You're listening to an airwave media podcast.

Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.

I'm Blake Smith.

Karen's out this week, chasing Yowis and drop bears.

I'll be at DragonCon in Atlanta this weekend doing a couple of panels on

Saturday for the horror track, and then I'll be at Criptecon in Kentucky the week after talking

about some of the same topics as in this episode, science and monsters. With recent and

upcoming appearances in some less skeptical venues I thought it would be useful to

take some time to reflect on the recurring themes of this show, some lessons learned, and what lies ahead in the future of monster talk.

It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.

A giant hairy creature, part 8.

Pardon me.

In Lark Ness, a 24 mile long bottomless lake in the highlands of Scotland.

It's a creature known as the Loch Ness monster. Yeah. Monster Dogg. I love monsters. That's not to say I'd love being attacked by an actual monster, but the very idea of monsters has long filled me with an incredible mix of thrill and dread.

I began planning monster talk back in June of 2009 when the TV show Monster Quest was on the air.

Monster Quests, like many TV shows on what you might call fringe topics,

typically enthusiastically covered the mysteries behind such topics,

ran a subplot where Monster Hunters would try and find the monster of the week,

and would include five minutes or so of a scientist talking about what science can tell us about these creatures

if they exist. That five minutes was the part I wanted to see more. I love monsters, but after 30 years of reading about them and looking for them and hoping to find one, I wanted to know what was scientifically plausible.

So we began our own quest via this show, and early on the was scientifically plausible.

So we began our own quest via this show and early on the science guests we sought

...