PODCAST · education
GradCast
by Maris Schneider, Anthony Cruz, Mark Ambrogio, Scott Walters, Ryan Baxter, Maria Khan, Garth Casbourn, Riya Sidhu, Sarah Bidinosti, Chrishma Perera, Bruno Mesquita, Kirstyn Seanor, Mohammed Zeratti
GradCast is the official podcast of the Society of Graduate Students at Western University. We highlight the research our university/‘s graduate students. From History to Histology, we show you the cutting edge research of one of Canada/‘s top research universities.
Episodes
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574 | Don't Look Up: Philosophy and the Study of Climate Change
This week, hosts Anthony Cruz and Bruno Mesquita are joined by Sara Varon Echeverri, a PhD student in Western University's Department of Philosophy studying social and scientific problems related to climate change. Enrolled in Western's collaborative specialization in environment and...
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573 | Building Towards Next-Generation Vaccines for HIV
This week, MSc (PhD-intended!) candidate Alexander Gain talks about his research on modelling and testing immune responses to different HIV vaccines. Although current treatments help keep the virus at bay, this requires people living with HIV to take anti-viral medication for the rest of their...
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572 | Aging, HIV Stigma, and Mental Health among Older Adult Across Communities
This week, PhD student Bright Ofori talks about his research on HIV stigma and mental health among older adults living with HIV. With advances in treatment, people living with HIV are living longer. However, this raises new questions about what aging with HIV looks like; what happens when the...
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Thrive, Don’t Just Survive #5: Advocating for Fairness
We’re back with our mini-series, chatting with folks on campus who support graduate students in every aspect of life! This week, your hosts, Maris Schneider and Garth Casbourn, are chatting with Melanie Molnar, the Ombudsperson at Western University. Melanie is a professional mediator who…
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571 | Hereafter and Evermore: Art History, Archaeology, and Cemeteries
In this week's episode, hosts Ryan Baxter and Mark Ambrogio interview Rory Succee as he graduates with his MA in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology. A newly-minted Western graduate, Rory is about to begin a PhD in Art History – also here at Western. Congratulations, Rory! In their...
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570 | Sound in the Round: How the Brain Maps Multiple Lines of Music
In this episode, hosts Anthony Cruz and Ryan Baxter are joined by neuroscience PhD student Nima Zargarnezhad. An amateur musician from an early age, Nima relates how, as an undergraduate in electrical engineering, he developed a fascination with how the human brain works. For his Master's…
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569 | Foraging Shin Bones: Studying Tibias Across History
This week, freshly-graduated MA Cristina Lama talks about her research, and why it’s cool to be studying human bones. Why can the tibia be a better candidate than other bones, when doing research in bioanthropology? What sort of problems and models can we take from the literature, and use that to...
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568 | Health Literacy, Patient Activation, and Specific Learning Conditions: The Impact of Health Communication
In this week's episode, hosts Anthony Cruz and Anika Bushra interview Stephanie Brocca, a master’s graduate in Health and Rehabilitation Science. Stephanie researches how current methods of communicating health information can be a barrier to health literacy, patient activation, and health...
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567 | The Young and the Restless: The Effects of Testosterone on Song Sparrows
In this week's episode, hosts Ryan Baxter and Mark Ambrogio interview GradCast's own Garth Casbourn, a PhD candidate in Biology. In his research, Garth studies how an animal's internal physiology shapes its behaviour, looking at the influence of testosterone on the song sparrow, a migratory bird....
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566 | More than Meets the Archive: Sustainable Approaches to Preserving Shared Identity and Culture
This week on GradCast, hosts Anthony Cruz and Milan Mammen are joined by Jordan Sellers, a PhD student in Library & Information Science (LIS). Jordan researches sustainable digitization practices in community archives, challenging the traditional narrative that full digitization is the only way…
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565 | There and Back Again: Amalie Migrates Home to GradCast
In this week's episode, host Mark Ambrogio interviews GradCast alumna Amalie Hutchinson, a PhD candidate in Biology. Amalie was a GradCast host and producer, ultimately serving two terms as Chair and Managing Editor. She returns to GradCast as she prepares to enter the fourth year of her program...
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564 | What are Metals Hiding? Zooming in on Corrosion
This week, PhD candidate Mila Strelnikova gives a crash course into adapting the scientific spirit, and exploring problems in electrochemistry with a basic science focus (and pioneering steps towards making novel, state-of-the-art microscopy approaches usable across Ontario’s nuclear ecosystem!)....
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563 | A 21st century essay towards a real character language
In this week's episode, hosts Ryan Baxter and Mark Ambrogio interview John (Jack) Kausch, who recently completed his PhD in Library and Information Science, formally graduating in June. In his research, Jack looks at past attempts to establish a universal language, as a way of communicating...
