All That We Touch

Epizódy

• Australia and Wikipedia: the bias in the map 14.07.2026 36min

  Wikipedia doesn't set out to play favourites. But when a made-up Melbourne suburb has more history than real Australian places, something is shaping what gets written.Who - or what - decides which Australian places matter on Wikipedia?Hosts Heather Ford and Francesca Sidoti go looking, through a map of 35,000 places, a street corner in Penrith, and a fight over one island's name.How is Wikipedia biased, and why? The answer will surprise you.VoicesHeather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press.Dr Francesca Sidoti is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the ARC Discovery project ‘Wikipedia and the nation’s story: towards equity in knowledge production’ in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.Dr Michael Falk is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Studies at the University of Melbourne, and is a computational literary scholar, data scientist, speaker and writer. In all his work, he aims to combine the creativity of the arts with the rigour and precision of data science. Research linksAustralian places and WikipediaMap of Australian places on Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025)Map showing Edit intensity of Australian place articles: English Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025)Full report: How Australian places are represented on Wikipedia (Wikihistories: 2025)We analysed 35,000 Wikipedia entries about Australian places. Some of them sanitise history (The Conversation: 2024)Erinsborough Wikipedia PagePenrith Wikipedia pageK'gari Wikipedia pageBias and WikipediaCan History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past by Roy Rosenzweig (The Journal of American History Volume 2006)Wikipedia's known unknowns (The Guardian 2009) The earliest geographical analyses of Wikipedia’s geographical biases is described Professor Mark Graham. ‘Anyone can edit’, not everyone does: Wikipedia’s infrastructure and the gender gap ( Social Studies of Science 2017) How Wikipedia’s infrastructure introduces new and less visible sources of gender disparity, by Heather Ford and Judy Wajcman.Who Gets To Be Notable And Who Doesn't: Gender Bias On Wiki (NPR All Things Considered 2021) On Wikipedia, gender inequality is hiding in plain sight. Of more than a million and a half biographies - that's on the English-language version - fewer than 19% are about women. A recent study by Francesca Tripodi brings some new insight into why that is.Demographic disparity in Wikipedia coverage: a global perspective (EPJ Data Sci. 2025)Even though people identifying as female and non-binary genders have been better represented in terms of the number of Wikipedia language editions over time, and they are currently better covered than males, current global coverage of people on Wikipedia still shows disparities in both gender and geographical location of biographical subjects in various dimensions.Wikipedia editorsWho is contributing to Wikimedia projects? (Wikimedia Foundation, nd) The Wikipedia “Change the Stats” page that collates research into the Wikipedia editor base as a baseline for increasing the diversity of Wikipedia editors.Community Insights Report (Wikimedia Foundation, 2020) A survey with 2500 Wikimedians looking at their demographics, social and technological experiences. Findings from the survey included:Wikimedia contributors are 87% male. Almost half live in Europe and one-fifth in Northern America, as compared to 9.7% and 4.8% of the global population.Fewer than 1% of Wikipedia’s editor base in the U.S. identify as Black or African American.Although women were still markedly underrepresented among contributors, there was a modest increase in women contributors between 2019 (11.5%) and 2020 (15.0%).Further reading“Finding Eliza: power and colonial storytelling” by Larissa Behrendt (2016)“Finding Eliza” exhibition at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery until 16 August 2026ClipsJimmy Wales on bias: Lex Fridman podcast 19 June 2023Comedian Guy Williams on visiting Rottnest IslandHerbs French Letter World Heritage Fraser Island officially restored to Indigenous name, K'gari, supported by public (ABC News 7 June 2023)CreditsThe executive producer of this series is Heather Ford.The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke.Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti.Story consultant is Rachael Cusick. Sound by John Jacobs.Thanks for feedback from Sarah Gilbert, Regina Botros, Celine Teo-Blockey, Siobhan Moylan, Lachlan A Court, Zlata Maltceva, Rosa Ellen, and Kate Lawrence.All That We Touch artwork by Alexandra Morris. Episode tiles by Jane Curtis.Bell music composition by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary.Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert.It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia.wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’.Find out more at wikihistories.netTranscriptsWikipedia and Australia: the bias in the map Transcript Word docWikipedia and Australia: the bias in the map Transcript PDF
• Introducing... Wikipedia 07.07.2026 2min

