Big Food and be On with Cliff and Bobo. These guys are your favorites,
So like Shay, subscribe and raid it five, study, listening,
watching, always keep it squatching. And now your hosts Cliff Berkman and James,
Bobo, Fay, Hey, Squatschkatiers is Cliff here, And of course
you're listening to Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and very often Bobo. Um,
we just got a message from Bobo a few minutes ago saying to start without
him. So hopefully whatever he's got going, he will get it together and
join us in just a few minutes or in a few dozens of minutes,
or perhaps even in this very broadcast, and perhaps not because it is Bobo
after all, and we all love him for these reasons. So um,
I'm going to start off today before we get to the guest, let me
know a little bit about what's going on lately, because there's been kind of
a lot going on. I guess the first thing I should start with is,
well, the Spokane conference was great. A lot of great things came
from it. I'm borrowing an original cast from a researcher up in north northeast
Washington and copying that it's gonna be added to the database, and it's also
going to be added to the archives at the North American big Foot Center.
So that's kind of cool. This week, or I probably this week,
I have to check with Matt Prude on that. I pieced together a video
of Bobo and I go into the field, so our members for Bigfoot and
Beyond, I guess beyond Bigfoot and Beyond, we'll get to see a short
video of Bobo and I going out to one of my secret Bigfoot spots and
doing some squatching in the woods. This isn't nighttime stuff. This is daytime
stuff. I've really been focused on finding footprints in the ground lately, and
of course we found a couple maybes. In fact, we found some definite
maybes. I believe that's even the title of the video, definite Maybes with
Bobo. So if you happen to be a member of Bigfoot and Beyond,
then you are going to be able to see that, probably later this week.
Prute, what do you think this week? Is that? Right?
Next? Maybe? Next? Yeah? I would think you post that this
week? Okay, yeah, yeah, so there you go. This week.
You're at it right from the Pruitt's mouth. So I hope you guys
enjoy that. And if you are interested in becoming a member of Bigfoot and
Beyond and being one of our BFFs or bigfoot friends, the link will probably
be in the show notes through It's kind of like that he throws everything in
the show notes for you. But you can also go to the website Bigfoot
and Beyond podcast dot com and follow the links to the membership thing, and
for that membership you get about an extra forty five minutes or so every single
week, just in case you can't get enough Cliff in the Bobes or just
Cliff when Bobes doesn't show up, you can get even more. So there
you go. That's all that. So, well, what else is going
on? Oh? I got COVID That was cool. So I'm kind of
I'm pretty much at the tail end of that right now. Yeah, it's
a gift that keeps on given. Isn't that great? So if I do
cough once or twice or a fun little scratchy that's probably why. But whatever
it costs me an opportunity or two of filming some stuff for Discovery Channel,
which kind of sucks, but whatever, woe is me. Let's see I
alway, I guess the last thing I probably want to tell you before we
hop into things is that I'm going to be up at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot
Conference in Gatlinburg up on July twenty second, And I think Matt is going
to be there, Matt Moneymaker, and of course Renee is going to be
there as well. So it's gonna be like a little Bigfoot thing, you
know, a little finny bigfoot deal. Bobo can't come. He doesn't enjoy
doing these as much as he used to, so he's not going to be
out there. But you're gonna get three out of four of us that'll be
kind of cool, and a couple other guests as well. But what I'm
actually kind of excited about, by the way, Adam Davies is one of
these guests. Tony Merkel and Lorie Wade are going to be the three other
speakers that are going to be there. But at my table, it is
gonna be Matt Pruett because Matt Prutt has his book out. Yea, Matt,
Matt has his book out. It is called The Phenomenal Sasquatch, So
go get it today in fact, go get two copies and you can read
one with your left eye and one with your right eye and read in stereo.
It's that kind of book, So enjoy that. And I'm about a
third of the way through it right now. And we will have Matt Pruett
on as a guest talking about his book and just the next couple of weeks
here. But Matt will be signing copies at my table at the Gatlinburg gig.
And if you are interested in checking that out, there's got to be
a website for it or something like that, and I'll figure out what that
is as soon as I can. But it's gonna be at the Gatlinburg Convention
Center and it's on July twenty second. It's gonna be good times. Man.
Any who, we're going to hop into our guest here. Our guest
today is really kind of a man who wears many, many hats, and
all of them look good on him. He's articulate, he's intelligent. He
has a whole slew of podcast Man. I've got one podcast and I don't
I barely have time to do that. But this guy's got like three or
four. His name's Mica Hanks. His main podcast is the Mica Hanks Program.
I don't know where he came up with that name. He also has
Sasquatch tracks purely bigfoot sort of thing, and some archaeological stuff called Seven Ages
podcast. He is all over the place, and we are going to be
talking about Bigfoot today. We're gonna be talking about his other interests, and
we're also gonna be talking about you aps. In other words, you fos
some of my favorite acronyms. So we're gonna be talking to him today about
this sort of thing because it's been all over the news, and from what
I understand, I want to get this clarified from Mike himself, and we'll
get to that in a minute. From what I understand, the reason it's
all over the news is directly because of Micah. So, Mica, welcome
to Big Fit and Beyond with Cliff and sometimes Bobo. Cliff, how are
you, sir? Longtime no see. I was very pleased to of course
be able to spend some time with you up there in Ohio. Recently said
Bobo isn't here yet, hoping he will come stumbling in soon. But again
we've got a great conversation in store and on tap today. Yeah, it's
gonna be fine. We have to do this every once in a while because
Bobo is Bobo and man. And you know what, It's funny, Mike,
I was telling me before we came on the air that, you know,
I came down to this COVID thing again, and I've had all this
slew of bad luck. I won't go too much into it, but you
know, it's like like my bank account was hacked briefly, and then I
had to miss some opportunities filming with Discovery Channel because of my illness, and
it's just like one thing after another after another. I'm thinking, what in
the world happened to me? And then I looked back and I say,
oh, you know what, I know, I know exactly what it is.
I hung out with Bobo and apparently his chaos is contagious. Yeah.
Well, the other thing too, I think, is you know, and
I realized this early on after I met you, Cliff, you and I
have a whole lot more in common than just sasquatch. We're also really busy
guys who travel a lot, and busy guys who are travel a lot,
who travel a lot seemed to have these kinds of things follow them. I
suppose. Now, if if sasquatch only would become as evident and follow us
as often as these kind of calamities, I guess we'd all have this figured
out, wouldn't we something like that, something like I think, Yeah,
probably Yeah. And they were also extraordinarily intelligent and good looking. Yeah,
well indeed, yes, thank you sir, And that certainly applies to you
so well. Listen, sorry to hear that you got COVID, and I
really appreciate you making time for the conversation day in spite of that. And
like we mentioned, they're in the intro. Of course, you've been talking
about the UAP thing. The kind of cool relationship to all of that and
everything that people have been hearing about in the news recently is that you and
I were together when a lot of that was still in the kind of behind
the scenes stage, which is kind of cool. So we kind of have
a unique relationship there too. Yeah. That was the Seth breedlove gig of
a monster what was it called monster or something? Monster Fest? Monster Fest.
Yeah. I'm not good at these names. I'm not good at people's
names or event names. I kind of know where I'm going, but Yeah,
the one in out out there in Ohio. You and I got the
got our rides to and from the airport and whatnot, and you're back.
They're busily texting, and apparently you're texting about all this stuff because it was
going to drop in the next couple of days. That's true. Yeah,
now I can talk about it. And also, you know, I'll just
say this just because since you mentioned, of course, for your subscribers,
some of the sites you've gone out to, in some of the footprints you've
been finding, let me go ahead and state for the record, I am
now of a mind having seen some of the photos from those locations. Cliff
has shared some of these images with me. After seeing those, Buddy,
I'm pretty sure if anybody is in the running to discover sasquatch first, you're
probably at the top of that list. I mean, really really incredible stuff
you're finding out there. Well, I appreciate that, but discover I mean
I think the John Bendernogle point where or the tact word it's the discovery is
ongoing and it is happening right now. We're just waiting for the academics to
catch up, right. Yeah, And you know that's the thing that fascinates
me about both the Sasquatch with a relic tominoid enigma and also UAP, you
know, the artists formerly known as UFOs. These are both topics to me
that there's been quite a lot of information that is strongly suggestive, maybe without
their being you know, unambiguous, it would convince a physicist or a chemist
type physical proof. There's still a lot of data that strongly supports the existence
of these phenomena. And it's like Thomas Koon talked about, and of course,
like you mentioned, John Bendernogyle is excellent writings on this, The Discovery
the Sasquatch one of my all time favorite books. He's talking about. You
know, sometimes it takes a whole lot of that data to accumulate and then
all of a sudden, at some point, a straw breaks the proverbial camel's
back and people go, WHOA, what's all this data? People knew about
this stuff for a long time before we actually accepted that it was here.
So you're right, I think we're in that phase of discovery rather than reaching
the point of discovery, both with Sasquatch and also with UAP. Yeah,
a bunch of anthropologists and biologists are going to their faces will be covered with
egg sasquatch egg yoke when the discovery does finally drop with sasquatch stuff. But
in the meantime, all we can do, I think, as the citizen
scientists that we are and the amateur community, is represent the subject as best
as we can and as honestly as we can. Steer away from the paranormal
stuff as much as we can when it comes to sasquatches, because it doesn't
do anybody any good. Internugle, even though he entertained some of those ideas,
and he would he certainly spend some time with people who thought these things
were paranormal. He was. It is biography, he always, he points
out, put the best stuff out there first. Put the best stuff out
there, because we don't want other scientists turning their nose up at the subject
and walking away because people are saying they're interdimensional shifting. You of a writing
teleporters or whatever. You got to put the best stuff out there first to
get the highest level of interest from academics. And then if all that's actually,
if any of that stuff is true, let it come out later.
I don't happen to think it's true. But if any of it is true,
we'll figure that out later. So let's do the good stuff first.
You know. Yeah, I'm right there with you in fact, And that's
an important point of clarification that should be made early on in a discussion like
this where we're likely to get into some of the end beyond on the Bigfoot
discussion and with the UAP thing, because people always ask me, they say,
okay, so you're you know, really deeply involved in trying to get
information from government sources, and of course you know, doing the citizens science
side of things with UAP. So you also look at relictominoids or sasquatch.
Are they connected? Do you think they're connected? Well, sorry, folks,
I gotta say I don't. I do not mix these two fields.
I mean, it would be really cool if there were some sort of connection,
if sasquatches were Chewbacca pets, you know, that were being dropped off
your own planet Earth. But you know right now, there is of course
no evidence that suggests that. And really, I don't think that we benefit
from trying to find you know, and I've heard people referred to it as
a grand unified theory of the so called paranormal Why do these things have to
be connected. I don't think they have to be connected. I don't think
that we have to see all this as some overarching mystery. I think that
Uap unto themselves, and then Sasquatch onto itself, are too found fantastic mysteries
without having to be connected. So yeah, I kind of am in the
You know, Sasquatch is a big ape camp Uap. We're not sure what
they are. They could be something extraordinary. Currently they just remain unidentified,
but there are no connections between the two. And yeah, like you said,
very well, you know, put the best evidence for either of those
or for any other anomalous phenomena that one wishes to study, you know,
put the best stuff you got forward. Try and appeal to scientists so that
these topics aren't completely ruled out of hand before they even have an opportunity to
be weighed on their merit and studied. Yeah, and I think that today's
psychology for a lot of people is that don't trust the scientists, don't trust
the man. We want them involved, We want them involved. I mean,
it would be really hard to argue no matter what side of the fence
or no matter what your take on sasquatches, happens to be that if you
look back people's involvement, you know, like Napier's involvement in the subject back
in the early nineteen seventies helped the subject. Doctor Meldrum's current involvement helps the
subject. Doctor Krantz's involvement helped the subject. We want more scientists, as
many as possible, to give an honest look at the evidence, because the
evidence can stand for itself. Things that are true can take all the scrutiny
that people want to give it and it'll still be true. Most scientists,
unfortunately, take a look at the evidence and point out things like hoaxes or
Ivan Marx's involvement or things like that and throw everything out throughout the Baby with
the Bathwater. We all know that hoaxes have existed. It's an unfair take
on the subject to do that, unfortunately. But we want people to take
a good, hard look at this subject because sasquatches are real animals, and
the longer you look, the more you'll be able to see that that is
true. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm very inclined to believe
that sasquatch is a real biological reality. I mean, and again, this
is one reason why I've been so interested in trying to collect information from federal
government and state government employees. It's not necessarily, in my view that they
are better witnesses in every instance, that they should always be deemed necessarily more
credible. But again, you do have in those instances qualified professionals, many
of whom do have specialized backgrounds and in their line of work, if they
have made an observation of a good candidate, for for instance, a relict
tominoid. You know, I do think that for those scientists who might have
been averse to the idea originally, some of them may find it compelling when
they hear will gosh. You know a lot of people who have worked for
government, people who are members of the armed forces, people who work in
law enforcement. They also have seen these things. So it's not just you
know, again the you know, the drunks and the hillbillies out there in
the hills who claim to see these things. No, there are a lot
of people, a lot of qualified professionals. And one reason I think that
that could help the sasquatch topic, again is because we've seen that very thing
happening, a sort of glass ceiling breaking with unidentified aerial phenomena in recent years.
Because let's just be clear, the government has always collected information about this,
and this has been something that has been a very contentious element of all
that for many years, but since twenty seventeen with a lot of revelations about
to what extent the government has been involved, and the result being updating of
reporting systems and attempts to try and end stigmas that have prevented members of the
Armed services from discussing things that they've encountered, experiences they've had, things that
they've observed. It's really kind of helped scientists to say, well, Okay,
there really might be something here. It's really helped them maybe become more
aware of the fact that not only is this data a very large data set,
but a lot of it comes from very credible sources, and hence more
scientists are getting involved. So for my own part, I'd love to see
the same thing happen with sasquatch, where we get to a point where people
say, okay, you know, there is a lot of good data.
