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From Here Forward shares stories and ideas about amazing things UBC and its alumni are doing around the world. It covers people and places, truths, science, art, and accomplishments with the view that sharing better inspires better. Join hosts Carol Eugene Park and Jeevan Sangha, both UBC grads, in exploring solutions for the negative stuff out there — focussing on the good for a change, from here forward.
[00:00:00] Carol Eugene Park: Hello, friendly alumni you're listening to. From here forward and Award-Winning UBC Podcast network podcast. I'm Carol,
[00:00:15] Jeevan Sangha: and I'm Jeevan. Happy Valentine's Day.
[00:00:17] Carol Eugene Park: Happy love Day to St. Valentine Cupid and to all mortals who celebrate. And lastly, happy Valentine's Day to the men in heterosexual relationships who, buy their girlfriends and or wives flowers more than once a year.
[00:00:30] Jeevan Sangha: My God, the bar is really on the floor, isn't it? The bar is so low that we're turning to the marine world for today's episode. Human love just isn't cutting it.
[00:00:37] Carol Eugene Park: So, what are you doing for Valentine's Day Jeevan?
[00:00:41] Jeevan Sangha: Well, you know, Valentine's Day created by the greeting card companies is an opportunity to celebrate love in all forms. So, I've got Galantines Day on the books with my best friends.
[00:00:51] Carol Eugene Park: That is very sweet, and I love that you're spending it platonically, romantically. Well. I'm having a solo date actually. I'm taking myself out because I'm the best love I've ever had
[00:00:59] Jeevan Sangha: That is so on brand for you, and I can't wait to hear more about it.
[00:01:04] Since it's the Day of Love, Carol and I wanted to discuss all things companionship and romance, outside of the human world, and as I mentioned in the marine mammal world, a return to our roots of sorts.
[00:01:14] Carol Eugene Park: We had the absolute pleasure of speaking with a beloved UBC professor, Dr. Andrew Trites, who is also the director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit.
[00:01:22] He was a senior author of a recently published paper that found Orcas and Dolphins have a far more collaborative foraging relationship than scientists initially believed. We've linked this paper at the show notes if you'd like to learn more.
[00:01:34] Jeevan Sangha: We asked Dr. Trites about this fascinating finding and the lessons of companionship humans might be able to take away from our mammal cousins.
[00:01:41] Carol Eugene Park: We hope you enjoy, and let's dive in.
[00:01:44] Andrew Trites: So, my name is Andrew Trites. I am a professor and director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit. Which is here at UBC in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.
[00:01:54] Jeevan Sangha: Lovely. And can you tell us a bit more about the Marine Mammal Research Unit? What is it? How did you get involved?
[00:02:00] Andrew Trites: Oh gosh. Well, it's something we created going back, I guess, in the early 1990s. And essentially it was just responding to a need. There's been a recovery of mammals in British Columbia since we stopped hunting and killing and culling them.
[00:02:15] And as the numbers have increased, there's been lots and lots of questions about, well, what impacts are they having on fishing? How can we coexist with them? At the same time as ours, were increasing, there were populations in Alaska that were dropping fast and furious to the endangered species list, such as Stellar Sea Lions, while ours were booming.
[00:02:35] So there was just an opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds we have here at UBC, bring some fresh perspectives in, new techniques, new technologies. We developed a partnership with the Vancouver Aquarium to help us learn things about animals under control conditions we couldn't do in the wild. We set up field camps in British Columbia and Alaska.
[00:02:54] And essentially open the doors to covering so many species and issues that aren't going away and things which matter to the public and to our students here at UBC.
[00:03:04] Carol Eugene Park: Great. We're going to add some fun questions before we get into the actual study. So last year you were awarded the UBC President's Award for Public Education.
[00:03:13] Congratulations. That's great. So that tells me that you're kind of like an expert. You got a lot of facts up your sleeve. So, with Valentine's Day around the corner. Do you have any romantic facts from the marine world?
[00:03:25] Andrew Trites: Oh, I don't know what's romantic in there. You know, I guess it's all in the eyes of the beholder. If you're a Stellar Sea Lion male, well the, the bigger, the fatter you are, the more attractive you are to the girl. So that's kind of reassuring for some of us to think that it isn't all about being thin and muscular
[00:03:41] We do see things; we try not to bring that into our personal lives. But we certainly do pick up a little tips that make us feel perhaps a little bit better about ourselves. Speaking from the male perspective.
