In this episode, Paul and C. J. discuss: 

• Personal roots in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands and origins of the project
• Transformation of the border through massive construction and engineering
• Paradox of closed-border policing vs. open-border trade and transportation
• Water infrastructure, irrigation, and the creation of migrant labor demand
• Systemic flaws, compensatory infrastructure, and the disfiguring of the Rio Grande

Key Takeaways: 

• The U.S.–Mexico border is not a single, uniform place but a 2,000-mile span of diverse ecosystems, cultures, and landscapes that defies simple political narratives.
• Over the last 175+ years, the border has been physically made visible and “legible” through mega-projects, dams, canals, roads, and fences, layered one atop another.
• Water engineering and irrigation projects have not only transformed rivers but also generated powerful economic magnets for migrant labor, tightly linking hydrology to human movement.
• Many contemporary crises at the border stem from earlier grand projects and policies; new “solutions” often serve as compensatory layers that attempt to fix problems those very systems created.
• The most profound environmental damage along the border has been done to the river itself, especially the Rio Grande, whose flow, shape, and ecology have been radically altered, challenging us to rethink our relationship with the more-than-human world.

“The border has always been open, and the border has always been closed. The only question is, to whom and to what and when?” - C. J. Alvarez

Episode Resources:

• Book: Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the U.S.–Mexico Divide - https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477319017/

About C. J. Alvarez: Dr. C. J. Alvarez is an environmental historian whose work explores deserts, the built environment, and the U.S.–Mexico border. He is the author of Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the U.S.-Mexico Divide (2019), a deeply researched study that connects border infrastructure, such as survey markers, fencing, and surveillance systems, to the history of river engineering and large-scale hydraulic projects. His current book project, The Arid Heart, traces the history of the Chihuahuan Desert from the end of the last Ice Age, drawing on Indigenous oral histories, archaeological evidence, and environmental data to craft a multi-millennial narrative and experiment with ecocentric approaches to history. His work has been supported by an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research, and he has served as a visiting fellow at the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Alvarez earned his doctorate in history from the University of Chicago after studying art history at Harvard and Stanford, and he continues to draw inspiration from his upbringing in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Connect with C. J. Alvarez: 

Website: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mals/faculty/ca29356 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/c-j-alvarez-5935ba37/ 

Connect with Paul Ryer & School for Advanced Research:

Website: https://sarweb.org/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sarsantafemultimedia 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-ryer-4a4889156   

Show notes by Podcastologist: Francine Poblete

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. 

• What Gabriella Coleman means by “sturdy knowledge” and why the concept matters in today’s epistemic crisis
• How misinformation debates often rely on a “naive liberal epistemology” that oversimplifies how knowledge is produced
• Why is scientific consensus difficult to achieve, even without political polarization
• Why AI boosterism reflects the same epistemic blind spots as science absolutism

Key Takeaways: 

• Establishing reliable knowledge is never simple or automatic, even in the absence of political polarization. Scientific facts emerge through contested processes shaped by uncertainty, debate, and institutional structures.
• Treating facts as obvious or self-evident often deepens mistrust rather than resolving disagreement. Absolutist claims leave little room for nuance, making public corrections feel like evidence of deception instead of scientific evolution.
• Knowledge is always produced within social and political contexts, and pretending otherwise undermines credibility. Transparency about positionality and process strengthens trust more than claims of pure neutrality.
• AI boosterism repeats the same epistemic mistakes as science absolutism by framing technology as a neutral source of truth. Without humility and accountability, AI risks amplifying, not solving, the current epistemic crisis.

“And you know this notion of sturdy knowledge, as we've explored. And you put so well, is anti-arrogance, it's like pro-humility.” - Gabriella Coleman

Episode Resources:

• Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”
• Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social
• Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France
• Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor
• Naomi Klein, Doppelgänger

About Gabriella Coleman: Gabriella (Biella) Coleman is a full professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her work focuses on the politics, cultures, and ethics of hacking, and she is widely regarded as one of the leading scholars examining hacker communities and digital power. She is the author of Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, the latter named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2014 and recipient of the 2015 Diana Forsythe Prize from the American Anthropological Association.

