When a bug gets stuck in her ear while she’s in the field tagging alligators, Laura Kojima isn’t sure how to get it out without putting herself and her work at risk due to COVID-19.

Laura Kojima is a graduate student with the University of Georgia looking at the consumption risk associated with alligator movement off of the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site, a former nuclear reactor plant that has reservoirs that are occupied by alligators that is connected to a river where public hunting occurs.

This story originally aired on The Story Collider’s podcast on April 9th, 2021 in an episode titled “Stories of COVID-19: On the Job”. Find the transcript and other information here: https://www.storycollider.org/stories/2021/4/6/stories-of-covid-19-on-the-job

Laura Kojima: A Bug In My Ear

While working at an off-grid field site in Malaysian Borneo, Kasia Majewski searches for a reticulated python that has gone missing.

Kasia Majewski is a science communicator, environmental biologist, herpetologist, entomologist and general lover of "ologies". Originally from Saskatoon, she has spent the last 6 years working and undertaking research in Vancouver, Japan, Wales, Malaysia, and most recently England, before returning to be with her family in Ottawa mid-pandemic. While she has many animal related stories from her time at Vancouver Aquarium, Science World, the JET Programme, and Manchester Museum, some of the ones that she recalls most fondly are from her masters research in Malaysian Borneo, where she studied the prey associated with Asian water monitor lizards.

This story originally aired on The Story Collider’s podcast on July 16th, 2021 in an episode titled “Human Nature: Stories About Confidences”. Find the transcript and other information here: https://www.storycollider.org/stories/2021/7/12/human-nature-stories-about-confidence

Kasia Majewski: Oh, snake

Caving with her research team in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind, Nompumelelo Hlophe finds herself in a tight spot.

Nompumelelo Hlophe is a third-year biological anthropology PhD student at Texas A&M University. She was born in South Africa and moved to the U.S. in August 2016 to pursue her master’s at Georgia Southern University. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Information Science degree in 2015 and also became an exploration technician/caver, looking for new fossil sites in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa. After completing her PhD studies, Nompumelelo plans to go into academia or research and hopefully have an opportunity to recruit young South Africans to get into the field of anthropology.

This story originally aired on The Story Collider’s podcast on July 23rd, 2021 in an episode titled “Human Nature: Courage”. Find the transcript and other information here: https://www.storycollider.org/stories/2021/7/15/human-nature-stories-about-courage

Nompumelelo Hlophe: Tight Squeeze

Tragedy strikes suddenly while Lindsay Cooper is in the field studying right whales.

Lindsay Cooper is an operations professional who started out as a whale biologist. She spent years following endangered North Atlantic right whales up and down the U.S. east coast, then went on to administer a prestigious marine conservation fellowship program. Now she takes her three kids to visit the Smithsonian’s Sant Ocean Hall in DC, where they can view one of her photographs in the right whale exhibit. She will always have a deep passion for conservation science and science outreach. Lindsay loves working behind the scenes to help Story Collider manage day-to-day operations. Besides hanging out with her kids, Lindsay takes time to volunteer for the local swim team and elementary school PTA. She loves coffee, pajamas, and dancing, and once a year you can find her performing with the famous Olney, MD Hip Hop Mamas.

This story originally aired on The Story Collider’s podcast on August 13th, 2021 in an episode titled “Human Nature: Stories of Resilience”. Find the transcript and other information here: https://www.storycollider.org/stories/human-nature-resilience

Lindsay Cooper: Missing Plane

Exclusive: Bart Ricardo - Field Work

Having a past with legendary House Music artists such as Derrick Carter, DJ Sneak, Gene Farris, Green Velvet, Roy Davis Jr. with whom he's shared the DJ booth with, Brugge-based producer Bart Ricardo himself has somewhat become an iconic House-scene mainstay too. With releases on Farris Wheel Recordings, Gourmand Music and now Music For Freaks, just to name a few, the Belgian has proven many reasons why he's on top the game. His latest release though, a four tracker on legendary UK-label Music For Freaks betters the before-mentioned as Bart delivers three cuts taking us from Deep to classic to jazzy House vibes, showing both: his talent as well as his affinity for pure and classy electronic music, designed for the floors and making House-affiliates dance! dance! dance! Field Work's tempting House drum combined with an array of chords is as addictive as Bart Ricardo's passion for the music itself. The spoken vocals round off the track in the most formidable way, no wonder Justin Harris wanted to sign and get those tracks out immediately. 

