Hosts Liam Clifford and Ryan Baxter meet with Rafaela Platkin, a MSc student in Cognitive, Developmental and Brain Sciences Psychology. Her research looks at how engaged children become with different story themes, and how this may influence broader cognitive domains (listening effort, attention, load, etc). She discusses studies with behavioural dual task to measure listening effort through reaction time, gaze and EEG brain activity. The hope is to better understand how children engage with auditory-only narratives and general stimuli and see how their listening effort and/or fatigue are affected. Rafaela talks about how she became charmed by the field of Psychology and her future plans for her PhD, to look at hearing aid users to see whether there is a disproportionate increase in listening effort.

Recorded on April 1, 2025

Produced by Maria Khan

Theme song provided by https://freebeats.io/ Produced by White Hot

And yes, he's back! Liam Clifford and Mark Ambrogio are joined, for the third time, by William Laur, a PhD candidate at Western in Biology, as he shares how he is making good progress on his doctoral research. William discusses his research on snakes; more specifically, he is interested in the human reaction towards snakes, which he studies by looking at both the scientific literature and social media posts. Topics discussed include threat perception, human-animal conflict, and the importance of ecological diversity. Snakes are not as dangerous as commonly perceived; indeed, it is possible, as William discusses, for us to learn to live alongside them.

Recorded on Mark 25, 2025 Produced by Mark Ambrogio

Theme song provided by FreeBeats.io (Produced by White Hot).

For this edition of #BookCast, we dive deep into The Secret History by Donna Tart, the origin of the dark academia genre. Join us as we discuss the book, which follows a student at a prestigious New England College, where he experiences new friends, an eclectic professor, and murder. The Secret History is a novel heavily laced with classical symbolism, and we discuss some of the central themes as well as engage in a breakdown of the main characters.

This episode was recorded on March 5, 2025

Produced by Scott Walters

Theme song provided by https://freebeats.io/ Produced by White Hot