The data, even if it's anecdotal, it comes from some very reliable resources,
and therefore we can look at this and we can say maybe this is
something indeed worthy of study. I think we could get to that point with
Sasquatch. We may already be getting to that point. You look at the
accellent work that people like Amy Boo with the Project Zoo book effort and things
like this. I mean, people are already beginning to an engage with the
academic community and they're taking note, they're taking interest. So that's very very
encouraging to me. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Will be right back after these messages. Friend of mine, Darren Nay,
she's a high profile skeptic from the UK. He told me when he
was visiting my home here. But we're going through the cast and all that
sort of stuff in the garage and going over some of the evidence and whatever,
and which I believe he found very impressive. I mean, I don't
want to speak for him, but that was my take on that um And
he says, you know, Cliff, there's a lot of scientists out there
that are watching. They are back there watching silently, sitting there, watching
what you guys are doing. And to me, that's that's horrifying because I
look around and saying, oh no, I don't want them to see that
stuff, Like, look at look at the way the community, you know,
presents itself. Look at the way that the loudest people are saying the
most ridiculous things and all that sort of stuff. But the point you're saying
there is well taken because they are interested. So there are scientists, there
are institutions that are interested, which is why we all need to present the
subject in the most dignified, intelligent, sober manner that we possibly can.
Because the loudest, most ridiculous claims, which often get amplified by the media,
Um doesn't they don't do anybody any good, especially our subject in the
individuals involved in it. No one. And again, that's one thing I
really love about the podcast. You guys do again, you know, saying
rational but fun conversations that are engaging. You know, they're getting people interested.
I can guarantee among your listenership, I know those folks you're listening right
now, there are a lot of people former government, current active duty military,
scientific community, a lot of folks out there who are listening to this
conversation right now. You may not be putting your name out there and getting
involved, but we know you're out there, We know that you're interested,
and you know, I always just like to put it out to folks.
You know, if you are one of those individuals, if you'd like to
communicate with somebody, you know, like Cliff or Eye, we always invite
you to reach out and your privacy will be respected if you don't want your
information share. But we do think it's important to be able to hear from
people like that. I certainly do, because I learn a lot from people,
especially those in these unique positions, whether it's you know, employment in
government or in the sciences, when they have had at experienced themselves or made
an observation, you know, whether it's a relict, hominoid or you ap
or whatever else, any kind of unusual or extraordinary phenomenon in nature. Those
firsthand observations by really credible individuals to me have helped me, you know,
shape the way I look at the phenomenon and broadened my opinions about it.
And also just it encourages me too, you know, when I know that
there are people out there who have had personal relationships to this and they say,
look, I was your perennial skeptic, and then it happened. This
is what I saw that encourages me. It just, you know, Clifford
drives me to want to look even deeper. And plus, you know,
guys like you and I, our names are already involved. You know,
we've already got our names behind this, so it's too late for us to
get out now. So we're happy to go out there and look for the
stuff if others can't. Well, yeah, and you know I mentioned earlier
Matt Pruett's book, and there's a section in there that I was reading and
it never really occurred to me before. But he's absolutely right. Then.
This is from his book The Phenomenal Sausewatch where people ask why haven't they found
them yet? And people I hear it almost all the time. I hear
it almost every day in the museum, why haven't they got more pictures?
And I was learning, who who is this they they keep talking about?
And it brings up it's the institutions, because people, human beings have this
inclination to basically give away our own power essentially to other institutions, whether it's
the state or the church, or the school or whatever, like they give
away our own I'm not not sure what the word I'm looking for is,
but that they look for other people to be the authority figures so we can
believe them, you know. And by having governmental or scientific establishment involvement in
the subject, it satisfies that need for those people who perhaps need somebody else
to validate something for them. They have not gotten more photographs because of this,
or they have not proven it because of this, And I think that
that in itself is a huge boon to the subject in the same way.
Like for example, another parallel thing I think drives the same point home is
for a long time with a Matt Moneymaker, Matt has always been very very
focused on footage, whether it's photographic or video footage, and I'm thinking,
well, that's not going to prove anything. And I brought this up with
them, and MAT's a good friend. He's very intelligent. I know what.
Perhaps he rubs people some people the wrong way, but he's very logical
and he's very very intelligent hyper intelligence. So I asked him, so,
like, what why are you always so focused on that instead of actually proving
one and killing one, which I don't want to do that either, mind
you, but that's I understand, that's what's going to take right, He
goes, well, because first of all, he's not going to kill one
either, he's not really a gun guy or anything like that. But secondly,
he says, because photographs are going to increase public awareness about it,
and that in itself is a good thing because it'll get more and more people
because the scientific establishment is made out of the public. So the more people
that are interested, the more enthusiasm there is for the subject, and more
people thinking that these things are real. Just by default, more people in
these institutions and seats of power are going to be interested in the subject as
well. And I think that's one of the benefits of the institutional approach that
you're talking about here. Yeah, I agree, and I'll make a couple
of points about that. You know, one thing about the institutional side of
things is that, yes, it does present a degree of legitimization, right,
you know, we see, Okay, well, you know official people
agencies take interest in these topics. Now again, I'll be clear, having
worked for several years now filing Freedom of Information Act requests, public Records Act
requests, things like that, on a range of different topics that relate to
everything from UAP to missing persons and you know, crime, and also of
course, yes, relic tominoids or sasquatch. I can tell you I have
found no evidence of there being you know, some elite grouping government who's really
serious about trying to find sasquatch. If anything, it's just the opposite.
I don't see a tremendous amount of evidence in most agencies when I write to
them and look for information. I mean, they're straight up and they'll say
we don't keep records actively on that subject. But sometimes they'll also follow it
up by saying, but we do actually have a few things that are wildlife
biologists or you know, this division or that division have kept in formally and
we're happy to pass that along. And you know, sometimes you get stuff.
So one thing I often caution people about is using the presumption that well,
government interest therefore legitimizes, and or we can presume maybe that even if
they aren't forward facing with their interest, if we do some guesswork and presume
that maybe they have stuff and they're hiding it, then all we've got to
do is we've just got to try and pressure government, and eventually all this
stuff will be released. I mean, we've seen that for years with the
UAP thing. People constantly trying to say, well, you know, if
we just continue to put pressure on lawmakers and write to our elected officials,
tell them this means something to us, eventually we're going to have the big
D word disclosure. You know, I'm not so sure, first of all,
that there is as much in government holdings, although recent news seems to
suggest that there is potentially quite a lot. Maybe we'll get into that,
but I've always been very cautious about presuming that there's a whole bunch of stuff
being withheld from the public and that the only avenue that's worthwhile is leveraging pressure
against government to get them to release it. And here's why, because at
the end of the day, one or two things could happen. Either they
have it and they won't release it, or they don't have as much as
you hoped for, and then what have you done? You You've wasted so
much time. So, especially when it comes to the relictominoid thing, you
know, citizen action, citizen science, that's incredibly important, and the same
goes for UFOs, you know, I'd loves more people out there, even
if you aren't a scientist, per se, go buy a telescope, you
know, learn a little about the night sky. Educate yourself online in astronomy,
you know, learn things like this, Learn about meteorology, learn about
relevant areas of science. Learn what to look for and what not to look
for. If you're interested in sasquats, learn about you know, man tracking,
learn about biology, you know, study different animal behaviors, learn about
wilderness and survival training, things like this. You know, that's so important
because I worry sometimes that if we put too much emphasis on the institutional,
we may miss some great opportunities and some headway that we could be making ourselves.
