The Virtual Jewel Box

How can scoring systems make games feel so joyful, fluid, and alive, yet drain the life from public institutions and everyday work? This is one of the central questions of a new book by University of Utah philosopher C. Thi Nguyen. In The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, published this year by Penguin, Nguyen traces the philosophical and ideological aspects of scoring systems when used outside of play. With Tanner Humanities Center Director Scott Black, Nguyen discusses games as forms of portable agency, the problem of value capture, and the ways gamification and institutional metrics can narrow and impoverish human life. Recent reviews of The Score:  The New York Times — Jennifer Szalai, “Why Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore” The Washington Post — Becca Rothfeld, “A philosopher’s case for living playfully without keeping score”  The Guardian — Tim Clare, “A brilliant warning about the gamification of everyday life” The New Yorker — Joshua Rothman, “Is Life a Game?”  Episode art: Detail from Georges de La Tour, The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs, c. 1630-34. Kimbell Art Gallery. Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Nora Lange, author of Us Fools (2024), discusses her new collection of short stories, Day Care, with Erin Beeghly (Department of Philosophy). Their conversation touches on female desire, motherhood, mischief, and the strange pressures of contemporary life. They discuss the surreal charge of stories like “Hot Spot,” the autofictional elements of the title story, and Lange’s “careening” prose style, which moves through play, surprise, and sudden transformation without losing emotional depth. Along the way, they talk about siblings, marriage, daycare, deadlines, and the elastic feeling of time in parenting, as well as Lange’s interest in genre, from realism to the snow-globe science fiction of “Dog Star.”  Episode art: Detail from Joris Hoefnagel, Seven Snails (c.1575/1590s), National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In anticipation of our symposium on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on April 10, Marcie Young-Cancio, Robert Carson, and Scott Black discuss the show from a humanities perspective, examining its treatment of faith, femininity, Utah culture, entrepreneurship, fan loyalty, and camp sensibility.  Marcie Young-Cancio is Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Founder and Executive Director of Amplify Utah.  See also:  Receipts, Proof, Timeline: How We Watch the RHOSLC symposium program  Heather L. King, “Tanner Humanities Center presents a scholarly deep dive into ‘The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’” @ the U  Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp”  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In this episode, Matt Potolsky (Professor of English) talks with writer and activist Cory Doctorow about digital privacy, platform decay, and the politics of monopoly. Drawing on his recent book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Doctorow argues that the erosion of privacy is inseparable from the rise of unchecked commercial surveillance, and that many people care deeply about privacy without recognizing it as such. They also discuss the three-stage collapse of digital platforms Robert Bork and the Chicago School’s influence on antitrust law the IBM antitrust case Yanis Varoufakis’s theory of techno-feudalism algorithmic wage discrimination effective altruism and longtermism AI as a fantasy of boss-without-workers  the surprising global resurgence of anti-monopoly politics as a source of hope. Cory Doctorow is a journalist, blogger, and the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. He is a longtime contributor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and blogs at pluralistic.net.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In a new series of episodes, The Virtual Jewel Box will feature conversations about great books. Scott Black and Jessica Straley discuss Mrs. Dalloway as a novel of thresholds: between past and present, sound and silence, intimacy and distance. Reading closely from the opening line through Big Ben’s leaden circles, they show how Woolf’s stream of consciousness turns a single June day, a walk through London, and a party into an inquiry into memory, war, love, and social life. They invite readers to consider how Woolf’s prose, down to its use of the semicolon, reflects on perception, privacy, and what it means to live with other minds. Jessica Straley is Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah.  