Podcasts about london's natural history museum

Prepare to be inspired by this week as Canadian singer Katie Stelmanis, AKA Austra, sits down with Dan Deacon, Cosmo Sheldrake and Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw. Dan Deacon is a singer-songwriter and film score composer from Baltimore, USA, who is known for his exhilarating live shows and is described by his record label Domino as an "alchemist of electro-acoustic recording tools". He released his latest record Mystic Familiar in January 2020, his first to display his natural singing voice. Another artist known to surprise his audiences is Cosmo Sheldrake, who often brings sounds from the natural world into his records and live performances. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer and songwriter, Cosmo released his debut album in 2018, and his compositions have featured in theatre, film, and London's Natural History Museum. They’re joined by Florence Shaw, who is a visual artist and university lecturer as well as being the lead vocalist and lyricist for London-based band Dry Cleaning. Her sources of lyrical inspiration include social anxiety, YouTube comments and even takeaway menus. They’ll be discussing the odd places they find inspiration, how an album’s format can impact the music itself, and overcoming anxiety.

They're in the kitchen. They're in the garden. They zoom into your room when the window is open. They can seem annoying BUT they're important. Flies. On today's show I spoke with senior curator of Diptera (Flies) at London's Natural History Museum & author of The Secret Life of Flies, Dr Erica McAlister. From her favourite species of fly, to why they're important & to what actually makes a species, Erica covers it all (whilst out on her daily government authorised walk). It was wonderful to chat to someone with such knowledge & passion about this world of insects. If you'd like to keep up to date with projects & shows that Erica is working on, you can do so by following her on Instagram & Twitter @flygirlNHM  

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have been around for years, and billions have been spent on popularising them, so far to little avail. Ed Butler dons an Oculus Rift at London's Natural History Museum to experience a VR journey through its collection, and speaks to John Casey, chief executive of Factory 42, which designed the experience. But despite big investments by the likes of Google, Facebook, Imax, Disney and others, sales of VR and AR headsets are still a fraction of traditional gaming consoles such as Sony PlayStation. Jeremy Dalton, who heads the AR/VR team at consultancy PwC, says that's about to change. But Stephanie Riggs, author of “The End of Storytelling", says that first content producers need to get out of their comfort zone of traditional narrative telling, and embrace AI-generated stories. Producer: Joshua Thorpe (Picture: Man using Oculus Rift VR headset; Credit: dangrytsku/Getty Images)

Dr Erica McAlister, of London's Natural History Museum, talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the beautiful world of flies and the 2.5 million specimens for which she is jointly responsible. According to Erica, a world without flies would be full of faeces and dead bodies. Unlike, for example, butterflies and moths, whose caterpillars spend their time devouring our crops and plants, fly larvae tend to help rid the world of waste materials and then, as adults, perform essential work as pollinators. Yet they are rather unloved by humans who tend to regard them as pests at best and disease vectors at worst. 2019 is international Year of the Fly, and dipterists and entomologists around the world are working to raise the profile of the many thousands of species so far known to science. Erica tells Jim about her work in the museum, cataloguing and identifying new species either sent in from other researchers or discovered by her and her colleagues on swashbuckling trips around the world. Modern gene sequencing techniques are revealing new chapters in the life histories of species, and her collection of 300 year old dead flies continues to expand our knowledge of how the world works. Perhaps in the future, she argues, we will all be eating pasta and bread made from fly-larvae protein, or using small tea-bag like packets of maggots in our wounds to clean out gangrenous infection.

Six years ago, I was dating someone living in London. While he was at work, I would troll around London by myself and was pulled many times back to London's Natural History Museum (NMH), in particular to The Darwin Center and their very interactive exhibit. The NHM is much more than a museum: it is home to over 300 scientists who are publishing 700+ publications a year on the solar system, earth's geology and life, biodiversity, and sustainability. It also houses over 80 million specimens that span 4.5 billion years! Out latest podcast features John Jackson, Head of Science Communication and Policy at NHM. In the 1990's, NHM changed the way they approached the museum's exhibitions. Traditionally, scientists would take something that they were working on behind closed doors, put it in a display case and then go back to the lab. The major goal has now shifted to include the public in the process of science and to shape both research and exhibits with public engagement in mind. I'm still thinking about The Darwin Center five years later, so definitely a model worth learning about. Check out our show links at www.publichealthunited.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at PHUpodcast.