  It started as a joke. An encyclopedia anyone could edit? Now it’s one of the ten most visited websites in the world.Even when you think you're not using it, you probably are. It's feeding your search results, your voice assistant, your AI chatbot.But if Wikipedia shapes how we understand the world, what shapes Wikipedia?Host Heather Ford, researcher Francesca Sidoti, and author Richard Cooke investigate the site and all that it touches.Episode 1 asks, what does Australia look like on Wikipedia? The answer takes you from a fictional soap-opera suburb to a dispute over what a place should be called.Episode 2 goes inside the three big fights that made Wikipedia what it is today.Episode 3 asks what its future holds, in the age of generative AI?Episode 4 is a True/False quiz with nuanced answers to simple questions.Episode 5 is for teachers and students wanting practical tips on how to research and teach with Wikipedia.Episode 6 is for Wikipedia editors wanting to share First Nations knowledge respectfully.All That We Touch: Wikipedia is produced by Impact Studios at the University of Technology Sydney.First episode coming soon. Follow now so you don't miss it.VoicesProfessor Heather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press.Dr Francesca Sidoti is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the ARC Discovery project ‘Wikipedia and the nation’s story: towards equity in knowledge production’ in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.Richard Cooke is an author, reporter and screenwriter. The author of three books, he is the former US correspondent and current contributing editor to The Monthly magazine. His latest book is The Last Best Place On The Internet: A Human History of Wikipedia.ResearchTop ten websites in the world by traffic in May 2026: SemrushCreditsThe executive producer of this series is Heather Ford.It is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke.Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti.Story consultant is Rachael Cusick. Sound by John Jacobs.Bell music composition by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary.Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert.It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia.wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’.wikihistories.net
• 0. Introducing All That We Touch - investigating the relationship between technology and society 30.06.2026 5min

  Are we really separate from the things we make? Do we really control our own tools? And where do we end, and they begin? All That We Touch explores the relationship between technology and society, and how the things we make shape and reshape us in turn.Host Matt Ryan speaks with Tamson Pietsch about the podcast's central questions and its sources of inspiration.In a changing climate, the powerful Western notion that humans are separate from nature, enjoying dominion over it, is coming undone. Meanwhile, digital life has us doubting whether we are fully in control of some of our most everyday objects and technologies. Our title is taken from Octavia Butler's novel, The Parable of the Sower. The dystopian story opens with the lines "all that we touch, we change, and all that we change changes us." It's a credo that seems to neatly sum up philosopher Bruno Latour's central idea: that humans, tools, language and technologies are bound together in networks where nothing stands apart, pure and untouched.You'll hear a sneak preview of the first two stories we'll bring you over the coming months, on a podcast that will feature documentaries, talks and recordings of live events - all on that theme of technology and society.VoicesDr Matthew Ryan is a Chancellor's Research Fellow at UTS' Faculty of Design and Society.Associate Professor Tamson Pietsch is director of UTS' Australian Centre for Public History at UTS and managing director of Impact Studios.Actress Lynne Thigpen reads the excerpt from The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Buter.Professor Heather Ford and Dr Francesca Sidoti, along with author Richard Cooke, present our inaugural series on Wikipedia - coming very soon.Michelle Maloney and Abe Noe-Hayes feature in a forthcoming episode, Liquid Gold.CreditsThis introductory episode was produced by Lachlan A'Court.Excerpt from Parable of the Sower is by Octavia E. Butler, narrated by Lynne Thigpen, provided courtesy of Recorded Books, © 2000. The full recording is available wherever audiobooks are sold.All That We Touch is made on Gadigal land, in Sydney, by UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.Further listeningTo learn more about Bruno Latour, you can listen to Ep 169 of Philosophize This! or Ep 230 and 231 of The Partially Examined Life.The Parable of the Sower, read by Lynne Thigpen, is available at Audible. You can hear an excellent discussion of the novel on Backlisted, Ep 223.