There’s a large cave in the foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan. It looks out over green and yellow fields and a river far below. Starting in the 1950’s, the American archaeologist Dr. Ralph Solecki led a team who excavated a trench in Shanidar Cave , discovering the remains of ten Neanderthals who died about 50,000 years ago. Dr. Solecki’s discoveries helped ‘humanize’ Neanderthals, a species of early humans often thought of as the brutish, stupid cousins of our species . In sharp contrast, Sole...
May 27, 2020•Season 8Ep. 18
David Pearce thinks it's possible to end suffering. He’s a philosopher* who studies “ hedonic zero ”, the state of being which is completely neutral--neither good nor bad. He believes that, despite our momentary joys and sadnesses, most of us have a set point we tend to return to. And that “ hedonic set point ” falls somewhere on the spectrum of positive to negative. For David, his set point is negative. He’s always been melancholic and he has depression. He remembers his interest in philo...
May 13, 2020•Season 8Ep. 17
In 2012, Jacob Lemanski started writing his autobiography a few words at a time when he signed his name on the digital card readers at the grocery store. He read somewhere that the credit card companies keep the signatures on file for seven years. He thought he might report his card stolen in 2019 so that some grunt at Mastercard would find the story of his life...or…more likely he thought it was a project destined to evaporate and never be seen by anyone. His inspiration came from an emai...
Apr 29, 2020•Season 8Ep. 16
We live in a culture of “death denial”. That’s what Amanda Provenzano thinks. She sees it when medical professionals use euphemisms like ‘passing away’ instead of ‘dying’. She sees it when funeral parlors use makeup to make it look like a person is not dead but sleeping. Most often she sees it when her clients’ loved ones insist their dying family member is going to pull through, despite all evidence to the contrary. Amanda is a death doula , someone who provides practical, emotional, and spirit...
Apr 15, 2020•Season 8Ep. 15
Searching for something to do during government-mandated social distancing, Here Be Monsters host Jeff Emtman recently digitized his cassette collection, and re-edited them into blackout poems and proverbs. While in the process of doing this, Jeff re-discovered a mixtape he made in 1999, the product of endless hours of waiting by the boombox in the basement with a hand hovering over the 🔴 button. And on this old mixtape, a 10 year Jeff attempted to make a fancy edit: swapping out th...
Apr 01, 2020•Season 8Ep. 14
Bodies are odd. Anyone who can see their own nose will tell you the same. So will anyone whose diet changed their body odor. And so will anyone who’s ever felt their phone vibrate in their pocket only to later realize it was a phantom ring . Our bodies make stuff up constantly and do plenty of questionable things without asking our permission first. It can feel disorienting, especially due to the fact that being our sole points of reference, they’re hard to see outs...
Mar 18, 2020•Season 8Ep. 13
Natalia Montes was a teenager living in Florida when Travyon Martin was killed . She says his picture reminded her of her classmates, “It could have happened to any one of us.” The Trayvon Martin shooting, as well as subsequent high profile police shootings and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, sparked an interest in Natalia for trying to understand one of the most difficult elements of human psychology: implicit bias . Natalia calls implicit bias “the cognitive monst...
Mar 04, 2020•Season 8Ep. 12
Bethany Denton has a long history of carsickness. Ever since she was a little girl, long car rides made her nauseous and gave her stomachaches. Once, when she was four years old, her carsickness was so bad that she made her dad take a detour to look for a cure at the grocery store. At the time, they were driving through Central Idaho, visiting all her dad’s favorite places from childhood. They drove to Kooskia and Kamiah , two small neighboring towns where Bethany’s dad lived for some time...
Feb 19, 2020•Season 8Ep. 11
Mother Pigeon says the wild animals of New York City are hungry. So she feeds them. Each morning, a flock of about 150 pigeons waits for her at her local park in Bushwick. She feeds them twice a day if she can afford it, and once a day if she can’t. Peas, lentils, millet and other grains, and corn in the winter to keep them warm. “When you go out to feed birds, you’re treated like a criminal, so I like to call myself ‘The Pigilante.’” Mother Pigeon considers herself a pre...
Feb 05, 2020•Season 8Ep. 10
Lars Christian Kofoed Rømer claims his red hat is mere coincidence. He wears it because his mother-in-law knit it for him 15 years ago and he quite likes it. However, it also makes him visually match the mythical underground people he spent three years studying on the Danish island of Bornholm. Bornholm folklore sometimes references “ De Underjordiske ”, a kind of people that live under the many ancient burial mounds that spot the landscape . Lars sometimes calls the people “subterraneans”...
Jan 22, 2020•Season 8Ep. 9
Colby Richardson ’s mom got leukemia when he was young. He has trouble remembering her. Soon after her death, Colby and his siblings wound up at a house in Hope, BC where he met Santo, a childhood friend of his mom’s. Colby remembers that Santo’s voice to be soft and extremely calm. Santo told Colby that he had a beautiful, green aura, a glow that surrounded his body. Back when his mother was alive, Santo had been able to see her aura too, the same green, but with a deep purply violet mixe...
Jan 08, 2020•Season 8Ep. 8
Most of us want to help. But it can be hard to know how to do it, and not all altruistic deeds are equal, and sometimes they can be harmful. Sometimes glitzy charities satisfy the heart of a giver, but fail to deliver results . That’s the paradox: motivating people to give often demands glitz, but glitzy causes often don’t provide the improvement to people’s lives than their less glamorous charity counterparts. GiveWell is a organization that quantitatively evaluates charities ...
Dec 25, 2019•Season 8Ep. 7
How familiar are you with the shape of the continents? What about the shape of the seafloor? If you’re unfamiliar with the contours of our planet’s underwater mountain ranges and plateaus and valleys, then you’re not alone. No one really knows what’s down there; at least, not in any great detail. That’s because, well, the water is in the way, and that makes it hard for our mapping satellites to see down there. Even the seafloor maps we now have, the ones that includ...
Dec 11, 2019•Season 8Ep. 6
There’s a beautifully written speech that was never delivered. Written for President Richard Nixon by Bill Safire, the speech elegizes astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11, who’d become stuck on the moon, and were left to die there. In reality, Buzz and Neil made it home safely, but this contingency speech was written anyways, just in case. Sometimes it’s called The Safire Memo and is sometimes called In Event of Moon Disaster. The latter title share its name with a...
Nov 27, 2019•Season 8Ep. 5
“Gene” says it started because he wanted to be a veterinarian. So he took a job as a research associate at a vivarium that studied cancer drugs. He was often alone in the lab at night with hundreds or thousands of research animals around him. The monkeys were his favorite, especially the rhesus macaques . He loved to give them treats, play movies and Celine Dion for them. And sometimes he’d lean up against the cages to let his monkey friends groom him. He knew the work would be hard, but h...
Nov 13, 2019•Season 8Ep. 4
Some time in the 90’s, Kathy Emtman received a gift from her husband, Rick. It was a pair of bent metal rods, each shaped into long ‘L’. Nothing special, not imparted with any kind of magic, just metal rods. Colloquially, these rods are called “witching rods” or “dowsing rods”. HBM producer Jeff Emtman (child of Rick and Kathy) remembers a scene that took place the night of that gifting: each family member taking turns holding the rods, testing who had the gift of water witching. Each pers...
Oct 30, 2019•Season 8Ep. 3
Mike Paros lives in two worlds. In one world, he’s an animal welfare specialist and mixed animal vet , meaning he works with both “companion” animals like cats and dogs, and large animals like horses, cows, goats, and sheep. He spends much of his time as a veterinarian working with animals that eventually become meat, and most of his human clients are farmers that lean right politically. In the other world, Mike is a college professor at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. There ...
Oct 16, 2019•Season 8Ep. 2
Angels saved Here Be Monsters ’ host Jeff Emtman once. They picked him up and took care of him after a bad bike crash. It was just one of many times that Jeff felt watched over by God. Jeff used to think he might be a pastor someday. And so, as a teenager, he made an active effort to orient his thoughts and deeds towards what God wanted. In this episode, Jeff tells four short stories about faith (and the lack thereof) through the metaphor of declination , or the distance ...
Oct 02, 2019•Season 8Ep. 1
In the fall of 1989, in Vancouver, Washington, a short, 29 year-old man named Westley Allan Dodd raped and murdered three young boys. The boys were brothers Cole and William Neer, ages 10 and 11, and four year old Lee Iseli. Content Note: Sexual violence, suicide and capital punishment A few weeks later, police arrested Westley at movie theater after he tried and failed to abduct another boy. He quickly confessed to the three murders. The prosecution sought the death penalty, and Dodd pled guilt...
Jun 05, 2019•Season 7Ep. 20
The end of our seventh season draws near! Just one more episode until we hang up our podcasting hats for a few months. We don’t want you to miss us too much though, so on this episode, we’re tying up some loose ends, answering some questions, and sharing ways that you can stay connected with us even when our podcast feed is quieter. Content Note: Sexual references and bodily injury Five ways to help us out this summer HBM Summer Art Exchange . You like to make art? You like to get ar...
May 22, 2019•Season 7Ep. 19
Life on earth began in the oceans . And it used to be simpler . For the first few billion years, life consisted of microbes that didn’t really swim or hunt ; they mostly floated and, if they were lucky, bumped into something they could engulf and digest . But that changed during the Cambrian period . Over a relatively short period of time known as the Cambrian Explosion , organisms started becoming larger and more complex. For the first time they grew limbs and exoskeletons ; intesti...
May 08, 2019•Season 7Ep. 18
Sudan has been involved in ongoing civil wars since 1983. The wars were about religion, culture and resources. By 2005, approximately two million civilians had died. In 2011, the southern part of the country voted to secede from the north, creating the new country of South Sudan. But there were still three regions that were claimed by both north and south: Abyei, Blue Nile, and South Kordofan. These regions are rich in oil and have fertile farmlands, so politicians and humanitarians predic...
Apr 24, 2019•Season 7Ep. 17
Mar 21, 1919 - NEW YORK CITY An anonymous writer for the New York Tribune stands at 154 Nassau . The writer asks passers-by a simple question: “Do you think this is a good world?” It’s just four months after Armistice Day , and on the tail of a flu pandemic that killed 55 million worldwide . The writer publishes five answers, ranging from “damned rotten” to “the finest”. Mar 21, 2019 - NEW YORK CITY Producer Ula Kulpa stands at the same spot and flags down passers-by 100 years ...
Apr 10, 2019•Season 7Ep. 16
A highway robber with many aliases lay on his deathbed after contracting a bad flu. He dictated his life story to his captors before succumbing to his illness in July of 1837. His captors published the highwayman’s story posthumously with the title: Narrative of the life of James Allen, alias George Walton, alias Jonas Pierce, alias James H. York, alias Burley Grove, the highwayman. Being his death-bed confession, to the warden of the Massachusetts State Prison . The story he ...
Mar 27, 2019•Season 7Ep. 15
In a warm and dark room in the winter of 1987, people lay on the ground with their eyes closed. A facilitator from the Shanti Project guides those assembled on an intimate visualization through the process of dying from AIDS. Content Note: Visualizations of death and language. This took place at the Interfaith Conference on AIDS and ARC for Clergy and Caregivers in San Francisco. The conference hoped to give religious organizations tools to help their dying congregants. The co...
Mar 13, 2019•Season 7Ep. 14
Bethany Denton’s been thinking about grief a lot lately. In 2017, two of her friends, a mother and a daughter, died unexpectedly just two months apart. Since then, Bethany’s started seeing grief in just about everything, including a caribou at Woodland Park Zoo that dropped her antlers after a miscarriage. Content Note: Death and Language Bethany’s good friend, Jesse Brenneman has also been thinking a lot about grief. It was his mother and sister who died in 2017. And shortly after that, his gra...
Feb 27, 2019•Season 7Ep. 13
Back when HBM host Jeff Emtman was a photographer, he used to solve his problems with walks in the woods. There, he’d see the ways that branches frame the sky. As an artistic concept, negative space gets hogged a lot by the visual arts . In this episode, Jeff attempts to wrestle the concept into the sonic world; address his current problems by listening to the spaces between words and by listening to the ambiences of a semi-empty, possibly haunted hotel. Below are some excerpt...
Feb 13, 2019•Season 7Ep. 12
Motherhood always seemed non-negotiable for Bethany Denton. Her upbringing in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints certainly instilled this. Mormons believe in what’s called a “ premortal existence ,” a place up in heaven where the eternal souls eagerly wait their turn to be born on Earth so they can prove their faith to Heavenly Father, and then return to glory in the afterlife. For Mormons, life on Earth is just a short test, an opportunity to practice free agency and serve G...
Jan 29, 2019•Season 7Ep. 11
For two thirds of his life, HBM host Jeff Emtman has been thinking about the distance to The Moon in terms of corn snacks. Bugles specifically. It was a factoid written on the packaging that purported to convey information about the distance to the moon. The number itself has been long forgotten, but the taste of degermed yellow corn meal lingers. Content Note: Language In this episode, Jeff takes issue with the significance that is placed on large and round numbers. And...
Jan 16, 2019•Season 7Ep. 10
HBM host Jeff Emtman travels to New York City in an effort to fulfill open-ended recording assignments issued from afar by Tim Hinman for an episode of Bang & Olufsen ’s Sound Matters podcast. It should be noted that in this episode, Tim incorrectly states that Jeff is from the “lentil capital of Washington State.” In fact, Jeff is from the self-proclaimed lentil capital of the world . This episode was produced and scored by Tim Hinman. Tim also hosts the fantastic podcast Third...
Jan 02, 2019•Season 7Ep. 9