So again, you know, being a week end warriors an important asp
back to this too, getting out there in the field, getting your feet
muddy and having a good time, whether or not you find sasquatch, but
of course always attempting to try and contribute in that way too. Yeah,
like empower yourself because that kind of goes back to one of those points I
was I kind of tangentially touched upon, is that people give their power away
to these institutions, and it reminds me of my friend Tom Powell, who
I disagree with wholeheartedly about sasquatches. He's very paranormal, but he always says,
it's really easy to convince yourself sasquatches are real. It's really hard to
convince other people. Not that I think that's a fruitful adventure anyway, Who
cares what other people think. There's people that will argue with you that the
Earth's flat. Who cares what other people are saying? Right, But it's
really easy to convince yourself. And the more you educate yourself on skills like
bushcraft or astronomy or outdoor things or tracking or whatever, you're going to be
out there in the right habitat, doing what you need to do to be
around sasquatches, and then maybe you'll have an experience that will eventually end up
convincing you. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, think about this too.
I mean, how many people who have those experiences. We're not out
there looking for the phenomena they end up having the encounter with In fact,
I mean, and I would maybe just guess based on my own experience from
collecting accounts from individuals. Sadly, I've never seen what I think is unequivocally
a UFO A certainly have never seen anything I think was related to sasquatch.
But most of the people who I've spoken to who have and who share those
experiences, you know, they weren't out there looking for it. Again,
in the case of those in government who've had those experiences, most of those
people never even would have hazarded to guess that there could have been something like
sasquatch when they had their encounter. And that's what's really interesting about it is
it seemingly took them completely by surprise and entirely off guard, having had no
expectation of ever seeing something like that, and then it is just thrust into
their reality. And again you talk about a paradigm shift on a personal level,
when somebody who was not even a skeptic, it's more like they just
never even thought about that, and then all of a sudden, they're looking
at sasquatch. And those are to me some of the most incredible encounters,
you know, as far as government agencies and whatnot. Having this information,
whether we're talking about UAPs or sasquatches or whatever like that, I can totally
see them collecting a lot more data on UAPs because number one, it could
potentially be a security threat of some sort. And I'm not talking necessarily about
you know, extraterrestrials or interdimensional consciousnesses or whatever, you know, like that
sort of thing. I'm talking about if say, an unfriendly national power got
a hold of technology that was we couldn't tell the difference between that and the
UFO stuff Like if say, these these deemed quote unquote you know, foreign
enemies had access to technology like that, it would scare the willies out of
the US government, of course, but also probably even more of more interest.
And this is the cynical cliff guy. You know. Um, I
think they see dollar signs when they see that sort of stuff, because I
think a big portion of our economy is driven by the military and industrial complex.
So much money is there, so many people are employed by the government
in that sort of way that they have a super high interest, whereas poor
old Bigfoot, you know, there's I don't think there's a lot of money
to be made there for them. You know, it's going to cost a
couple industries a little bit of money, like logging or road building or things
like that, but for the most part, there's not like there's not like,
you know, billions of dollars on the line when it comes to sasquatches.
Yeah, those are really very important points to make. Again, you
know, sasquatch is fascinating as that possibility is the recognition of its existence if
anything. And this is by the way, in no way by intent on
my part to you know, espouse and conspiracy theory. I don't really generally
think that using conspiracy theories necessarily help an argument, and so you know,
great philosophers would tell you don't appeal to conspiracy theories when you're making those.
So all that said, I think that it's very likely that a lot of
industries would potentially be more harmed than helped by the revelation that a creature like
sasquatch exists, which you know, pretty much like you're pointing out logging industry.
Think about issues that this might raise for the national parks. Right now,
we do have some park officials at various different national parks around the country
that are kind of beginning to embrace sasquatch. But they're using it and I
think this is a good idea. They're using it as a fun kind of
educative thing. A means by which to get people interested in getting out into
the forest and enjoying nature. And that's good. I don't think though,
it should be something that you know, is just entirely just treated whimsically.
Again, I take very seriously the idea that there is a flesh and blood
biological reality to sasquatch. But if it's helpful in terms of getting people out
there into the woods, hey great, I love it. But like you
mentioned, Cliff, with regard to UAP, in terms of relevance to government
interest, here, we don't seem to have a intelligence or even if we
say that sasquatches maybe more intelligent than the average animal, but still quote unquote
a big dumb ape in terms of its relation to humans, we still have
a very unique organism that alone is not interesting enough to government. Whereas with
UAP, we appear to have a technology, something that was highly intelligent that
must have produced this technology. Whether that be of an earthly provenance or from
someplace else, we just don't know. And so, like you said,
we cannot risk the possibility that a country like China or Russia might have made
some sort of incredible technology. You know, they could have seen some sort
of incredible technological development and done so in relative secrecy that the US has not
yet learned about, but that we're beginning to observe. And that's what some
of these UAP are. Yeah, they don't want to take that chance.
And so it's obvious why UAP is of greater relevance to government. But I
think it gets lost in the mix, though, is that a lot of
the more skeptically inclined look at the topic these days, with the recent developments
that have occurred, and they say, look, you have the DoD it's
newly established All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. They're saying a lot of these phenomena
that they're observing and that they're collecting information on or balloon like or drone like.
It's probably because most of them are balloons and drones, and those are
probably balloons and drones being operated by foreign adversaries, not extraterrestrials. Point taken,
and again, in the interests of national security, they're going to look
at that possibility because that's what's most directly pertinent to ensuring the safety of this
nation. So it's obvious why they would be looking at anything that seems out
of place or potentially concerning anything that challenges our airspace. But there's always that
possibility, and many intelligence officials know less. Among them, the Director of
National Intelligence, Avril Haynes, has recently said, Yeah, but we're open
to the possibility that some of these things, and make no mistakes, some
do seem to display capabilities that are not easily reconciled in terms of known technologies.
Were open to the possibility that some may come extraterrestrially. So I understand
why government would be more interested in one. But bringing that back down to
academia, to me, the idea that a non human again, whether we
call sasquats intelligent or not, that a non human species is in our midst
That's another one of those commonalities we have between UAP and sasquats, the potential
that we're going to discover something that's closer to humans than anything else we've ever
seen in that in any case, either way it goes, would be the
greatest discovery of all time for the sciences. To me, stay tuned for
more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right back after these messages.
For me, the first inclination that at least the first like a high
resolution look of like the modern age of all this sort of thing to me
was the Podesta emails. This is during the Hillary email leaks, where in
Wikipedia got to hold everything and put it all out and I so those are
out there, and someone mentioned to me, yeah, I look up UFOs.
It's going to blow your mind. Is okay? Cool? I did
it. That's where I first heard of UAPs, for example, And they
had academics from institutions emails and corresponding with government agencies about things like quote unquote
celestials and interdimensional intelligences and this idea that they're trading this non non nuclear or
nuclear non proliferation for technology and this things like that, And when like,
oh wow, look at that. That's co crazy stuff going on, and
this kind of wrote it after that. But here we are today where a
lot of this stuff is becoming declassified. I think as recently as yesterday,
I was scrolling through Twitter news feeds that I'm saying that the House is trying
to pass some sort of legislation about them not withholding and correct me or farmer,
actually refine what I'm saying, cause I know there's something going on,
and you probably know far more about it than I ever will. The House
is trying to put some sort of legislation forward to saying that you can't withhold
like basically extraterrestrial technology from them. And it's just this phenomenal time. So
what is the current state of this subject in the government as far as you
know? So right now you correctly point out that again Congress is back in
the game. They really have stayed in the game in the last several National
Defense Authorization Acts, which is basically the big defense spending bill that's signed into
law by the President each year, and it provides kind of the roadmap for
where the armed forces go and you know what the DoD will do. Basically
for the last several years that bill has included UAP related legislation, and now
there is new draft language that will go in the twenty twenty four bill,
which is dealing with exactly what you're talking about. It's aimed at trying to
determine if and also to provide a means through which information about craft of non
human origin if it exists, And that's the term they like to use these
days, because they're saying, we aren't sure if it's necessarily extraterrestrial. We
just know that, according to what some have said in recent days, that
there are purportedly craft of nonhuman origin that the government, perhaps some contractors special
excess programs and things like this, may have knowledge of, may actually have
acquired and now have in their possession. And so Congress is trying to create
essentially a means through which that can be revealed. Now to back up just
for a moment, because you make a really good point there, Cliff,
Like you mentioned the Podesta emails that were leaked, like yourself, and I
don't know why more people don't bring that up. I found those really interesting.
Podesta had been in contact with a lot of interesting people and at that
time that those emails leaked. We should point out again those emails I believe
we're actually made available online by wiki leaks. This was for political reasons,
because this was during a very contentious election year. Podesta, of course was
a part of the campaign that was actually attempting to elect a president at that
time, Hillary Clinton. She ended up losing the election, But in the
midst of all that there were these emails from Podesta regarding these meetings he had
been having with individuals. One of those individuals. For instance, had been
Tom DeLong, the former guitarist and singer. Actually he's back with the band
Blink when eighty two now, who went on to form this organization called to
the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences. But he had been bringing with him
to Washington to meet Podesta a guy named Major General William mccaslan, who at
the time oversaw the scientific Division at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. So basically
he was in charge of about eleven thousand employees, I believe, and they
oversaw the science division within the Air Force. They're at right pat and they
were going to meet Podesta to talk about UFOs in the middle of an election
year. I mean, there must have been some genuine interest in something for
that to have been occurring. Now, fast forward to twenty seventeen. The
following December, of course, there was an article that broke in The New
York Times that was by a couple of authors, Leslie Kane and Ralph Blumenthal,
who happened to be the authors of an article that was recently published by
my publication, The Debrief, which is available online at the debrief dot org.
That publication featured their latest offering which entails the claims of a former member
of government who worked for a number of different organizations, the NRO more recently
the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and he was a liaison to what was called
the UAP Task Force, which was officially sanctioned back in twenty twenty under the
cognizance of the Department of the Navy, but it was basically the UAP investigative
component within government. It's since been replaced by the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office
within the DoD. When the UAP Task Force was in operation, David Grush
had been the liaison for the National Geospacial Intelligence Agency, and that guy has
now come out and in Canam Blumenthal's recent article that we published, has said,
Look, while I was doing work in relation to the UAP issue for
the task Force, there were several insiders that came to me and they said
that they had knowledge of a program and that this program involved the acquisition of
and maybe also things like reverse engineering and things like this, but essentially that
there had been acquired craft that are believed would be of non human origin,
and this information has been illegally withheld from Congress and thereby, of course from
the American people. So the long story short, he decided to file an
official complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General. And what this means is that
he is there by going the entire thing is going to be investigated. But
if he were to be found guilty of making, for instance, false statements
about all this, if that were the result of this investigation, I mean,
he could be held criminally liable for doing that. So he stands to
lose nothing. I mean, he loses everything actually if he has misspoken,
if he has told any information and is found to have knowingly done so,
he doesn't gain anything from lying. So many people are looking at this saying,
well, you know, I mean, given those circumstances, it definitely
seems like he believes the information that he's provided to Congress, or rather to
the IC Inspector General. He seems to believe that this information is true.
We've got to wait and see what the results of this investigation will be.
But that is essentially what has caused, like you said, Cliff, Congress
now to get involved, and they're already drafting legislation to try and say,
hey, look, if this stuff has been going on and we haven't been
informed we need to know about it. And then as recently as just the
last couple of days, Senator Mark Rubio of Florida has also come out and
said, look, he's not the only whistle blower we've spoken to. There
are others that have told us very similar things about so called legacy programs.
So they do seem to think a lot of information may have been withheld from
Congress, of course from the American people, and now elected officials are trying
to get to the bottom of how much and indeed if all that information can
be verified. And just to catch me up, because I'm not in the
the UAP game. I'm just a humble, little big footer, you know,
looking for prince in the woods for the most part, just to catch
myself up. This is what we were talking about now is essentially the central
hub of the last say two weeks of UAP whistle blower news. Is that
correct? Like when I look at whistle blower blah blah blah UAP stuff,
that's this is exactly what you're talking about, right, This is exactly what
we're talking about. Yeah. In fact, I think the listeners will appreciate
this. The weekend that I was working with the two authors, Kane and
Bloomenthal. They approach us about this article for various reasons. I think it
had been somewhat erroneously reported in the media that well, they'd gone to a
bunch of big publications and they all turned it down. That's not actually accurate.
There'd been several publications they've been working with, but the name of the
whistleblower had leaked online. And while many of those publications said, well,
we need more time, Kanam Bluenthal were concerned about various aspects of what could
happen if they waited too long. But make no mistake, many publications,
including The Washington Post and Politico had been approached. They also wanted the story,
and I'd been informed about that before we actually ended up accepting it for
publication ourselves. My advice had been, look, get it in the biggest
publication that will take it. But time became a concern for the authors,
and they said, you know, we're going to lose the story if we
wait too much longer. When they approached me and said, would you be
interested in having your publication Prentice, I said, on the condition that my
team can independently vet those sources. Go through all the background checking, which
we had enough time to be able to do. But it was quite an
interesting time because while my team was doing that, I was handling the editorial
side of things, you know, having phone calls with the two authors getting
things lined up, while you and I were at an event together. Yeah
again, monster request gets in the our monster fest, you know, gets
in the way. Literally. As Cliff and I are riding to the airport
on Sunday with our pala Aarondese, you know, I'm seeing these incredible footprint
photographs you're showing and stuff. Let's just say that there was the weight of
the world on my shoulders at that time, my friend, and so I'm
glad to be able to come out and now say, yeah, this is
the story everybody's been hearing about. And I think that the net result has
been positive because, like Marco Rubio said in the last couple of days,
if Grush is you know, if he believes what has been said and what
he has been told, and if any of that ends up being true,
it's going to be really important. Again, like you said, it might
not impress everybody out there, but I'm sure there are going to be a
few scientists and you know others and officialdom that are going to find this really
important. It's going to be arguably the hugest story in all history. But
if it ends up being the case that someone has misled him and there's someone
in the upper chalons of f who is you know, seeding bad information,
as Marco Rubio said, that two should be investigated. So I think this
is very important to get to the bottom of whichever direction the investigation goes.
But yes, this is the whistleblower story everybody's been hearing about. And again,
this is the strange and small world that we live in. That Cliff
and I were in a car together the weekend this was all coming down.
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty whacky. Man. Life is like that.
So this is all, you know, moving through the halls, the halls
of power basically in Washington, DC at this point, and those wheels churned
very very slowly. So um, but it's all coming down the next couple
of months probably what what what would you expect or what are some of the
things that one might expect to see over the next couple of months ort to
hear about? Well, as some like I've mentioned Marco Rubio, also US
Senator Kirsten Jillibrand of New York, who has really kind of led the charge
with drafting legislation for the various bills that have featured UAP related language. Several
members of the House and Senate have been really active with all this, And
so right now what I would expect to see is indeed, we're going to
probably see bipartisan language that's going to go into law. It will be signed
into law in early twenty twenty four in the next INDAA. But in the
meantime, the current language for this year's bill already has wait for it,
a whistleblower provision. So it's no big surprise that people are starting to come
forward and talk about this because it had been included in the language of this
year's bill that there should be protections for anyone who has knowledge of any kinds
of special access programs, you know, programs that have been kept out of
the purview of not only the public, but many in government too, And
if individuals from those programs or people in other areas of government have knowledge about
this, they are essentially offered protections for coming forward and informing Congress about it.
So there are already elected officials, saying there are others who have spoken
about this, some may be coming forward. I would say what we can
expect probably in the weeks and months ahead, is that we will probably be
hearing from some others, and certainly we'll see some more bill language. But
again, the question I guess on everybody's mind is when is there going to
be unequivocal evidence that supports these claims. One of the issues people people have
raised as well. You know, Grush says that he has provided documents in
the form of classified information transcriptions and things to the Inspector General of the intelligence
community. Everybody wants to see the UFO photos and the videos and stuff.
You know, I'd like to see those two and we have seen a few.
There were a few that were released. Of course, there were first
leaked in twenty seventeen. They appeared in the New York Times. One of
those three videos had already been floating around for years, and that's the famous
tic Tac that was filmed off the coast of California. Still a really interesting
video in my opinion, And no, I don't think it's a pelican or
anything else that a lot of the skeptics have made it out to be.
Maybe they actually try to say pill akin because it does look like a pill,
That's what I meant, Yeah, Pilican, of course, I mean,
you know, they've been all different suppositions about what it may be.
The bottom line is it's unidentified. I mean currently THEDD still characterizes that one
as unidentified. They don't know what it is. And we could come back
and talk about that in a moment, but again, in the immediate sense,
you know, what we can expect to see. I would hope maybe
that we'll see some additional video, photographs and other things that might help substantiate
some of the claims. But certainly for the time being, will probably be
hearing more about Grush and what he is reportedly larned, And there may be
some other whistleblowers who have similar stories who'll be coming forward in the days ahead
as well. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Will be right back after these messages. Now, how is what is unfolding
here in the United States paralleling what is happening in other places? Like it
wasn't it Chile who declassified a lot of their UAP stuff a few years before
the US. Yeah, I believe they may have, and of course Brazil
did. And you know, I spent a lot of time done in Brazil.
I think I had to miss an opportunity to go squatch and maybe with
Matt Pruitt, because I was in Brazil a couple of years, or actually
I guess it was probably early last year, and I've spent enough time down
there and gotten to know some of the former lawmakers who were interested in this
subject. In Brazil, their national archives boasts an impressive collection of government documentation
about their experiences and their interest in this phenomenon. And it's funny because I
have seen some who have said, you know, this is a culture bound
phenomenon. There's a reason why only the United States and its citizens claim to
see UFOs, and only its government is actively pursuing answers about this phenomenon.
But that's not true. These things certainly have been seen in other parts of
the world, and other governments have taken interest. Quick examples, since we
were talking about Brazil, we had back in the nineteen seventies, so many
residents along this little coastal town in northern Brazil called Cholaris that were alleging not
only that they were seeing objects, but several of the residents claimed to have
actually been accosted by these things. You know, again UAP attacks. They
aren't frequent occurrences, but they do happen, and the Islanders down there at
Coolaris were saying that this had happened to them. Now the Brazilian government responds
to this and they put together what at the time, and my Portuguese is
terrible, but bear with me, Opera sal Pratu, which essentially translates to
mean Operation Plate or Operation Saucer. There was an official air Force, Brazilian
Air Force investigation into these incidents. There were some photographs and video that were
I guess it would have been filmed back in the seventies that were obtained of
the aerial phenomena in question. And again the Brazilian National Archives have made those
kinds of documents available to the public. And I had a dear friend who
was a great researcher in Brazil who just passed away earlier this year, A
J. Givard. But he had really really led the charge in terms of
trying to push for transparency in his country and also to obtain a lot of
those documents and make the public more aware of their presence and what they entailed.
So to your point, yeah, a lot of countries have been involved
in this. I can't speak with the same level of about what maybe has
happened in China, although I will point out that once the UAP Task Force
had been established here in the United States, there had been a lot of
Chinese I guess official news outlets, state controlled media there in China that came
out saying that the Chinese government's going to use artificial intelligence and we're going to
figure out what UAP are before the Americans do. So it's interesting to see
that sort of dynamic, you know, we're going to beat him to the
punch. But the broader takeaway seemed to have been that China indeed is interested
in this phenomena just like the Americans are. And so for those who would
say, well, we're just worried about whether Chinese drones are what some of
our personnel are encountering when they see these UAP, it seems that China's concerned
about what these things might be and that they're trying to get to the bottom
of it too. So I mean, for what that's worth, again,
it does seem to point to the worldliness of this phenomenon. Yeah, it
can't just be an American thing. And of course we also had a James
Fox on the program a couple of times now, and he's done a tremendous
amount of research down in Brazil, so it's kind of funny that you brought
that particular entry up. He's had various degrees of success, I guess,
with working with governmental agencies and what knock down there. And he was a
fascinating guest and a really cool guy in general. Yeah right, great guy
too, very well research, very very well, Resoarch. At this point,
what's your best guess what the hell is going on? I'm still ain't
saying it's sasquatch as far as um you know what I think is going on
again? You know, sasquatch, for instance, is a simple problem.
And by that I mean, and Cliff, I've heard you and Bobo say
this many times, you know, I mean they're probably just apes. I
mean, all the evidence points to this just being a biological phenomenon. It's
an animal, and somehow it has remained incredibly wary of humans, wary enough
that they're pretty hard to reconcile in terms of, you know, obtaining that
physical evidence, and UAP aren't unlike that in the sense that this is a
similarly similarly evasive phenomenon. Again, a great definition of the paranormal appears in
Matt Pruitt's new book The Phenomenal Sasquatch, where he's talking about how phenomena that
are reported throughout history and that seem to be fairly a common occurrences but actually
are incredibly rare. That's a good way to look at both sasquatch and UAP.