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562 | Birds, Fatty Acids, and Isotopes: A Story About Where Fresh and Marine Waters Meet
In this week's episode, hosts Ryan Baxter and Mark Ambrogio interview GradCast's own Scott Walters, a long-time host and producer. Shortly after his successful PhD defence on June 11, Scott's thesis was published on the Western website. Scott's research explored how the feeding patterns of...
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561 | Popping the Bubble: International Experiences at Western
In this week’s episode, Anthony Cruz and Maris Schneider are joined by our newly reappointed international commissioner, Lucas Ferreira Marques dos Santos. Lucas is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry, but today he is telling us all about his experience moving to Canada, conducting...
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560 | Confidence, Speaking, and Digital Tools: Supporting Older Adult English Language Learners in Canada
In this week's episode, hosts Mark Ambrogio and Ryan Baxter interview Kelly Wang, a first-year PhD Student in Education. Kelly is exploring how digital media tools can enhance English language learning to support learners who are older adults and seniors. With her research, Kelly aims to…
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559 | #Feminismo: Feminism and the Digital Hispanosphere
In this week's episode, hosts Chrishma Perera and Mark Ambrogio interview Pilar Rodriguez Mata, a PhD Student in Digital Humanities and Hispanic Studies. Pilar is studying Spanish-language tweets written from 2009 to 2022. Rooted in the humanities, Pilar studies the digital form, utilizing coding…
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558 | How do we think about cells? There isn't one right way
Doing science is never about a single approach. Join hosts Bruno Mesquita and Rafaela Platkin as they chat with guest Camdyn Holmes, a MSc student in Biochemistry whose research compares two different approaches in examining what makes us human. Most people know that our DNA is an important part…
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557 | Minding the Body: How Does Mental Health Correlate With Exercise?
Hosts Garth Casbourn and Milan Mammen are joined this week by psychology student and member of the Psychobiology of Eating and Related Disorders (PEAR) Lab, Taylor Nicole Breddy. Taylor is in the first year of her Master of Clinical Psychology, though she already has multiple years under her belt...
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556 | K-Queer Regionality and Digital Affinities: Queer Identity in K-pop’s Transcultural Fandom
In this week's episode, hosts Ryan Baxter and Mark Ambrogio interview Jasmine Proctor, a PhD candidate in Media Studies, in Western's Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS). Jasmine ("Jazz") is interested in how queer K-pop fan communities negotiate gender and sexuality through...
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Special Episode: 40th Annual Western Research Forum
GradCast heads to the Western Research Forum! Get a glimpse into Western's largest multidisciplinary graduate research conference as hosts Chrishma Perera, Victor Lau, Maris Schneider, Milan Mammen, and Anthony Cruz conduct short interviews with the graduate student presenters. This year's...
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555 | Marc Lalonde and The Grad Club, the Heart of Grad Life at Western
This week, hosts Anthony Cruz and Mark Ambrogio are joined by Marc Lalonde, the longtime manager of The Grad Club and recent recipient of the Western Award of Excellence. For over 20 years, Marc has played a central role in shaping The Grad Club as a community space for graduate students…
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554 | Culturally Safe Long-term Care: Supporting Seniors with Diverse Cultural Backgrounds
This week, PhD candidate (Nursing) Azmat Jehan shines a light on older adults and their experiences in long-term care. How are they supported by family, or by other care partners? How do cultural practices intersect with the healthcare system to make individuals feel more heard, cared for, and...
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553 | Internationally Educated Nurse (IEN) Beyond Borders: Reality, Resilience, and Research in Canadian Health Care
In honour of International Nurses' Day (on Tuesday, May 12), hosts Chrisma Perera and Mark Ambrogio interview Mehtab Jaffer, a PhD candidate in Nursing here at Western University. While many topics of study are divided between practitioners and researchers, Mehtab is uniquely positioned as both…
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#BookCast 10 | Special Topics in Calamity Physics
BookCast is an ongoing series where we delve into novels set in an academic context. For the 10th edition of BookCast, Garth Casbourn, Milan Mamman, and Mark Ambrogio discuss the 2006 novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl. Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly...
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552 | Understanding the Abstract & Each Other: How Mentalizing Shapes the Way we Think
In this week's episode, PhD student Hannah Corenblum joins hosts Rafaela Platkin and Spencer Schmitz to talk about her research on abstract mental state concepts. Hannah is interested in understanding the individual differences in mentalizing abilities and how these relate to people's capacities…
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Art or Science #1| Music
How do artistic and scientific ways of thinking meet, overlap, and challenge each other? In this special Arts & Sciences mini-series episode of GradCast, hosts Ryan Baxter and Riya Sidhu are joined by Rebekka Lagace Cusiac, a PhD student in Psychology studying music and numerical cognition, and...
