HBM047: Peacocks Without Tails
Here Be Monsters
Here Be Monsters Podcast
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2015
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Hippocrates noticed that the hair on the top of his head was falling out, he fought it by applying various ointments of opium to his scalp. But none of them worked. So he called it a disease and named it "Alopecia" (translated to "disease of the fox") after the mangy, hairless foxes that wandered Greece in those days. His friends called it something different though, they called it a "Hippocratic Wreath." He also tried sheep urine. That didn't work either.
Content Note: Language.
Like Hippocrates, HBM Host Jeff Emtman is concerned about his hair loss. And unlike Hippocrates, Jeff is staying away from opium and sheep genitals. However, he wants to know if there's a relationship between baldness and vanity, so he found three bald (and bald-ish) people asked them to share stories of their hair and how they lost it, how they fought it, how they dealt with it, along with their wishes and regrets.
Jeff Emtman interviewed:
- Brian Emtman (Jeff's brother), who lost his hair at 20
- Eric Nucci, who has genetically thin hair
- Carrie McCarty, who has trichotillomania, a hair plucking psychiatric disorder
If you're a die-hard Here Be Monsters fan, you'll recognize Carrie's voice from a short radio piece called Psychic Blob, wherein Carrie extracts a benign tumor from Jeff's arm in her backyard.
Track image for this episode comes from an app called Make Me Bald (free, Android only).
Music: Monster Rally ||| Lucky Dragons ||| The Black Spot ||| Flowers ||| Serocell
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before this episode starts, I want to let you know that our Here Be Monsters live show is coming to Los Angeles. |
| 0:08.0 | Bethany Denton will be there, I will be there, our live show Sound Engineer Joe Morgan will be there and hopefully you will be there too. |
| 0:16.2 | Our live show is called terrible resonance and it's about infrasounds which are these subversive |
| 0:21.5 | basi tones that are so low that they must be felt rather than heard. |
| 0:26.0 | We're performing Sunday October 18th at the Cine family at the Historic silent movie theater in West Hollywood. |
| 0:34.7 | This is going to be our biggest show yet, and we're honored to do it as a part of Specterfest 2015. |
| 0:41.6 | Terrible Residence in Los Angeles is a co-production of KCRW and Specter Vision. |
| 0:47.0 | So get your tickets early. They're on sale now and you can find all of the information on our website |
| 0:52.1 | at HBM Podcast.com slash live or you can just |
| 0:56.5 | click the black banner at the top of any page. We're looking forward to it and |
| 1:00.8 | we'll see you at the show. |
| 1:11.0 | From the Independent Producer Project of KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. |
| 1:14.0 | Can you just close your eyes? And then, was that your right hand? |
| 1:16.0 | Can you just go from the in between your eyes |
| 1:19.0 | to the back of your head and just describe what lumps you feel and where it's flat and where it's curved and all of that. |
| 1:26.5 | I think it's pretty egg-shaped. |
| 1:29.5 | Right above my eyes, my forehead is fairly flat. |
| 1:33.0 | All right, I have a hairline at the top of my forehead. |
| 1:36.0 | I think it's fairly average. |
| 1:38.0 | Front part of which is flat and smooth and then... |
| 1:41.0 | It's like just the top of my scalp it's got the thin how you can see through |
| 1:46.2 | it might just be a lighting thing sometimes I think I've got kind of an antelope face |
... |
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