Lots of people say they've seen these things and encountered them, but they're
actually extremely rare phenomena. As far as what I think is going on and
what UAP may represent, I mean, it's about anybody's guests. I've always
been fond of the possibility that there could be an extraterrestrial phenomenon. But if
we want to go down the rabbit hole here for a moment and say,
you know, what are the other possibilities. There have been people who have
proposed the idea that we may be seeing you some sort of developments that are
occurring behind the scenes here on Earth, and that a lot of these may
just be secret technologies of ours that might help account for why when there are
observations of the occupants of some of these craft that they often do appear very
human like and in some instances almost indistinguishable from humans. In some instances,
people have said that the reason they look so much like humans might be because
they are humans. But maybe they aren't humans from our temporal reality. They
could be humans from another dimension. They could be humans for another period in
time, and other words, it could be us from the future coming back
to view successive generations from the past and observe how we lived in our present
day. There's always that idea that we could be dealing with extraterrestrial visitors that
just traverse great distances through space to get here. But there's also that fun
idea that's kind of what you see in the Matrix films, that maybe we
live in a simulation and that the operators of the Matrix when they intersect with
our reality, they appear to us as UFOs. And you know, for
all we know, if we're going to go that far out on a lem
to try and suppose what UAP might be, maybe sasquatches or glitches in the
matrix too, But if I had to really bet on any of those circumstances,
my view would probably be that, again, UAP appear to be physical,
tangible craft. We don't know where they're from, but I'm very open
to the possibility, especially if more and more evidence seems to point in this
direction that extraterrestrials or some extraterrestrial technology at very least. You know, it
could be autonomous probes that are being controlled remotely, or they could just be
completely autonomously controlled, but it could be some kind of an exotic technology.
Now we'd need to see more evidence before we can lead with that presumption,
but I am fond of that idea without getting married to it. And again
that's kind of my corollary for the Sasquatches, the big dumb ape idea.
I'm not trying to be mean by calling it a big dumb ape. I'm
just saying I mean, I think that if we get so far out in
our thinking about either of these phenomena, we really don't do ourselves any favors.
This comes back to what you were talking about, Cliff, you know,
put your best data first. I think it's unnecessarily reductionist to say that,
oh UAP can very easily be explained. They can't trust me. The
United States federal government would not take such interest in this phenomenon as they do
if this were easily reconcilable and they didn't think there was anything worthy of study.
Again, we should put our best data forward, and for me,
a lot of that data is what we are now seeing coming out of government,
and there are a lot of researchers myself included in my team with a
debrief to McMillan, m J. Banias, and others who are actively involved
in trying to appeal to government. We're speaking with people who have worked in
government past and present, and as journalists were trying to get to the bottom
of what they know and how that could help us frame what we may be
dealing with. But again, I keep saying that if we have seen this
glass ceiling broken in recent years with the UAP issue, it's gone through this
legitimization. We're now seeing lawmakers taking the subject seriously. We may not be
able to see all the same developments happening with Sasquatch, but I do think
that a similar approach toward trying to understand that phenomenon could also result in more
people taking it seriously, more scientists getting involved, and who knows, It
could also be that there are some records that will eventually obtain that indicate that
at various times, even to a small degree, that there have been government
agencies on the state level or federal have also taken interest in the sasquatch issue.
Oh, certainly they have. Certainly. You know, one thing that
you keep saying that I love the fact that you keep coming back to it
is that you keep mentioning to basically follow the evidence. Wherever the evidence leads,
that's where we need to go. And that is what comes down.
It comes down to for not only UAPs, but sasquatches as well. Of
course, you're throwing around a big dumb ape, and I know that you
don't really think that way because of that, but that's the general idea that
if you say these things are an animal, then the people who are less
aware of how fantastic and intelligent whatever apes are, they say, oh,
Cliff, you just think they're a big dumb ape. So no, no,
not at all. I think fact they're a really big, really intelligent
ape. Actually, you know, and I'm sure I've talked to you about
this way, and I know that that's your case as well, but I
want to clarify that for listeners that in a way, that's almost a throwaway
line because when people ask are they humans or are they apes, which is
a ridiculous question, of course, because that's like asking is it a coyote
or is it a canine? Right, It's a meaningless question, unfortunately.
But but generally speaking, people who are unaware of our own biological family and
are in the way that taxonomy works and in our you know, the way
that evolution works, etc. They throw so clip you think they're a big
dumb ape. No, no, not at all. They are big.
They are apes, but they're not dumb, right, And I want to
point it out before people get all their feathers in a big uproar out there.
I appreciate you making that point, and actually I'll clarify further to that.
Again, by that, I mean in no way as a pejorative to
ascribe low intelligence to sasquatch, which is if indeed the characteristics that are often
attributed to the creature by those who have encountered it are accurate representations of how
sasquatch behaves. It's arguably second to humans, the most intelligent creature out there.
Okay, and by some measures it may be more intelligent than we are.
But what does say they don't have jobs or pay taxes and that proves
they're murder You can't argue that, can you? You know? So,
I mean in some ways, and you know, I've talked with a lot
of friends, you know, naturalists, philosophers who say that one of the
greatest problems that humans have ever created for themselves are civilization, society and the
intricacies. I mean, it gives us a lot of really good things,
right, I mean, easy access to food and shelter and things like this.
But really, anybody who spends any time camping or out in nature and
reverting back to the wild so to speak, I mean, I think they
will have the experience of realizing what we have lost by becoming so dependent on
a structured kind of civilization, the likes of which we have today. I
know, I love that. And whether or not I find sasquatch when I'm
out there in the forest, you know, with Matt Prude or whoever,
and we're out there stomping around in the foothills of Georgia. I mean,
to me, getting back to nature in itself is something I just love.
And in that regard, I mean, I look at a creature like sasquatch
that has evolved to resemble and in many ways even behave like humans. We've
got a bipedal ape It's very large, it's very clever, very cunning,
very capable of finding food and obviously sheltering itself against the elements, and yet
it hasn't become encumbered by a lot of the things that society imposes on humans
today. I mean, maybe that's sort of a romantic outlook, but I
think there's actually some truth to that too. So in some ways, you
might say sasquatch, who is actually more intelligent than we are. It's avoided
a lot of the perils that humans now face by remaining hidden out there in
the forest and living simply and enjoying nature. Getting back to the UAP thing
real fast. I'm Melissa and I my wife, we said her, and
we're astonished because Melissa's kind of a UFO girl, right, she likes this
sort of thing UFOs and ghosts and stuff. So I'm exposed a lot of
this stuff through her. We're astonished that more people aren't interested, you know,
I mean, they'd rather watch a reality TV show about you know,
a family or the Gardassians or something. But but no, no, no,
there's potentially non human intelligences out there looking at us or interacting or doing
Why do you think it is that more people aren't taking this seriously or perhaps
don't understand the gravity of this situation that I mean, this could legitimately be
potentially the most important discovery in all human history, and it's on our doorstep,
but people, you know, are watching like cupcake shows. It's a
really good point. I think about this a lot. I saw a guy
on Twitter in recent days tweeting about, you know, is there a way
that we can learn to talk to our family members about UAP? And again,
I think that the same really that we're about to dive into here applies
to sasquatch or any other kind of topic like this. But he had been
sharing a communicational messenger or some app and saying, so, here is a
link to a article that's giving a breakdown of all the latest stuff with the
whistleblower and everything, and the family member had replied with like an eyebrows raised
emoji and then immediately pivoted to what do you want me to pick up for
dinner tonight? I mean, and I gotta tell you, I mean,
I've had that same thing. I lovingly say that, you know. I
called my mom and dad just to check in right after we had dropped the
big article there at the day Brief, and I said, you know,
Mom, Dad, and let me just be clear. I mean, I
am interested in all this stuff because at a young age I was gifted with
parents who instilled wonder in my imagination, and they gave me books on Sasquatch.