[00:03:51] Jeevan Sangha: I love that; challenging beauty standards in all settings is, is so funny. Thank you for sharing that back. I think that made, that gave us all a nice little chuckle to start the conversation, which is great. So, we wanted to talk about the recent study that you worked on about interspecies associations during foraging. Can you tell us a bit about the scope of the study and what prompted that area of exploration?
[00:04:16] Andrew Trites: Among the different studies we've been involved in, a lot of involve comparing an increasing population to a decreasing one because it's very hard to do controlled experiments.
[00:04:26] So we try to do what we would call a natural experiment, which in the case of killer whales is trying to figure out why are the Southerners killer whales declining? There's like 74 right now, and their future is very bleak.
[00:04:39] Meanwhile, their cousins to the north, the northwestern killer whales that have the very same culture, the same social structures, they also love to eat Chinook salmon, the number one prey source. They're increasing. There's like over 300 of them. Both populations are dealing with declining salmon, so how come one can do it and the other one can't?
[00:04:59] So to answer that question, we decided we would put cameras onto the backs of killer whales using suction cups. Some of the best suction cups are made at Canadian Tire, roof racks suction cups are just perfect, they stick down, they hold on, and when the time comes right, they peel off the animal.
[00:05:19] So we used it to put a camera on, but it wasn't just a camera, it was like a Killer Whale Fitbit went with it, and it was of course Killer Whale size because it's recording water temperatures, three dimensional movements, water depth that they're swimming at, light levels, and it's got also a hydrophone so it's listening and recording.
[00:05:40] So we put all this technology on because what we wanted to do was to see the Northwestern Killer Whales. Are they finding fish faster? Is it easier for them? How do they find these fish?
[00:05:50] We, we've got some ideas, but we really wanted to, to follow a foraging dive by Killer Whale. We wanted to be there with them. The only way was to essentially put technology and have the Killer Whales take technology with them, which when they came back after a day of feeding would come off the animal and leave no marks, and then it would float to the surface. And then we would recover it and then download the audio recordings, download the video and all the data, and then we got to watch what was going on.
[00:06:19] At the same time we were doing that, we were doing the parallel study with southern residents to see whether or not they were having more trouble or not, because our assessments of fishes just in fact, more fish available to southerns than to Northerns. So, here's the first chance to experimentally follow and compare in real time what they were doing.
[00:06:38] So we get our footage back, and of course it's the first time. You sit in the cabin, the ship, and we've downloaded and we're all huddled around and we want to see what weather the whales see. We want to follow them down to depth and see them with a big fish and catch it. And in one of the first few frames we discovered, we got photo bombed by dolphins.
[00:06:58] Like they were just there in the frame. It's like, no, you're not part of the study. You're messing up what we're doing. And, and we've seen dolphins with Killer Whales before. But I've always assumed like pretty much everybody else who studies Killer Whales, they're just there to mess with them. It just like, it, it's like, I don’t know, maybe like the pesky little brother that just won't leave you alone and they're just harassing.
[00:07:21] And it sort of seemed like maybe that was the case, but it really wasn't. As we began to watch, we didn't see any type of antagonistic relationships. We didn't see the whales trying to like nip at them or push them outta the way. It seemed like everybody was there to have a good time. Not only that, we saw something really remarkable, which is within the frame, we saw a whale that had a fish in his mouth just in front. It bit it in half to share with another killer whale. And when it bit in half, there are all these little scraps and bits of tissue floating the water. And the dolphins were eating it. The dolphins are getting leftovers. They're like, oh, that's kind of cool.
[00:08:00] And so I guess maybe that they're just waiting for handouts. Why not? Then we watched further, and then we began to see more things that were really intriguing. Like we would see the dolphins leading a dive, and the dolphins were going down and swimming to depth, and the whales were following them. Well, that didn't make sense because if we thought they were there to harass the whales, the whales should not be following; they should be swimming the opposite way.
[00:08:22] And then because we had the hydrophones on, we could listen. And as the whales go down, it starts, you see light, you see the dolphins and it goes black. ' Cause when they get down into the really deep water, it is pitch black. You cannot see anything, but you can hear.