Bart Ricardo's Morning Bliss EP was released on Music For Freaks.

Buy the EP: https://mffmusicforfreaks.bandcamp.com/album/bart-ricardo-morning-bliss-ep

Artist & label information
Bart Ricardo: https://facebook.com/bartricardo // @bartricardo // https://instagram.com/bart_ricardo
Music For Freaks: https://facebook.com/musicforfreaks.mff // @mff-musicforfreaks // https://instagram.com/musicforfreaks

Visit & follow Torture the Artist at:
https://torturetheartist.net​
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Morning Bliss EP

Field Work

Buy the EP

EXCLUSIVE: Bart Ricardo - Field Work [Music For Freaks]

Linguists are often interested in comparing several languages or dialects. To make this easier, it’s useful to have data that’s relatively similar across varieties, so that the differences really pop out. But what exactly needs to be similar or different varies depending on what we’re investigating. For example, to compare varieties of English, we might have everyone read the same passage that contains all of the sounds of English, whereas to compare the way people gesture when telling a story, we might have them all watch the same silent film and re-tell it back.  

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about linguistics examples that have been re-used in lots of studies to get large groups of people to produce comparable language data. These sentences are supposed to be pretty unremarkable so we can focus on doing linguistics on them, but they end up having a sort of charmingly banal vibe that makes them much beloved by people who have spent tons of time poring over recorded files. We talk about The North Wind and the Sun, the Stella passage, the Rainbow passage, the Harvard Sentences, the Frog story, the Pear story, and the Tweety Bird video. We also talk about what goes into creating different genres of reusable example sentences, from phonetic balancing to what makes a concept culturally specific, as well as our experience learning about and coming up with various examples. 

Have a favourite recurring example that we didn’t have space for here? Let us know!

Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723543648527122432/transcript-episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more

Announcements: 
In this month’s bonus episode we present: LingthusiASMR, a very special bonus episode, in which your hosts Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguistics in a very relaxed manner by reading one very large classic set of charmingly banal linguistics example sentences. Several people have told us that this has helped put them to sleep, which isn’t usually our goal but it sure is for this episode! 

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions, which you can ask here: https://forms.gle/s6MeeVAGWD3oaDoM6 (until September 1st 2023). You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm

For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723422789301829632/episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more-staples-from

82: Frogs, pears, and more staples from linguistics example sentences

Love Alone

Meet Pastor A! As one of our ministry representatives in Israel, Pastor A is an inspiration to many as he shares the truth of the Messiah and God’s Word in the Holy Land. He joins the show this week to speak about his powerful testimony of salvation, his heart for ministering to kids and teens, the church in Israel, and living a life for Jesus while enduring a war. Don’t miss this exciting and valuable interview with Pastor A!

August 31, 2024 | #2435 - FOI IN ACTION: Pastor A in Israel

The Friends of Israel reaches all around the world, and this week, we’re checking in with Trevor and Maggie Stewart-Sweet in the United Kingdom! They are a much-needed light in a progressively darkening climate, as antisemitism’s rising tide in Europe includes a surge in the UK. Chris chats with Trevor to learn more about their ministry, including their work to provide bomb shelters in Israel and how they are blessing the Jewish people in the UK. Tune in to hear how God is hard at work through Trevor and Maggie in the UK!

May 3, 2025 | #2518 - FOI IN ACTION: Trevor Stewart-Sweet in the UK

Recent years have not been kind to the Jewish community of Eastern Europe, where Jewish people desperately need true friends. That’s where Timothy Rabinek steps in! Whether he’s delivering aid to the needy, serving at our children’s Bible camps, or reaching millions of viewers through his one-of-a-kind Israel My Channel on YouTube, Timothy never stops ministering to the Jewish people, young and old, and teaching many about God’s great love. Listen to Timothy’s stories this week, and you’ll be inspired to carry out loving acts of kindness for the Jewish people too!

September 6, 2025 | #2536 - FOI In Action: Interview with Timothy Rabinek

Linguistic research has its highs and lows: from staging a traditional wedding to learn about ceremonial words to having your efforts to found a village school disrupted by civil war. Linguistic research can also be about highs and lows: in this case, looking at how high and low tones in Babanki words affect their meaning. 

In this episode, your host Lauren Gawne gets enthusiastic about the highs and lows of fieldwork in Babanki with Dr. Pius Akumbu, who's a linguist from Babanki, Cameroon, and a Director of Research in African Linguistics at CNRS in the LLACAN Lab (the Languages and Cultures of Africa Lab) in Paris, France. We talk about Professor Akumbu's documentation work on a wide variety of topics from the relationship of Babanki to other Grassfields and Bantu languages, what happens when words have a mysterious extra tone that is only produced under the right circumstances (floating tones), to that time he staged a false wedding to document traditional wedding ceremonial language – and led to a real couple opting for a traditional-style wedding of their own. We also talk about the process of founding a school in his home village to ensure that children have access to primary education in their own language.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice: https://pod.link/1186056137/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMjE3Mjk5MTM2Mg
Read the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/795823209951936512/transcript-episode-108

Announcements:
Lingthusiasm has more than twenty interview episodes, and you can find them all together on our Topics page, where we have a category for our interviews. We also have over 100 bonus episodes for patrons, with a few interviews there as well.

In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the joys and challenges of translating internet slang with Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez, linguist and translator of Because Internet into Spanish! We talk about why Because Internet was the toughest and also most entertaining book he's ever translated (for some of the same reasons), from coming up with localized Spanish versions of vintage internet memes to making the silly names of pretend people in the example sentences just as silly in Spanish. We also talk about leaving breadcrumbs for future translators in the original text and the special challenge of translocalizing the title: Arroba Lengua isn't a literal translation of Because Internet, but it fits similarly into Spanish internet slang.

Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 100+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. https://patreon.com/posts/137995510

For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/795082104011669504/lingthusiasm-episode-108-highs-and-lows-of-tone

108: Highs and lows of tone in Babanki - Interview with Pius Akumbu

Torture the Artist - your source for contemporary electronic music

Torture the Artist is a webzine, or a magazine made for the internet, geared towards those with a passion for contemporary electronic music, with subgenres including Techno, Tech House, Deep House and Eletronica, as well as a small amount of Indie and Alternative. Founded in 2014 by Holger Breuer, a German native and lover of the arts, Torture the Artist now consists of five team members from all around the world.

In addition to publishing interviews, music reviews, DJ charts and track premieres, the webzine hosts out a  podcast series called 'art:casts'. This medium gives DJs and producers the artistic freedom to highlight their different musical styles while not being restricted by factors such as setting, and connecting them to a wider audience. 

Being in its ninth year, Torture the Artist has gained a strong and active online support group, including music enthusiasts to label managers and artists themselves, creating a cohesive community with music as their bond.

Whether we wear a lab coat or haven't seen a test tube since grade school, science is shaping all of our lives. And that means we all have science stories to tell. Every year, we host dozens of live shows all over the country, featuring all kinds of storytellers - researchers, doctors, and engineers of course, but also patients, poets, comedians, cops, and more. Some of our stories are heartbreaking, others are hilarious, but they're all true and all very personal. Welcome to The Story Collider!

A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. "A fascinating listen that will change the way you see everyday communications." –New York Times. "Joyously nerdy" –Buzzfeed.  

Weird and deep half-hour conversations about language on the third Thursday of the month.

Listened to all the episodes here and wish there were more? Want to talk with other people who are enthusiastic about linguistics? Get bonus episodes and access to our Discord community at www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm 
Shownotes and transcripts: www.lingthusiasm.com

The Friends of Israel Today is a magazine style radio program/podcast made up multiple segments; Bible teaching, Q&A, interviews, and dramatic readings of Zvi Kalisher’s articles, entitled Apples of Gold. We’ve intentionally crafted this program to revolve around God’s Word and how it affects our lives today.

New tracks tagged #field work