Getting People Listening with Jul Parke and Katya Godwin

Amplified is an audio blog series about the sounds of scholarship from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. This month, we’re sharing a conversation between Jul Parke and Katya Godwin, two participants from Amplify’s first ever podcasting school that took place in spring 2024. Jul and Katya interview each other about the audio works they created during the week-long school, and we take a listen to both works.

• Transcript

  TRANSCRIPT

  Natalie Dusek 0:00

  [Theme Music]

  Welcome to Amplified, an audio blog, a podcast about the sounds of scholarship from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. I'm Natalie Dusek. Amplify's project assistant and your host for today. Last spring, Amplify hosted our first ever podcast school. Aimed at emerging scholars from across Canada, we hosted a cohort of podcast minded grad students and professors, and worked with them on how to podcast their research. In part one of this short series, we heard from Treva Legassie and Kristen Rodier about the projects they created during our school. Today, we hear from two more attendees, Jul Parke and Katia Godwin, who both made trailers to podcast their thesis research. Before each interview, you'll hear the final deliverable they each created, which they'll then discuss. Katya's work which you'll hear first is a trailer for their thesis on the ethics of working with human bones. Second, you'll hear Jul's work, which is a podcast trailer for their forthcoming podcast Homo Virtualis, investigating the virtual human. In this conversation, they'll share favorite memories from the school as well as future hopes and dreams for their podcasts, thanks for being here.

  [Theme Music]

  Jul Parke 1:33

  So my name is Jul Parke. She/they My research area is in media and communications, encompassing internet studies, platforms and social media and my connection to Amplify came through one of my PhD colleagues at the Faculty of information at the University of Toronto, Lauren. Lauren is a sound studies scholar and one of her close friends, Stacy, was part of the faculty at Amplify, and that's how I got to know about the school.

  Katya Godwin 2:08

  Yeah. So my name is Katya. I enjoy she/they pronouns, and my area of research is in biological anthropology. I'm doing an MA and biological anthropology, my area is focused on human bones. So I'm interested in human identification at the moment. I'm also interested in the ethics of the use of human remains, how we learn from them, how we teach. Somy connection to Amplify came through a faculty member sending me the application form. I'd made a podcast episode for her course, and from there, I was really excited about it.

  What do you think of when I say bones? Scapula, skulls, sternum, tibia metacarpals? What about her? "Bones dentifies bodies for us. Don't call me bones, and I do more than identify. She also writes books." Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist affect me, known to all as bones. She was created by anthropologist and author Kathy Reichs, and is played by Emily Deschanel. She graced our televisions during my childhood and teen years instilling a fascination in human bones to many myself included. However, as someone who went on to study forensic anthropology, just like my icon, Temperance Brennan, her portrayal is incredibly divisive within the field, with friends and colleagues having strong opinions about whether or not she is a role model, a disgrace, an offense. She's often wrong and portrays harmful stereotypes that are highly inaccurate about the way that we practice, learn and research, "I'm picking up the phone. I'm sorry I got preoccupied dressing and re articulating the remains. Why? To hopefully gain insight into the killer's mind," but she brought many students the field wanting to be like her. So how does one become bones? How do we train aspiring anthropologists who want to work with human remains "[inaudible] and avicular like you just don't care". How do we learn to identify an individual from their bones? Well, in every university there is a room, a room full of boxes, hundreds of these boxes, and in each of these boxes are bones. These bones are from once living, breathing humans, just like you or I, day after day, year after year, they have been picked up, touched, accidentally, dropped, damaged, and marked with pen, just like any other teaching supply. Pieces have been lost, misplaced, forgotten in the busy hustle and bustle of students coming in and out, teaching assistants moving the collections, selecting what needs to come out for course, what needs to go away, and forgetting which shelf is appropriate for which person. My academic interest has always been in human identification, just like our beloved bones. I strive to know who someone is when we find their bones and what they can tell us about the person who is no longer there to communicate their story to us. Consequently, I have spent a large amount of time in these classrooms with these bones and these boxes, and I've always been fascinated by their story, not just in what I'm learning from them to identify, but in how they came to be here and who they are. Currently I'm taking a detour away from working with bones to focus on these teaching collections. I want to explore their use, where they came from, and what their future is. Answering who ends up here and how they are treated while in use, more generally, concerns everyone. How we treat and interact with the dead should reflect more than the few administrators who control these collections and those who gain a direct benefit from their use. I want to bring people along with my journey of how we got here and where we're going. [Transition sound]

  Jul Parke 6:05

  All right, so, Katya, can you tell me about the work that you created during the amplify podcast school in May 2024, what inspired you to make this piece?

