machinelistening
/
curriculum

---
title: "Mara Mills, Xiaochang Li, Jessica Feldman, Michelle Pfeifer"
Description: "Mara, Xiaochang, Jessica and Michelle talk us through the history and politics of machine listening, from 'affect recognition' and the 'statistical turn' in ASR to automated accent detection at the German border, voiceprints and the 'assistive pretext'. This is an expansive conversation with an amazing group of scholars, who share a common connection to the Media, Culture, and Communications department at NYU, founded by Neil Postman in 1971 at the urging of Marshall McLuhan."
aliases: []
author: "Machine Listening"
date: "2021-03-01T00:00:00-05:00"
episode_image: "images/ml.gif"
explicit: "no"
hosts: ["james-parker", "joel-stern", "sean-dockray"]
images: ["images/ml.gif"]
news_keywords: []
podcast_duration: "01:29:18"
podcast_file: "https://machinelistening.exposed/_preview/library/Mara%20Mills/Mara%20Mills,%20Xiaochang%20Li,%20Jessica%20F%20(535)/Mara%20Mills,%20Xiaochang%20Li,%20Jessi%20-%20Mara%20Mills.mp3"
podcast_bytes: ""
youtube: ""
categories: []
series: []
tags: []
---

[Mara](http://maramills.org/), [Xiaochang](https://comm.stanford.edu/faculty-li/), [Jessica](http://jessicafeldman.org/) and [Michelle](https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/michelle-pfeifer) talk us through the history and politics of machine listening, from ‘affect recognition’ and the ‘statistical turn’ in ASR to automated accent detection at the German border, voiceprints and the ‘assistive pretext’. This is an expansive conversation with an amazing group of scholars, who share a common connection to the [Media, Culture, and Communications department at NYU](https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/departments/media-culture-and-communication), founded by Neil Postman in 1971 at the urging of Marshall McLuhan.

![Interview conducted on 1 March, 2021](audio:https://machinelistening.exposed/_preview/library/Mara%20Mills/Mara%20Mills,%20Xiaochang%20Li,%20Jessica%20F%20(535)/Mara%20Mills,%20Xiaochang%20Li,%20Jessi%20-%20Mara%20Mills.mp3)

{{<nosup>}}[Transcript](http://git.metadada.xyz/machinelistening/curriculum/src/branch/master/content/transcript/feldman-li-mills-pfeiffer.md){{</nosup>}}