Coleman’s current research examines the relationship between hackers and the state, including a Ford Foundation–, NSF-, SSHRC-, and FRQ-funded project on the professionalization of hacking from the mid-1990s through the 2000s, co-authored with Matt Goerzen. She is also co-creator of Where Warlocks Stay Up Late, an interactive research website and map, and the founder and editor of Hack_Curio, a video portal on the cultures and politics of hacking.

Beyond academia, Coleman has contributed to major outlets including The New York Times, Wired, Slate, MIT Technology Review, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post, and presented her research to audiences such as the U.S. Congressional Internet Caucus, Brookings Institution, ACLU, and NASA. She delivered the 2022 Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures at the University of Rochester, previously held the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University, taught at NYU, and earned her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Connect with Gabriella Coleman: 

Website: https://gabriellacoleman.org/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriella-biella-coleman-285aa4161/ 

Connect with Paul Ryer & School for Advanced Research:

Website: https://sarweb.org/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sarsantafemultimedia 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-ryer-4a4889156   

Show notes by Podcastologist: Francine Poblete

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. 

• What it feels like to live in Minneapolis amid intensified ICE and Border Patrol operations.
• The role of legal observers and rapid response networks in documenting enforcement activity.
• The power and limits of social media in organizing, surveillance, and public accountability.
• How churches, small businesses, musicians, and neighborhood groups are reshaping civil society in real time.

Key Takeaways: 

• Minneapolis residents describe the current ICE presence as feeling like a “military occupation,” yet alongside fear and exhaustion, there is a profound sense of solidarity and shared purpose.
• Legal observers play a critical role in documenting law enforcement actions, providing evidence for court cases, and countering official misinformation.
• Social media has become both a democratizing force for transparency and a potential tool for surveillance and misinformation, highlighting the need for in-person organizing alongside digital tools.
• Universities and institutional leadership may lag behind grassroots movements, even when faculty, students, and community members are deeply engaged.

“Everybody just wants to figure out some way to help, and all you have to do is give them some opportunity to do that, and they will leap in happily, willingly.” - Carl Elliott

“There is so much power in people standing up for their rights and supporting their neighbors.” - Heidi Reynolds-Stenson

Episode Resources:

• Cultures of Resistance: Collective Action and Rationality in the Anti-Terror Age by Heidi Reynolds-Stenson
• The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No by Carl Elliott

About Carl Elliott: Carl Elliott is a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, where he joined the Center for Bioethics in 1997. Originally from Clover, South Carolina, he trained in both medicine and philosophy at Davidson College, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the University of Glasgow. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award, Elliott has also held fellowships at the Library of Congress, the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, and the School for Advanced Research. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Mother Jones, and The American Scholar. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Ina, and their three children.

About Heidi Reynolds-Stenson: Heidi Reynolds-Stenson earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Arizona in 2018 and soon after joined the faculty at Colorado State University Pueblo. Her research focuses on social movements, protest, and policing, and she is the author of a book and several scholarly articles on these topics. Her current projects examine the impact of Black Lives Matter protests on police reform, historical shifts in protest policing, and legal consciousness surrounding family responsibilities discrimination.

Connect with Carl Elliott: 

Website: https://www.carl-elliott.com/ 

More Information: https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/ellio023 

Connect with Heidi Reynolds-Stenson: 

Website: https://www.dr-hrs.com/ 

More Information: https://www.csupueblo.edu/profile/heidi-reynolds-stenson/index.html

This is a link to download a PDF that includes Rapid Response Phone Numbers for all 50 states if you ever need assistance: https://www.cliniclegal.org/file-download/download/public/80156 

Connect with Paul Ryer & School for Advanced Research:

Website: https://sarweb.org/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sarsantafemultimedia 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-ryer-4a4889156   

Show notes by Podcastologist: Francine Poblete

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it. 

