March 23, 2016

HBM059: When Cthulhu Calls

March 23, 2016/ Jeff Emtman

The most notable monster created by Howard Phillips Lovecraft was completely omnipotent, yet completely uncaring. A massive, tentacled being that sleeps in the depths of the ocean--Cthulhu. A creature that will one day rise again from its watery home to reclaim the Earth for itself.

In this episode of Here Be Monsters, we team up with Eric Molinsky of the Imaginary Worlds Podcast from Panoply Studios.

Eric speaks with Sheldon Solomon, a psychologist who co-founded the study of Terror Management Theory. Solomon explains the absurd lengths that humans go to avoid realizing their own mortality. And thus, Eric embarks on a fictional journey to find out why a creature so loathsome is constantly being turned into Cthulhu plushy toys and Cthulhu onesies for babies.

Eric visits a store call Love Craft in Redhook, New York, where he meets Roberta Suydam (played by Ann Scobie). Roberta tells him to look in the water off Rockaway point, Cthulhu is real. Seeking confirmation, he visits the Lovecraft Archives, deep in a basement lab in Lovecraft's hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. There, professor George Angell (played by Dan Truman) introduces him to the re-animated brain of "Howard" (played by Bill Lobely). Howard Lovecraft turns out to be just as racist in death as he was in life. Deciding to take matters into his own hands, Eric rents a boat to see what's out there in the waters off Rockaway Point, but as he draws closer to the dome rising from the water, he finds himself at wits' end.

Balancing the literary genius of Lovecraft's dark mythos with his unabashed xenophobia is no easy task. Readers must either choose to ignore the troubling aspects of his personal character, or disgrace him for his beliefs. Or possibly, they may superposition themselves in both camps at once, trying understand Lovecraft as if he's a just another creature in a universe of his own making.

Music: Serocell

We produced this episode in collaboration with Imaginary Worlds.

HP Lovecraft's drawing of his own monster, Cthulhu. 1934

March 02, 2016

HBM058: Kelly Is Cold

March 02, 2016/ Jeff Emtman

It was early in the morning of New Years Day and Kelly had just bought a purse-load of psychedelic mushrooms from Laramie Wyoming's local "druggist." Kelly handed them out to the assembled company and took some himself. He felt a bit apathetic about the world. He was wearing thin shoes,, a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. But when he went outside to look at the stars, he realized what he wanted more than anything else in the world...a book on combinatorics.

Suddenly, Kelly found himself elsewhere, in a wavy and confusing reality, holding a large rock and looking through the windows of Coe Library. He was thinking about the math books that lived there on the third floor. He was very cold and had a decision to make.

Kelly lives in Seattle today. He cares about math, people and bikes. His favorite book on combinatorics is Herbert S. Wilf's generatingfunctionology, which is available for free.

Music: The Black Spot, Flowers

Our first ever season wrap party is happening in Seattle in April! Please RSVP to us on Facebook if you'd like to come.

"Kissing Spheres" are an application of combinatorics that are useful in constructing 20 sided polyhedrons. Courtesy of Robert Bradshaw of Wikimedia Commons.

Calculation of Pascal's Triangle. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

It is possible to cut a rectangular cake into 15 equal sized pieces with just 4 cuts. These are called "cake numbers." Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

February 17, 2016

HBM057: Impostor in a Pink Pinstripe Suit

February 17, 2016/ Bethany Denton

Bethany Denton participating in high school speech and debate.

Growing up in small-town Montana, Bethany Denton's parents and teachers told her what she knew already: she was brilliant. Bethany couldn't help but feel destined for something big, even though she often skipped her school readings and phoned it in. Why try hard when you already know everything?

Content Note: Explicit Content

Bethany in her pink pinstripe suit at her final tournament. Photo by Katy Allen-Schmidt.

In high school, Bethany joined the speech and debate team and started winning medals in an event called Serious Oral Interpretation. One afternoon Bethany went to the bookstore and stumbled across a monologue by American author Joyce Carol Oates entitled Nuclear Holocaust, from her play I Stand Before You Naked. It's a first-hand account of a religiously devout and mentally unstable Southerner who eagerly awaits the world's destruction. It was the perfect kind of material for a Serious Oral Interpretation monologue, so Bethany bought the book. Her dramatic performance of this piece soon won her a trip to Las Vegas to compete against teenagers from across the country.

Bethany spent the next couple months slacking off, per usual. Later that summer in Las Vegas, Bethany steps in front of a room full of strangers and realizes that she's made a huge mistake.

Bethany Denton wrote and produced this story, with editing help from Jeff Emtman and Nick White from KCRW. Track image by Angie Foreman.

