Season 9 = February 17th

Image by Jeff Emtman.

Season 9 will be here soon!  We’ll bring you ten new episodes about fear, beauty and the unknown.  

We’ll see the fight for survival and beauty of the microscopic world.  We’ll learn how balloons can be used to capture the souls of doomed buildings.  We’ll listen for alien transmissions on a reserved shortwave frequency.  We’ll luxuriate in the scent discarded cocoa bean husks. and you’ll get quick-fixes to all your problems from the all-knowing, hyper-dimensional entity that sometimes advises Jeff in his sleep. 

As a side note, we’ve been re-shuffling some things behind the scenes on the podcast feed.  If you’ve got duplicate episodes showing up, you can likely fix that by unsubscribing and re-subscribing to Here Be Monsters.  Thanks for your patience! 

Also, we have a Patreon now.  Your support is very much appreciated.  Thank you! 

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

HBM Continues as an Independent Podcast

For the last five years, Here Be Monsters has been a part of KCRW.  And in those years, we’ve put out a 100+ episodes under KCRW’s imprint.  

However, moving forward, HBM will continue as an independent production, and no longer be distributed through the KCRW feed.

This departure leaves HBM entirely unfunded.  So for our upcoming ninth season, we’re seeking community sponsors.  We’d love to promote your business or project or just say some words that are meaningful to you.  Become a sponsor of HBM today.  

Please note that the release date of Season 9 is currently unknown.  Probably early 2021. 

We’ll be transferring our feed off of KCRW’s servers in the coming month.  If we do it right, you won’t have to do anything on your end.  If you’re experiencing any difficulty with the feed, please send us an email or tweet at us. 

💗 Thank you so much for your endless support. 💗

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The Eras of Here Be Monsters (HBM). Infographic by Jeff Emtman. Click to enlarge.

Psychic Blob and The Radio Race

On a hot summer day in 2014, HBM host Jeff Emtman received a bit of amateur, backyard surgery from a fish biologist.  

It was for the KCRW 24 Hour Radio Race. which is a one day radio contest now in its fifth year.  The race gives contestants 24 hours to record, edit and publish  the most interesting radio story they can find.

The 2017 24 Hour Radio Race is happening on August 19th (Saturday), and you can sign up at kcrw.com/radiorace.

And, this should go without saying, but never give or receive amateur surgery.

We just got Instagram!  Follow us.

wet-slop-plop.wav (Among Other Sounds)

There are about 10,000 files in the Here Be Monsters sound library.   HBM producer Jeff Emtman has been recording, synthesizing and downloading them since way back before this show started.  And of these thousands of sounds, there’s a tiny subset of them that just keep winding up on podcast episodes.

On this interstitial episode, Jeff plays back some of these heavily-used sounds and asks whether they occur because of an inherent goodness, a force of habit, or some kind of weird nostalgia he feels for the early days of the podcast. 

The site Jeff often downloads sound from is FreeSound.org (see Jeff’s download history).  A big thank you to the many recordists there who volunteer their work to the public domain, especially Felix Blume, a sound artist and sound engineer who is responsible for many of the site’s best recordings.

Season 5 Soon!

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These dinos know what's up. Image by Heinrich Harder, 1912.

We're returning for a 5th season very soon and we have 20 more fantastic stories coming for you.  We're again working with the good folk at KCRW's Independent Producer Project, which is good news all around. 

First release of Season 5 happens August 17th!

Need help remembering the date?  This will tickle your memory:

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Your Last Memory Of Being Free

This is a preview of our 60th episode and season 4 finale, which will be about a man who's lived his last two decades on an island in the Puget Sound of Washington against his will, and the trial that sought to free him.  In this preview, one of his defense lawyers, Andrew Morrison, asks him to recall the last time he remembers being free. 

For more information on the subject matter of this episode, please reference Chapter 71.09: Sexually Violent Predators in the Revised Code of Washington.

Music: The Black Spot