Hi listeners, Benjamin here. Welcome to The Nature Briefing podcast, our regular Friday show.

Joining me, as always, is Nick Petrich How. Nick, how are you doing today?

I'm doing well, thank you, Ben. Excited to get into it.

Well, exciting stuff today, because today, the 27th of February, if you're listening to this, the day it goes out, is the 30th

anniversary of Pokemon.

The original Game Boy game was released back on the 27th of February, 1996.

And in this show, we're going to take a little look at how Pokemon and science have intersected.

And we've got an expert on board to do it with us.

Miriam Nadaf, I choose you.

Hello, Ben. Great to be on the show. It's my first time in the Friday show. Well, it's great to have you with us. Now, we'll say you're in the presence of two Pokemon expert trainers, me and Nick here,

but you have been looking a lot at this intersection. Before we get into that, I think I have to know, tell me both, what's your favourite Pokemon? If you say, Mr. Mime, I'm ending this show right now. No, it's not my favourite Pokemon. It's the Psycacac duck. That is an excellent choice. My choice would have to be Charazard, which is a very, very boring choice. but I remember getting the very first shiny Charazard in that starter Pokemon deck that many people will have had, and it stuck with me since then. Nice. Well, people say you never forget you first, and I will go the same. I think it's squirtle for me. Pokemon Blue on the original Game Boy. Put a lot of time into that when I was a student, instead of going to lectures, then my house got burgled and so did the Game Boy. So that's where we kind of left it.

Anyway, this crossing over between Pokemon and science is something you've been looking at a lot. And in fact, you were over

in Chicago last week, meeting a researcher who said that Pokemon, the pocket monsters, were maybe

something that sparked an idea in him about about natural history.

That's true. So last week I was in Chicago and I visited the Field Museum there, which is hosting an

exhibition for the first time in the US about fossils and Pokemon. And the exhibition will feature

some of the Pokemon that were inspired by or based on real animals as well as the real fossils that they were based on.

So the curators really hope that people will see how the world of Pokemon and the world of science coming together

and how they influenced each other over the years.

And speaking of influences of Pokemon on science and vice versa, Being an insect biologist back in the day,

I kind of have an idea that Pokemon itself was inspired by collecting insects.

That is right. So the creator of the Pokemon, Satushi Tajiri, used to collect insects and

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