 

[00:14:07] Hanna Sistek: 
In each episode we will examine a specific facet of our digital public sphere, how it works, and how we got here. We're here to help you sort through the noise.

[00:22:04] Julius Freeman: 
So, who are we guys? 

[00:24:00] Hanna Sistek:
I’m Hanna

[00:25:00] Sage Goodwin:
I’m Sage 

[00:26:04] Julius Freeman:
And I’m Julius

[00:27:08]Sage Goodwin:
We're part of a new center at Purdue University, the Center for American Political History, Media and Technology (CAPT). 

[00:00:35] Hanna Sistek: 
And the force behind this new center is Professor Catherine Kramer Brownell, who is with us today. So tell us about you and this new endeavor, Katie.

[00:00:41] Kathryn Cramer Brownell: 
Thank you so much. This podcast is so exciting and really hits at the core mission of CAPT, and that is to better understand our current political and media landscape to understand the incentive structures. Why is it so divisive and diversionary? And to come up with concrete tools to help people better navigate it so that they can get the information that they need as citizens?

I am a history professor here at Purdue University. And I am a scholar of modern America, and I look at the intersections of media and politics in 20th century America. And I've written two books, and they both chronicle how new technologies, from motion pictures to broadcast television, to cable television, and now the Internet, about how they've really upended American politics and culture. 

But here's the thing that I have found in my scholarship that is driving the mission of the center, and that is: people make choices over how to use and structure technology. They can use it for division. They can also use it for democratic engagement and for enlightenment and education. And so if we better understand how we got here, we can see the different paths that we might take this moment where we have so many new technologies and so many opportunities, but also serious challenges. And to address these challenges, we need research and conversation from people across the political spectrum, across the academic world as well. So we need interdisciplinarity. We need people to study this from a sociological angle, a political science angle, a communications angle, a philosophical angle, and yes, of course, a historical angle.

And so that's what we hope to do with this center: to generate interdisciplinary research and conversations to better understand our current information landscape and to better navigate it. And so we also hope to bring in a lot of programming and tools to take this research beyond the confines of the university and apply it in the daily lives of individuals who really are looking for solutions, who feel overwhelmed, the way that you mentioned, Julius, every day.

I'm really excited to also bring in new scholars to Purdue through our postdoctoral research fellowship program. And that's how we've gotten you Sage to go all the way from the UK to Boston to West Lafayette, Indiana. and to bring in political scientists like you, Hannah, as well. And so, tell us a little bit about how you found out about CAPT. 

[00:03:25] Sage Goodwin: 
I pitched an article for a column that Katie edits called Made by History, which brings historical research to put current things happening in the news into historical context. And that's when I first met Katie. Since then, it's been a wonderful five years, and she's been a really great mentor to me, so I was really excited when I heard about her new center, I am also a historian, and I'm working on a book about the Civil Rights movement and racial politics, and how they affected the development of the American television news industry in the fifties and sixties.

So with CAPT, American Political History, check, media, check, technology, check. In my research, I'm interested in all of the questions that we're thinking about here at CAPT. How does power operate to structure a news media ecosystem? What role do business interests play? How do different actors use discourses about bias in the news as a political strategy? All that good stuff. So this is a really great place to be sort of thinking, and in conversation, while I'm working on this book, I've also got a background in public humanities events organizing, and in this work, I always focus on bringing people from different areas together in conversation about shared topics of interest.

So different disciplines, people inside and outside of academia, and that's something we're also trying to do here at CAPT. So I'm really excited to bring some of the conversations we're having outside of the Ivory tower. What about you, Hanna? 

[00:04:50] Hanna Sistek: 
Yeah, so I heard about Katie and the Center through a couple of co-authors that I worked with, here at Purdue, on a new information literacy framework based around mindfulness. And I got so excited when I first heard about CAPHMT because it fits perfectly with the questions that I'm interested in. So for a long time, as a journalist writing for Swedish and Scandinavian publications from abroad. I was based in India, Egypt, and the Bay Area, and I travelled all the time. And I got interested in the attention economy when I did a fellowship at Stanford in innovation journalism.

And that's when I started thinking about how technology impacts our public sphere. So, reporting on the ground in 19 different countries made me curious about the power structures behind what was happening. And this eventually led me to pursue a PhD in political science. 

In my research, I've been interested in understanding what societal conditions lower accountability for politicians and have paved the way for the increased use of falsehoods that we can see in our information environment. And among these conditions are increased affective polarization, where we begin to see out partisans as enemies, and also the fragmentation of media landscapes. So how did you get involved with this, Julius? 

[00:06:01] Julius Freeman: 
Well, as you all can hear, I am not as illustrious as these amazing individuals, but I do bring something to the table, and I met Katie when I was taking a class with Dr. Jen Hoewe here at Purdue, and Katie talked about CAPT, how it was upcoming. And I just felt like I wanted to be involved in some way and learn more. And so immediately after class, I went right up to Katie, and I told her, I was like, you know, I have some things that I'm interested in, and I think I might be useful to the project. We met, and I told her, you know, I may not be so useful on the research side as I'm still developing my research skills as I'm a third-year PhD student here at Purdue, but what I do have is some skills when it comes to making podcasts. I can edit, I can talk, and I can do all the other stuff. And she was like, great, let's work. And so I've been a part of it ever since, and I've just been really amazed by the opportunity to work with such amazing people like yourselves. And I'm just excited to be a part.

[00:06:57] Kathryn Cramer Brownell: 
I'm thrilled to have all of you be a part of this project. And as Sage mentioned, I also added a column called Made by History that seeks to bring historical insight to contemporary events. And we've run several pieces on media history and political history that I think are very valuable resources, and we can link to them in our show notes as well. However, what is the value of a podcast? Why are we doing a podcast? 

[00:07:23] Hanna Sistek: 
Yeah. So we already have all these amazing speakers that are coming to our CAPT seminar series, so we figured wanna pick their brains a little bit more and bring them to the public. We know a lot of people are struggling with navigating our broken information system, so let's get some advice from the experts.

[00:07:40] Sage Goodwin: 
So on the podcast in the coming weeks, we'll be talking to researchers, journalists, content creators, technologists, policy makers, and a ton more interesting people to help us understand how we got here, how it all works, and how to stay sane. 

[00:07:55] Julius Freeman: 
We'll be shooting to bring you episodes every fortnight. Now, let's pause there. I did not know what that meant, but it was explained to me that we're adding a global perspective to this podcast. Fortnite means every other week, so we are learning together already before we even get into the content, guys. We're already learning, so every fortnight we will be bringing you a podcast.

Our first conversation was with Dr. Nicole Hemmer, a professor of Media and American politics, and it's an amazing podcast. She had such great wisdom and such great knowledge to offer to us all, and I hope you all listen to it in every podcast to come. It's so great to have you all listening.