Spark from CBC Radio

Jason Heikenfeld on biomimicry and e-reader design. Scott Eckert on Baxter and the future of robotics. Randall Stross on his book, The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator. Kaj Hasselriis on strangers helping strangers. Futurist Ray Kurzweil on his new book,

Nora Young speaks with Randall Stross, author of The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups.

Ian Cook on social analytics in the workplace. Izar Gafni on his cardboard bike. Tom Tullie on recycling your old devices at the ecoATM. Hany Farid on photo forensics.

Group chat boards are fun and productive in the workplace, but what if your company was reading and analyzing them? Nora Young speaks with HR expert Ian Cook about social analytics, algorithms designed to track sentiment and emotion.

Nicolas Nova on the curious physical gestures we've adopted to adapt to the tech around us. Kevin Kee on augmented reality and education. Andrew Clement on whether or not Canada is in fact, an internet backwater. Jessica Ivins on designing for women. Hugh

Nora Young speaks with Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College who is researching ways to determine whether a photo has been altered. Just this week, he launched his company Fourandsix Technologies, which offers software to help with this task.

Nora Young speaks with blogger Anil Dash about Terms of Service agreements. He feels these agreements are becoming intrusive and encourages us to push back.

Nora Young speaks with James Grimmelmann, a law professor from the New York Law School. He's been following Capitol Record's lawsuit against ReDigi, a website where people can resell their legally purchased digital music files.

Ivan Bowman, man and telepresence robot. Dalton Caldwell on social media gentrification. JP Davidson gets into shape with an online personal trainer. Maral Pourkazemi and Ron Deibert on the Iranian internet. And we ask the question - Does 'better late th

Spark contributor JP Davidson brings us the story of his own personal fitness quest. His personal trainer is in California, while he is in Toronto. They connect and train through a website called Wello.

Nora Young speaks with Dalton Caldwell. Dalton is the founder of App.net, an alternative to Twitter with a difference. You have to pay $50 to get in. Dalton explains why App.net might save third party developers too reliant on Twitter.

Nora Young speaks with Ivan Bowman. Ivan lives in Halifax, NS while his colleagues are in Waterloo, ON. To stay connected, he uses an interactive robot at the Waterloo office that he controls from home.

Nora Young speaks with Ron Deibert, director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab recently released new findings about a variant of FinFisher surveillance software designed for

Nora Young speaks with Mills Kelly. He's a history professor at George Mason University. In his course Lying about the Past, students create a hoax and then "throw it loose on the internet."

Nora Young speaks with Ted Striphas. He's an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University and he's a little wary of algorithmic culture.