Music: The Black Spot, Flower Petal Downpour

February 03, 2016

HBM056: It Works Better in Movies

February 03, 2016/ Bethany Denton

When Lina Misitzis was a teenager, she told people she was dying. She wasn't. But, an entire genre of "dying girl gets the guy" movies taught her that landing a boyfriend required a certain brevity on this planet. She only lied to men, men she wanted to be with.

Content Note: Explicit Content

That was more than ten years ago, but the guilt of exploiting imaginary illness for (failed) romantic gain stays with her to the present. Julia Wallace, her therapist, thinks that Lina can overcome this guilt by re-writing the story of her teenage years, by calling three people she wronged and telling the truth. So, Lina does.

Music: The Black Spot, Serocell

Lina Misitzis produced this piece. Jeff Emtman edited it with help from Bethany Denton and Nick White.

January 20, 2016

HBM055: Ghost Tape Number Ten

January 20, 2016/ Bethany Denton

All is fair in love and war... even mind games. The United States military employs psychological warfare in nearly every war it's part of. From creating a "ghost army" of inflatable tank fleets in World War II, to blasting heavy metal music toward enemy territory during the Gulf War, the purpose of these tactics is to decrease morale and inspire enemy combatants to surrender or defect. The US Military calls these tactics "Psychological Operations", or "PSYOP".

The Vietnam War was no different. Threatened by the growing popularity of communism in North Vietnam, the United States joined the conflict in the early 1960's in support of anti-communist South Vietnam. Within a few years, U.S. Army 6th PSYOP Battalion tried a new form of psychological warfare, they called it "Operation Wandering Soul".

Operation Wandering Soul was designed to exploit a Vietnamese belief that death far away from home meant becoming a restless spirit, doomed to wander aimlessly for eternity. The PSYOP unit hired South Vietnamese voice actors to play the role of ghost soldiers and their families lamenting in an echo chamber. They played these recordings at full volume from helicopters and airplanes flown over enemy territory in the middle of the night. The hope was that North Vietnamese soldiers, exhausted by combat, would drop their weapons and go home.

In this episode, Sergeant Major Herb Friedman (Retired) explains how Ghost Tape Number Ten was created and its effect (or lack there of) on the course of the Vietnam War. Friedman did not work in the U.S. Army 6th PSYOP Battalion nor any other psyops unit, but in his civilian life he became an expert U.S. psychological operations. You can read more about him and other psyop tactics at psywarrior.com, including his article about Operation Wandering Soul.

This episode included excerpts from Lynden B. Johnson's 1966 State of the Union address.

Caitlin Pierce produced this episode. Caitlin is an independent producer living in New York, and is the creator of the podcast Borders. This episode was edited by Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman. Our editor at KCRW is Nick White.

Music: Phantom Fauna, The Black Spot

January 06, 2016

HBM054: Flaming Sword of Truth

January 06, 2016/ Bethany Denton

Patti Negri is a witch who lives in a house buried deep in the Hollywood Hills. Here Be Monsters producer Jeff Emtman and performance artist Lenae Day went to visit her one day in October 2015, audio recorder in-hand, in an attempt to better understand the mechanisms behind her magic.

One of Patti's tools is astral travel (or astral projection), a form of controlled out of body experience where the travelers eschew their flesh and bone bodies for ones made of souls, or energy, or something else entirely. In this state, travelers may move freely through time and space, see things previously hidden, visit alternate realities, or revisit past traumas, all while leaving their physical bodies safely at home. This is sometimes also called "remote viewing".

From the 1970's through the 1990's, The US military researched remote viewing through Project Stargate, in which they attempted to gather intelligence on the Soviets and others via the employment of skilled remote viewers. In 1995, the government disbanded Project Stargate for being "too vague and ambiguous, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the technique to yield information of sufficient quality andaccuracy of information for actionable intelligence." During roughly the same time period, the Soviets also researched the paranormal.

In this episode, Patti facilitates an astral projection session that unwittingly brings Lenae to one of her earliest moments of trauma. And for that reason, listeners should note that this episode contains a brief, albeit vivid, description of violence.

Patti Negri is a the senior vice president of the American Federation of Certified Psychics and Mediums, the co-host of the Cosmic Truth podcast, an actress, and a regular guest on reality television shows, including Bank of Hollywood, Mansion Hunters, and Ghostly Lovers.

A special thank you to HBM listener Cynthia, for connecting us to Patti.

Lenae Day helped record this episode. She is a performance artist living in Los Angeles. She's also the co-creator of KLAM Radio, a new podcast in the form of a public radio station broadcasting out of a fictional desert casino town.

Music: The Black Spot, Lucky Dragons

Patti Negri appears on Ghostly Lovers, a Travel Channel documentary on spectrophilia.

Patti Negri appears on Mansion Hunters, invoking the spirits present in the Black Dahlia Mansion. Good stuff starts around 6:00.