Ready Steady Learn

The University of Auckland's Dr. Mohamed Alansari is here to remind you all how important it is to attend ALL your classes. Specialising in Educational Pyschology focusing on classroom practices that impact the social and academic trajectories of student learning, Mikey and Mohamed talk about the patterns of attendance and how it all drops off in week four. Damn.

Dr. Anne Gaskett, from the University of Auckland, comes in to teach Mike and Tess a few things about the wonderful world of flowers, in particualr, orchids. Their behaviours are fascinating, specifically how they fool insects into pollinating their flowers using mimicry as well as other sensory deception techniques to attract insects. You can check out more of her work here.

The University of Auckland's PhD candidate Romana Grubner (also featuring in Animal Minds) is focused on studying the New Caledonian crow, you know, the crow with tool-making and problem solving abilities. While being compared to the way humans play chess, the crow collects tools and plans out a sequence of behaviours before taking on a task. Wowee, very fascinating stuff!

Dr. Molly Mullen from the University of Auckland's Faulty of Education and Social Work joins Mikey in studio to talk funding in Applied Theatre and her own book, Applied Theatre Economies 2018. Mike and Molly talk about the importance of theatre programmes and the so-called game that is applying for funding in the arts, whether it's important to teach younger communities of children to be competitive or to collaborate together.