  Katya Godwin 6:16

  Yeah, so I essentially made a trailer for my thesis. At the time I was rewriting my thesis proposal. I had gone from doing a methods test, which is, I guess, like a more science based thing for my thesis, to getting really interested in the ethics around how we were learning from people and their bones, and what the implications of that was. I wanted to kind of make an intro to partially I was wanting to still convince my advisor fully, get my faculty members on board. And I really wanted to be able to integrate some kind of like alternate distribution medium and show them how it could be like effective. And add to the whole process of doing my thesis.

  Jul Parke 7:04

  That's really cool. So this was connected to research that you were already doing. Um, is this something that you are planning to extend at all, or have you built on what you showcased with us?

  Katya Godwin 7:18

  Yeah, so I'm still writing my thesis. I haven't finished that yet, and hopefully when I finally come to defend I will, at the same time, have prepared essentially like little podcast episodes, along with my chapters that have kind of like a more public facing presentation of like what I've been working on. So I mean, the joke is, like your thesis is only read by your advisor and your mom. And I kind of, like, maybe at least my greater friend group can know what I'm working on, and, like, the other people in my department might get more of an exposure than, like, just coming to my defense, so they can hear what I really got up to.

  Jul Parke 7:57

  That's so fantastic. And I love that idea. Um, I'm also in denial that only my mom and my committee will be reading my thesis. I have it in my head the more people will read my thesis. But yes, whatever makes it easier, that's fantastic. So I was listening to the piece that you put together at the podcast school, and what struck me first was how great your voice was. I tend to listen to ---you look surprised. I tend to listen to a lot of podcasts that are informative and sort of based in news sites and your voice has that quality of a nature reporter, or definitely like a science coded kind of podcast host. So it felt so natural, and it felt like a podcast that already existed. That's something that really stuck out to me, and I love the recurring theme or the sound of bones when you say it. So there's something about the script that makes it come back to this very catchy sound and concept of bones that anybody can relate to, even if they're not an expert in your field. So that's a kind of simplification that you've succeeded in that makes the audio somehow very accessible and very professional in a way. So I really appreciated those two things. I thought it was super cool.

  Katya Godwin 9:46

  Oh, that's really sweet. I listened to it too today, because I haven't, of course, created in a while, and I was thinking of already how much more confident I would feel if I re recorded it, and everything I would change. But it's really sweet to hear that like. Despite the flaws that I see, it was still interesting to other people.

  Jul Parke 10:06

  See, yeah, I think we are our greatest critics. I'm surprised to hear that. So what makes you excited about podcasting or audio work?

  Katya Godwin 10:15

  I guess so, podcasting or audio is my preferred media consumption content. I think we all got our Spotify wraps or whatever recently, and I listened to 84 days of podcast audio this year er last year, which is kind of baffling to me. But, um, I think part of it is accessibility. I have, like, a language related learning disability, which mainly affects, like, written and read language. So I have always really loved audio. I've really loved listening to the radio. I think I've been listening to podcasts, like, almost on a daily basis since I was like 14. It's my preferred format for consuming the news so, and I think when you take in so much of something. It's kind of like natural to be like, Hmm, I wonder how I could, like, get into that myself. I also love, like, when I write an essay, it doesn't necessarily have the same texture that you can add with, like the audio medium. There's, like, something about the pacing, how you're going to use your tone, I guess, like ambiance you're gonna set with the music or the sound effects, how you can, like, alter certain things with the sound to really like, communicate your message, like more clearly, or just add a little bit of emphasis. And I like that, like, there's a relatively low barrier to entry. So there's a lot of ways to professionalize it and a lot of skills to learn. And part of like, the Amplify school was really helpful in getting more into that. But I guess it hadn't stopped me previously from, like, messing around with it and having fun. And I like that kind of like DIY, like format, the first podcast I listened to was Witch Please when I was 14 [Laughter]. So getting to go and learn from Hannah McGregor was a really surreal experience now an adult.

  Jul Parke 10:16

  So cool!