See also: Jenny Noice, “A Hundred Years of Mrs. Dalloway,” JSTOR Daily.  Episode art: Photo of Virginia Woolf, circa 1927. Virginia Woolf Monk's House photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In this episode, Scott Black talks with literary scholar Joseph Metz about The Feeling of the Form: Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke (Cornell University Press), Metz’s cultural and intellectual history of empathy that traces the origins of the concept back to 19th-century German art theory. Drawing on close readings of Georg Büchner, Adalbert Stifter, and Rainer Maria Rilke, Metz shows how empathy originated as Einfühlung, a theory of bodily projection into objects and forms, before later becoming a model for interpersonal feeling. They also discuss Robert Vischer and Theodor Lipps, Kant and nineteenth-century neurophysiology, debates between vitalism and materialism, and the ethical limits of understanding others.  Joseph Metz is Associate Professor of German in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Utah.  Episode art: from Charles Le Brun, Expressions des passions de l’Ame, as a frontispiece to Henri Testelin, Sentimens des plus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et Sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In this episode, Omi Salas-SantaCruz talks with Leandra Hernández about Queer, Women of Color, and Critical Approaches to Feminist Mentorship and Pedagogy (University of Illinois Press), co-edited by Hernández, Stevie M. Munz, and Jessica Pauly. Along the way, they discuss the power of feminist mentorship, the ecological webs of care that sustain scholars and students, and the forms of solidarity that help communities thrive even in times of precarity. Leandra Hernández is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, and Omi Salas-SantaCruz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education, Culture and Society, at the University of Utah.  See also:  Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender  Feminist Mentoring in Academia (Lexington Books)    Episode art: Detail from Yreina D. Cervántez, Mujer de Mucha Enagua, PA' TI XICANA, 1999 Smithsonian American Art Museum.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In this episode, Scott Black talks with poet and critic Craig Dworkin about his new book, The Sound of Thinking: A Listener’s Companion to Conceptual Music (University of Chicago Press), on music made from rules, systems, and procedures rather than personal expression. They explore pieces like György Ligeti’s 100 metronomes, Steve Reich’s swinging-microphone Pendulum Music, Enrique Udo’s braille-based scores, Johannes Kreidler’s stock-market sonifications, and an uncanny note-for-note remake of Kind of Blue. Along the way, they discuss John Cage, the boundaries between noise and music, how listening becomes a cognitive practice, and why conceptual sound works challenge us to rethink creativity, difficulty, and the very definition of music. Craig Dworkin is Professor of English at the University of Utah.  Episode art: Detail from Juan Gris, Le papier à musique (1913-1914), Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris. Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Daniel Mendelsohn discusses his new translation of Homer’s Odyssey (University of Chicago Press) with Jordan Johansen, Assistant Professor of Classics in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at the University of Utah. They discuss the musicality of translating Homer’s poetry for the human voice, the discovery of sarcastic swineherd personalities, and the 15-hour marathon reading of The Odyssey at University of Utah.  Links:  Homer, The Odyssey, translated by Daniel Mendelsohn, University of Chicago Press  Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic, Knopf  Cover image: Odysseus, about 25 BCE, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward speaks with Kase Johnstun of Utah Humanities about the craft of writing, resilience, and historical memory, in anticipation of her 2025 David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts. Ward’s lecture is hosted by the Tanner Humanities Center and the Salt Lake City Public Library, and is part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival.  This episode is a collaboration with the Utah Humanities podcast, Check Your Shelves.  Books by Ward include: Let Us Descend  Sing Unburied Sing (Winner, National Book Award)  Salvage the Bones (Winner, National Book Award)  Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

