Episode 27 - (Season 2, Episode 8) - Marisa Hoeschele

Scientist and metal drummer 

Marisa Hoeschele received an honours B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada in 2006. After that she completed an M.Sc. and PhD in Psychology with a specialization in Comparative Cognition and Behaviour at the University of Alberta, Canada.

In 2013 she moved to Vienna as a post-doc and built the budgie lab at the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna. In October 2018 she started her own group, known as the “Musicality and Bioacoustics” group, at the Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This institute has researchers from many different disciplines all studying problems in acoustics: however the first animal studies were not conducted on site until this year in April when the budgie lab was moved to the institute. Marisa studies how different animals, including humans, perceive and produce sounds. The broader goal is to understand where music and language come from and what other similar capacities might exist in the animal kingdom.

Marisa is the first guest I've had on who had a pop filter on her mic.  That's neither here nor there but it's still a thing.

We talked, of course, about how Marisa got into the field in the first place, a bit about Austria and, obviously about her work.  Her work is interdisciplinary and we talked a bit about how this sort of thing is important not just in animal cognition, but in any field.

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Episode 20 (Season 2, Episode 1) - Jenna Congdon

Jenna was wearing PPE before it was cool

YES THE PODCAST IS BACK!

I'm really happy to be back doing these.  They take some time, so I waited until my next sabbatical.  Well, my next sabbatical is NOW.  Look, OK, I'm pretty psyched for this, but let's not make this all about me.

We open up season 2 with Jenna Congdon, who is a postdoc at York University, working with Suzanne MacDonald (who you may remember from such podcasts as 'Spit and Twitches, the Animal Cognition Podcast').

We talked some about her PhD work as well as side projects.  We also talked about her current work at the Toronto Zoo.

Jenna started out her career as a biology student at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, ON.  Coincidentally, I work there!  She switched over to psychology, what the cool kids take, when she took an elective with a frenetic but brilliant intro psych prof (me).  Actually, I'm a bit of a hack, don't tell anyone.  After completing her honours thesis project with me she moved on to bigger and brighter things, working with Chris Sturdy at the University of Alberta.  She got her PhD in 2019 and has been teaching as a part time faculty member at Concordia University of Edmonton and at the University of Alberta.  

She's currently working with Suzanne MacDonald, as I noted above. Look, I haven't written one of these things in a while, and, well, I'm out of practice...

As always, thanks to Red Arms for allowing me to mash up their music in the closing theme, BUY THEIR MUSIC.

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Episode 6 - Laurie Bloomfield

Laurie Bloomfield is an associate professor of psychology at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada.

Laurie grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, and did her BA at Algoma University College (1996-2000). Based on some fascinating research she had learned about during several classes with one particular professor (Laurie claims this was me), she was the only student to conduct her Honours thesis study on animal behaviour (a trend that hasn’t seemed to have changed in years at AU). Also while at Algoma University College she was a teaching assistant in Psychology and the Assistant Manager and bartender for the T-Bird Lounge, which at the time was open all day on Thursdays, and students and professors alike met and enjoyed a beverage or two.

Laurie Bloomfield, she's my boss....

In 2000 she began work on her Master’s degree at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario with Ron Weisman. There she investigated vocal production and perception in chickadees, as well as learned techniques to explore the neural correlates of auditory perception. She received the Canadian Psychological Association Award for Academic Excellence for her Master’s thesis which examined in detail the morphology and phonology of the “chick-a-dee” call of the eastern Carolina chickadee, and the perception of this species’ call by the closely related black-capped chickadee.

She then (2002) went to the University of Alberta in Edmonton to work with Chris Sturdy. There she continued her investigation of auditory perception in chickadees by examining the morphology and phonology of the chick-a-dee call of the western Mountain chickadee. Several lab studies that followed attempted to determine which acoustic features were most important to the birds in making species-specific discriminations.

Immediately following the completion of her PhD (2007) she turned down an NSERC post-doc to start as Assistant Professor at Algoma University….  where it all began.

Why continue to work with the chickadees? Well, they produce that chick-a-dee call that is a perfect model for understanding perception. It can be broken down into several components to determine what the birds are paying attention to, and perhaps then we can figure out why they modify this call. In other words, what are they trying to say? It’s sort of like attempting to learn another language.  

Laurie and I talked about a lot of different things, her present research, her inspirations, and other stuff.  This one was fun for me as it was the first non Skype interview I have done.  Laurie is also the first woman I have had on the show, which is a long overdue thing.  Oh yeah, and she is like four doors down the hall from me at work....

Thanks again to Red Arms for letting me mash up their music in the closing theme. Buy their music now.

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Episode 1 - Chris Sturdy

Chris Sturdy is a professor of psychology and member of the neuroscience and mental health institute at the University of Alberta.

Chris (far right) and the members of the Songbird Neuroethology Lab

Chris has a BA in psychology from the University of Windsor as well as an MA and a PhD from Queens University in Kingston Ontario.

He studies the neuroethology of song learning and more generally songbird communication. I was really happy he wanted to be my first guest on the podcast.

We talked about a lot of different things including the influence that other researchers have had on Chris, the future of comparative cognition and the ever complicated world of gene expression in learning.

Thanks to Red Arms for allowing me to mash up their music with quotes from a bunch of people in the closing theme. Buy their music. NOW.

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