Podcasts
Welcome to UCSC Online Education's first podcast series:
The Show Where They Talk About Monsters
UC Santa Cruz Online Education is delighted to announce the launch of “The Show Where They Talk About Monsters.” Join podcast host Mike Halekakis (Boom! Knowledge) and monster expert Dr. Michael Chemers (The Monster in Theatre History: This Thing of Darkness) for a lively and hilarious discussion about the things that scare us the most. The podcast was made possible through the Arts Research Institute faculty minor grants.
MONSTERS! They haunt our days and chill our dreaming nights, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson. There's not a population on earth that does not have its own unique monster stories to tell to frighten, but also to instruct on the nature of good and evil, right and wrong. But what happens when monsters get out of control, when the monstrous imagination starts to bleed over into the real world? What are the effects of monsters on real people's real lives? This podcast examines the histories and mysteries of some of our favorite monsters to unlock their secrets and expose their influence on our lives.
The series is available everywhere you get podcasts, including Libsyn, Spotify, Amazon, Google Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts.
Check out the latest episodes below!
Michael Chemers
Michael Chemers (MFA, PhD) is a Professor of Dramatic Literature in the Department of Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz. His work on monsters includes The Monster in Theatre History: This Thing of Darkness (London, UK: Routledge 2018). Dr. Chemers is the Founding Director of The Center for Monster Studies.
Formerly the Founding Director of the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dramaturgy Program at Carnegie Mellon University, he joined the faculty of UCSC in 2012. He is also the author of Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010) and Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). Dr. Chemers is also an actor, a juggler, and a writer of drama.
Mike Halekakis
Mike Halekakis is an entrepreneur, business owner, internet marketer, software engineer, writer, musician, podcaster, and hardcore situational enthusiast. He is the co-founder of What We Learned, a company that specializes in compassionate training courses on complex adult subjects such as caregiving for people who are sick, planning for death, and administering after the loss of a loved one. He is also the CEO of Moneyfingers Inc., a company that trains people on how to successfully create, market, and sell products on the internet.
When not burning the candle at both ends with a blowtorch, Mike loves video games, outdoor festivals, reading comics and novels, role-playing, writing and playing music, hanging out with the world’s best cats, and spending time with his amazing wife and their collective worldwide friend-group.
UC Santa Cruz Arts Research Institute
Artists create meaning, solve problems, and challenge expectations. The Arts Research Institute at UC Santa Cruz supports UC faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students involved in creative research, scholarship, and publicly-engaged practice. We are particularly interested in fostering critical interdisciplinary collaborations that reach across disciplines and genres and engage a broad range of off-campus partners, organizations, and communities. We are committed to supporting the diverse artists and scholars of our campus in an environment of respect, support, innovation, and exploration. We do this by building and supporting Arts Division research initiatives, coordinating and managing strategic planning and fundraising to elevate the visibility of the arts, placing equity and inclusion at the center of our work, coordinating cross-divisional, multi-campus, and national arts research collaborations, administering the ARI faculty grant program.