The leaders of the University of Utah summer institute Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence, Elizabeth Callaway and Rebekah Cummings, join Scott Black to discuss the human limitations of AI, as well as the points of contact between AI and the humanities.  Links: Marriott Library, The ARPANET Project  Brigham Young University, Office Digital Humanities  Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism — MIT Press  Claire Wardle, “The Science of Misinformation” — SciLine  Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power — PublicAffairs  (Episode image: modified detail from Caspar David Friedrich, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer/Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818.)  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.   

What are the humanities, and how do they function in our daily lives? It might be that they’re primarily academic disciplines studied in universities and cultural institutions. Or some say they're the everyday conversations and reflections that make us fully human—like discussing a movie with friends or questioning our assumptions. In this episode, Jodi Graham, Executive Director of Utah Humanities, discusses how both formal programming and informal human interactions serve the humanities mission. With host Scott Black, she explores why face-to-face connection remains irreplaceable in our digital age, how community-driven programming strengthens Utah’s cultural infrastructure, and why the humanities’ role is to ask probing questions rather than provide predetermined answers. They also examine how fifty years of state humanities work has evolved from simple grant-making to comprehensive community engagement, and why this work is especially urgent in a culture of mistrust and division.  Episode image: Detail from Victor Arnautoff, City Life, mural in Coit Tower, 1934.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Kate Bowler joins Gretchen Case to discuss authenticity in academic, spiritual, and medical life; the limits of toxic positivity; and how joy can be both a surprise and a discipline. Reflecting on her own experience, Bowler examines what it means to seek truth and integrity within imperfect systems and bodies.  Kate Bowler is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke Divinity School. Her books include: Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!: Daily Meditations for the Ups, Downs & In-Betweens Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved  No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)  Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel  The Preacher's Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities  Gretchen Case is Director of the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Utah. Episode artwork: Detail from Edward Hopper, Soir Bleu, 1914, Whitney Museum of American Art.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Historians Paul Reeve and Jordan Watkins discuss This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (by Reeve, Christopher B. Rich, Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth), published by Oxford University Press in 2024. Their discussion explores the origins and transcription of primary sources integral to the book, the legislative stance on slavery in 1850s Utah, the nuanced differences between various forms of unfree labor, and the perspectives of both white lawmakers and the enslaved people in the region. They also touch on the broader political and religious implications of these debates, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of a complex and contentious period in Utah’s history. W. Paul Reeve — Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies and History at the University of Utah   Jordan T. Watkins — Associate Professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University  The documents analyzed in This Abominable Slavery are available at thisabominableslavery.org, hosted by the University of Utah.  Episode album art, left to right: Green Flake, Brigham Young, Pidash or Kah-peputz, and Orson Pratt.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

This episode features Bryan Counter (Framingham State University) discussing his new book Four Moments of Aesthetic Experience: Reading Huysmans, Proust, McCarthy, and Cusk (published by Anthem Press) with Nathan Wainstein (Department of English, University of Utah). Counter theorizes aesthetic experience as something that mediates between subjective judgment and objective art, emphasizing the role of chance, atmosphere, and embodied encounters with literature. Rather than focusing on formal analysis, he examines moments within texts where characters grapple with aesthetic experience, arguing that our experience of reading often transcends the content itself.  Episode artwork: detail from Clara Peeters, Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels, c. 1615, Mauritshaus, The Hague.   Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

 A slave becomes Queen and later is sainted for her work as an abolitionist. A new book by Isabel Moreira (Distinguished Professor of History, University of Utah) explores not only the life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), but also the methods of late-medieval historical research. Professor Moreira discusses Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint (Oxford University Press, Women in Antiquity series) with Tanner Humanities Center Director, Scott Black.  See also: Isabel Moreira’s Tanner Conversation with Chris Jones    Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