  Katya Godwin 10:17

  I didn't tell her because I thought it would make her feel really old. And I was like, I don't know how that'll go down, but it was like a really surreal moment when I saw that. I was like, Huh, well, I didn't think I'd be here, but this is wonderful [Transition Music]

  Jul Parke 12:41

  Virtual humans make me feel hesitant, joyful, freaked out, uncomfortable. This s Homo Virtualis, a podcast where we talk about human representation in cyberspace. I'm Jul Parke, a PhD student who researches social media, technology and culture. Virtual humans exist in the form of Reddit avatars, chatbot girlfriends, computer generated influencers on Instagram, holographic pop stars and animated YouTubers. Who creates them? What's the technology behind it? And most importantly, how do we feel about them? Join me as I journey through the world of spatial computing, AI romance in the metaverse and the heated debates around making humans virtual, or making the virtual human. [Transition Music]

  Katya Godwin 13:48

  Okay, so we've already done the introduction, so it's on to question two. Okay, Jul could you tell me about the work that you created during Amplify, what your inspiration was for it, but also, if you had any continuation of this project since or like, any plans to do that?

  Jul Parke 14:11

  Yeah absolutely. So the works that I created at Amplify is a trailer for a podcast series that I conceptualized as being a version or adjacent project to my doctoral thesis work on virtual influencers. So virtual influencers are AI or CGI generated non human characters who work as social media influencers on popular social media platforms like Instagram, Tiktok or Twitter, and I am planning to actually work on this podcast series next year. I'm applying for a grant to actually develop an entire series with episodes, and the title, as you might have heard, is Homo Virtualis. So I actually want to branch out beyond this concept of virtual influencers and interrogate the entire notion of a virtual human, including deep fakes, AI girlfriends, chat bots and a lot of the human rights and privacy and data governance issues that we're seeing.

  Katya Godwin 15:26

  That's so cool. I remember when I first heard your piece, and I didn't know what a virtual human was before I met you atAmplify, so it was kind of like mind blowing in a very uncomfortable way. And I really felt that like the way you produced that trailer, really captured, captured that it's almost like you've altered your voice to give it that like, kind of like typically digital, or like virtual feeling to it and yeah I was, I remember it was the first one we heard. And I was like, super blown away by, like, how much you had done in like, such a short time. And I was like, Wow, that's so cool. Like, what everybody has produced here. I mean, I'm super excited. I really hope you get that grant, because I truly want to hear what you have to say about virtual humans, especially like now. I guess there's more AI talk in public, so I keep feeling like I encountering them a concept that I hadn't known before.

  Jul Parke 16:30

  I also want to thank you for featuring in this trailer. You feature in the important role of staying uncomfortable in the intro to this trailer, and I recall I had to leave Amplify early because I had to fly out to Seattle to attend the Association of Asian Studies conference, Asian American Studies conference. And so I remember sort of cornering you and cornering others in the stairwell and quickly gathering people's recordings to put this together, and I really appreciated that. I think it wouldn't be the same without all of your voices in the trailer.

  Katya Godwin 17:08

  It was an honor to be featured as the uncomfortable [inaudible]. So building on that, can you tell me like what excites you about audio work and why you would choose this, like podcasting specifically?

  Jul Parke 17:22

  What makes me really excited about podcasting and audio work is that it is a sensory experience. I think it's something that people can get lost in. For me, I struggle with hypersensitivity. And so when I was working and commuting and always being in environments where I couldn't control a lot of the sensory experiences I was having, I relied on podcasts to help me regain a sense of safety and control in my environment. And I think that's the special thing about podcasts, the layout in the format of these mediums, sort of having this like little ditty in the beginning and having a familiar voice introducing all these different kinds of topics. I think that it's uniquely suited to the environment that contemporary folks are in nowadays, as they continue to lose a sense of control over their environment. And it's a very accessible way that really goes beyond the boundaries of typical academic distribution methods, as you've already really well stated. [Transition Music]

  Something I'd like to share is a shout out to one of our faculty members at Amplify, Vinita at The Conversation Canada, the host of the Don't Call Me Resilient podcast, Vinita has been an incredible mentor to me after the podcast school, and I have continued to speak with her and her producer, co producer Attica. And so this upcoming February 5, we are doing a in person taping of a Don't Call Me Resilient episode at Massey College in Toronto, where I am going to be sharing my work and sharing more about this issue of virtual influencers. And not only has it been a great opportunity to learn more about podcasting, it's just been a great, sort of great opportunity to continue writing for the conversation and to continue working on research dissemination. It's so exciting, and so we've continued to have meetings, and we've been trading research articles back and forth. Yeah, it's gonna be amazing. [Transition Music]

