Confessions of an Academic Chameleon

Professor Chris Plack does the music for our podcast and Kate and I have collaborated with him.

I would say extensively.

Is that fair to say? I think we can say that.

Extensively?

Yeah.

We think he's great.

Extensively.

I adore him.

He's a wonderful person.

Wonderful, wonderful colleague and person.

His book is wonderful, but for somebody coming into...

It's psychophysics heavy.

Coming into this area cold, I can appreciate that it might have felt like, whoa, this is very different from what I know.

I think you nailed it there.

It was very psychophysics heavy, which was a big, yeah, it was a big shock.

And I was like, oh, I have no idea what any of this means.

Like even just trying to pick out words that I could kind of relate to in terms of the psychophysics stuff.

I was like, I've got no idea.

But in terms of the physiology stuff, it was a lot more linked to my previous background, which is really nice.

So I could kind of really like nail down that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And apply that more easily to the auditory system and then try and link back to the psychophysics stuff, which has been helpful.

And I say that about Chris's book because that's how I felt when I read it as a PhD student because I also engaged in some academic reinvention.

Because I started out with a BA degree in linguistics with literature as a minor.

I couldn't decide whether to study linguistics or neuroscience.