HBM148: Early Attempts at Summoning Dream Beings

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Image by 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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Sponsor: Sleep With Me Podcast

Sleep With Me is a podcast that helps you fall asleep.

Host Drew Ackerman tells tangential stories, reads old catalogues, recaps old Charlie Brown specials and does other calming things all in pursuit of slowing your mind down and letting you drift off to sleep more peacefully.

Subscribe to Sleep With Me on any podcast app.

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

HBM143: Laughing Rats and Dawn Rituals

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Image by Jeff Emtman. Photo of sage grouse by Bob Wick of the Bureau of Land Management. Orange sky elements are the spectrogram of the sound of the mouse courtship call heard in this episode.

Image by Jeff Emtman. Photo of sage grouse by Bob Wick of the Bureau of Land Management. Orange sky elements are the spectrogram of the sound of the mouse courtship call heard in this episode.

 

Animals sometimes make noises that would be impossible to place without context.  In this episode, three types of animal vocalizations—described by the people who recorded them. 

The monkey who lost their mother. Photo by Stephanie Foden.

Ashley Ahearn: Journalist and producer of Grouse, from Birdnote and Boise State Public Radio

Joel Balsam: Journalist and producer of the upcoming podcast Parallel Lives.  Joel co-created a photo essay for ESPN about the “pororoca”, an Amazonian wave chased each year by surfers. 

Kevin Coffey, Ph.D.: Co-creator of DeepSqueak and researcher at VA Puget Sound and the University of Washington.  Kevin co-authored the paper DeepSqueak: a deep learning-based system for detection and analysis of ultrasonic vocalizations in Nature’s Neuropsychopharmacology journal. 

Also heard: calls of the Indies Short Tailed Cricket (Anurogryllus celerinictus), which may be the perpetrator of the so-called “sonic attacks” recently reported in Cuba.  Sound sent in by HBM listener Isaul in Puerto Rico.  

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

 
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Sponsor: Chas Co

Chas Co takes care of cats and dogs in Brooklyn (especially in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Bed Stuy and surrounding neighborhoods). 

Chas Co welcomes pets with special behavioral and medical needs, including those that other services have turned away.  They offer dog walking, cat visiting, and custom care arrangements too. 

Visit Chasco.nyc

Look, it’s Kane!

HBM105: Beautiful Stories about Dead Animals (part 1)

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Before Kryssanne Adams was old enough to understand death, she found a dead mouse and carried it around with her in a plastic Easter egg shell.  She talked to it and gave it water.

Content Note:
Descriptions of death/dismemberment, language.

This is a special two-part episode, in which Kryssanne describes the many times where she’s seen death or inflicted it upon animals.  This series is now a book, which you can purchase in our store!

Kryssanne is a writer in Bellingham, Washington, where she also helps run the Bellingham Alternative Library, sings in a Threshold Choir, and works at a museum.

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

👉 Listen to Part 2 👈

 

HBM050: The Scientist is not the Angel of Death

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What's a life worth? About $25, before shipping.  At least, that's the case if you want a high-quality inbred lab mouse, like the C57BL/6J (in the biz, they just call them "black mice"). 

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. 

The Scientist says that he is not a satanist, despite the satanic art that covers much of his body.   Instead, he considers himself a utilitarian, someone who believes that sacrifices must be made to promote the most good for the most beings (human or otherwise).  And "sacrifice" is actually the technical term he and others use for killing the mice.  The Scientist admits that it is a euphemistic word, but defends it because "from their sacrifice, you gain knowledge."

In his lab, the death comes via carbon dioxide, which is often thought to be the most painless option (though it has critics).  Other labs use cervical dislocation--though generally there's a requirement that the animal must be unconscious first.  

After the lab, Jeff and The Scientist sit out on a porch drinking beer, discussing the path to becoming a scientist, The Scientist's admiration of Neil Degrasse Tyson, and the beautiful French animated film, Fantastic Planet.

Music: Lucky Dragons, The Black Spot, Flowers

 

Jeff Emtman wearing his protective garb prior to entering The Scientist's lab.

The Scientist points to the spot where he injects cancer cells into lab mice.

Trailer for "Fantastic Planet" (1973). AKA "La Planète sauvage".