For our fifth installment of our book club series, the #BookCast team read Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. Join us for a discussion led by Garth Casbourn with co-hosts Meghan Voll, Riya Sidhu, and Scott Walters.

We dive into the complex narrative of Gifty, a young scientist getting her PhD at Stanford, attempting to discover secrets behind addictive behavior. This story is one of grief, hope, childhood trauma, conflicts between faith and science, and racism and immigration in North America.

We'll cover many of the books themes and writing devices, its approach at describing science and graduate student life, and talk about the challenges faced by the protagonist both in the lab and her difficult past.

ADVISORY: This book has themes of addiction and overdose that are central to the story. In the second part of our conversation, we dive into these topics. Some listeners may wish to either avoid or prepare for this portion of our episode.

Airing October 31th at 11 AM on Radio Western.

Recorded on October 2, 2024

Produced by Scott Walters

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

This week, hosts Mark Ambrogio and Ryan Baxter are joined by Lauren Jarman, a Masters of Music Education Candidate in the Don Wright Faculty of Music. Her research is focused on the impact of policy, globalization and neoliberalism and how it affects students with disabilities through a windband pedagogy. Lauren explores how AI and technology enable learning for musicians and how it can improve student and teacher experience. She also talks about her involvement in student government and her own experiences with disability as a student.

Recorded on October 15, 2024

Produced by Maria Khan

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

Hosts Anthony Cruz and Meghan Voll are joined by Emiko Muraki, a PhD candidate with the University of Calgary, and a visiting PhD student at Western University. Emiko studies how context and differences between people affect how we learn and use concepts, and understand language. She also studied people with aphantasia, who can't form mental images, and found that they may still engage in sensorimotor simulation during semantic processing, even if they lack conscious, voluntary imagery.

Recorded on October 8, 2024.

Produced by Bruno Mesquita.

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