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551 | Navigating Falls After Stroke: Research Shaped by Community Voices
PhD candidate Catherine George joins hosts Milan Mammen and Mark Ambrogio to discuss her research on falls and their risk factors among stroke survivors aged 30–65 living in the community. Guided by supervisors Joy MacDermid and Janelle Unger, Catherine uses a community-based participatory action...
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550 | Where are you From? How Placed-Based Identity Affects Political Behaviour
Political science PhD candidate Katie McCoy returns to the podcast this week. She chats with hosts Scott Walters and Garth Casbourn about the new directions her research has taken over the past 18 months. She explains how the focus of her dissertation has broadened from the urban/rural divide to...
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Thinking with the Earth 4: Where and Why People Move
This is the fourth and final episode of the Thinking with the Earth miniseries, 2026. In this episode, hosts Chrishma Perera and Ryan Baxter speak with Haorui Zhou, a second-year Master's student in Geography and Environment. Haorui shared key insights from his research on mobility patterns in...
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549 | Caring About Caring
PhD student Kailey Cutillo joins hosts Maris Schneider and Mark Ambrogio to talk about her work in Theory and Criticism. Kailey is interested in better understanding the politics of care, particularly within institutions such as universities. The "politics of care" is a framework that examines…
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547 | Thinking with the Earth 3: Rooted in Community
This is the third episode of the Thinking with the Earth miniseries. In this episode, hosts Chrishma Perera and Ryan Baxter interview Javier Ponce de Leon Eyl, a PhD student in Hispanic Studies. Javier also serves as the Sustainability coordinator for the Society of Graduate Students (SOGS)...
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546 | Thinking with the Earth 2: The Water We Don’t See
This is the second episode of the Thinking with the Earth miniseries. In this episode, hosts Chrishma Perera and Spencer Schmitz speak with Dharma Raj Dhakal, a second-year PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dharma shares insights from his research on how landfills can…
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548 | It's All About Carbon and Football
In this week's episode, hosts Bruno Mesquita and Zoe Kallenekos are joined by Samantha Hopkins, a PhD candidate from the department of biology who is investigating the exciting and complex world of carbon fluxes in dryland ecosystems. Outside of her studies, she is also a student athlete for the...
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545 | Ungetable: Exploring How English as a Second Language Speakers Navigate Derivatives
In this week’s episode, hosts Maris Schneider and Kelly Wang are talking with Yuhan Zhao, a MA student in the department of Education. Yuhan looks at how adults who learned English as their second language use derivatives when they are writing. For those who need an English refresher, a…
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544 | Chick-a-Dee-Coding the Accents of Birds
In this week's episode, hosts Anthony Cruz and Rafaela Platkin are joined by Alex Muth, an MSc student in the Psychology department at Western University. Alex shares an in-depth look at his research on the communication systems of two chickadee species, like did you know birds have accents just...
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543 | Thinking With the Earth 1: Flight Paths Toward Sustainability
This is the first episode of the Thinking with the Earth miniseries. In this episode, hosts Chrishma Perera and Garth Casbourn interview Madison Robinson, an MSc student in Biological Sciences, about her research on butterflies and her involvement in collaborative specialization of environment…
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542 | #Inspiring Minds 16: Optical Payload in Western Skylark CubeSat to Demonstrate the Future of Space Communication
This week, Purvaja Karthikeyan, a PhD candidate from Electrical and Computer Engineering is joined by hosts Mark Ambrogio and Victor Lau. Purvaja is supervised by Dr. Jayshri Sabarinathan, and is focusing on improving optical chip function for eventual deployment into space.. within ultra-small...
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541 | The Math Behind Viruses
In this week’s episode, hosts Kuljeet Chohan and Rafaela Platkin interview Jake Daigle, a MSc student in bioinformatics, about his research on modelling mutation accumulation (buildup of genetic mistakes) in viruses. From a bachelor's degree in math to starting a masters in bioinformatics, he...
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540 | Demystifying Job Hunting Through Peer Advising
In this week's episode, hosts Milan Mammen and Chrishma Perera are joined again by Varsha Vasudevan, a PhD candidate in the Health & Rehabilitation Sciences department at Western University, in the Health Promotion stream. Varsha went into depth in her work in a previous episode. Here, she goes...
