Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a stream going
Speaker 1: on here, something just cause my dog. Something killed your dog,
Speaker 1: my dog. We're flying through the air over the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm
Speaker 1: really confused. All I saw was my dog coming over
Speaker 1: the fence and he was dead. And once you hit
Speaker 1: the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I
Speaker 1: saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what
Speaker 1: are you putting? We got some wonder or something prowling
Speaker 1: around out here? Did you see what it was? Or
Speaker 1: was it was? Standing enough? I'm out here looking through
Speaker 1: the window now and I don't see anything. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go outside. Jesus Quice, you better hello, get
Speaker 1: the Boddy out here, quin, I'm out there. I thought
Speaker 1: of Avenu about Tech fort nine. I don't know. Easy
Speaker 1: ann out there? Yeah, I'm walking right. Hey.
Speaker 2: If you caught my last newsletter, either reading it or
Speaker 2: listening to it here on the show, you already know.
Speaker 2: I spent some time on the documentary capturing Bigfoot the
Speaker 2: claims around it, the new footage supposedly tied to the
Speaker 2: Patterson Gimlin film. I gave you my initial read on
Speaker 2: what was being put out there, and I was straight
Speaker 2: with you. I hadn't watched the full documentary as of
Speaker 2: right now. I still haven't, but I've been watching what's
Speaker 2: been happening around it closely, and what I've seen has
Speaker 2: been more revealing than anything in the documentary itself, because
Speaker 2: what's unfolded over the past several weeks isn't a conversation
Speaker 2: about the Patterson Gimlin film. Not really. It's not about
Speaker 2: Roger Patterson or Bob Gimlin. It's not about what happened
Speaker 2: at Bluff Creek in nineteen sixty seven, or whether that
Speaker 2: footage shows something real walking through those trees or something staged.
Speaker 2: Those questions matter, they deserve real attention, but that's not
Speaker 2: what people are actually doing right now. What people are
Speaker 2: doing is picking teams. What people are doing is older
Speaker 2: than any film, older than any documentary, older than Bigfoot
Speaker 2: Research itself. What people are doing is tribalism, plain and simple.
Speaker 2: And I want to spend some real time today talking
Speaker 2: about why that should bother every single person in this field,
Speaker 2: not just because of this one documentary, but because of
Speaker 2: what it says about us, about how we handle evidence,
Speaker 2: about how we treat each other. About whether this community
Speaker 2: is actually capable of doing what it claims it wants
Speaker 2: to do, which is fine, the truth. I need to
Speaker 2: take you somewhere first. It's going to seem like it
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with Bigfoot. I promise you it does.
Speaker 2: Just give me a minute. Dayton, Tennessee. The summer of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty five, a high school teacher named John T.
Speaker 2: Scopes goes on trial for breaking the Butler apt That
Speaker 2: was the Tennessee law that said you couldn't teach human
Speaker 2: evolution in a public school. The trial became a national event.
Speaker 2: It became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, and to
Speaker 2: this day it's one of the most famous legal spectacles
Speaker 2: in American history. Most people have a version of this
Speaker 2: story in their head. Evolution versus creationism, Clarence Darrow on
Speaker 2: one side, champion of science, William Jennings Bryan on the other,
Speaker 2: defender of the Bible. A small town courtroom where the
Speaker 2: modern world collided with the old one. Good versus evil,
Speaker 2: reason versus ignorance. Pick your hero, pick your villain, and
Speaker 2: enjoy the show. Except that's not what happened, not even close.
Speaker 2: Here's what actually happened. A local businessman named George rapple
Speaker 2: Yee saw the Butler Act and realize something. If someone
Speaker 2: got arrested for teaching evolution in Dayton, it would make
Speaker 2: national news, and national news meant national attention, and national
Speaker 2: attention meant money, tourism, prestige. He literally recruited Scopes to
Speaker 2: get arrested. They planned it out at a drug store
Speaker 2: over SODA's. Scopes later admitted he wasn't even certain he'd
Speaker 2: taught evolution in his class. The entire thing was staged.
Speaker 2: Not the legal proceedings, those were real enough, but the
Speaker 2: reason it happened. That was manufactured from day one. Then
Speaker 2: the press showed up and it became a circus. H. L.
Speaker 2: Mincn came down from Baltimore. He was maybe the most
Speaker 2: influential journalist in the country at the time, and he
Speaker 2: had no interest in the actual legal or philosophical questions
Speaker 2: at stake none. What Mincoln wanted was a spectacle, a
Speaker 2: story with heroes and villains. He painted the people of
Speaker 2: Dayton as fools, ignorant, backwoods hicks, too dim to understand
Speaker 2: the world they lived in. He turned Darrow into a
Speaker 2: crusader for enlightenment and Brian into a relic. He created
Speaker 2: a narrative so clean and so satisfying that people are
Speaker 2: still repeating it one hundred years later, and the thing
Speaker 2: is almost none of it reflected reality. Darrow was brilliant, sure,
Speaker 2: but he was also a showman who understood the press
Speaker 2: better than anyone in that courtroom. Brian wasn't an idiot.
Speaker 2: He was a three time presidential nominee, a former Secretary
Speaker 2: of State, and a man who genuinely believed he was
Speaker 2: protecting communities from having their values overridden by distant institutions.
Speaker 2: The people of Dayton weren't rubes. They were ordinary Americans,
Speaker 2: living ordinary lives who suddenly found themselves at the center
Speaker 2: of a media machine they didn't ask for and couldn't control.
Speaker 2: But none of that complexity fit the story Mincin wanted
Speaker 2: to tell, so he told a simpler one, and it stuck.
Speaker 2: The reporters who followed Mencoln's lead turned Dayton into a joke.
Speaker 2: They wrote about the town as if it were some
Speaker 2: kind of museum exhibit, a living diorama of American backwardness,
Speaker 2: and the people who lived there, the farmers and shopkeepers
Speaker 2: and school teachers and families who had to walk those streets.