[00:08:37] So what we're hearing then is we could hear the whale echolocating, it's trying to find fish because they send out, it's like sonar signals. And this goes ping, ping, ping, and then it bounces back. Ping, ping, ping off of hard objects, but particularly fish, it bounces off their swim bladder, so it's like a little air sack in the fish that gives buoyancy, it sends back a signal, and the whale is listening for it.
[00:09:01] Here's what was really fascinating. The Killer Whale was pinging less and less and going kind of quiet, and we could hear the dolphins. Then we thought, you know what's going on here? The dolphins are scouts. They're like equipped with these radars and they're fanning out in front in the dark water and they're pinging, and the killer whale is eavesdropping and is listening for the dolphins to find the fish.
[00:09:24] You might say, well. why don't the dolphins go get the fish. Well, they can't because the fish are too big. And if you ever look in the mouth of a Killer Whale, well there you're looking at tyrannosaurus rex. They are giant sized teeth meant for grabbing and ripping apart. If you look inside a dolphin's mouth, you little, tiny pins, it just like, like there's a hundred of them.
[00:09:43] They're just minuscule tiny. They, they basically like give you little like lump bites about how you're going to get out of them. So, and also if you look, then you realize too that the dolphin can't swallow anything that big, nor does it have the teeth to break it up, but they can find them. They just can't catch them.
[00:10:00] And so, by working together the story we were able to piece together, literally it's like ecological detective work. Each step we're trying to solve, like what's going on, what are we hearing? And then we've got the dive tracks, and then we can hear even when the Killer Whale then takes over and we're hearing the clicks and then we hear boo, both sounds and then we hear crunch.
[00:10:22] And that crunch sound is when death occurs to the fish because the killer whale now has locked jaws on the fish and we hear this crunch. So now we've got to, and then we can listen as, as there's no celebrations underwater, but there's quiet thrusting, and then we can see them coming up to the light and some dolphins in there.
[00:10:42] And we can see this tail of a fish hanging transient Killer Whales, the meat eaters have been seen with the resident fish eaters, the one that seems to chase the other one away are the residents, and so they seem to have the stronger hand. And so, it would appear that what's going on in the big picture is that here we've got parts of our coast where huge salmon are migrating through, and as they're migrating, they're feeding on herring. In the same area. So that's what brings the resident Killer Whales there.
[00:11:10] And the dolphins are there because there's lots of herring, which is probably why the salmon are coming there. So, they're in the same area. And probably over time the dolphins have figured out, oh, these are the good ones. We love these residents. They, because they're very vocal and to be, get a chance to hear some other calls, it's, it's like magical. The transients are not vocal at all. They hunt like complete silence. And by the time you know you're there, it's game over.
[00:11:37] But they do vocalize a lot after they've made a kill. They really yuck it up. It's like bragging, look what we got. Yum, yum. So good. But the, uh, they're quiet before that.
[00:11:48] And so in all likelihood, you know, this is a level of cooperation that has occurred because of circumstance. Hey, they're in the same area and dolphins and they're both curious, but I suspect the dolphins are even more curious, like, hey, I wonder where they're going. Like what are they doing down there? Oh look, and it probably just came through trial and error to develop these cooperative relationships. I don't think anybody had a game book say, hey, what do you think if we work together? I think it really came out through by accident, but these are sort of accidents that work and it reinforces itself. So now it's like, hey, we do this. We're all going to get something good at the end of a hunt.
[00:12:28] Jeevan Sangha: I think the concept of a dolphin Fitbit is awesome and hilarious. As a researcher, how involved are you in the process of getting the technology onto the killer whales?
[00:12:37] Andrew Trites: Well, involved in, you know, choosing the team that can do it because you know, and then coordinate everything and running the show. But in this case, here we have our mothership, which was a former whale watching boat called the Gmy, and we had also advanced acoustic equipment on board to look for fish. And so, another research team there.
[00:12:57] Then we have our little boat that's going to go to track the whale and to put the tag on. And for that, I've got three people on board that. I've got the skipper who was the former whale watching captain so he really can predict whale behavior. Like, I'm not messing around here. We get one chance at this, and we have to do it right.