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539 | #Inspiring Minds 15: Inside Speech Development, Altered Auditory Feedback, and Growing Voices
In this week's episode, hosts Maris Schneider and Mark Ambrogio talk to Jessica Holmes. Jessica is completing a combined MCISc/PhD in Speech-Language Pathology and Health & Rehabilitation Sciences. Her work focuses on how children respond when hearing the sound of their own voice subtly shifted,...
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538 | Studying Shape: From Human Histories to Earth Processes
In this week’s episode, hosts Kelly Wang and Scott Walters interview Sorcha Rountree, a PhD student in Earth Science, about their journey from archaeology to geology and what studying ancient skull shapes can tell us about identity in the past. Sharing insights from their MA research on cranial...
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537 | Zola, but Make it Funny: The Comedies You Missed
This week, French studies PhD candidate Kaitlyn Gagnon takes hosts Garth Casbourn and Mark Ambrogio into both the literary and theatrical worlds of mid-nineteenth-century France. Her research focus is the short-lived foray of Émile Zola into writing comic works for the stage. We learn about the...
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536 | How Kids Process Stories and Sharing our (Scientific) Stories with the World
In this week's episode, hosts Garth Casbourn and Bruno Mesquita interview Jessica Lammert, a fifth year PhD student in the Cognitive, Developmental, and Brain Sciences research cluster in Psychology, to talk about her work studying narrative processing and storytelling in children. Jessica also...
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535 | #Inspiring Minds 14: “One-Size-Fits-All” Myth: Concussions are Different in Male and Female Brains
In this week's episode, hosts Milan Mammen and Kuljeet Chohan interview Emilie Potts, a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering, to talk about what we still don’t fully understand about concussions, brains, and biological sex differences. Sharing what it's like to bridge engineering and…
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534 | Midwives on the Frontline of Maternal Mental Health Care
In this week's episode, hosts Anthony Cruz and Bruno Mesquita interview Shahnaz Shahid Ali, a PhD student in Nursing under the supervision of Dr. Panagiota Tryphonopoulos. Shahnaz's research explore midwives' experiences providing physical and mental health care to women during pregnancy,...
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533 | #Inspiring Minds 13: Accessibility by Design: Musical Instruments in Student Hands
In this week's episode, hosts Ryan Baxter and Mark Ambrogio interview Ran Jiang, a PhD candidate in Music Education, in Western's Don Wright Faculty of Music. In her research, Ran explores how certain norms sometimes go unquestioned in music; especially, by non-disabled people. Music-making is...
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532 | Taking a Close Look at Protein Oxidation Using Mass Spectrometry
In this week's episode, hosts Anthony Cruz and Milan Mammen interview Evelyn MacKay-Barr, a third year PhD student in Physical/Analytical Chemistry. Evelyn is studying the effects of oxidation on protein structures and dynamics. Though her lab studies small model proteins, their findings have big...
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531 | #Inspiring Minds 12: Walking to the Beat: Music, Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation, and Parkinson’s
In this week's episode, hosts Kelly Wang and Mark Ambrogio speak with Marina de Oliveira Emerick, a PhD candidate in Neuroscience. Marina's research looks at the relationship between music and cognition; more specifically, how music and non-invasive brain stimulation can affect walking patterns...
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530 | Changing Minds: Improving Hiring Practices with Growth Mindset Messaging
This week, hosts Garth Casbourn and Maris Schneider speak to Sarah Capellaro, a master's student in Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Sarah is developing methods to reduce bias against autistic people seeking to enter the workforce. Her particular focus is on promoting a growth mindset…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
GradCast is the official podcast of the Society of Graduate Students at Western University. We highlight the research our university/‘s graduate students. From History to Histology, we show you the cutting edge research of one of Canada/‘s top research universities.
HOSTED BY
Maris Schneider, Anthony Cruz, Mark Ambrogio, Scott Walters, Ryan Baxter, Maria Khan, Garth Casbourn, Riya Sidhu, Sarah Bidinosti, Chrishma Perera, Bruno Mesquita, Kirstyn Seanor, Mohammed Zeratti
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does GradCast have?
GradCast currently has 600 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is GradCast about?
GradCast is the official podcast of the Society of Graduate Students at Western University. We highlight the research our university/‘s graduate students. From History to Histology, we show you the cutting edge research of one of Canada/‘s top research universities.
How often does GradCast release new episodes?
GradCast releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 600 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to GradCast?
You can listen to GradCast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts GradCast?
GradCast is created and hosted by Maris Schneider, Anthony Cruz, Mark Ambrogio, Scott Walters, Ryan Baxter, Maria Khan, Garth Casbourn, Riya Sidhu, Sarah Bidinosti, Chrishma Perera, Bruno Mesquita, Kirstyn Seanor, Mohammed Zeratti.
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