Here Be Monsters

HBM050: The Scientist is Not the Angel of Death

In this episode of Here Be Monsters, Jeff Emtman joins "The Scientist," an unnamed cancer researcher, for an after-hours trip to his lab, where they visit the hundreds of lab mice that he tends to. The Scientist's job is to inject his mice with cancer cells, then attempt to cure them using experimental treatments. After the cancers become too large, he kills the mice.

HBM049: Sam's Japan Tapes

When Sam Parker went to Japan to celebrate his mother's 60th birthday, he brought along a handheld audio recorder.  For the next few weeks, he recorded every sound that he could find, attempting to capture as many audio snapshots of Japan as possible.  Sam doesn't really take pictures.  Without his glasses he's legally blind twice over.  So, to remember and share his trip, he created five beautiful audio postcards. On this episode, Sam Parker and Jeff Emtman discuss the merits of deep list...

HBM048: Barrie's Mental Tempest

Barrie Wylie has heard voices for as long as he can remember. Growing up on a small island in Scotland, the voices in his head were like secret best friends that he could play with. When he left school to become a fisherman at 15, his voices told him he was a disciple of Jesus.  He believed he could control the weather and prevent harm befalling his boat and his crew. As Barrie got older, his voices intensified. They became more aggressive, telling him to harm himself and others. He learne...

HBM048: Barrie's Mental Tempest [EXPLICIT]

Barrie Wylie has heard voices for as long as he can remember. Growing up on a small island in Scotland, the voices in his head were like secret best friends that he could play with. When he left school to become a fisherman at 15, his voices told him he was a disciple of Jesus. He believed he could control the weather and prevent harm befalling his boat and his crew.

HBM047: Peacocks Without Tails

When Hippocrates noticed that the hair on the top of his head was falling out, he fought it by applying various ointments of opium to his scalp.  But none of them worked.  So he called it a disease and named it "Alopecia" (translated to "disease of the fox") after the mangy, hairless foxes that wandered Greece in those days.  His friends called it something different though, they called it a "Hippocratic Wreath." He also tried sheep urine.  That didn't work either.  Content Note: Language. ...

HBM047: Peacocks Without Tails [EXPLICIT]

When Hippocrates noticed that the hair on the top of his head was falling out, he fought it by applying various ointments of opium to his scalp. But none of them worked. So he called it a disease and named it "Alopecia" (translated to "disease of the fox") after the mangy, hairless foxes that wandered Greece in those days. His friends called it something different though, they called it a "Hippocratic Wreath."

HBM046: Crooked Skirts

HBM045: Deep Stealth Mode (How to Be a Girl)

Marlo Mack gave birth to a son. At least, she thought she did. But her son crawled towards dresses, wanted to be a princess, and asked to grow long blonde hair. At age 3, Marlo's son asked to go back into mommy's tummy, so he could come back out as a baby girl. Marlo thought it was a phase--it wasn't. So she began learning how to raise a very young transgender daughter. Along the way she kept an audio diary.

HBM045: Deep Stealth Mode (How To Be A Girl)

Marlo Mack gave birth to a son.  At least, she thought she did.  As a toddler, her son crawled towards dresses, wanted to be a princess, asked to grow long blonde hair.  And at age 3, Marlo's son requested to return to her tummy so he could come back out as a baby girl.  Marlo thought it was a phase--it wasn't.  So she started learning how to raise a very young transgender daughter.  She started keeping audio diaries.  In this episode, Marlo sends her child to a new summer camp, and strugg...

HBM044: Distant Warfare

Bridget Burnquist was backpacking around Southeast Asia. After weeks of drinking cheap liquor on beautiful beaches, she was beginning to feel as though her experiences were merely superficial. She heard rumors that the nearby country of Myanmar (formerly Burma) was home to beautiful mountain villages that have hardly changed for centuries, accessible only by hiking for days in the Burmese jungles. So she headed west into Myanmar, despite (or perhaps, because of) warnings from the U.S. State ...

