June 02, 2021

HBM148: Early Attempts at Summoning Dream Beings

June 02, 2021/ Jeff Emtman

As a teenager, HBM host Jeff Emtman fell asleep most nights listening to Coast To Coast AM, a long running talk show about the world’s weirdnesses. One of the guests stuck out though; one who spoke on his experiences with lucid dreaming. He’d learned how to conjure supernatural entities and converse with his subconscious.

Lucid dreams are dreams where the dreamer knows they’re asleep. Some sleepers become lucid completely at random, but lucid dream training can drastically increase the frequency of their occurrence.

Months ago, Jeff put out a call for dream prompts on social media. He asked if anyone had questions for an all-knowing being to be conjured in a forthcoming lucid dream. Some of the questions are heard in this episode.

While training for this episode, Jeff used two approaches to trigger lucid dreams. The first was an audio recorder by the bedside. Each morning, Jeff recorded his dreams (lucid or not). The second method was a series of “wakefulness checks” throughout each day, stopping at random times to test reality, and to make a determination on whether he’s currently awake or asleep. This tactic is useful as it may eventually trigger the same behaviour in a dream.

In this episode, Jeff attempts to lucid dream to answer listener questions, but finds the progress slower than he hoped.

Here Be Monsters is an independent podcast that is funded entirely by individual sponsors and donors. You can become a donor at patreon.com/HBMpodcast

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot, Phantom Fauna, and Serocell.

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Jeff wearing his favorite Sleep With Me shirt. This shirt elicits compliments whenever its worn 🐏💖

May 09, 2018

HBM098: Feed the Queen

May 09, 2018/ Bethany Denton

The Victoria Bug Zoo is home to dozens of species of insects and arachnids, and two leaf cutter ant colonies.

There's the new colony, with a three year old queen whose kingdom grows every day. If all goes well, she is expected to live to the age of fifteen, laying an egg approximately every three seconds. Her colony is teaming with a healthy population of soldiers, gardeners, and foragers with the potential to reach more than a million ants. There is a constant stream of activity; the soldiers patrol the tunnels to keep the queen and colony safe, the foragers trek back and forth retrieving leaves for the gardeners who busily chew the leaves into substrate.

Leaf cutter ants don't actually eat the leaves they cut down. Instead, they use chewed up leaves to build nurseries for the hatchlings, and to grow fungus gardens. The fungus produces a nectar, and that's what everyone eats. These ants have farmed and domesticated this fungus for many millions of years, long before humans discovered agriculture. This special relationship is called “mutualism”.

The second ant colony -- the old colony -- is not a robust as the first. At thirteen, almost fourteen years old, the old queen recently passed away. In fact, Bug Zoo tour guide Ash Bessant discovered ants dragging dismembered parts of her body to the ant graveyard as HBM producer Bethany Denton was interviewing him.

According to Ash, some of the ants continue to try feeding and cleaning the queen even after she’s died. Without a queen to lay eggs, the colony population will eventually dwindle and die out.

Can’t get enough leaf cutter ants? We recommend the 2013 BBC documentary Planet Ant: Life Inside the Colony.

Producer: Bethany Denton
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot, Serocell
Images: Bethany Denton

From: Ants! Natures Secret Power A giant ant colony is pumped full of concrete, then excavated to reveal the complexity of its inner structure.

October 25, 2017

HBM083: Sweet Like Snap Peas

October 25, 2017/ Bethany Denton

Cemetery asparagus. Photo by Jeff Emtman.

Ryan Graves thinks that store-bought asparagus is as flavorless as potatoes. But that's just because he's spoiled on the really good stuff.

His preferred crop grows wild among the tombstones at Clinton Cemetery, hidden on an old gravel road between the towns of Pullman, Washington and Moscow, Idaho. Most who are buried there died over 100 years ago.

That intervening century left the cemetery mostly forgotten and overgrown. And Ryan thinks the deep-rooted asparagus taste so good because of the natural quality of their fertilizer.

Ryan Graves thinks that store-bought asparagus is as flavorless as potatoes. But that’s just because he’s spoiled on the really good stuff.

His preferred crop grows wild among the tombstones at Clinton Cemetery, hidden on an old gravel road between the towns of Pullman, Washington and Moscow, Idaho. Most who are buried there died over 100 years ago.

Ryan Graves also appears on HBM042: Deers. Jeff Emtman produced this episode.

Music: The Black Spot