The torch has been lit and the Science Podcast Olympiad is on! Mike goes for gold with his report on a South Korean city of the future! Mark manages to walk away with a bronze for his story on asteriod collisions, despite a suspiciously low score from the Swedish judge. Alas, Joe falls shy of medal contention after failing to stick the pronunciation as he details the color of feathered dinosaurs. The closing ceremonies include the world's largest solar-powered office building, a tour of the International Space Station, and communication with patients in vegetative states. It was an honor representing our country.

What we didn't get to: a solar turbine powering Arizona, cat versus robot, and Olympic medals made of junk.

(Links to the stories we cover are always available at scienceTASTIC.net.)

In this episode of scienceTASTIC the crew takes a little time from combatting VENOM to bring you the latest headlines. Mark (vehicle codename "Gator") explores some avant garde chimp cinema, Mike (vehicle codename "Condor") takes aim with a giant gun that shoots stuff into orbit (Popular Science, February 2010), and Joe (vehicle codename "Thunderhawk") turns office paper into toilet paper. In the second half of the show those stories turn into these: robots in movies, why crows hate Mark, and elastic water. Now, Fly Away!

(If any of that made sense, sorry, you're pretty much a dork.)

What we didn't get to: a 200 kilometer per hour soccer kick, five brand new emotions, and how you can feed hungry people around the world while making yourself a little smarter. Seriously, check out FreeRice.com. It's really the very least you could do.