HBM093: The Brain Scoop
Here Be Monsters
Here Be Monsters Podcast
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2018
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In school, Divya Anantharaman used to get teased for having long skinny fingers like ET. But now she sees them as valuable asset for the intricate work she does. Divya runs Friends Forever Taxidermy in Brooklyn, New York.
Content Note:
Fleshy sounds
In this episode Divya carries a recorder with her while as she slowly disassembles a deceased pet parrot: snipping joints, scooping brains, removing eyes, separating the skin from the body. Birds’ skin is very thin—Divya likens the peeling to removing a delicate silk stocking.
We found out about Divya through Erika Harada, another skilled artist in the Brooklyn taxidermy scene.
Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: Serocell (new album out!) and Phantom Fauna
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You know when you work with death you can't help but be emotional about it you know you can't help but have some empathy that's only human |
| 0:12.1 | From KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. And sometimes at the beginning of the show |
| 0:16.7 | we use this spot to give a little warning about the content of the upcoming episode. |
| 0:21.2 | And I was thinking about it for this episode and I couldn't for the life of me think of a concise way to give the right kind of mourning. |
| 0:27.0 | And that's because there's nothing overtly terrible that happens in this show, nothing that absurd. |
| 0:32.0 | But it's just like earlier in the season, we had this episode nothing that |
| 0:35.0 | absurd. |
| 0:38.0 | and it's just like earlier in the season, |
| 0:34.0 | we had this episode where I wound up taking a big bite of raw asparagus. |
| 0:38.0 | And after that aired a couple people wrote in |
| 0:40.0 | to be like, hey, that's a really obnoxious sound. |
| 0:42.0 | There's not even any chewing in this episode, but hey, that's a really obnoxious sound. |
| 0:42.9 | There's not even any chewing in this episode, |
| 0:44.5 | but I think that's the warning. |
| 0:46.2 | Like if you found that sound of Ross Baragus |
| 0:48.3 | to be really obnoxious, |
| 0:50.6 | then this episode is going to be five times worse. |
| 0:53.0 | On the other hand if you didn't mind that sound then I think you're going to really enjoy |
| 0:57.2 | this episode because there's all these really beautiful delicate sounds of this |
| 1:01.9 | here parrot being slowly and meticulously disassembled. |
| 1:07.0 | All right, there's your warning. |
| 1:10.0 | Enjoy the show. So I'm sort of peeling the skin away and it's kind of like, I hesitate to call it a pulling motion. It's kind of like the motion you do to take off a stocking, like a very delicate silk stocking, like the nicest stocking you ever have had in your life that you don't want to rip. |
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