The Here Be Monsters Art Exchange is back!It’s a really simple and wonderful thing where you, gentle listener, can mail a piece of art to a stranger and get a piece of art in return. It’s open to artists of all experience levels from around the world. The deadline to sign up is November 10th, 2022. Sign up and more info here: https://www.hbmpodcast.com/artThe art exchange is made possible this year by HBM listener Devon Sherman, who’s offered her time and expertise to help with communication between artists. Thank you Devon. Devon is a past participant in the art exchange, and has an ongoing project where she illustrates Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. Another listener, known as “Endless_Want”, also helped out by making the Art Exchange’s promotional video, which you can see on the sign-up page and on our Instagram and Twitter.Music: The Black Spot, Robbie Quine—Glitter Rock Werewolf

In 2012, a street preacher walking three small dogs tried to convince Jeff Emtman of his way of thinking about gender and the afterlife. In this Here Be Monsters brief, Jeff shares the short essay he originally wrote about the dinner party where they attempted to make an uneasy friendship. Jeff re-edited the essay in 2022 and gave pseudonyms to the main characters (“Cliff” and “Sophie”). Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black SpotHere Be Monsters is an independent podcast supported by listeners and advertisements from small businesses. If you’d like to support the show, consider sponsoring an episode, or becoming a supporter on Patreon. Some other news: 1. Album of German field recordingsThe recordings from the last episode (HBM153: Klänge from Berlin) are now available as an album.  Listen and purchase here.2. New HBM stickers are here! They’re beautiful, screen printed, die-cut, clear vinyl versions of the “HBM” logo.  Available for purchase on the HBM store. Patreon supporters can get some for very nearly free by following the instructions in this post.

Season 10 is nearly here!  The season starts on March 9th and episodes will be released on a rolling basis until all ten shows are published.Want to advertise on an episode? Fill out the sponsorship request form. Want to support HBM with a small monthly donation?  Become a patron on Patreon. Can’t wait to share the season with you.  More soon. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

I’ve decided to remove my work from Spotify.  It’s not just their recent controversies around Joe Rogan, it’s a much bigger problem with the way that Spotify treats the medium.  If you listen on an app other than Spotify, you don’t need to change anything, just stay subscribed, and you’ll get all the new episodes (Season 10 is coming soon!).If you do listen on Spotify though, you’ll need to download a different app to keep listening.  Personally, I’m a big fan of  Pocket Casts, but there are a lot of good options out there. Direct links to HBM’s listing on several podcast apps: Apple PodcastsStitcherGoogle PodcastsPocket CastsCastboxDeezerPodcast AddictRadioPublicAmazon MusicPodBeanThere’s a million more too :).  If you can’t find HBM on your favorite app, please send an email or a tweet.  Last thing: If you’re a podcaster and you’re interested in removing your own work from Spotify, I just published an article called “How to remove your podcast from Spotify without losing (all) your listeners”.  Perhaps an overly bold title, we’ll see..  Thank you for all the support for all these years.  I really appreciate it.  Season 10 will be here soon. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

Episode 149 is an odd duck for sure.  It changes every day due to some coding trickery that is happening behind the scenes. That episode is a part of a bigger project, a new podcast project that’s potentially the first of its kind.  It’s called Neutrinowatch, and every day, each episode is regenerated with new content. But this is a conversation between Jeff Emtman (Here Be Monsters’ host), and Martin Zaltz Austick (Answer Me This, Song By Song, Pale Bird and others) about the hows and whys of Neutrinowatch: A Daily Generative Podcast (available now on most podcast apps 😉)

A brief follow-up to last episode: you can now follow our AI-powered friend Theodora on Twitter! She tweets several times a day, giving bad advice, good advice, and some strange poetry. Her account’s called Hypothetical Inspiration. Give her a follow.

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 EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

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 no longer be associated with the station, instead continuing as an independent production. This departure leaves HBM entirely unfunded.  So for our upcoming ninth season, we’re seeking community sponsors.  HBM would 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.  Producer: Jeff EmtmanEditor: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

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.

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.

Carlos Gemora loved the feeling of the dirt at the cemetary where he used to dig graves.  One day he climbed down into the loamy, silty soil and looked up at the sky.  It felt like a womb... a death womb. This piece was produced by Alex Kime and Jeff Emtman, with support from Bethany Denton. Our editor at KCRW is Nick White.Music by Nym and Lucky Dragons 

HBM producers Jeff and Bethany are having more and more trouble bearing silence.On this episode, Jeff calls back crow researcher Kaeli Swift and asks her what it was like to sit in silence with a stranger. And Bethany explains the differences in the anxieties that she and Jeff have towards silence.Music: The Black SpotPlease note that there are some delicate tones in this podcast.  If you're listening in a noisy environment, you might miss them.  That's not necessarily a bad thing...just pay attention to the sounds around you.Season 4 of Here Be Monsters will begin in June.

Here's a little gift for you.  It's clips of every episode of Here Be Monsters.  You can use this page as a hub to your discovery of HBM.  As each clip plays, a comment will pop up in the bottom of the player.  Click that comment and a new tab will open with a link to the full episodes.  Pretty neat, right?Just because we're on break doesn't mean we don't want to hear from you.  Please, let us know what we're doing right and wrong, like us on facebook, and subscribe/review us on iTunes. 2015 will be a great year for this podcast!  We'll keep you posted about the exciting developments that are happening behind the scenes right now, including the first ever HBM Live show in NYC.  Happy New Year!

Here Be Monsters is a podcast about strange and unusual and beautiful and sometimes dark things.Jeff Emtman started Here Be Monsters in 2012.Here are three things you should know about the show:You can listen to the episodes in any order you want, there’s no need to start from the beginning. Some of our oldest oldest episodes aren’t on the feed anymore, but you can hear them all on our website, HBMpodcast.com.If you listen to this show and you like it, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and follow us on social media.If you ever want to get in touch for any reason, it’s easy to do. We love hearing your feedback, your questions, your ideas for episodes, or secrets that you want to share. We have a contact form on our website, and we have a voicemail line: 765-374-5263.Enjoy the show!