  Katya Godwin 20:17

  I think one of my favorite takeaways from Amplify was Hannah was saying, like, do the weird thing and like, that's really helped me with, like, furthering my thesis in general, ethics and anthropology is kind of all over the place. Like, some people are really into it, and some people are like, No, we'd like to make this a science, and I think as anthropology is a discipline that studies people, like having a human element, but also engagement from other people is really important. And I think we're not very good at that, especially in disciplines that are trying to be more like pure science, or that are, like, kind of uncomfortable, like, I really want to talk about, like, dead people and like, do bones have any type of remaining human rights? And like, Are we allowed to treat them any way that we want to? And like, who gets to decide, like, what are like the ethical, like, spiritual, like implications of, like, the choices we're making in, like, teaching research and like, how does that like affect the end goal? And like, can you have a greater good argument in this area? And I think I really like podcasting and audio and being able to share it, like having an outside engagement of people who are, like, very much, not within this field and not within the institution, is really important, because this is maybe not something they've thought about. And maybe they have like, a gut reaction of like, oh, I don't care. Like they're dead. Or like, oh, absolutely not. Like, do not touch like, people's bones. But when you get down to it, like, people do have, like, much more nuanced, like, complex understandings of, like, how you can interact with a dead person and, like, in what way they, like, retain that kind of personhood or reality. So I'm really excited to, like, see how this is able to engage people. Because, yeah, I think if I just write my thesis and I publish it, like, maybe a few other people will read it who are doing, like, similar things, but I don't know. I think, like, as I said, my like, trailer, like, every university pretty much has a room full of bones and like, although art culture around that's changing, and like, who's included it, it's changing. Like, I mean, everyone's gonna die at some point, right? And like, do you want your bones in there? And like, how you feel about could that be you? So yeah. [Transition Music]

  Jul Parke 23:01

  Yeah, why podcasting? Why use podcasting to share research like this? This is a story I shared when I was applying to the podcast school, and it has nothing to do with my current research. But before coming to internet and media studies, I specialized in North Korea. That was my life's work, North Korean refugees, peace on the Korean peninsula, diplomacy and methods of sustainable unification. And where that fell apart was in 2016 or 2017 Donald Trump was in the first term of his presidency, and he went on Twitter to spew a barrage of hateful tweets against the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un and at that time, I was waiting in Seoul to go inside Pyongyang to teach English and to experience the country, make use of my master's degree and do the thing that I thought I would do for most of my life, but in a moment, a few tweets derailed all that, and I saw non profits and NGOs crumble and people's lives become just under so much stress and danger, years of negotiations and goodwill and donations falling apart, and months after that, Trump was publicized to have done a good thing for peace in North Korea and for engaging in talks, and disinformation was rampant, and I felt so helpless looking at the ways that narratives were proliferating around North Korea and around peace and around governance and diplomacy, and it factored into my reason to go into a field that would affect so many people, but it is also factoring in to my decision to make my research as accessible as possible, and to make sure that whatever I research, it will be listened to and it will be part of the public discussion.

  Natalie Dusek 25:20

  [Theme Music] Thanks for listening to Amplified- a podcast, an audio blog about the sounds of scholarship coming to you from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. If you have comments or additional thoughts on our conversation today or on any of Amplify's initiatives, please do reach out. Make sure to follow us on Twitter, aka X, Instagram or subscribe to our email newsletter on the website for updates and to keep in touch. See you next time. [Theme Music Out]

• Guest Bios

  Jul Parke is a PhD candidate researching virtual influencers—AI and CGI-generated characters that exist on social media platforms—and their impact on how we understand race and gender in digital spaces. Through her framework of 'virtual skin,' she examines how these artificial beings embody and commodify racial features, revealing complex dynamics around identity and beauty standards in our increasingly virtual world. LinkedIn, Instagram (@julladonna)

  Katya Godwin (she/they) is a biological anthropology master’s student at the University of Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory, having previously completed an HBSc in Forensic Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Katya’s master’s thesis looks at the past, present, and future of skeletal collections in a Canadian context. By exploring the past of these skeletal collections, they seek to understand the current ethical dilemmas facing their use and how this can guide future interactions with them.

• Links and Resources

  The Conversation Canada Presents: Don't Call Me Resilient Podcast- AI-generated influencers: A new wave of cultural exploitation? Live event at Massey College on February 5, 2025 with With Jul Jeonghyun Parke and Vinita Srivastava.

  Upcoming podcast series, Homo Virtualis (slated for Oct 2025)

  Intro + Outro Theme Music: Pxl Cray – Blue Dot Studios (2016)

  Written and produced by: Natalie Dusek