Ars Technica Live #1: Meat

Join Ars Technica writers and anthropologist Krish Seetah for a conversation about the history and culture of meat-eating! Join us April 20 for the first episode of Ars Technica Live, a monthly interview series with fascinating people who work at the intersections of tech, science and culture. Filmed before a live audience in Oakland tiki bar Longitude (347 14th St., Oakland, CA), each episode is a speculative, informal conversation between Ars Technica hosts Annalee Newitz and Cyrus Farivar and an invited guest. The audience, drawn from Ars Technica’s readers, are also invited to join the conversation and ask questions. These aren’t soundbyte setups; they are deepcuts from the frontiers of research and creativity. April’s event is about the history of meat-eating and animal butchery, from the first archaeological traces of humans hunting other animals, to our contemporary obsession with locally-sourced meat and paleo diets. Guest Krish Seetah is a Stanford anthropologist and former butcher who is working on a book about the history of meat eating. Episodes are posted to Ars Technica the week after the live events. Contact: Annalee Newitz annalee@arstechnica.com Krish Seetah is an assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University. He is a zooarchaeologist who uses butchery analysis—with the benefit of professional and ethnographic experience—to investigate the human-animal relationship. His work centers on understanding how people manipulate animal bodies, both during life and after death. He is currently working on a book about the history and cultural meanings of meat. Annalee Newitz is the tech culture editor at Ars Technica. Previously she was the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo and io9. She is the author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction (Doubleday). Her first novel, Autonomous, comes out in 2017 from Tor Books. Cyrus Farivar is the senior business editor at Ars Technica. His book, The Internet of Elsewhere (Rutgers UP) is about the history and effects of the Internet on different countries around the world, including Senegal, Iran, Estonia and South Korea. He previously was the Sci-Tech Editor, and host of "Spectrum" at Deutsche Welle English, Germany's international broadcaster. Longitude tiki bar is located at 347 14th St., Oakland, CA 94612. (longitudeoakland.com)