Speaker 2: Long after the press went home. They got to carry
Speaker 2: that reputation for the rest of their lives. Their grandchildren
Speaker 2: are probably still carrying it. That's the part that never
Speaker 2: makes it into the history books, the human wreckage left
Speaker 2: behind after the circus moves on, the people who got
Speaker 2: used as props and then discarded. Here's what I need
Speaker 2: you to understand. The Scopes trial wasn't just a weird
Speaker 2: chapter in American legal history. It was a prototype. It
Speaker 2: was the first great media manufactured culture war in this country,
Speaker 2: and it created a playbook that has been running on
Speaker 2: repeat ever since. The playbook goes like this, a controversy
Speaker 2: is identified or manufactured. Sometimes both advocates on both sides
Speaker 2: race to claim the moral high ground. The media, always
Speaker 2: hungry for conflict and drama, amplifies the most extreme voices
Speaker 2: on each side and ignores everyone in the middle. A
Speaker 2: complex issue gets reduced to a binary. You're either for
Speaker 2: science or for religion, for progress or for tradition, for
Speaker 2: the enlightened or for the backward. And there's no room,
Speaker 2: none at all for someone who thinks maybe the question
Speaker 2: itself has been badly framed. Then comes the rest of it.
Speaker 2: The tribal sorting. People pick their side and it becomes
Speaker 2: part of who they are. The outcome gets mythologized, performance
Speaker 2: replaces substance, and eventually, quietly, inevitably, the truth gets forgotten,
Speaker 2: entirely buried under the noise. That's what happened in Dayton.
Speaker 2: The Butler Act wasn't really a question about whether evolution
Speaker 2: was true or false. It was about who gets to
Speaker 2: decide what kids learn. It was about the tension between
Speaker 2: science and religion, between local control and national norms, between
Speaker 2: holding on and moving forward. Those are serious questions, hard questions,
Speaker 2: questions that don't have tidy answers. But tidy answers were
Speaker 2: all the media wanted, because tidy answers create two sidesdes
Speaker 2: create conflict, Conflict creates engagement. An engagement then, as now,
Speaker 2: creates money. So the question got flattened, stripped of its complexity,
Speaker 2: shoved into a box it didn't fit in, and the
Speaker 2: people of Dayton got handed a binary they never asked for. Now,
Speaker 2: I need you to hear what I'm about to say,
Speaker 2: because this is where it matters to us. That exact
Speaker 2: same playbook is running right now, not in Tennessee, in
Speaker 2: the Bigfoot community, in your Facebook groups, in your YouTube recommendations.
Speaker 2: In the way this community is processing the Capturing Bigfoot documentary,
Speaker 2: a controversy has been identified. People on both sides are
Speaker 2: scrambling for the moral high ground. The loudest voices, the
Speaker 2: most extreme ones, are getting all the attention, while anyone
Speaker 2: trying to occupy the middle gets shouted down. And a
Speaker 2: genuinely interesting, genuinely complex question about a piece of evidence
Speaker 2: is being flattened into a binary. You're either a believer
Speaker 2: or a debunker, loyal or a trader. You either defend
Speaker 2: the Patterson Gimlin film without hesitation, or you're trying to
Speaker 2: burn it down. There is zero room right now for
Speaker 2: the person who says hold on. Maybe this isn't about
Speaker 2: whether I'm for the PGF or against it. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: about whether I'm actually willing to look at what's being presented.
Speaker 2: That person is getting eaten alive from both directions, and
Speaker 2: that should concern every one of us, because every single
Speaker 2: time a complex question gets crammed into a binary, the
Speaker 2: first thing that dies is the truth. So I'd suggest this,
Speaker 2: and I mean it sincerely, be skeptical of any story
Speaker 2: that comes with clear heroes and clear villains. Be suspicious
Speaker 2: of any narrative that makes you feel righteous and comfortable
Speaker 2: and absolutely certain that your side is the right side.
Speaker 2: That feeling, that warm, settled certainty. That's almost never what
Speaker 2: truth feels like. That's what belonging feels like. And those
Speaker 2: are very, very different things. Mencoln understood this probably better
Speaker 2: than anyone in that day and courtroom. He understood that
Speaker 2: people don't really want the truth. They want a story
Speaker 2: that makes them feel like they're on the right team.
Speaker 2: They want a villain to point at and a hero
Speaker 2: to root for. They want the world to be simple
Speaker 2: because simple feels safe, and complex feels dangerous. And if
Speaker 2: you hand people that simplicity, if you give them a
Speaker 2: clean narrative that sorts the world into good guys and
Speaker 2: bad guys, they will follow that narrative anywhere. They'll defend
Speaker 2: it against any evidence, they'll attack anyone who questions it,
Speaker 2: and the whole time they'll tell themselves they're the righteous ones.
Speaker 2: Mencoln didn't create this pattern, He just figured out how
Speaker 2: to weaponize it for newspapers, and every generation since has
Speaker 2: been running the same play. Find a topic people feel
Speaker 2: strongly about, strip the nuance, build two camps, amplify the
Speaker 2: loudest voices, and let the engagement take care of itself.
Speaker 2: It worked in print in nineteen twenty five. It works
Speaker 2: on social media in twenty twenty six. The technology changes,
Speaker 2: the pattern doesn't, and the people who pay the price
Speaker 2: are always the same. The ones who wanted to understand,
Speaker 2: the ones who were trying to think, the ones who said,
Speaker 2: I think this is more complicated than either side is
Speaker 2: making it. Those people get chewed up every time because
Speaker 2: they don't serve the narrative, and once the machine is running,
Speaker 2: the narrative is all that matters. The Patterson Gimlin film
Speaker 2: is the single most significant piece of evidence in the
Speaker 2: history of sasquatch research. That's not hyperbole. I say that
Speaker 2: as someone who's been involved in this field for nearly
Speaker 2: forty years, Since a childhood encounter in North Georgia in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six that changed the trajectory of my life.
Speaker 2: Since a visual sighting in Washington State in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four while I was filming a documentary, Since decades of
Speaker 2: walking through those woods, reading the research, talking to witnesses,
Speaker 2: and trying to bring the same discipline to this subject.
Speaker 2: That I brought to my work in law enforcement. The
Speaker 2: PGF matters, It's always mattered, and because it matters, it
Speaker 2: has always generated controversy. That's expected, that's even healthy when
Speaker 2: it's done right. For decades, researchers have debated what the
Speaker 2: film shows. Some are convinced it's a genuine unknown primate.
Speaker 2: Others believe it's a man in a suit. Both sides
Speaker 2: bring technical arguments, detailed analysis, and a lot of personal
Speaker 2: conviction to the table. People have spent entire careers defending
Speaker 2: this footage. Others have spent entire careers trying to dismantle it,
Speaker 2: and somewhere along the way, the actual question of what
Speaker 2: the film shows has taken a back seat to what
Speaker 2: the film means, what it represents, what side you're on.
