Don't Pretend We're Dead Podcast
Don't Pretend We're Dead Podcast
Podcast Description
For each episode of the Don’t Pretend We’re Dead podcast, I’ll be talking with women doing interesting work right now in the fields of advocacy, arts and culture, food, science and technology. Ladies who give me a shred of hope in these dark times—and who doesn’t need more of that? Subscribe for free to learn about new episodes. corinazappia.substack.com
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast focuses on a wide range of themes such as cultural advocacy, culinary innovation, and the intersection of social issues with professional disciplines. Specific episode topics include Caribbean cuisine with chef Marie Mitchell, discussing cultural identity through food, and humanitarian advocacy featuring Ruth Mukwana, highlighting women's empowerment in crisis narratives.
For each episode of the Don’t Pretend We’re Dead podcast, I’ll be talking with women doing really cool work right now in the fields of advocacy, arts and culture, food, science and technology. Let’s meet them together. Subscribe for free.
On this episode: Talking with the editor of the forthcoming book Internet Decolonized, Dr. Henna Zamurd Butt, on why people still get unequal internet service and prices across a city like Chicago—and how communities are fighting back.
For each episode of the Don’t Pretend We’re Dead podcast, I’ll be talking with women doing cool work right now in the fields of advocacy, arts, culture, food, journalism, science and technology. Let’s meet them together. Subscribe for free to learn about new episodes.
Mentioned in this episode with Dr. Henna Zamurd Butt:
Internet Innovation Initiative at University of Chicago
Internet Decolonized (forthcoming), Oxford University Press, 2026.
Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin, Wiley, 2019.
Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics by Nanjala Nyabola, Bloomsbury, 2018.
Feminist Principles of the Internet v2 by the Association for Progressive Communications, 2024.
About Dr. Henna Zamurd Butt
Dr. Henna Zamurd Butt is an interdisciplinary scholar-artist and Assistant Professor of Communication & Culture at Columbia College Chicago. Her work brings together ethnographic and participatory methods with a creative research practice that spans curation, digital network-making, printmaking, ceramics, and DJing. She is interested in the cultural politics of sociotechnical systems and the possibilities of feminist and decolonizing praxis.
Technē Studio serves as the hub for Henna’s creative research. In March 2026, the Studio will launch Mehfil, a situated server art gallery inaugurated with everyday marks—an archive of images documenting her personal henna practice. The project unsettles binaries of right/left hand and active/passive, foregrounding embodied and habitual forms of knowledge. In late spring 2026, Henna will open a preparatory installation ahead of her forthcoming solo exhibition, Bodies of Knowledge, which uses ceramic and print works to consider the ethnographer’s body as a technology of knowledge-making.
As co-editor of Internet Decolonized (Oxford University Press, 2026), Henna has worked with her collaborator, Professor Marianne Franklin, to curate a collection that brings activists’ and academics’ writing into conversation, exploring how the internet might be decolonized. Her forthcoming publications include a comparative analysis of internet connectivity projects in Michigan (Digital Culture & Society) and an autoethnographic account of DJ practice as technē (Journal of Cultural Politics).
In 2025, Henna completed a postdoctoral scholarship at the University of Chicago. She holds a PhD from the Department of Media & Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and master’s degrees in Global Politics (Royal Holloway) and Politics and Communication (LSE).
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