[00:13:15] And then the tagger was actually the same person that built the blue whale at UBC Mike DeRoos. I met him first as an undergraduate student and his project as part of the marine mammal course, he built a sea otter skeleton, the very first one. And then, so he takes like the world's smallest marine mammal, and then he built the biggest one, put it back together.
[00:13:36] But one of Mike's became friends just over the years, but one of his talents is not only is he able to weld and build, but he's also got the upper body strength and experience put these tags on because we're putting on a very super light tag on the end of a pole that is like so long and you would not believe how heavy that is.
[00:13:58] There's not many people that can, it, it looks so light to hold. There's just this carbon fiber pole. It's so light, and the tag is, I can hold one finger, but you put that little thing on the end of the long thing, and it is just incredibly heavy.
[00:14:12] And so it took a while to find the right team that could do that. And then I had a postdoc researcher with Sarah Fortune at the time, and now she's a professor at Dalhousie University. So UBC served her well and is now serving Dalhousie well. And, and so she was on board and, and this was part of her postdoctoral study, was this particular aspect of this study.
[00:14:33] So it's a whole team. They have another team on board, another postdoc that was doing the acoustic fish part, and a captain and a cook. There's a whole team that goes into this. And but before that we're also just, you know, working with a company that's building the tag and they're down in Australia and according with them and getting our permits in place.
[00:14:52] So there's just a lot of things that need to be dealt with and often in the case of the pi, so it's often our faculty at UBC that are write the grants and and lead these projects. But in all cases, we have an amazing team of students and researchers and assistants that make it happen.
[00:15:10] And you know, and I think that's one of the things that draw people to UBC is that like we, we've got such incredible expertise here and literally there's no problem that I might have that I can't find somebody at UBC that could help me with, whether it's needing help to do a scan at the hospital of a blue whale flipper to dealing with battery problems.
[00:15:29] So we go to the engineering department, to physiology or, or wherever. It just like I, I, I'm constantly amazed at the depth of talent we have to work in problems and, and the willingness of people to come together to help solve problems.
[00:15:44] Carol Eugene Park: One might say cooperative foraging,
[00:15:46] Andrew Trites: well, put, well put
[00:15:48] Jeevan Sangha: I imagine as a researcher that footage and data must have been fascinating to watch. What was it like for you initially seeing and hearing the acoustic and visual data from this study? What was that experience like?
[00:16:00] Andrew Trites: When this tag comes off? You know, it's, it's a pretty bulky little thing. We have it painted with fluorescent colors and paint. And we've got a vhf, like a radio signal on it. And we also have something to connect to a satellite. And at the end of the day to find, this is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
[00:16:17] We are searching everywhere. We're getting close to calling the Coast Guard for help, like where is this. And so, when you finally get it back, it just such a relief because this little tag is not like you go to your local store to buy a Fitbit for whale. Like these are custom made and, and they are like prototype tags, which are really expensive.
[00:16:36] So everyone, we've got to get back. We only have three and we can't really afford. So yes, we did bid and we might lose one, but, and then we didn't lose any, which was just amazing. We had really dedicated people. In fact, we were calling down to our office at UBC saying, hey, we lost our tag. Could you get online and go to the satellite and find out the last coordinates and see if that can get us down?
[00:16:58] And so we were coordinating using UBC while we're out in the ocean to help us find it. So, we got the first tag back and it's this joy, but it's getting kind of late. And we did some quick little glimpse on it. We made this agreement, okay, we're not going to look at it until everybody's able to sit down and watch it together.
[00:17:13] But I woke up in the middle of the night and I just like, shameful. I snuck up and I turned on the computer and I really, I just dying to see, I couldn't sleep. I really want to know like, what, what, what we're going to see on here. And, and initially on there, it was just like so boring because, you know, I, I'm used to snorkeling places and I, and it created this idea that, oh, it must be such a rich, colorful environment.
[00:17:40] Like, have you ever gone snorkeling in Hawaii? You know you've been a little reef, and you've got corals and fish and turtles and No. If you are a killer whale, what you see is it looks green. It's just like green. Literally. It's like we're, we're doing a zoom call, and you blur the background, so you see no details of anything, you get a sense of light and whatnot.
[00:18:00] And the only time I could figure out where we were is when the killer Whale broke the surface, the camera comes outta the water, but oh, I can see a tree. I can see land. That must be where they are. But the whale's eyes doesn't break the surface. It's underwater the whole time.