Speaker 2: That's what happens when evidence becomes a symbol. It stops
Speaker 2: being something you examine. It becomes something you identify with,
Speaker 2: something you protect, or something you tear down, and your
Speaker 2: response to it stops being about what you see and
Speaker 2: starts being about who you are. That's exactly where this
Speaker 2: community is right now. Capturing Bigfoot has brought claims about
Speaker 2: new footage, about the circumstances behind the filming at Bluff
Speaker 2: Creek about what that footage might tell us regarding the
Speaker 2: pgf's authenticity. I'm keeping this general on purpose because I
Speaker 2: still haven't watched the full documentary. What I've seen are clips, interviews,
Speaker 2: online reactions, and a lot of people with very strong
Speaker 2: opinions about something most of them haven't fully sat with either.
Speaker 2: And it's that last part that gets to me. I'm
Speaker 2: not concerned about the documentary's claims. Those can be weighed
Speaker 2: on their own merits once people have actually seen them.
Speaker 2: What concerns me is the behavior surrounding the documentary, the
Speaker 2: speed with which people picked sides, the way the conversation
Speaker 2: splintered into factions that don't look anything like researchers evaluating evidence.
Speaker 2: They look like sports fans defending their teams honor. I've
Speaker 2: watched people reject this documentary outright, not after careful analysis,
Speaker 2: not after seeing the footage and finding it wanting without
Speaker 2: seeing it at all, just because they've already decided the
Speaker 2: PGF is real and anything that might complicate that conclusion
Speaker 2: has to be an attack. I've also watched people celebrate
Speaker 2: the documentary's claims without any scrutiny. Whatsoever, because they've already
Speaker 2: decided the PGF is fake and this feels like proof.
Speaker 2: And then there are the people in between, the ones
Speaker 2: who said something as simple as I'd like to see
Speaker 2: this before I form an opinion, and for that they
Speaker 2: caught heat from both directions. Think about where we are saying,
Speaker 2: I want to look at the evidence is now a
Speaker 2: controversial position in a community that exists to look at evidence.
Speaker 2: That's the scope's playbook running in real time. The controversy
Speaker 2: identified both sides racing for the high ground. The extreme
Speaker 2: voice is drowning everyone else out, and stay tuned for
Speaker 2: more sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after
Speaker 2: the these messages, a complex question crushed into a binary.
Speaker 2: The middle turned into a war zone, different century, different subject,
Speaker 2: identical dynamics. Let me be straightforward. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the Patterson Gimlin film shows. I have opinions, I have
Speaker 2: instincts shaped by decades of fieldwork, but I don't have certainty,
Speaker 2: and neither do you. That's the whole reason this conversation
Speaker 2: exists at all. That's why this documentary matters. If you
Speaker 2: believe the PGF is authentic and the thought of new
Speaker 2: evidence makes you defensive rather than curious. You need to
Speaker 2: sit with that. Ask yourself what you're actually defending. Is
Speaker 2: it the evidence or is it the identity you've built
Speaker 2: around your interpretation of the evidence. There's a difference. Research
Speaker 2: means following the evidence wherever it goes, even somewhere you
Speaker 2: don't want to be. Belief means holding your ground no
Speaker 2: matter what. And belief is fine, it's human, but it's
Speaker 2: not research. Don't confuse the two. If you believe the
Speaker 2: PGF is a hoax and you're ready to embrace this
Speaker 2: documentary without putting it through the same filter you'd apply
Speaker 2: to anything else, the same question applies. Are you evaluating
Speaker 2: evidence or are you celebrating because someone finally validated what
Speaker 2: you already thought. Here's the uncomfortable reality. Most of us
Speaker 2: are doing a little of both. We want truth and
Speaker 2: we want to be right, and we don't always notice
Speaker 2: when those two things stop being the same. That tension
Speaker 2: right there, that's the soil tribalism grows in the people
Speaker 2: of Dayton in nineteen twenty five. Weren't fools. They were
Speaker 2: people caught in a moment that demanded they pick a
Speaker 2: team for evolution. Or against it with Darrow or with Brian,
Speaker 2: modern or backward, And the moment they chose, everything they
Speaker 2: encountered got filtered through that choice. The same filter is
Speaker 2: running in the Bigfoot community right now for the PGF
Speaker 2: or against it, believer or debunker, loyal or treason us.
Speaker 2: Once you've been sorted, the evidence stops driving the conversation.
Speaker 2: The fight becomes the point. I won't do it, and
Speaker 2: I'd ask you not to either. I want to talk
Speaker 2: about why this works so well on us, because understanding
Speaker 2: the mechanism is how you start to see past it.
Speaker 2: We are, at our core tribal creatures. We evolved in
Speaker 2: small bands where social belonging wasn't just nice to have,
Speaker 2: it was survival. Getting expelled from your group meant death.
Speaker 2: So our brains got very very good at reading social cues,
Speaker 2: at identifying who's in the group and who's not, at
Speaker 2: adjusting our behavior to match the people around us, at
Speaker 2: punishing anyone who threatens the group's unity. That wiring is
Speaker 2: still active. Every time you see a post from someone
Speaker 2: in this community who disagrees with you about the PGF,
Speaker 2: something happens in your nervous system. You might not feel
Speaker 2: it consciously, but it's there, a small jolt, a titan,
Speaker 2: a flash of that person is wrong and I need
Speaker 2: to say something, A quiet signal that whispers they're not
Speaker 2: one of us. That has nothing to do with evidence,
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the actual content of the film.
Speaker 2: That's pure tribal machinery, your brain identifying an outsider and
Speaker 2: mobilizing a response. It's ancient, it's automatic, and it hijacks
Speaker 2: your ability to think clearly about the very thing you
Speaker 2: claim to care about. The Scopes pattern works because it
Speaker 2: taps directly into this wiring. It gives people a team,
Speaker 2: a flag, an enemy, something to fight about that feels important,
Speaker 2: even when the real questions underneath are more complicated than
Speaker 2: anyone on either side wants to deal with. Now, let
Speaker 2: me add something to this picture that makes it worse.