Lying in a Stranger's Grave

Carlos Gemora loved the feeling of the dirt at the cemetary where he used to dig graves.  One day he climbed down into the loamy, silty soil and looked up at the sky.  It felt like a womb... a death womb.  This piece was produced by Alex Kime and Jeff Emtman, with support from Bethany Denton. Our editor at KCRW is Nick White. Music by Nym and Lucky Dragons 

HBM043: Last Chance To Evacuate Earth

Marshall Applewhite met Bonnie Nettles in 1972, and together they built a religion. It was called Heaven's Gate, and it drew heavily from the bible, astrology, and Star Trek. Applewhite and Nettles believed they were placed on Earth to deliver a holy message. They were the leaders of their new religion, and they changed their names to Do and Ti (pronounced "doe" and "tea"). After Nettles' death, the group developed a larger, stronger following, its doctrine evolved—incorporating more and mor...

HBM042: Deers

Andy Wilson and Ryan Graves are best friends, despite having very different opinions on the hierarchy of human and animal life. The two come face-to-face with those differences after a fatal encounter on a frigid winter day in northeastern Idaho when Andy's dogs chase a deer into Lake Chatcolet. Today, Andy is happily married (celebrating his year anniversary next week), working as a fine woodworker at Renaissance Fine Woodworking, and living in Pullman Washington. He now has three brown do...

HBM041: Crossing the River, Feeling Watched

In his junior year of high school, HBM host Jeff Emtman left his home and everything he knew to live and study in a tiny village nestled in the Cascade Mountain range of Washington state. An outsider among outsiders in a tight-knit rural community, it wasn't long before Jeff felt the unmistakable feeling of being watched. This episode is the first in our 4th season of shows.  We recently joined KCRW.  If you'd like to know what that means for the show, you can read a little bit about our a...

HBM041: Crossing The River, Being Watched

In his junior year of high school, Here Be Monsters host Jeff Emtman left his home and everything he knew to study in a tiny village nestled in the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington state. As an outsider among outsiders, Jeff soon began to feel like he was being watched.

We've joined forces with KCRW!

Fear of Silence

HBM producers Jeff and Bethany are having more and more trouble bearing silence. On this episode, Jeff calls back crow researcher Kaeli Swift and asks her what it was like to sit in silence with a stranger. And Bethany explains the differences in the anxieties that she and Jeff have towards silence. Music: The Black Spot Please note that there are some delicate tones in this podcast.  If you're listening in a noisy environment, you might miss them.  That's not necessarily a bad thing...ju...

Terrible Resonance: Live Show Announcement

A live podcast from Here Be Monsters about subversive sound, earthquakes, ghosts, outer space, sonic weaponry, and whales.

Forty Monster Bites

Here's a little gift for you.  It's clips of every episode of Here Be Monsters.  You can use this page as a hub to your discovery of HBM.  As each clip plays, a comment will pop up in the bottom of the player.  Click that comment and a new tab will open with a link to the full episodes.  Pretty neat, right? Just because we're on break doesn't mean we don't want to hear from you.  Please, let us know what we're doing right and wrong, like us on facebook, and subscribe/review us on iTunes.  ...

Nearly Opposite Reactions

This episode is a follow-up to Here Be Monsters Episode 40, in which producer Emile B Klein talks to the pastor of The Reformation Puritan Bible Church, an anti-papal and white supremacist organization.

HBM040: The Reformation Bible Puritan Baptist Church

Eric Jon Phelps knows a lot of things.  He knows that the Pope controls the world.  He knows that it was the Jesuits who poisoned him in Tampa.  And he knows that we can avoid the Vatican's plans to incite global race wars is to keep the races separate. Eric is the pastor of rural Pennsylvania's Reformation Bible Puritan Baptist Church. Content Note: Explicit content including bigotry, historical inaccuracies and language. The strange thing about Eric is that he's completely open he is ab...

HBM040: The Reformation Bible Puritan Baptist Church [EXPLICIT]

In this episode, Emile visits the church to investigate the story of Eric's rise and fall in the bizarre, radical, niche world of anti-papal internet talk radio and finds out how Eric's upbringing in the Civil Rights Era informed his views on white supremacy.

HBM039: A Goddamn Missionary

HBM038: Do Crows Mourn Their Dead?

Crows have really strange habits around death. When a bird dies, crows gather, squawking loudly and gathering as many other birds as they can find to come and look at the dead body. Much of what we know about crow funerals comes from the work of John Marzluff, a biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. He and Kaeli Swift (one of his grad students) are trying to get to the bottom of these strange phenomena using taxidermy crows and masks and Cheetos and raw peanuts. On this epi...

Potential Energy (Live)

Potential Energy (Live) [EXPLICIT]

This episode is a recording from a live storySLAM organized by The Moth. However, this is *not* from The Moth's podcast.

