Here Be Monsters

Jeff walks to the edge of Berlin and explains why the Here Be Monsters feed has been quiet for so long. On the way, Jeff talks about plans for upcoming episodes, looks at the ways that moving to Berlin has changed him, and discusses a pair of films featuring Tilda Swinton: Cycling the Frame (1988), and The Invisible Frame (2009). Both movies feature Swinton riding a bicycle around the entirety of the Berlin Wall—or, in the case of the latter, where the Berlin Wall used to be. Please follow Here Be Monsters on Patreon: patreon.com/HBMpodcastField recordings heard in this episode (starting around the 17:20): a former site of the Berlin wall in Marienfelde  ~  birds and insects near Portbou, Spain  ~  canoe paddling near the in Germany’s Spreewald  ~  geese and peacocks calling on Peacock Island (Pfaueninsel)  ~  dusk crickets near Locarno, Switzerland  ~  a massive pipe organ that was part of Italy’s submission to the 2024 Venice Biennale  ~  public transport boats in Venice revving their engines  ~  Jeff singing in a bathroom while a faucet drips  ~  Water splashing against cement in Banyuls-sur-mer, France  ~  Hiking the Walter Benjamin memorial trail on the France / Spain border  ~  Baby goat at the peak of a mountain on the France / Spain border  ~  A canal boat passing in Amsterdam, Netherlands  ~  An announcement bidding visitors to be quiet while visiting France’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg.  Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

n the midst of a stressful move, HBM producer Jeff Emtman finds comfort in the phasing techniques developed by minimalist composer, Steve Reich. Note: this episode contains sounds that cannot be accurately represented by speakers.  Please use headphones.  Steve Reich compositions excerpted in this episode: Clapping Music, performed by Steve Reich and Wolfram WinkelViolin Phase, performed by Jonathan Morton Pendulum Music, performed by Joan Cerveró, Víctor Trescolí, Isabel León, and  Estefanía SánchezHere Be Monsters is an independent podcast supported by listener donations.  If you’d like to make a small monthly contribution, visit patreon.com/HBMpodcast. Producer: Jeff Emtman

Allen H Greenfield is a UFOlogist and occult researcher.  He’s also a father of three.  His first child, Alex was the subject of HBM155: Ghosts Aliens Burritos.  In that episode, Alex tells stories from his childhood of chasing strange phenomena with his father. In this episode, Here Be Monsters host Jeff Emtman talks to Allen to get the “fatherly perspective” on UFOs, black lodges, tarot, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and (most of all) how to be a good parent. Allen Greenfield is currently working on the final installment of a trilogy whose first two entries are Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts and Secret Rituals of the Men in Black.  The forthcoming book is yet to be titled. Also heard on this episode: Rick Emtman, who is Jeff’s dad.Content Note: LanguageProducer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: Serocell, The Black SpotSponsor: Pal’s PlantsPal’s Plants is a Flatbush, Brooklyn based subscription service for potted plants and intriguing zines.  Plants can be delivered to the 5 boroughs of New York City. Zines can be delivered anywhere in the USA.  Pal’s Plants is customized to your preferences.  They’ll have you fill out a short survey when you sign up so that you can be sure to get something you like each month in the mail. Pal’s Plants makes a great gift.  Use offer code HBM50 at signup to get half off your first month’s subscription.  Thank you Pal’s Plants for sponsoring Here Be Monsters.

Berlin’s Schwerbelastungskörper is a massive concrete structure that, today, is hidden in plain sight between a railroad and an apartment building.  It’s one of just a dozen remaining pieces of Nazi Architecture in Berlin.  And it’s not much to look at. It was built in 1941 as a test structure for a triumphal arch that Hitler wanted to build in that spot. The Schwerbelastungskörper (“heavy load-bearing body”) is the arch’s test structure.  It weighs about 12,650 metric tonnes, or about 28 million pounds, and it’s the equivalent weight of one of the four massive legs of the never-built arch.This plan was abandoned as World War 2 accelerated.  And the structure remained, slowly sinking into Berlin’s marshy soil, providing proof of the arch’s impossibility. In this episode, HBM host Jeff Emtman visits the Schwerbelastungskorper, records some impulse responses in the structure’s single room and reflects on his discomfort in finding beauty in another Nazi structure nearby, Tempelhof Airport (now a public park and refugee camp). Also mentioned on this episode: The Berlin Airlift, Austrian Tyrol, The Little Mermaid (1989), and Der Herr Der Ringe (Lord of the Rings movies dubbed in German).  Here Be Monsters is an independent podcast supported by listener donations.  If you’d like to make a small monthly contribution, visit patreon.com/HBMpodcast. Registration for the Here Be Monsters Art Exchange is open until November 10th, 2022.  Sign up: https://HBMpodcast.com/art/Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot

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

Content Note: pervasive language, brief mentions of bigotry.Alex Greenfield says that there was no such thing as a normal day when he was a kid.  His dad (Allen H Greenfield) self describes as a “researcher in the shadow world.” And his mom soon grew tired of her husband’s lifestyle, which included a lot of time on the road: chasing rumors of cryptids, ghosts, and aliens.  But after his parents split up, Alex, his dad, and an ever changing cast of motorcycle gang members and step-moms kept seeking the occult. Some of the topics discussed in this episode: St. Simons Island in Georgia (and reported hauntings), The Okefenokee Swamp (and the ignition of swamp gas), The Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident (and subsequent protests), Mono Lake in California (and the UFO sightings  there), and a movie called Being There (wherein the character played by Peter Sellers appears to walk on water).Alex Greenfield is the writer of The Sand, 10.0 Earthquake, and other movies.  He also used to be the head writer for WWE Smackdown. Alex’s dad, Allen H Greenfield (aka. T Allen Greenfield), is a UFOlogist and occultist.  He is the author of Secret Cipher of the UFOnauts, The Story Of The Hermetic Brotherhood Of Light, and other books. Unrelated to this episode, but do give a listen to the limited series that Jeff’s been mixing for Crooked Media.  It’s called Another Russia, and it’s about the assassination of Russian dissident Boris Nemtsov, as told by Ben Rhodes and Zhanna Nemtsova.  Available now on every podcast app.  Also, Jeff’s headed back to Berlin, Germany for about a month.  If you know any good stories/interviews he should record while he’s there, send a DM on Twitter or Instagram, or use the contact form.Here Be Monsters is an independent podcast supported by listeners and sponsors. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot, Circling Lights, August FriisSponsor: is / ought books  is / ought books is a publisher of spiral bound self help manuals, art books, and non literary works on paper.All titles from is / ought books are available to buy online via the link below. is / ought books are also distributed via Small Press Distribution (SPD).Thank you is / ought books for sponsoring Here Be Monsters.

Sally Grainger was originally a chef, but in her 20’s, she was gifted a copy of an ancient Roman cookbook called Apicius. Apicius is a bit of a fluke.  It shouldn’t have survived the 2000-ish year journey into the modern era, but it did.  And in this episode of Here Be Monsters, Grainger explains how Apicius persisted due to being a favorite text for monks-in-training to practice their gilding skills.  And thus, this fascinating book of recipes (featuring cooking instructions for boiled ostrich soup, complex sauces, and cucumbers stewed with brains) is still feeding people today.While cuisine today might seem distant from ostrich soup, Grainger thinks that Roman food often gets inaccurately portrayed as overly decadent or overly spiced.  Cooked correctly, the cuisine is quite balanced, she says.  And in her book, Cooking Apicius, she uses her knowledge of ancient Roman life to put the recipes in context for a contemporary kitchen and contemporary cooks. Also, on this episode, Jeff also reads from a 1932 English translation of Apicius by Joseph Dommers Vehling, which is available in the public domain thanks to Project Gutenberg. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black SpotHave you seen the new HBM stickers? They’re beautiful.  Get yours here.  As of publish date: if you buy 4, one of them will be free.  The discount gets applied automatically when you add them to your cart.

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.

The composer Pauline Oliveros thought there was a difference between hearing and listening.  She defined hearing as a passive act, something done with the ears.  But she defined listening as something active saying that listening happens in the brain.  Sam Parker is a recordist who takes inspiration from Oliveros’ words and work.  About six years ago, on an episode of Here Be Monsters called Sam’s Japan Tapes, Sam shared dozens of recordings he made during his first (and only) trip to Japan.  He released those recordings under the name Observance as an album called Japan, 6/21 - 7/14.On this episode, Here Be Monsters host takes two trips to Germany, and records the sounds of Christmas in Berlin, New Years in Saxony, and many hours of people and birds just going about their daily lives in the late winter and early spring. Before Jeff leaves on his first trip, he calls Sam Parker back, to ask for recording advice before the trip, and Sam offers three tips: Take lots of time.Capture moments of everyday routine. Trust your instinctsThe recordings on this episode are available as an album called “Field Recordings: Germany, 2021-2022” and it’s available for purchase on Bandcamp, under Jeff Emtman’s The Black Spot moniker.  Until June 30th, 2022, all profits from the sale of this album will be donated to The International Committee of the Red Cross. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: Remixes from the recording session in HBM049: Sam’s Japan Tapes.Photos: Jeff EmtmanThank Yous: Sam Parker, Johanna Gilje Sponsor: HBM’s Patreon SupportersHere Be Monsters’ supporters on Patreon send a small monthly (or yearly) donation to help cover Jeff’s living expenses, pay contractors, fees, taxes, etc.Listener Kit Roberts supports HBM on patreon, saying “I’m a patron of HBM because no other podcast has ever made me feel like this one does…so small and singular and yet connected to everything all at once.”Thank you so much, HBM Patrons.👽👉Become a patron👈👽Recordings heard in this episodeMM:SS - Description.  (📸 means there’s a photo in the gallery)08:45 - Train to SeaTac airport.09:45 - Announcements on an Air France flight.11:00 - Turbulance and people rustling.12:30 - Berlin's Brandenburg Airport13:15 - A brown swan hissing and chirping13:30 - Boats rubbing against wooden piers and a small dog barking.14:15 - Cars driving on cobblestone streets.14:45 - Ice Skating at Berlin's Alexanderplatz 📸15:30 - Swing ride with metal chains at Alexanderplatz. 📸16:00 - Riding on the subway, then walking up several flights of stairs.18:45 - Radio playing advertisements, news, and christmas music20:45 -  A Christmas Eve service in a cathedral with a speaker reading a children's story.21:30 - Christmas carols playing as people mill around.22:00 - A wedding party in front of the Brandenburg Gate.23:15 - A Christmas exhibit with a lit up polar bear and fog machine.24:00 - Birds chirping in Berlin's Mauerpark as people walk by.25:00 - Crunching frosted leaves on a cold morning.25:30 - Walking through a forest in the Saxony Region of Eastern Germany.📸26:15 - Whistling through hands in the forest.27:00 - Buying 5 kilograms of potatoes from a vending machine as a dog barks.📸27:30 - Mountaintop shop selling hot drinks and snacks in Czechia.27:45 - Chopping kindling. Distant fireworks echoing through the hills in Saxony.28:30 - Snaps and pops of a small fire29:00 - Distant fireworks to celebrate the start of 2022.29:30 - Close fireworks echoing.30:00 - A strong wind blowing on a mountaintop in Saxony.📸30:30 - A tree swing creaking.31:15 - 6AM on the outskirts of Berlin.  Traffic starting, crow screaming.32:45 - Captive pigeons fluffing their feathers and cooing at Hasenheide Park34:00 - Slow motion recording of a sudden hailstorm.34:30 - A motorized billboard in a subway station35:00 - Accordion player performs in a subway station in Berlin's Mitte neighborhood.37:45 - Applause after a play.38:15 - A small bird singing several songs.39:30 - Church bells ringing.40:45 - Wind flapping the torn domes of the Teufelsberg listening station as people sing.📸43:00 - Walking through the forest near Teufelsberg as bikes pass.

What do you want to happen to your body when you die?  It’s a touchy topic where tradition, religion and death denial all come into play.  But across much of the world, there are just two options: burial and cremation, which both have substantial ecological impacts. In 2019, Washington State passed SB 5001, which legalized several new options for deathcare. In this episode, host Jeff Emtman visits Return Home, a facility in Auburn, Washington that’s using one of those new options, called “Natural Organic Reduction” (NOR) which is commonly called “human composting”.  Return Home has built the world’s largest NOR facility to date, with 74 available individual vessels.  Their process (which they’ve trademarked as “Terramation”) takes about two month to complete, and involves dressing a deceased person in a pressed cotton gown and placing them a bed of organic material, and left to naturally break down using active composting techniques that bring the contents of the vessel to well above 100° Fahrenheit for much of the composting period. The techniques used by Return Home were largely inspired by Katrina Spade, a death activist and the owner of Recompose, another NOR facility located near Seattle.  Spade was one of the people who strongly advocated for the passage of SB 5001.There’s currently one other NOR facility in Washington State: Herland Forrest in Wahkiacus.  Currently two other states, Colorado and Oregon have legalized NOR.  NOR’s future isn’t known.  It’s new and still relatively rare. Do enough people want to be composted to have it be a viable business model? Each of these companies have different approaches to their process.  Return Home’s model relies on scale.  They wouldn’t disclose the exact cost of building their facility, or how many simultaneous descendants they’d need in their facility to be profitable.  As of publishing, they charge $4,950 for their process and they have 15 of their 74 slots occupied.  And in some ways, the full ecological benefits for Return Home’s process also rely on scale.  In a follow up email, CEO Micah Truman stated that “We calculate our inputs as follows. Our electricity bill each month is about $1,700, and is sufficient to Terramate 74 bodies. This comes to $22 per body. In current gas terms ($5 a gallon at present) that is roughly 4 gallons of gas, which is about 1/8 the amount of gas used for cremation. The number is actually quite a bit better than that, as our electricity bill also powers our entire facility, not just the Terramation equipment.”When asked about the relative emptiness of the facility, Katey Houston (Return Home’s Services Manager) said, “The funeral industry is so slow to change. When cremation became a thing, it took sixty years to become mainstream.  The fact that we’ve served just over thirty families now in four months, is quite amazing.  And we’ve continued to grow month-over-month, and that’s all I can ask for.”Thank you Hannah Suzanna for help with research for this episode. Here Be Monsters is an independent, listener supported podcast.  Consider supporting the show on Patreon. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot and SerocellSponsor: Sleep With Me PodcastSleep With Me is a podcast that helps you fall asleep.  Host Drew Ackerman tells tangential stories, reads old catalogs, makes metaphors about washing machines, 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.

Season 10 of Here Be Monsters starts and host Jeff Emtman hallucinates his adolescence while working long hours.  Scenes from middle school dances, dawn bus rides, the basement, and ( most crucially), a late-night raffle at a hardware store.Do you like Here Be Monsters? Tell your friends, support HBM on Patreon, and have your boss sponsor an episode.Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: Serocell and The Black SpotSponsor: RadioLabAre you curious about the world, but also want to be surprised, and even moved? Radiolab experiments with sound and storytelling allowing science to fuse with culture, and information to sound like… well, music. Join hosts Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser for an experiential investigation that explores themes and ideas through a patchwork of people, sounds, and stories. Listen to Radiolab

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

The origins of Julia Susara’s chronic fatigue are hard to pin down.  She still doesn’t know exactly how it started but suspects that a deeply broken heart had something to do with it.  She spent about three years going through some excruciating physical sensations: immense chills, brain fogs, pregnancy nightmares and the feeling that her blood was about to boil through her skin. Doctors weren’t able to figure out what was wrong, nor were the array of alternative healers she visited. Feeling that no one was able to help, she was at the edge of giving up. But, at her brother’s suggestion, she reluctantly visited a hypnotherapist who gave Julia instructions to swim daily in cold water.  So she started jumping in the ocean each day and felt a strange and near immediate change in her symptoms.  If you’re feeling suicidal, here are some numbers you can call to speak with someone who will listen. USA Suicide Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255UK Samaritans: 116 123Canada Crisis Services: 1.833.456.4566Japan Tell JP:  03-5774-0992Australia Lifeline: 13 11 14Denmark Livslinien: 70 201 201Other countries: check the list available at suicide.org~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~This episode marks the end of Season 9.  Season 10 is coming, but the date is currently unknown.  Stay subscribed!  And keep an eye on the HBM Patreon page for an upcoming message with a season debrief and some musings about the show’s future.  That post will be public, so no need to be a member to read it.  Also, please note that due to some summer busy-ness, Jeff will not be able to run an HBM summer art exchange this year.  Sorry about that.  Thank you for all your support through Season 9.  It is such a pleasure to make this show. ~~~~~~~~~~Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: Julia’s choir group and The Black SpotSponsor: AnimasusEmilius Martinez is an illustrator and designer who runs Animasus.  Animasus can help you design email campaigns, websites and improve the overall branding for your business.  Speaking of which, Emilius designed the new HBM t-shirt, which is wonderful. Thank you Animasus for sponsoring Here Be Monsters!

A short episode from the new show Neutrinowatch: A Daily Generative Podcast.  Each episode of Neutrinowatch changes a lil’ bit every day.  This episode, The Daily Blast, features two computerized voices (Wendy and Ivan), who share the day’s news. To get new versions of this episode, you’ll need to either stream the audio in your podcast app/web browser, or just delete and re-download the episode.  It’s updated every 24 hours.  Note: Due to Spotify’s policy of downloading and rehosting podcast audio, this episode won’t work very well on Spotify.  Most other podcast apps should handle it well though. Neutrinowatch is a project of Jeff Emtman (Here Be Monsters’ host), and Martin Zaltz Austick (Answer Me This, Song By Song, Pale Bird and others). If you’d like to know more about generative podcasting and the story of Neutrinowatch, listen to So What Exactly is Episode 149? and Jeff’s blog post called The Start of Generative Podcasting?Neutrinowatch is available on most podcast apps, and as of publish date, there’s currently 6.5 episodes available.  Each updates daily. Producers: Jeff Emtman and Martin Zaltz AustwickMusic: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 😉)

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/HBMpodcastProducer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black Spot, Phantom Fauna, and Serocell. Sponsor: Sleep With Me PodcastSleep 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. 

With much of the world shut down over the last year, HBM host Jeff Emtman started wondering if there were smaller venues where the world still felt open. In this episode, Jeff interviews Chloé Savard of the Instagram microscopy page @tardibabe about the joy of looking at small things, and whether it’s possible to find beauty in things you don’t understand.  Chloé also gives Jeff instructions for finding tardigrades by soaking moss in water and squeezing out the resulting juice onto slides.Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: The Black SpotSponsor: Pod PeoplePod People is an audio production and staffing agency with a community of 1,000+ producers, editors, engineers, sound designers and more.  Pod People helps audio professionals find amazing job opportunities, and they're also  building a network of support that connects their members with other audio producers, educational workshops, events, and more.Pod People is free to join. After a short onboarding process, Pod People will send you clients and work opportunities that are a good match for your specific skills and interests. Join Pod People

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.

How does a computer learn to speak with emotion and conviction? Language is hard to express as a set of firm rules.  Every language rule seems to have exceptions and the exceptions have exceptions etcetera.  Typical, “if this then that” approaches to language just don’t work.  There’s too much nuance. But each generation of algorithms gets closer and closer. Markov chains were invented in the 1800’s and rely on nothing more than basic probabilities.  It’s a simple idea, just look at an input (like a book), and learn the order in which words tend to appear.  With this knowledge, it’s possible to generate new text in the same style of the input, just by looking up the probability of words that are likely to follow each other.  It’s simple and sometimes half decent, but not effective for longer outputs as this approach tends to lack object permanence and generate run-on sentences. Markov models are  used today in predictive text phone keyboards, but can also be used to predict weather, stock prices, etc. There’ve been plenty of other approaches to language generation (and plenty of mishaps as well).  A notable example is CleverBot, which chats with humans and heavily references its previous conversations to generate its results.  Cleverbot’s chatting can sometimes be eerily human, perfectly regurgitating slang, internet abbreviations, obscure jokes.  But it’s kind of a sly trick at the end of the day, and, as with Markov chains, Cleverbot’s AI still doesn’t always grasp grammar and object permanence. In the last decade or two, there’s been an explosion in the abilities of a different kind of AI, the Artificial Neural Network.  These “neural nets” are modelled off the way that brains work, running stimuli through their “neurons” and reinforcing paths that yield the best results. The outputs are chaotic until they are properly “trained.” But as the training reaches its optimal point, a model emerges that can efficiently process incoming data and spit out output that incorporates the same kinds of nuance, strangeness, and imperfection that you expect to see in the natural world.  Like Markov chains, neural nets have a lot of applications outside language too. But these neural networks are complicated, like a brain.  So complicated, in fact, that few try to dissect these trained models to see how they’re actually working.  And tracing it backwards is difficult, but not impossible. If we temporarily ignore the real risk that sophisticated AI language models pose for societies attempting to separate truth from fiction these neural net models allow for some interesting possibilities, namely extracting the language style of a large body of text and using that extracted style to generate new text that’s written in the voice of the original text. In this episode, Jeff creates an AI and names it “Theodora.”  She’s trained to speak like a presenter giving a Ted Talk.  The result varies from believable to utter absurdity and causes Jeff to reflect on the continued inability of individuals, AI, and large nonprofits to distinguish between good ideas and absolute madness. On the creation of Theodora: Jeff used a variety of free tools to generate Theodora in the episode.  OpenAI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 2 (GPT-2) was turned into the Python library GPT2 Simple by Max Woolf, who also created a tutorial demonstrating how to train the model for free using Google Colab.  Jeff used this tutorial to train Theodora on a corpus of about 900 Ted Talk transcripts for 5,000 training steps. Jeff then downloaded the model locally and used JupyterLab (Python) to generate new text.  That text was then sent to Google Cloud’s Text-To-Speech (TTS) service where it was converted to the voice heard on the episode. Producer: Jeff EmtmanMusic: LianceSponsor: Liance Independent musician James Li has just released This Painting Doesn’t Dry, an album about the relationship between personal experiences and the story of humanity as a whole.  James made this album while he anxiously watched his homeland of Hong Kong fall into political crisis.Buy on Bandcamp. Listen on Spotify.