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 that episode, we were talking about the confusion surrounding the bit of audio called God's Cricket Chorus by Jim Wilson. In this segment we’ll clear up exactly what is known and exactly what is not about God’s Cricket Chorus and its derivative works.

Also, a correction to a mistake we made in Episode 29 about how digital audio is constructed for our ears. In that episode we represented the final product of digital audio to be choppy, yet moving by too quick for our ears to notice its choppiness. This is NOT the case. In fact, digital audio is always converted back to analog before it hits our ears. This is done with a device called a Digital to Analog Converter (DAC). Here’s an article that explains this process very simply (Page 4 is where the good stuff starts). Big thanks to the two commenter s who pointed out this error.

Want to try stretching some crickets yourself? Download this same set of cricket songs we used for the shows.

Part 2: Conventional Wisdom on the Future of the Four Humors

In HBM027: Balancing Act, Here Be Monsters producer Lina Misitzis delved into the rich history of the Four Humors, which was, for thousands of years, the way much of world understood medicine, the body and the universe as a whole.

While we never heard from Alain Touwaide in that episode, he was central to our research of traditional medicine. He’s the director of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions in Washington DC.

He spoke with Lina about the foggy past and likely future of Humorism.

HBM's very own time-pitch bending tape recorder

Jeff melted that hole with the soldering iron. Turn knob clockwise to slow stuff down by up to 3x.

Here Be Monsters' true heroes. These are the crickets you hear chirping in this epsiode.

At the Evergreen Washelli Cemetery. This is where the University of Washington offers free burial for their medical cadavers.

Some people choose to have their names engraved, most do not,

This is one of the few ways to be buried for free.

Part 3: The Resting Places of Medical Cadavers

In HBM028: Johnathan’s Cadaver Paintings, Johnathan Happ, a grad student at the University of Washington, visits one of the cadaver labs on campus. He spends a lot of time there, studying the bodies, so that he can make paintings of them in his studio.

While that episode has a lot of information about the cadaver labs themselves. We never got the chance to talk about what happens to those bodies after their 3 year rotation in the lab.

So, in this segment, Jeff goes out to the Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery in northern Seattle, where most of those bodies come to rest.

Special thanks to two employees of Evergreen-Washelli who helped out with a lot of the background for this piece: Sandy Matthie (Reception at Columbarium) and Brian Braathen (Funeral Home Manager)

Music: The Black Spot ||| Half Ghost <-- New!

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, and religion for thousands of years don’t just vanish. While few people still eat lemons to balance their yellow bile, or willingly drain their blood at the barber shop, elements of Humorism still play into modern society. They can be hard to see, but trust us, they’re here.

Music from: Lucky Dragons ||| Nym ||| The Black Spot

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