HBM037: Uncertain Death

Recent episodes of Here Be Monsters have been largely about death.  So, on this episode David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg teach us about the exact opposite—immortality, living forever.  Their documentary film, The Immortalists, follows a small community of scientists who think of aging as a preventable disease, not an inevitable outcome.    Seeking immortality is nothing new, in fact, the oldest known text, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is largely about a king's quest to live forever.  And further...

HBM036: Throw It In The Ocean

Eric Chase's memory of April 19th, 1989 is largely a blur. On that day, he was aboard the USS Iowa, a World War 2 era battleship, equipped with some of the world's biggest cannons, capable of leveling a city block with a single hit. Content Note: Explicit Content, namely graphic descriptions of dead bodies. But April 19th, 1989 was the day when one of the 16 inch guns aboard the ship malfunctioned and caused a huge internal explosion that claimed the lives of 47 sailors and caused a huge f...

HBM036: Throw It In The Ocean [EXPLICIT]

In this episode of Here Be Monsters, Eric describes his experience inside the turret, putting organic material into garbage bags, wading through the destruction. He describes how it awakened a contradiction between his sense of duty and his sense of dissatisfaction with the Naval chain of command and policy.

HBM035: Spirits Of The Past

In this episode of Here Be Monsters, freelance producer Mickey Capper attends a modern seance, conducted by 20-somethings under an udder-like canopy in a living room in Chicago.

HBM035: Spirits of the Past

It was a group of businessmen in the late 19th century who originally invented the Ouija Board. They sold them in toy shops and promising questions answered “about the past, present and future with marvelous accuracy.” Spiritualism was all the rage in the United States, and, while hiring a professional medium could be costly, the Ouija Board allowed ordinary people to communicate with the dead. In this episode of Here Be Monsters, freelance producer Mickey Capper attends a modern seance, co...

HBM034: The Grandmother and The Vine Of The Dead

Ayahuasca is one of the most powerful and most illegal hallucinogens in the world. It contains DMT. But, for as long as anyone can remember, it's been used by people who have wanted to know more about the universe. These people have traditionally been involved with shamanic tribes of the Amazon Rainforest, but in recent years, more and more people have had access to Ayahuasca through ceremonies lead by shamans in countries near the South American Equator. Ayahuasca (also called Iowaska, Ya...

HBM034: The Grandmother And The Vine Of The Dead

In this episode, producer Lauren Stelling visits her old boss Cherub, who was facing a lot of grief after her best friend's daughter, Zippy, was killed in a freak accident of nature.

HBM033: What One Does

HBM033: What One Does [EXPLICIT]

In this extended interview, Ryan Beltz talks about German Romanticism, jouissance, Stoicism and the nature of anger, and how The World Speed Project is a rebellion against the "what one does" that society shoves our throats.

HBM032: Fugitives of the Blue Laguna

Back when David was a nerdy Oklahoman teenager, he fell in love with Stephanie. They both had angst towards their overbearing, conservative parents and they both wanted out. So, when the opportunity presented itself, they decided to run for it. They took David's blue 1976 Chevy Laguna and as much money as they could find and started driving to Portland to start a new life. Stephanie's mom found out and hired a private investigator. She told the PI to break David's arms if he ever caught up...

HBM032: Fugitives Of The Blue Laguna

This week's episode is about a nerdy Oklahoman teenager named David who runs away with the love of his life to what started as an adventure, turned into something really serious, really fast.

HBM031: The Roman Slug Death Orgy

In a strange, small, moss-covered forest in Bellingham, Washington, Jeff stumbled on to the most gruesome scene of hedonism he's ever seen. While it's not common for humans to witness slug death orgies, every once in a while, someone's there with a camera in the right time and place.  These slugs are most likely European Red Slugs (Arion Rufus), which were first noticed in the Western United States by a Californian biologist who found one in a lawn in Seattle. Now, the slugs are commonpla...

Season 3 Coming Soon

HBM030: Crickets, Cadavars, and Conventional Wisdom

This episode is a Grab-bag, it contains three segments that serve as follow-ups to the three most recent episodes of Here Be Monsters. Part 1: Crickets on Tape In this segment, Jeff takes apart his tape recorder and installs a knob to help him slow down the tape without using digital wizardry in attempts to de-muddy the waters after HBM029: Do Crickets Sing Hymns.  He bought some more crickets and slowed the cassette slowed down to 1/3 speed.  The results were telling, and surprising. In ...