Speaker 2: There's a concept in psychology called the backfire effect. It
Speaker 2: describes what happens when someone encounters evidence that contradicts something
Speaker 2: they believe deeply. You'd think the evidence would weaken the belief.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. It strengthens it. The person digs in harder,
Speaker 2: the belief gets more entrenched, not less. The evidence that
Speaker 2: was supposed to change their mind actually fortifies the position
Speaker 2: it was supposed to undermine. This has been studied extensively.
Speaker 2: It shows up in politics, in religion, in medicine, and yes,
Speaker 2: in the Bigfoot community. It happens because our brains aren't
Speaker 2: designed to process information neutrally. They're designed to protect our
Speaker 2: existing understanding of the world. Revising a core belief is
Speaker 2: cognitively expensive. It disrupts your sense of who you are,
Speaker 2: so your brain resists it, often without you even knowing.
Speaker 2: This is why the response to capturing Bigfoot has been
Speaker 2: so predictable, not because Bigfoot researchers are uniquely pigheaded, because
Speaker 2: they're human, and this is what humans do when something
Speaker 2: threatens a belief that's become part of their identity. They
Speaker 2: circle the wagons, They discredit the source, They retreat to
Speaker 2: their tribe and tell each other the threat isn't real.
Speaker 2: Brian did this at the Scopes trial when Darrow put
Speaker 2: him on the stand and pressed him on the literal
Speaker 2: truth of Genesis. Brian didn't engage the questions. He deflected.
Speaker 2: He played to the gallery. He invoked the authority of faith,
Speaker 2: and the audience loved every second of it because they
Speaker 2: weren't there for a legal proceeding. They were there to
Speaker 2: watch their guy win. And here's the part that makes
Speaker 2: this so insidious. Nobody in that crowd thought they were performing.
Speaker 2: They thought they were standing on principle. They thought they
Speaker 2: were defending something that mattered. The performance and the sincerity
Speaker 2: weren't opposites. They were woven together so tightly that nobody
Speaker 2: could tell where one ended and the other began. And
Speaker 2: that's what makes tribalism so hard to recognize from the inside.
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like tribalism when you're in it. It
Speaker 2: feels like conviction. It feels like integrity. It feels like
Speaker 2: doing the right thing. The people going after researchers right
Speaker 2: now for expressing even mild curiosity about capturing Bigfoot are
Speaker 2: doing the same thing Brian did. They're not engaging with evidence.
Speaker 2: They're performing loyalty, proving to their tribe that they're solid,
Speaker 2: that they'll hold the line, that they'll defend the cannon
Speaker 2: and the folks on the opposite end, the ones treating
Speaker 2: the documentary like it already settled the question without actually
Speaker 2: subjecting its claims to scrutiny. Same game, different Jersey. Both
Speaker 2: sides are sure they're the rational ones. Both sides are
Speaker 2: sure they're following the evidence. Both sides are wrong because
Speaker 2: neither side is looking at the evidence. They're looking at
Speaker 2: each other. And this is the thing that keeps me
Speaker 2: up at night about this field. We spend more time
Speaker 2: watching each other than we do examining evidence, more energy
Speaker 2: crafting rebuttals to people we disagree with than analyzing data.
Speaker 2: I've watched Facebook threads about the PGF go from a
Speaker 2: genuine question to a full scale tribal war in under
Speaker 2: an hour. The question forgotten, the evidence never discussed, just
Speaker 2: accusations flying in every direction. Gullible, trader hill, closed minded,
Speaker 2: hidden agenda. You know who watches all of this The
Speaker 2: scientific community, the people with the resources, the training, the
Speaker 2: institutional support to actually move this field forward. They watch
Speaker 2: us devour each other, and they walk away. I've had
Speaker 2: conversations with academic researchers who were genuinely interested in the
Speaker 2: sasquatch phenomenon, good scientists with real curiosity, And what drove
Speaker 2: them off wasn't the skeptics, wasn't the lack of a
Speaker 2: type specimen, wasn't the difficulty of the field work. It
Speaker 2: was us, the community itself, The way we eat our own.
Speaker 2: They looked at that and decided it wasn't worth the grief.
Speaker 2: We are chasing away the people who could help us
Speaker 2: the most, and we're doing it because we can't stop
Speaker 2: fighting each other over who owns the truth in a
Speaker 2: field where nobody has actually found it yet. I'm not
Speaker 2: exempt by the way. I've let my frustration get ahead
Speaker 2: of my judgment. I've said things about other researchers that
Speaker 2: had more to do with my pride than with any evidence.
Speaker 2: I'm not above this. I'm in the same valley as
Speaker 2: everyone else. But recognizing you're in a valley is the
Speaker 2: first step toward getting out of it. I want to
Speaker 2: say something now that isn't going to make everyone comfortable,
Speaker 2: but I think it needs to be said, so here
Speaker 2: it is. The Patterson Gimlin film is not sacred scripture.
Speaker 2: It is a piece of evidence, and evidence exists to
Speaker 2: be tested. That distinction matters more than it might seem,
Speaker 2: because when a piece of evidence becomes sacred in a community,
Speaker 2: when it gets elevated from important data that deserves examination
Speaker 2: to foundational truth that must be protected, something fundamental shifts.
Speaker 2: You stop evaluating it and start guarding it. You stop
Speaker 2: welcoming new analysis and start viewing it as a threat,
Speaker 2: and you start treating anyone who approaches the evidence with
Speaker 2: open ended curiosity as if they're committing heirin. I've watched
Speaker 2: that shift happen with the PGF. Slowly over years, the
Speaker 2: film went from being the most important piece of evidence
Speaker 2: in this field, which it still is, to being the
Speaker 2: untouchable arc of the Covenant that no one is permitted
Speaker 2: to question. And the people who enforced that shift didn't
Speaker 2: do it consciously. They did it out of love, out
Speaker 2: of investment, out of decades of defending something they believe in.
Speaker 2: I understand the impulse. I respect the devotion, but devotion
Speaker 2: to a conclusion is not the same as devotion to
Speaker 2: the truth, and somewhere along the way those two things
Speaker 2: got confused. I realize that's going to land hard for
Speaker 2: some people. There are researchers who've spent decades defending this footage.
Speaker 2: There are people who knew Roger Patterson. There are people
Speaker 2: who consider Bob Gimlin a personal friend. I have enormous
Speaker 2: respect for Bob. The scrutiny that man has endured over
Speaker 2: the decades would have broken most people, and he's handled
Speaker 2: it with more grace than anyone could rea reasonably ask for.