Marvin Hewitt never finished high school, but he taught advanced physics, engineering, and mathematics under assumed names at seven different schools and universities between 1945 and 1953. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll trace the curious career of an academic impostor, whose story has been called "one of the strangest academic hoaxes in history." We'll also try on a flashproof scarf and puzzle over why a healthy man would check into a hospital. Intro: Between 1950 and 1995, mathematician Marion Tinsley took first place in every checkers tournament he played in. The Hoover Dam contains a map of our sky so that future historians can date its creation. Sources for our feature on Marvin Harold Hewitt: Herbert Brean, "Marvin Hewitt, Ph(ony) D.," Life 36:15 (April 12, 1954), 144. "Honest Career for a Ph(ony) D.," Life 42:3 (Jan. 21, 1957), 57. "A Bogus Professor Is Unmasked," New York Times, March 6, 1954, 1. Michael L. James, "Bogus Professor Expects Job Bids," New York Times, March 7, 1954. "Ousted 'Professor' Gets Offer of a Job," Associated Press, April 11, 1954, 63. Helene Deutsch, "The Impostor: Contribution to Ego Psychology of a Type of Psychopath," Psychoanalytic Quarterly 80:4 (October 2011), 1005-1024. Ian Graham, Ultimate Book of Impostors, 2013. Maria Konnikova, The Confidence Game, 2017. Listener mail: One of the hard-won 1911 penguin eggs, now at London's Natural History Museum (thanks to listener Dave Lawrence). An anti-paparazzi scarf (thanks to Kevin Cedrone). Natural History Museum, "Treasures in the Cadogan Gallery" (accessed Nov. 30, 2017). Audio guide to the Cadogan Gallery (the penguin egg is at 26:14). Tiana Attride, "Celebrities Are Obsessed With This 'Paparazzi-Proof' Clothing Brand That Makes Them Impossible to Photograph," Business Insider, March 17, 2017 (contains video of anti-flash photography clothing). Mark Molloy, "This Genius 'Paparazzi-Proof' Scarf Can Make You 'Invisible' in Photos," Telegraph, June 30, 2016. Timothy Revell, "Glasses Make Face Recognition Tech Think You're Milla Jovovich," New Scientist, Nov. 1, 2016. Mahmood Sharif et al., "Accessorize to a Crime: Real and Stealthy Attacks on State-of-the-Art Face Recognition," Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, 2016. "Snow Prints Spark 'Devil' Mystery," BBC News, March 13, 2009. "Ancient Legend of Satan's Visit Reawakened by Footprints in the Snow," Telegraph, March 13, 2009. Centre for Fortean Zoology: "Mysterious Footprints in Woolsery." This week's lateral thinking puzzle was devised by Sharon. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!

It's the end of an era. Dippy the dinosaur has left the building. Gifted to King Edward VII in 1905, a 70 foot long cast of a fossilised dinosaur skeleton discovered in America has been on display at London's Natural History Museum for more than a century. It's become the country's most recognisable museum exhibit - seen by an estimated 90 million people. Now it's being replaced by the real skeleton of a giant blue whale...Dippy's 292 plaster cast bones setting off instead on a nationwide tour. On Profile this week, Mark Coles examines how Dippy the replica Diplodocus has become a national treasure. Producer Smita Patel Researcher Beth Sagar-Fenton.

In the summer of 2017, Dippy the Dinosaur is being removed from London's Natural History Museum. We discuss what prompted the decision, how you can campaign against the decision, as well as give details on the Diplodocus, a dinosaur known for its length and whip-like tail. Visit http://www.IknowDino.com for more information including a link to dinosaur sites near you. You can also visit https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino to get the inside scoop on I Know Dino.

British Geological Survey scientists have completed the first full geological survey of Lake Windermere in the English Lake District since the Royal Navy made a survey in the 1930s. Among other things, the survey will help researchers understand how quickly the ice retreated after the last Ice Age, how the lake evolved and which parts the Arctic Charr prefers to live in. Richard Hollingham went to visit scientists on the BGS's research boat the White Ribbon on the lake to talk to the scientists involved. Next up, Richard speaks to a dinosaur expert at London's Natural History Museum who is... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists