Geek Pop: November 2012 (Nicey Nicey Zoo Zoo)

Nyawww, ickle wickle cutey wutey spider… In honour of Jim, ahead of his imminent departure to the southern hemisphere, this month’s episode is themed entirely (well, almost – when did we ever stick to a theme?) around the things he loves best: ANIMALS… And, perhaps predictably, there’s a considerable amount of spider chat. Jim does, however, underperform spectacularly in Hayley’s game “Does Jim really know as much as he thinks he does?” Other questions answered this episode include: “Are snakes soft in the middle?” and “Can a dove be noble?”

Some links for this month: Looking for the crazy robots made by the team at MIT? Here’s their web page. And here’s more about the baby raft spider programme at Bristol Zoo. Our musical find of the month was Paul Mosley’s bird song-based album, which comes out in early 2013. Otherwise, the music got quite obscure, so most of the songs don’t appear on Spotify, but go here for the big bumper list covering 2009-2012.

Bohr – Sleepy Valley

Spider Lovin’ – The Mighty Boosh

Snake – Frightened Rabbit [or on Spotify]

A Robot Meets the Tree of Life – Ben Prunty

FULL PLAY: A Chattering of Birds – Paul Mosley

Click here to choose from iTunes and other podcatchers. Subscription is free – it just means that whenever you open iTunes, it will automatically check for updates and download new podcasts. The online archive is here.

Intro/outro music by Intercontinental Music Lab. Image: The fen raft spider walks on water. But it’s protected in the UK because it’s so rare. Our local zoo has recently been hand-rearing some raft spiderlings (feeding them with flies) to get them ready to go back to the wild.