Speaker 2: But respecting the people connected to the film doesn't mean
Speaker 2: the film itself gets to be off limits. If anything,
Speaker 2: it means the opposite. If the PGF is authentic, rigorous
Speaker 2: examination only makes it stronger. Every serious analysis that can't
Speaker 2: debunk it adds to its credibility. The only scenario where
Speaker 2: examination is dangerous is if the film can't hold up
Speaker 2: under it. And look at the track record. The PGF
Speaker 2: has withstood a tremendous amount of scrutiny, the biomechanical analysis,
Speaker 2: the proportional studies, the work Bill Mounds and Jeff Meldrum
Speaker 2: have done. That's some of the most careful, substantive analytical
Speaker 2: work this field has ever produced. And it wasn't done
Speaker 2: by sheltering the film from hard questions. It was done
Speaker 2: by inviting them. That's what confidence and evidence actually looks like.
Speaker 2: Not defensiveness, not aggression toward anyone who raises a concern,
Speaker 2: just the steady, patient willingness to say go ahead, will wait.
Speaker 2: If this community can't summon that kind of composure in
Speaker 2: the face of a single documentary, then we've got a
Speaker 2: problem much bigger than any film. Here's what I believe
Speaker 2: about Capturing Bigfoot. Anyone in this field who cares about
Speaker 2: the truth should want to see the new footage period.
Speaker 2: If there's additional material connected to the Patterson Gimlin film,
Speaker 2: material that could illuminate what happened at Bluff Creek, then
Speaker 2: everyone with a genuine stake in this question should be
Speaker 2: eager to examine it, not to confirm what they already believe,
Speaker 2: not to tear it apart on behalf of their tribe,
Speaker 2: to examine it with open eyes and honest intent. If
Speaker 2: it supports the pgf's authenticity important. If it raises new
Speaker 2: questions also important. The only bad outcome is the one
Speaker 2: where we refuse to look because we're afraid of what
Speaker 2: we might see. Anyone dismissing this documentary without watching it
Speaker 2: has already made a decision they're not entitled to make.
Speaker 2: I don't care how long you've been in this field.
Speaker 2: I don't care how many conferences you've spoken at, or
Speaker 2: how many books you've published. If your reaction to new
Speaker 2: evidence is to cover your ears and go after the
Speaker 2: person presenting it, you're not doing research. You're doing fandom.
Speaker 2: And fandom is fine, But it doesn't get to run
Speaker 2: the investigation. I'm going to watch this documentary. I'm going
Speaker 2: to look at the footage with everything I've got, the
Speaker 2: decades of field experience, the investigative training, the willingness to
Speaker 2: be wrong, and I'm going to share what I honestly think,
Speaker 2: even if it's messy, even if it contradicts positions I've
Speaker 2: held before, even if it makes people angry, because that's
Speaker 2: the job. That's what real inquiry looks like. And I
Speaker 2: want to be clear about what I mean by real inquiry,
Speaker 2: because I think the term has been so diluted in
Speaker 2: this community that it barely means anything anymore. Real inquiry
Speaker 2: doesn't mean watching a trailer and deciding you've seen enough.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean reading someone else's review and adopting their
Speaker 2: conclusions as your own. It doesn't mean waiting to see
Speaker 2: which way the wind is blowing in your Facebook group
Speaker 2: before you say what you think. Real inquiry means sitting down,
Speaker 2: doing the work yourself, engaging with the material directly, and
Speaker 2: then forming your own honest assessment based on what you
Speaker 2: actually observed, not what your friends think, not what your
Speaker 2: audience wants to hear. What you observed that used to
Speaker 2: be the baseline in this field. It used to be
Speaker 2: the minimum. I'm not sure it is anymore. If the
Speaker 2: Patterson Gimlin film shows a real Sasquatch, no documentary on
Speaker 2: Earth changes that. The film stands on its own, and
Speaker 2: if the film shows something else, I'd rather know. I
Speaker 2: want to tell you something from my years in law enforcement,
Speaker 2: because I think it connects directly to what we're dealing
Speaker 2: with here. Every good investigator I ever worked with understood
Speaker 2: one rule above all others. Don't fall in love with
Speaker 2: the theory. Don't do it because the moment you decide
Speaker 2: what happened before you've looked at everything, you start bending
Speaker 2: the investigation to fit your conclusion. You give extra weight
Speaker 2: to evidence that confirms what you think, You minimize the
Speaker 2: stuff that doesn't fit. You explain away inconsistencies instead of
Speaker 2: chasing them, and eventually you've built a case that looks
Speaker 2: bulletproof on paper but lives nowhere near the truth. I
Speaker 2: watched it happen good investigators, smart people who locked onto
Speaker 2: a theory too early and missed the answer that was
Speaker 2: sitting right in front of them. And the price wasn't
Speaker 2: an argument lost online. It was real cases that went cold,
Speaker 2: real victims who didn't get answers, real damage done because
Speaker 2: someone wanted to be right more than they wanted to
Speaker 2: be thorough. That's a lesson you learn once and carry
Speaker 2: for the rest of your life, because you see what
Speaker 2: confirmation bias actually costs when the stakes are real. Sixteen
Speaker 2: years of working cases taught me that the people who
Speaker 2: get it right aren't the ones with the strongest convictions.
Speaker 2: They're the ones with the most discipline, the ones who
Speaker 2: can hold a theory in one hand and doubt in
Speaker 2: the other and not let either one go until the
Speaker 2: evidence tells them which one to keep, and stay tuned
Speaker 2: for more sasquatch ott to see. We'll be right back
Speaker 2: after these messages. I know bigfoot research doesn't carry the
Speaker 2: same weight as a criminal investigation. Nobody's going to prison,
Speaker 2: nobody's freedom hangs in the balance. But the principle is identical,
Speaker 2: the mechanism is the same, and the consequences for this field,
Speaker 2: if not for any individual person, are real, and they
Speaker 2: accumulate over time. I carry that with me into every
Speaker 2: conversation about the PGF. That's why I resist the tribal pool,
Speaker 2: not because I enjoy being difficult because I've seen what
Speaker 2: happens in the real world when you let your conclusion
Speaker 2: outrun your evidence. You get it wrong every time, and
Speaker 2: in this field, getting it wrong has consequences beyond your
Speaker 2: own ego. Every time this community tears it so apart,
Speaker 2: the people on the outside take notice. Mainstream science looks
Speaker 2: at us eating each other alive and says, why would
Speaker 2: we invest time and credibility in a community that can't
Speaker 2: even have a civil conversation. And they're not wrong to
Speaker 2: ask that we are our own biggest obstacle, not the debunkers,
Speaker 2: not the media, not the giggle factor. Us. Our tribalism
Speaker 2: is doing more damage to the credibility of sasquatch research
Speaker 2: than any documentary could ever do. Now I already know
Speaker 2: someone is thinking, Brian, come on, some of these documentaries
Speaker 2: are just money grabs. You can't just take every new
Speaker 2: claim seriously. And I hear you. You're right. I'm not
Speaker 2: asking anyone to accept claims at face value. That's the
Speaker 2: exact opposite of what I'm saying. I'm asking you to
Speaker 2: look to evaluate, to bring your skepticism and your experience
Speaker 2: and your sharpest critical thinking to bear on what's being presented.
Speaker 2: That's not credulity. That's investigation, and it's all also the
Speaker 2: opposite of dismissing something before you've even seen it. This
Speaker 2: requires discipline. It means holding your opinions loosely enough that
Speaker 2: new information can actually reach you. It means separating who
Speaker 2: you are from what you've concluded. It means being willing,
Speaker 2: genuinely willing to discover you've been wrong, not hypothetically wrong,
Speaker 2: actually wrong in a way that changes things. That's hard.
Speaker 2: I know it is. I've been wrong before, held positions
Speaker 2: with real conviction, then realized I've been looking through a
Speaker 2: warped lens the whole time. And the hardest part was
Speaker 2: never accepting the new information. It was letting go of
Speaker 2: the old certainty. Because certainty feels so good. It's warm,
Speaker 2: it's stable, it tells you where you stand. Uncertainty is
Speaker 2: the opposite of all that. It's cold and it's exposed,
Speaker 2: and it's uncomfortable. But that's where the real discoveries live,
Speaker 2: not in the comfortable warmth of your tribe, in the
Speaker 2: open air of not knowing. An older officer told me
Speaker 2: something early in my career that I've never forgotten he said,
Speaker 2: the moment you stop being willing to be wrong is
Speaker 2: the moment you stop being any good at this job.
Speaker 2: That followed me through sixteen years of police work and
Speaker 2: nearly four decades of sasquatch research, because it's true in
Speaker 2: both worlds, the second you decide you have all the
Speaker 2: answers is the second you become useless. I've watched people
Speaker 2: in this community build their entire identity around the PGF.
Speaker 2: Being authentic, their online presence, their friendships, their standing among
Speaker 2: their peers, all of it balanced on that one conclusion.
Speaker 2: And when your identity depends on a single position, any
Speaker 2: challenge to that position becomes a challenge to who you are.
Speaker 2: That's not a foundation for research, that's a foundation for war.
Speaker 2: I've also watched people build their entire identity around debunking
Speaker 2: the PGF, their reputation in skeptical circles, their self image
Speaker 2: as the clear eye rationalist who sees through the nonsense.
Speaker 2: And those people are just as trapped, just as unable
Speaker 2: to look at something new with fresh eyes, just as
Speaker 2: invested in their predetermined answer. Both groups need to loosen
Speaker 2: their grip, not let go of their positions, just loosen
Speaker 2: the grip. You can hold a view and still be
Speaker 2: open to revision. You can believe something strongly and still
Speaker 2: acknowledge the gap between belief and proof. You can think
Speaker 2: you're right while keeping enough humility to look at evidence
Speaker 2: that says you might not be. That isn't weakness. That's
Speaker 2: the strongest, most adult thing a person can do in
Speaker 2: a field like this, and it's in dangerously short supply
Speaker 2: right now. I think sometimes about the ordinary people of Dayton,
Speaker 2: not the lawyers, not the journalists, not the national celebrities
Speaker 2: who rolled into town and turned it into a stage set.
Speaker 2: The people who actually lived there, went to church there,
Speaker 2: ran the hardware store, raised kids, had normal lives in
Speaker 2: a normal town that was suddenly anything but normal. Most
Speaker 2: of them didn't have fierce opinions about evolution before all
Speaker 2: of this started. They were just going about their business.
Speaker 2: But once the circus arrived, they had to choose. The
Speaker 2: whole country was watching, Their neighbors were watching, their pastor
Speaker 2: was watching, and every set of eyes asked the same question,
Speaker 2: whose side are you on? Some of them surely had
Speaker 2: nuanced thoughts. Surely some quiet voice in some quiet kitchen
Speaker 2: said maybe it's not that simple. Maybe both sides have
Speaker 2: a point. Maybe the truth is more tangled than anyone
Speaker 2: out there wants to admit. But that voice didn't get
Speaker 2: a microphone because nuance doesn't sell papers, Nuance doesn't fill
Speaker 2: a courtroom with gawkers. Nuance can't compete with the adrenaline
Speaker 2: of a good, clean fight. I think about those people
Speaker 2: because I see them in this community every day. Good people,
Speaker 2: curious people, people who look at capturing Bigfoot and think
Speaker 2: that's interesting. Let me sit with it, let me see
Speaker 2: the evidence and think for myself. But the tribal machinery
Speaker 2: won't let them. The moment they express anything other than
Speaker 2: full throated allegiance to one side, they get pounced on.
Speaker 2: Believers call them traders, Skeptics call them naive. They end
Speaker 2: up in no man's land, wondering why they bother to
Speaker 2: speak up at all. I've spent most of my career
Speaker 2: standing in that no man's land. It's not comfortable, but
Speaker 2: it's honest, and I'd rather be honest and standing alone
Speaker 2: than popular and compromised. I need to say something to
Speaker 2: the content creators in this space, and I'm saying it
Speaker 2: as a content creator myself, someone who understands the pressures
Speaker 2: the algorithms the grind of building and keeping an audience.
Speaker 2: If you are positioning yourself on one side of this
Speaker 2: debate purely because that's where your audience lives, you are
Speaker 2: making this worse. You know who you are. I don't
Speaker 2: have to name anybody. You know the math you're running.
Speaker 2: You know, defending the PGF gets more engagement than examining it.
Speaker 2: You know, tribal certainty generates more interaction than intellectual honesty.
Speaker 2: You know, the path of least resistance is to tell
Speaker 2: your audience what they already believe and make them feel
Speaker 2: good about believing it. I get the temptation. Building content
Speaker 2: is hard. Keeping people engaged is hard, and every platform
Speaker 2: on Earth is designed to reward the hottest take over
Speaker 2: the most careful analysis. The algorithm loves conflict, It loves certainty.
Speaker 2: It loves extreme positions because extreme positions provoke reaction, and
Speaker 2: reaction is the only currency that matters. But easy isn't
Speaker 2: the same as right, And at some point everyone with
Speaker 2: a platform in this field has to make a decision.
Speaker 2: Are you here to grow numbers or are you here
Speaker 2: to push this subject forward? Because right now those two
Speaker 2: things are pulling in opposite directions. I made my choice
Speaker 2: a long time ago. I say what I actually think,
Speaker 2: even when it shrinks my audience, even when people unsubscribe,
Speaker 2: even when I get that email that starts with I
Speaker 2: used to respect you. But I didn't get into this
Speaker 2: to be liked. I got into this because something happened
Speaker 2: to me in the North Georgia Woods when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, and I've spent every year since trying to
Speaker 2: make sense of it. That's the engine, not metrics, not
Speaker 2: downloads understanding. I think most people in this community started
Speaker 2: with that same engine. Something happened, something they couldn't explain,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to know more. But for some of them,
Speaker 2: wanting to know quietly became wanting to belong. Curiosity seated
Speaker 2: ground to certainty. Investigation gave way to performance, and they
Speaker 2: stopped chasing the truth and started chasing Applause worth asking
Speaker 2: yourself which mode you're in right now? This moment, with
Speaker 2: capturing Bigfoot sitting in front of all of us, is
Speaker 2: a good time for that kind of honest self check.
Speaker 2: There's a line investigators use, follow the evidence, not the narrative.
Speaker 2: Sounds obvious, it's not. Narratives are powerful. They organize information
Speaker 2: into stories with meaning, with roles, with emotional stakes. And
Speaker 2: in the Bigfoot world, the narratives have been running for decades.
Speaker 2: They're deep. There's the narrative of the noble pioneer Patterson
Speaker 2: as the gutsy independent filmmaker who went into the wilderness
Speaker 2: and got the shot of a lifetime. In that story,
Speaker 2: the PGF is a triumph. Anyone who questions it is
Speaker 2: attacking a hero's legacy. There's the narrative of the Great Deception,
Speaker 2: Patterson as the con man who pulled off the biggest
Speaker 2: hoax in cryptozoology and got away clean. In that story,
Speaker 2: the PGF is a cautionary tale about gullibility. Anyone who
Speaker 2: defends it is a sucker. There's the narrative of the
Speaker 2: Tragic Witness Gimlin as the honest, decent man who was there,
Speaker 2: who saw what he saw, and who spent sixty years
Speaker 2: being either worshiped or accused for it. In that story,
Speaker 2: the PGF is almost beside the point. The human cost
Speaker 2: is the real subject. All three of those narratives are compelling,
Speaker 2: all three contain pieces of truth, and all three, without exception,
Speaker 2: obstruct the actual examination of evidence. Because once you've settled
Speaker 2: into a narrative. You're no longer processing evidence on its merits.
Speaker 2: You're processing it as a plot point. Does this new
Speaker 2: footage support my story or threaten it? Does this documentary
Speaker 2: confirm my narrative or attack it? And your reaction isn't
Speaker 2: driven by what the evidence actually shows, It's driven by
Speaker 2: what role the evidence plays in the story you've already chosen.
Speaker 2: This is why the PGF debate has been spinning its
Speaker 2: wheels for decades. Not because the evidence is ambiguous, though
Speaker 2: it is, not because the analysis is incomplete, though there's
Speaker 2: always more to do, but because the people arguing aren't
Speaker 2: actually arguing about the evidence. They're arguing about the narrative,
Speaker 2: which story is the right one, And a documentary like
Speaker 2: Capturing Bigfoot doesn't interrupt that pattern. It gives each narrative
Speaker 2: a new chapter to absorb. If you're in the pioneer camp,
Speaker 2: the documentary is slander. If you're in the deception camp,
Speaker 2: it's vindication. Either way, you've folded it into your existing
Speaker 2: framework without letting it challenge a thing. The only way
Speaker 2: out of this is to do something unnatural. Set the
Speaker 2: narratives down, all of them, just for a moment and
Speaker 2: look at whatever evidence is being presented as what it
Speaker 2: actually is. Not a plot twist, not a weapon, not
Speaker 2: confirmation or attack. Data, information, something that deserves to be
Speaker 2: weighed on its own terms, regardless of which story it
Speaker 2: helps or hurts. That requires a kind of discipline most
Speaker 2: people aren't used to exercising. The narratives are comfortable, familiar.
Speaker 2: They tell you what to think and how to feel.
Speaker 2: Walking away from them, even briefly means sitting in uncertainty,
Speaker 2: and most people will do almost anything to avoid uncertainty.
Speaker 2: But that discomfort is where actual discovery rehappens. That's the
Speaker 2: space where real researchers live, not in the warmth of
Speaker 2: the narrative, but in the cold clarity of genuinely not knowing.
Speaker 2: If this community could learn to occupy that space, even temporarily,
Speaker 2: I think the results would surprise every one of us.
Speaker 2: Here's what I know about the history of this field,
Speaker 2: and it's a history that gives me both hope and
Speaker 2: a deep grinding frustration in roughly equal doses. The Bigfoot
Speaker 2: community has always been fractured, always since the beginning. Patterson
Speaker 2: and Gimlin themselves ended up in a bitter falling out.
Speaker 2: Grover Krantz, the first tenured professor to publicly defend the
Speaker 2: reality of Sasquatch, was ostracized by his academic peers for
Speaker 2: the trouble. The early wave of researchers, John Green, Peter Burn,
Speaker 2: Renee dot Hendon, they had decades long feuds with each
Speaker 2: other that got genuinely nasty. This field has never been unified.