[00:18:14] And so there are a few times when the whale comes in shallow, it's in some kelp, I go, oh, that's incredible. But that's not the daily life. And I was just left wondering like, how do the whales know where they are? Like they don't have a GPS map to go by and, and they've got no visual cues to look at.
[00:18:32] So they're also using sound. They can hear everything, but short of when they come together and can see each other. It's a world devoid of much stimulation, whereas us as humans just look around at the colors, the depth. I mean, we are just inundated it. It's like, uh, we're over sensed. We just feel everything. And for a whale, their world is so much simpler, but it gave me even more respect for them.
[00:18:59] But of course then we got photo bombed by the dolphins and they go, whoa, now I'm seeing something that is just so neat. But we are getting snapshots. And we saw some of the most incredible things, particularly when the whales were up and traveling together. cause now they stick together. It's literally when they're diving down the screen. But when they're together. We got one piece of footage where we can see they, a calf coming up and, and nursing on, on the fly, just like, you know, hanging on as they're going. And that's pretty neat.
[00:19:27] Or we saw another time where, where we've got a mum swimming with her calf. So the, the, the filmmaker, the killer whale is in behind, but he's filming the ones in front and we see like a mom and calf side by side, and the calf turns on its side belly up, and mom then rubs it with her, her side fluke and rubs the belly, and then it's time to breathe. So, they both turn over and they surface again.
[00:19:49] And I realize, oh, there's so much going on underwater. And they're like touching each other as they swim and bumping into each other. And there's just so much physical contact and we don't appreciate that when you just sit on a boat and watch.
[00:20:03] And I, I begin to see so many parallels with, with people what holds them together. It's really, touch is so important. And I guess at Valentine's we feel that even more importance of touch, but I think in some cases for Killers might, you might say, well, every day is a Valentine's Day, because there is just this constant physical touch among each other. And I think it's one thing that holds 'em together, provides those bonds, those reassurances as well. And that was something too that just hit me as I watched this footage of these, these remarkable encounters,
[00:20:34] Carol Eugene Park: Who knew their love language was physical touch. That's crazy.
[00:20:37] Andrew Trites: Mind, mind you, they're not kissing, but they are touching. How's that?
[00:20:42] Carol Eugene Park: You're such a, like an amazing storyteller. Where did your passion for the marine world begin?
[00:20:49] Andrew Trites: I grew up in Nova Scotia. And there's probably no better place in Canada than the Maritimes, whether you're talking about Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island for storytelling. Like we just hear it without realizing we're hearing stories. And so that's probably something that I, I learned early on.
[00:21:06] And then my interest in the ocean came via my father, who was actually A UBC alumnus as well. He did his PhD at UBC, but in physics, and he became an oceanographer. And he studied ocean currents. So, as a kid he would load me, my four brothers and sisters and our mom, and we would go to like Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island and he would like knock on the door of a farmer's house and say, can we put our tent up in the bluff over the ocean?
[00:21:35] And we spent our summers there. I remember showers was waiting for the rain to come, so we, my mom would push us all out of the tent to with soap as it rained, and then we got to play on the beaches, go with him and it would just like. So, I guess that's where I first saw the ocean without realizing it was something you could study. It was just something my dad did for work.
[00:21:54] And I guess I didn't really know either that I was going to go down a track of marine mammals. I knew that as a kid, I loved animals. I've always had that attraction with a, they were, you know, from my aunt's farm or animals that were kept at home.
[00:22:07] But also, I think the other thing inherited from my dad was mathematics, and I really went to university to study mathematics, but I ended up applying it to biology and doing mathematical modeling in biology, and I just found a really interesting problem. It turned out that a lot of people in biology don't like math, and that's why they're doing biology. Of course, a lot of that has changed today. That got me into it. And then I just found these really interesting problems about Northern First Seals. A species that breeds up in Alaska that was declining, issues with harbor seals and humpback whales and killer whales and stellar sea lions.
[00:22:43] And, and anyway, that's how I sort of got into it. But I didn't know from day one, that's what I would do. It was like at each juncture of my life is okay, do I go right or left? And this is where I ended up.
[00:22:55] Carol Eugene Park: I love that. Wow. Coast to coast. So, we're going to kind of go back serious here.
[00:23:00] With the world on fire as a scientist, you, I imagine have good and bad days with a healthy level of climate anxiety. What helps you stay grounded and hopeful despite knowing that our oceans are changing and getting warmer and all that stuff.
[00:23:17] Andrew Trites: You know, pretty much all of us that work in marine mammals, I think we must be among the most optimistic people in the world.
[00:23:23] I can introduce you to my colleagues who work on fisheries. They're not so happy. You know, in many cases with marine mammals, we're finding that the public cares about them, and so we have laws to protect them. For the most part, they're recovering around the world. We still have some populations in trouble, and so in many ways they are also providing us insights and a way to understand how the ocean is changing, how they're going to adapt to it.
[00:23:47] It's much harder, though, when you're dealing with other situations and you know, I'm not quite sure what to say in terms of the optimism, but you know, for me, I guess I see it's hard to get people to care about the oceans. It's just like, it's just a flat body of water and sometimes it's stormy and rough and I get seasick and like what's there to love about it?
[00:24:06] And, and yet I think as we talk about the oceans through the eyes of a whale, for example, it engages people. And so, if we're talking about, you know, what warmer temperatures is doing, not to the whales per se, but to their food, people start to listen more. So, I think it's, they are ambassadors of the ocean. I feel very pleased to get to work on a daily basis with those ambassadors.
[00:24:31] Jeevan Sangha: And as we mentioned, this is our Valentine's Day episode, which is really fun. And just hearing how passionately you spoke about the way different mammals, marine mammals communicate underwater, I wonder if there's any communication advice you've gleaned from researching marine mammals just in, in your day-to-day life.
[00:24:52] Andrew Trites: One thing I've learned over time is that not everything is the way you think it is, and sometimes we just have to look at things in different ways to realize we misunderstood something. It's worthwhile to have a second look, and the more time we spent thinking about things, the more we realize how much better we do understand it.
[00:25:11] But it takes time and that's the one thing I think that keeps me going in the research, is that we never know what new surprising thing we're going to discover. Just when we think we know it all, we find out that we're still just scratching the surface.
[00:25:26] Carol Eugene Park: How romantic.
[00:25:29] Jeevan Sangha: Thank you so much for chatting with us today, Andrew.
[00:25:31] Yeah. It's been, it's been so nice to learn from you.
[00:25:34] Andrew Trites: Yeah. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure chatting with, with both of you as well. Happy Valentine's.
[00:25:40] Carol Eugene Park: As I get older, I learn more about romance and companionship. Jeevan, did you have any lessons learned about romantic love from the marine world
[00:25:48] Jeevan Sangha: Following some of Dr. Trites' wisdom? I thought a lot about challenging beauty standards, about the world of sea lions and about how companionship might be found in places where we least expect it. I mean, who would've thought that orcas and dolphins had the relationship that they had.
[00:26:03] Carol Eugene Park: Are you going to ask me about my thoughts?
[00:26:05] Jeevan Sangha: Yeah, I should probably do that. Another lesson to learn about communication. What have you learned about romantic love from the marine world? Carol,
[00:26:12] Carol Eugene Park: Thank you so much my forging partner. I learned that I am like the dolphins. I don't want to do all the work, but I'll lead you so that you think that you are the leader, but really, I'm the leader.
[00:26:25] I liked that about them. They're really sneaky guys. One might say, that's my romantic style. I don't know.
[00:26:30] Do you have any final words of wisdom to our listeners as they prepare to love their loved ones? Maybe tips to our listeners perhaps?
[00:26:40] Jeevan Sangha: Just being open to new experiences like like Dr. Trite said, maybe looking at things from different perspectives. That's my little tidbit.
[00:26:47] Carol Eugene Park: Well said, and I think that's a great place to wrap up. So, thanks everyone for listening. Make sure you catch our next episode by subscribing or following our show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:57] Also, if you miss our Valentine's Day episode from last year, that's going to be in the show notes. You won't want to miss it. If you are feeling your feels, please drop us a review. You can find me on Blue Sky at Carol Eugene Park
[00:27:09] Jeevan Sangha: and me on Twitter at Jeevan K. Sangha. From here forward is an alumni UBC podcast produced by Kylé McPhedran for Podium Podcast Company.