HBM030: Crickets, Cadavers And Conventional Wisdom

This episode is a Grab-bag, it contains three segments that serve as follow-ups to the three most recent episodes of Here Be Monsters: Do Crickets Sing Hymns, Balancing Act, Johnathan's Cadaver Paintings.

HBM029: Do Crickets Sing Hymns?

A bit of stunningly beautiful audio has surfaced online recently and it's riling up two different kinds of people--churchgoers and audio engineers. Some are saying that this music proves God's intention, others say it's a load of crap. The funny thing is that it's just recordings of bugs, crickets chirping, but with the speed turned waaaaaayyyy ddoooowwwnnn. Whatever it is, it's...undeniably "church-y". But some have argued that it's not just bugs in the recording, that there's voices or gu...

HBM028: Jonathan's Cadaver Paintings

Jonathan Happ’s white lab coat and latex gloves make him look like a doctor when he stands in a room full of people. But he’s not a doctor…he’s an artist, and the people he shares this room with are all dead. In this episode, Jonathan takes a recorder into the University of Washington’s cadaver lab and reports on what he sees, and why he draws and paints images of the bodies. Sensitive listeners should note that this episode contains graphic (but mostly scientific) descriptions of the cada...

HBM027: Balancing Act

For thousands of years, Western Medicine thought it had itself figured out. Everything came in fours. There were four sensations, four fluids in the body, four kinds of people, and four elements making up the world. They were all related. There wasn’t one without the other. Everything was a balancing act, and it was called Humorism. In recent history, vaccines, sterilization, and other modern treatments have pushed Humorism out of the picture. But traditions ingrained in culture, science, a...

HBM026: John Comes Down The Birth Canal

It was 40-odd years before John Hanneman figured out what the night terrors of his youth represented. In this episode, John describes the first trauma he experienced in life—something we all share. And he explains how he overcame it to become the person he is today. Check out some pictures of John Hanneman over on the HBM's Facebook If John’s voice sounds familiar, you aren’t imagining it. John appeared on the show waaay back on Episode 3: John Dips Below where he talked about his experien...

HBM025: The Sasquatch of Pumpkintown VS Motley Crue Jon Bon Jovi

Homemade Bigfoot costumes can get you in a lot of trouble. And in gun-toting community of Pumpkintown, SC, a fake Bigfoot costume might get you killed too. But when the recession caused a local outfitter’s store sales to sag, it was a risk he was willing to take. In the episode, Ben Becker tells the story of a disgusting hound dog named “Motley Crue John Bon Jovi”, a tobacco-juice soaked Sasquatch suit, and the world’s worst hot sauce. Sharp listeners should note that no one fact-checked a...

HBM025: The Sasquatch Of Pumpkintown vs Motley Crue Jon Bon Jovi

In the episode, Ben Becker tells the story of a disgusting hound dog named “Motley Crue John Bon Jovi”, a tobacco-juice soaked Sasquatch suit, and the world’s worst hot sauce.

HBM024: The Friendliest Town In Texas

Shoppingspree Clark showed up on the side of the road outside the “Friendliest Town in Texas” with nothing more than a sketchpad and the burnt-out ruin of the RV he’d just bought. Content Note: Explicit Content Coleman, Texas’ self-claimed title is true because it used to be on a billboard above the highway. And the people that live there are diverse, troubled, religious, unusual…and friendly. This episode contains many adult themes, including suicide, prejudice, and racism. There are als...

HBM024: The Friendliest Town In Texas [Explicit]

Shoppingspree Clark showed up on the side of the road outside the “Friendliest Town in Texas” with nothing more than a sketchpad and the burnt-out ruin of the RV he’d just bought.

HBM023: The Near Destruction of Rey Jaguar [Extended Cut]

For lucha libre wrestlers, masks are everything. They wear them in the ring, they wear them to the grocery store, they wear them any time they appear in public. No one knows what face lies under that mask, so it makes sense that de-masking a Luchadore or Luchadora is highest taboo in the sport. In this episode, we travel to Seattle’s South Park neighborhood for Lucha Libre In The Park, a free wrestling event put on by Lucha Libre Volcanica. Costumes, yelling kids, exquisite masks, cross-dre...