EPISODE 18 – Hunting Monsters with Jonathan Downes!

This week we chat to the amazing Jonathan Downes, the director of the Centre of Fortean Zoology. Jonathan is a real-life monster hunter and has uncovered many mysteries surrounding bizarre and weird sightings of unknown and unidentified creatures. In this weeks episode we discuss The Owlman and the decline of education, The Chupacabra and tiny goats, Hitler’s Koi Carp and many other weird and wonderful topics.

My new co-host is George Mortimer of the amazing Media Underground, who’s been adding the great new ‘Armchair Anarchy’ feature to the site. As is usual, Claire brings us this weeks Weekly Weird news.

Our new music feature comes from DaddyTanks ‘MySpace Heroes’ music picks:

Pang – http://www.myspace.com/pangmusic

Disolved – http://www.myspace.com/dissolvedamberrooms

Raleigh St. Clair – http://www.myspace.com/raleighstclair

Background music comes courtesy of the amazing Martin Denny, and even Mark Snow (if you listen to the interview closely).

We’ll be back next week with Lon Milo Duquette, who you’ll remember from episode 5 of the show.

Jonathan Downes is a cryptozoologist, author, film-maker, journalist, composer and singer-songwriter, with a background in radical politics and mental health care. His father, the explorer and Colonial Service Officer J. T. Downes, authored several books on wide range of subjects, such as African history, theology and Devonshire dialect. His mother Mary Downes was a broadcaster and author who published several collections of Nigerian folklore under the pen-name `Yar Kunama`.

He is currently the editor of Animals & Men; the journal of the Centre for Fortean Zoology, the editor of Exotic Pets – a magazine published by CFZ Press, and until August 2007 was and the Deputy Editor of Tropical World magazine, a tropical fish magazine published in the UK. He has also edited and contributed to several other publications over the years.

According to his autobiography and other writings, as a child he lived in Nigeria, and then Hong Kong (then a British Crown Colony), and returned to the UK in 1971, when his father was ‘invalided out’ of the Hong Kong government. He was educated at Bideford Grammar School, (1971-6) and later West Buckland School from which he was expelled. He worked as a psychiatric nurse between 1981-90 and between 1990 and 1994 ran the fan club for Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel.