Renowned investigator Joe Nickell returns to MonsterTalk to discuss his latest book Tracking the Man-beasts: Sasquatch, Vampires, Zombies, and More—a survey of a human-like monsters that runs the gamut from Almas to Zombie. The book covers scores of monsters from legend and lore, and many entries include insights from Joe’s personal investigations. In this episode possible reasons why there are so many anthropomorphic monsters the evolution […]
PLENTY OF PEOPLE HAVE HYPOTHESIZED about being able to bring back an extinct animal, but (so far as the MonsterTalk team knows) the only person who has successfully brought an extinct animal’s gene back to be able to express itself in a living organism is Dr. Andrew Pask and his team of genetics experts. Tasmania’s marsupial tiger, the Thylacine, appears to be […]
IN TODAY’S EPISODE we learn about what has been called one of the best pieces of evidence for the existence of bigfoot. The Skookum cast, found in Washington state in 2000, is alleged to be the body imprint of a bigfoot lying in the mud to reach some fruit. But skeptics think it is just a big Elk print in […]
IN THIS EPISODE, Ben Radford takes a seat in the interview-chair as we discuss his latest book Tracking the Chupacabra.. It is the culmination of five years of research on the mysterious Latin American goat-sucker—a vampiric creature which has been troubling ranchers since 1995. In this episode we discuss: the origins of the chupacbra legend the nature of the beast why […]
This week the hosts of MonsterTalk take on the mysterious, mystical, legendary menace of the ninja! Should ninjas be considered monsters? They come out at night, have mysterious powers and use fear and lethality to wreak havoc. But to be sure, we Ask a Ninja. Also, we interview Matt Alt, co-author (with Hiroko Yoda) of Ninja Attack: True Tales of Assassins, Samurai and Outlaws. […]
IN THIS EPISODE, the MonsterTalk crew interviews Dr. Tony Russell, a professor at the University of Calgary who studies evolutionary and functional morphology in geckos. Dr. Russell’s work includes ethnobiology — the utilization of folklore to guide his research. He discuss the uses and limitations of this mode of research, as well as the remarkable features of the lizards that he studies. […]
Author Christopher Dell has collected an astonishing array of art from around the world depicting many obscure and mysterious creatures in his new book Monsters: A Bestiary of Devils, Demons, Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Magical Creatures. Christopher Dell joins the MonsterTalk crew to discuss why humans are so fascinated by these bizarre entities. Music Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys
LATE IN THE 1960S, in the era which gave us the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film, fairgoers in Minnesota were confronted with a marvel: a hairy, primitive-looking humanoid frozen in a block of ice. Was it an anthropological relic? Was it a sasquatch? As investigators from the Smithsonian Institute and cryptozoological researchers studied the frozen creature, they came to very different […]
THIS WEEK on MonsterTalk, author Stephen Asma (Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago) speaks about his comprehensive book surveying Western monster-lore. Is humankind’s fascination with monsters broader than any single cause? Asma’s On Monsters examines hundreds of legends — and their cultural, psychological and social implications. In this episode the roots of fear the fascination some find with birth defects the saint […]
IN THE PANTHEON OF AMERICAN MONSTERS, only one truly dominated the newspapers of the 1990s. Checkout lines everywhere were haunted by the bald-headed, wide-mawed visage of Bat Boy. What was Bat Boy, and where did he come from? The MonsterTalk team interviews cartoonist Tye Bourdony, a former employee of the Weekly World News and creator of the online comic “The Lighter Side of Sci-Fi”. Bourdony has had […]
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