This episode explores Obert C. Tanner’s life and legacy, which includes the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center and the Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Mark Matheson, Lecturer in English at the University of Utah and Director of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, discusses Obert’s remarkable journey from poverty to philanthropy, including his upbringing by his extraordinary mother, Annie Clark Tanner, who used J.S. Mill’s On Liberty as a parenting guide.   Links:  Obert C. Tanner, One Man’s Journey: In Search of Freedom Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother: An Autobiography  John Stuart Mill, On Liberty  The Tanner Lectures on Human Values    Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Under what conditions do people trust the news, if at all? How did Covid lockdown change news consumption? What are we to think of journalists who leave establishment news organizations and build their own following on platforms like Substack?  And does our mistrust of news organizations mirror mistrust of other professional sectors, like health care and higher education?  Jake Nelson, Associate Professor of Communication at the U and former journalist, discusses these issues and more, based on his extensive interviews with news audiences. With Seth Lewis (University of Oregon), he is working on a book project, Why We Distrust: American Skepticism toward Media, Medicine, and Higher Education.  Sources mentioned in this episode:  Jeff Bezos on X, about the editorial mission of The Washington Post  Glenn Greenwald, on Locals  Bari Weiss, The Free Press  Ken Klippenstein, Substack  Taylor Lorenz, User Mag  Jake’s recommended media:   City Cast Salt Lake  Axios  The Hollywood Reporter Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Matt Basso and Megan Weiss discuss the iconic film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. They explore the film’s historical context, its satirical take on Cold War politics, and its depiction of gender. The Red and Lavender Scares, consumerism, and militarization all helped set the stage for the Cold War culture lampooned in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film.  Matt Basso is Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies, and Megan Weiss is a doctoral candidate in History, at the University of Utah.  This episode was recorded in anticipation of the Tanner Humanities Center’s screening of the London National Theatre’s production of Dr Strangelove, starring Steve Coogan. You can find out more about the Center’s NTL screenings, and other public programming, at tanner.utah.edu.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Louis Chude-Sokei, author of Floating in a Most Peculiar Way, discusses the Black diaspora, sound, accent, masculinity, Afrofuturism, dub music, and AI with Scott Black. Links:  Louis Chude-Sokei, Floating in a Most Peculiar Way Louis Chude-Sokei, The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora  Louis Chude-Sokei, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism festival  Anarchic Artificial Intelligence  Louis Chude-Sokei is George and Joyce Wein Chair in African-American and Black Diaspora Studies, and Director of the African-American and Black Diaspora Studies Program, at Boston University. Scott Black is Director of the Tanner Humanities Center.  Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Why learn to write in the age of artificial intelligence? Elizabeth Callaway, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Utah, talks with Scott Black about writing pedagogy with and about AI. Links:  Josh Dzieza, “Inside the AI Factory”  Ethan Mollick, “I, Cyborg: Using Co-Intelligence”  NYT review of Chris Hayes, The Siren’s Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, and Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

In 1882, Oscar Wilde visited Utah during his famous lecture tour of the United States. Local historian Randell Hoffman discusses the scandals of Wilde's visit, and the Victorian-era conventions that Wilde challenged. Robert Carson examines Wilde's lectures on the importance of beauty and his provocations about taste and artificiality.   Links: Michèle Mendelssohn, Making Oscar Wilde (Oxford University Press)  The Mildred Berryman Institute Utah Digital Newspapers, by the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah    Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

What if advances in technology were already changing the causal logic of human reproduction which is now taken for granted? Could pregnancy shift from an event which some opt out of through prevention or termination, to an intentional, elective choice? How should such a system work, and what would be its likely consequences? These questions comprise the “opt-in conjecture” by University of Utah Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Margaret Pabst Battin, whose book, Sex and the Planet: What Opt-In Reproduction Could Do for the Globe was published by MIT Press. In discussion with James Tabery (Professor of Philosophy), of the Center for Health Ethics, Arts & Humanities at the University of Utah. Introduced by Scott Black, Director of the Tanner Humanities Center. Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Nathan Wainstein (Assistant Professor of English at the University of Utah) discusses his new book, Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne. Joining him is Michael W. Clune (Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities at Case Western Reserve University).  See also: Video Games: The Artistic Medium of the Future.  Introduced by Robert Carson, Associate Director of the Tanner Humanities Center. Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Alice Dailey recounts the life and death of her mother, who was “a gifted teacher, a passionate reader, and a pathological liar.” Dailey is Professor of English and Director of Faculty Affairs at Villanova University. She discusses her scholarly memoir, Mother of Stories: An Elegy, with Lindsey Drager (Assistant Professor of English, University of Utah).  Episode edited by Matty Glasgow and Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.