• Why Chaco Canyon drew people for centuries, and why it continues to remain a powerful symbol of the ancient Southwest.
• What social network migration has revealed about Chaco Canyon throughout the centuries.
• How science, oral tradition, and indigenous epistemologies can better work together to interpret sacred places like Chaco.
• The importance of Chaco and the need to respect all peoples involved. 

Key Takeaways: 

• We want to be careful not to polarize the past with modern understandings of categories. For instance, the roads show how interconnected religion, politics, and economics were all interwoven.
• There are different stories and different perspectives that need to be acknowledged and treated with respect as we try to find the balance between preservation, development, and indigenous peoples.
• Chaco matters to different groups. While there may be different views on the best way to protect Chaco, the shared sentiment is that Chaco is powerful, sacred, and significant, and we should all do what we can to ensure its health.
• There are many different reasons why people may have left Chaco, ranging from droughts to astrological phenomena to clans dying out and more.

“All of us have to be very, very careful that we don't take our Western European education and template and try to lay it down on a group of people that might as well come from Venus or Mars. We don't know what they were thinking; we don't know their judgment, values, and such things. We’ve got to be careful of not trying to interpret ancestral people in our everyday framework.” - Phillip Tuwaletstiwa

Episode Resources: 

• Evaluating Chaco migration scenarios using dynamic social network analysis
• Parallel roads, solstice and sacred geography at the Gasco Site 
• Lidar Reveals Sacred Roads Near Chaco Canyon

About Dr. Barbara Mills: Regents’ Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona and Curator of Archaeology at the Arizona State Museum, Dr. Mills is one of the foremost experts on the social networks, migrations, and ceremonial practices of Chacoan society. Her work integrates dynamic social network analysis, ceramic studies, and Indigenous collaboration to explore why people gathered — and eventually dispersed — from Chaco Canyon.

Connect with Barbara:

Website: https://anthropology.arizona.edu/person/barbara-mills 

About Phillip Tuwaletstiwa: A Native archaeologist and geodesist of Hopi heritage, Phillip Tuwaletstiwa collaborated with Anna Sofaer to scientifically validate the astronomical alignments of Chacoan buildings and petroglyphs. His work underscores the engineering and cosmological sophistication of the Chacoans — and his own DNA has been linked to ancestral burials within Pueblo Bonito.

About Dr. Robert Weiner: Postdoctoral Fellow in the Dartmouth Society of Fellows and a specialist in ritual landscapes, Dr. Weiner studies the roads, rituals, and cosmologies of the Ancestral Four Corners societies. His recent lidar and fieldwork at the Gasco Site reveals previously unknown parallel roads aligned with solstice sunrises and sacred mountains — transforming how we understand Chacoan movement and meaning.

Connect with Robert:

Website: https://dartmouth.academia.edu/RobWeiner   

Connect with Paul Ryer & School for Advanced Research:  

Website: https://sarweb.org/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sarsantafemultimedia 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-ryer-4a4889156

• How AI and machine learning have changed the approach to archeological research.
• Understanding the paradigm shift AI brings to archaeology.
• Multi-factorial and the human factor.
• Ethical considerations surrounding AI, indigenous communities, and cultural heritage.

Key Takeaways:

• We are currently in a stage of experimentation where we are figuring out what AI and machine learning are good at doing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
• Multi-factorial analysis allows for gathering and analyzing information at scale, generating new knowledge and opening up lines of questioning.
• AI is not an all-seeing eye to identify all archaeological sites. It will not replace the human archaeologist with human-interpretive skills.
•  We need to be intentional about how we engage with AI technology and the types of questions we ask of it.

“If we leave technology to the technology or to the technologists, we miss the point, which is ethical analysis, discussion of different ontologies and human interpretation, which is necessary in many terms.” 