I mean, when I was in kindergarten, in first grade, I
was reading Ivan Sanderson. I had a UFO book by Ray Fowler. These
were not books for children, but I asked for him and my parents said,
you know, if it will make him read, we'll give him what
he's asking for. And I'm so glad that they did. So they're interested
in this stuff too. And my dad is just about as interested as I
am in Sasquatch. But I call him to tell him the news about the
whistleblower stuff and everything, and my mom in the background, I hear her
yell and say, I believe it, and my dad says, that's fascinating.
Son. Now listen, I gotta go to the dealership tomorrow. Could
you give me a ride. So a lot of people I talked to have
had that kind of experience, but it's I think in the case with my
parents, it's certainly not because they're not interested. But I think that the
reality for them is they're like, you know, of course, this stuff's
probably out there. It's probably real. And I would imagine that a lot
of people are already they've kind of warmed up to that idea. And so
we always hear this idea you can't handle the truth and one concern, and
there actually there's some historical precedent for this and the reality that certain agencies have
been concerned about. You know, what would happen if humankind were made aware
without any kind of you know, question any further. I mean, if
we were to disclose the reality of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. I mean,
society might fail, Religions would go away, people would be you know,
out there in the streets. I mean, it would be complete and
total chaos. I wonder sometimes wouldn't necessarily I mean, I look at people's
reaction to this recent news. People are excited, but a lot of them
are like, man, doesn't surprise me at all. That's kind of where
I am, Cliff. I look at this, and I say, if
you told me that all this stuff that we've been hearing, these whispers,
about these rumors about crash wreckages and things maybe at Roswell or wherever else going
back decades cover up secret programs that have been studying this technology, trying to
reverse engineer it. I mean, if you told me all of a sudden
that all of it was true, I can't say I'd really be surprised.
We've been hearing these rumors for a long time, but again, we've still
got a long ways to go before we find that if it is indeed true.
So I don't know. Maybe there will be complete societal collapse once the
news all breaks. But something tells me that, based on people's kind of
hohme reactions, maybe we shouldn't worry about that too much. I think a
lot of people are kind of already accepting the idea. Yeah, I don't
think much would change. It's like the sasquatches are proven to be real today,
it would be a big hullaballoo for about a month, and then everybody
go back to normal because it turns out they're already real right, nothing really
changed except for people are aware of it. But I would hope that I
mean again that this is I'm a curmudgeoney old guy or whatever, but at
the same time, I am an optimist in a lot of ways, and
I would hope that knowing that perhaps we weren't alone, whether I'm talking about
sasquatches on the planet or something else, you know, driving cool spaceships or
our atmosphere and checking us out, maybe that would give us a little bit
of introspection, some sort of humility, I guess, and realize that perhaps
building our arsenals to kill our brothers isn't the best use of our money when
we have so many people in need in the world, you know. And
that's one one glimmer of hope that I see with a lot of this UAP
legislation or whatnot, is that is finally giving those people who say that they're
quote unquote leaders but don't act like it, and governments something to agree upon,
because for the most part they're like they're like preschoolers arguing over a toy
and like yelling and pointing fingers and blaming at each other. But to give
them something to actually agree upon for some greater good that that has to have
some sort of beneficial effects for society. And to see them coming together and
some sort of bipartisan legislation to make some things happen for a bigger than human
cause, literally bigger than human cause, is at least some good that's coming
out of the government today instead of the tip for tat, name calling and
what about ism that we get fed every day through the media. Yeah,
that's one of the most fascinating things I've seen. I mean, it's hard
to say that anything that's just happening on Capitol Hill is anywhere remotely close to
as fascinating as some of the UAP potentials. And again saying goes for sasquatch.
To me, there's a reason why I'm studying these phenomena. And I'm
not a politician, but it's been fascinating seeing that members of the different parties
that often share no you know, common ground or very little at least,
they all seem to be an agreement that, hey, whatever UAP represent,
this is something we all need to take seriously. I've seen very few instances
where there have been holdouts for political reasons that have said we can't pass this
legislation. Now that's not to say that there haven't been some. They're always
going to be skeptics, certain personality types and things like that. But I
mean in large part those who have worked to push forward this UAP legislation and
who have gotten it included in the National Defense Authorization Act over the last several
fiscal years. I mean, it's been a bipartisan group with lawmakers from both
sides of the political aisle, and they're all coming together in unity on this
point. So I mean that to me, at least on the socio cultural
level, has been one of the most fascinating things. Yeah, and a
glimmer of hope I think as well, because I think I'm a lot like
a lot of Americans that is, with very little hope in the government at
this point because of the way they behave like children essentially, So to give
them something to agree upon a move forward with, to me, that's a
breath of fresh air that people are paying attention to something and realize that the
importance is greater than what they normally, you know, bigger and bitch at
each other about so yeah, for sure, and that's you know again.
I used to follow politics. I used to be a political junkie. I
got to be honest. I mean, I read the news every morning.
But I'm not really the political junkie anymore. I mean I began to realize
the deeper I looked into trying to understand these phenomena. I mean, really,
I guess you could call me a fourteen in that tradition of Charles Fort.
I'm somebody who's interested in every kind of anomalous phenomena that can be observed
in nature, and I study a little of all of it. I am
just a you know, a long time reader of not only that kind of
you know, classic literature, but more recent additions by guys like William R.
Coralist, the American physicist who documented all kinds of stuff. He even
devoted some time to the relic tominoid question and biological anomalies too. But for
me, I've had to step away from so much of that. I mean,
you turn on the news and I mean it's it's just so depressing,
so sucking, it's a bum out. It really isn't to me that sense
of wonder that I used to get from watching In Search of as a child.
You know that I have that hope to find something new, to aspire
to find something that not only maybe is fascinating, but in many ways,
like you're saying, but you know, might benefit humankind, make us all
the better for it. Maybe it will broaden our perspective even in a cosmic
way, and help us understand that our bickering and our fighting here on the
global level is you know, a lot less consequential than we may think it
is. Yeah, those kinds of pursuits, the pursuit of the mysterious,
but not just for the sake of being interested in mysteries, No, actually
really trying to study it, really to resolve these anomalies and to understand what's
happening in our world. That's what really gets to me interested, that's what
really enlivens my spirit, and that's really where I've just chosen in recent years
to put my time, effort, and energy. Yeah, the unknown and
mysteries is a wonderful unifier that brings people together from all sorts of walks of
life, and it sees no boundaries, And I think that's just fantastic.
And you know you mentioned you're a general forty in so I think that I
think that on that note, will probably end this episode and go over to
the member section and let's get into some of the other things over there on
our special members only broadcast. Let's get into some of the other things that
you might think are real, or maybe some of the things that you don't
think are real, and we can talk about that. We can cover things
I don't know, like like dog men or fish fallen from the sky,
or lizard men or lake monsters and some of that stuff in there, and
we'll hear your thoughts on some of those more extraordinary beyond Bigfoot and Beyond sort
of things and in the members section. Okay, sure sounds great. All
right, so members talk to you on Thursday, I guess and everybody else.
Thank you so much for listening to Bigfoot and Beyond today. Bubba was
not able to make us. He was not able to join us before this
broadcast ended, but that's all right. We're all here to cover for each
other. We're all good friends. That's what we do here at Bigfoot and
Beyond. So thank you very much for listening. Everybody. I'll talk to
you next week, and in the meantime, keep it squadgy. Thanks for
listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked what you
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