- Dr. Maurizio Forte

Episode Resources:

• Artificial intelligence rethinks the past: How computers are reconstructing Etruscan and Roman landscapes
• Vision Foundation Models in Remote Sensing: A survey
• Augmenting field data with archaeological imagery survey: mapping hilltop fortifications on the north coast of Peru

About Dr. Forte: Dr. Maurizio Forte is the William and Sue Gross Distinguished Professor of Classical Studies, Art, Art History, and Visual Studies at Duke University. He is a pioneer in digital archaeology, integrating technologies such as virtual reality, AI, and neuroaesthetics into the study of ancient civilizations. As the founder of the Dig@Lab at Duke, he leads interdisciplinary research at the intersection of cultural heritage and emerging technologies. Dr. Forte currently serves as an AAAS-SPTF Fellow and advisor for cultural heritage and neurodiplomacy at the U.S. Department of State.

Connect with Maurizio:

Website: maurizioforte.com

About Dr. VanValkenburgh: Dr. Parker VanValkenburgh is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brown University and Interim Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. His research focuses on the long-term impacts of colonialism and imperialism on Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes. Utilizing archaeological methods, GIS, and remote sensing, he co-directs projects like the Paisajes Arqueológicos de Chachapoyas (PACha) and the Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History, and Archaeology (GeoPACHA).

Connect with Parker:

Website: vivo.brown.edu/display/pvanvalk

About Dr. Wernke: Dr. Steven Wernke is a Professor and Chair of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, where he directs the Spatial Analysis Research Laboratory and the Vanderbilt Institute for Spatial Research. His work centers on the lived experiences of Indigenous communities during the Inka and Spanish colonial periods in the Andes. By combining archaeological and documentary datasets within geospatial frameworks, he explores how new communities and landscapes emerged from colonial encounters.

Connect with Steven:

Website: stevenwernke.com

About Dr. Zimmer-Dauphinee: Dr. James Zimmer-Dauphinee is an archaeologist specializing in computational archaeology, GIS, and machine learning. Affiliated with Vanderbilt University, his research applies AI and remote sensing to understand the spatial dynamics of colonization and Indigenous land use in the Andes. He has contributed to projects like GeoPACHA, enhancing large-scale archaeological surveys through AI-assisted satellite imagery analysis.

Connect with James:

Website: as.vanderbilt.edu/anthropology/bio/james-zimmer-dauphinee

Connect with Paul Ryer & School for Advanced Research:

Website: sarweb.org

YouTube: youtube.com/@sarsantafemultimedia

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/paul-ryer-4a4889156

In this episode, Doug and Paul introduce In Context with SAR!

How do the present and past shape each other? Why does understanding this matter?

Investigating Humanity with SAR tackles the fascinating world of scholarly research through questions like why people left Chaco Canyon or how climate change affects migration and explores them through the perspectives of three experts across anthropology, archaeology, and the humanities more broadly.

Hosted by Paul Ryer and produced by the School for Advanced Research (SAR), each episode brings together voices from the field who share real-world stories, behind-the-scenes research, and their takes on today’s challenges.

Founded in 1907, SAR is a hub for groundbreaking social science and humanities research, supporting scholars and artists through residencies, seminars, and collaborations. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico SAR is also home to the Indian Arts Research Center, a leader in Native arts and museum practices.

Whether you’re an academic, a student, or just someone who loves a good story, Investigating Humanity with SAR is here to bring big ideas to life.

Join us as we connect history to today’s world—one question at a time.

“The idea is to take some academic topics that are relevant to the wider world and provide a forum for cutting-edge scholars to get together and have a conversation about their work, but hopefully in ways which are intelligible to non-scholars.” - Paul Ryer

Connect with Paul Ryer & School for Advanced Research:  

Website: https://sarweb.org/ 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sarsantafemultimedia 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-ryer-4a4889156