Speaker 2: It has never spoken with one voice. It has always
Speaker 2: been a loose collection of individuals and small factions, often
Speaker 2: working at cross purposes, often more invested in being the
Speaker 2: one who was right than in actually getting to the
Speaker 2: truth together. And Yet despite the infighting, despite the egos,
Speaker 2: despite the tribalism, and the occasional outright fraud that has
Speaker 2: surfaced over the years, this field has also produced work
Speaker 2: that deserves respect. Serious work. The dermal ridge analysis, the
Speaker 2: footprint morphology studies that showed consistent anatomical features across casts
Speaker 2: separated by decades and thousands of miles. The biomechanical analysis
Speaker 2: of the PGF by Meldrum and Muns, work I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: which represents some of the most careful and rigorous analysis
Speaker 2: this field has ever seen. Thermal imaging audio analysis habitat
Speaker 2: correlation studies. There are people in this community doing real, substantive,
Speaker 2: scientifically grounded work that would hold up under peer review
Speaker 2: if anyone in the mainstream cared enough to submit it
Speaker 2: for consideration. That work doesn't come from tribal spaces. It
Speaker 2: never has. It doesn't get done in Facebook threads or
Speaker 2: YouTube comment sections. It gets done by people sitting alone
Speaker 2: with data, asking honest questions, and being willing to follow
Speaker 2: wherever the answers lead. It gets done when someone has
Speaker 2: the courage to say I was wrong about that piece
Speaker 2: of the puzzle, and the humility to start again with
Speaker 2: cleaner eyes. And here's the irony that kills me. The
Speaker 2: very people who cite that rigorous work to defend the PGF,
Speaker 2: the ones who point to Muns's proportional analysis or Meldrum's
Speaker 2: biomechanical models is proof the film can't be faked. Those
Speaker 2: same people often refuse to apply the same intellectual standard
Speaker 2: to new evidence. They love rigorous analysis when it confirms
Speaker 2: their position, they treat it as an attack when it
Speaker 2: might challenge their position, and they don't seem to recognize
Speaker 2: the contradiction and stay tuned for more sasquatch otyesee, we'll
Speaker 2: be right back after these messages. If you invoke the
Speaker 2: rigor of Muns and Meldrum to support your case, you've
Speaker 2: accepted that rigorous analysis is the standard. You don't get
Speaker 2: to abandon that standard the moment it's applied to something
Speaker 2: that makes you uncomfortable. Either careful, honest analysis matters or
Speaker 2: it doesn't. If it does, then it matters just as
Speaker 2: much when applied to capturing Bigfoot as when applied to
Speaker 2: the PGF itself. Consistency isn't just an intellectual virtue. It's
Speaker 2: a credibility requirement. And the selective application of standards happening
Speaker 2: in this community right now is doing more to undermine
Speaker 2: our standing than any documentary ever could. There's something else
Speaker 2: at work here that makes everything harder, and I don't
Speaker 2: think it gets enough attention. In nineteen twenty five, the
Speaker 2: Scopes trial moved at the speed of print. Lincoln would
Speaker 2: write his dispatch, it would get typeset printed, people would
Speaker 2: read it over coffee the next morning. The whole cycle
Speaker 2: had breathing room built into it. Time to think before reacting,
Speaker 2: time for that initial surge of emotion to cool before
Speaker 2: you had to respond. We lost that completely When Capturing
Speaker 2: Bigfoot started making waves. The reaction was instantaneous. People were
Speaker 2: posting before they'd finished processing what they'd seen. Within hours,
Speaker 2: The trenches were dug within days, the positions were set
Speaker 2: in stone, and the platforms where all of this plays
Speaker 2: out are built deliberately engineered to make it happen exactly
Speaker 2: that fast. Social media doesn't reward careful thought. It rewards engagement,
Speaker 2: and engagement runs on strong emotion, outrage, indignation, tribal solidarity, fear.
Speaker 2: The algorithm is indifferent to whether you're right, or thoughtful
Speaker 2: or fair. It cares about one thing. Did you generate activity?
Speaker 2: And the fastest way to generate activity is to say
Speaker 2: something extreme. The person who says, let me take a
Speaker 2: week to think about this gets buried. Their post reaches
Speaker 2: thirty people. The person who says, this documentary is an
Speaker 2: attack on everything we stand for and here's why you
Speaker 2: should be furious gets three thousand and Over time, that
Speaker 2: selection pressure reshapes the entire conversation. The loudest, most certain,
Speaker 2: most combative voices rise to the top. The thoughtful ones
Speaker 2: learned to stay quiet, And then we all look around
Speaker 2: at the toxic landscape and wonder how it.
Speaker 1: Got this bad.
Speaker 2: It got this bad because the systems were built for it,
Speaker 2: not by the people using them, by the people who
Speaker 2: designed them. Tribalism is the most engaging thing human beings do.
Speaker 2: It's been the most engaging thing we do since long
Speaker 2: before we had phones in our pockets. Social media just
Speaker 2: industrialized it, gave it a megaphone, made it operate at
Speaker 2: a scale and speed our brains were never built to handle.
Speaker 2: So what I'm watching happen right now now with capturing
Speaker 2: Bigfoot is two forces working in tandem. There's the ancient
Speaker 2: pull of tribal belonging that's been part of us since
Speaker 2: we lived in small bands on the savannah. And there's
Speaker 2: the modern technological amplification of that pull, which turns what
Speaker 2: used to be a heated conversation around a campfire into
Speaker 2: a wildfire burning across the entire community in a matter
Speaker 2: of hours. Both of those forces are enemies of honest inquiry.
Speaker 2: Both have to be actively deliberately resisted, and that resistance
Speaker 2: takes conscious effort. It doesn't come naturally. It can't come
Speaker 2: naturally because the impulse toward tribalism is natural. Fighting It
Speaker 2: is the part that takes work, and I want to
Speaker 2: be practical about this for a second, because I think
Speaker 2: it's easy to talk about resisting tribalism in the abstract
Speaker 2: and much harder to do it when you're actually scrolling
Speaker 2: through your feed at eleven o'clock at night and you
Speaker 2: see someone you disagree with saying something that makes your
Speaker 2: blood pressure spike. Here's what i'd suggest when you feel
Speaker 2: that spike, and you will because you're human. Pause, just pause,
Speaker 2: don't type, don't respond, don't share the post with your
Speaker 2: own commentary, give yourself ten minutes, walk away from the screen,
Speaker 2: get a glass of water, and then ask yourself one
Speaker 2: question before you engage. Am I about to respond to
Speaker 2: what this person actually said? Or am I about to
Speaker 2: respond to how what they said makes me feel? Because
Speaker 2: those are different things, and the tribal impulse lives in
Speaker 2: the gap between them. If you can learn to operate
Speaker 2: in that gap, even sometimes even imperfectly, you'll be ahead
Speaker 2: of ninety percent of the people in this community, and
Speaker 2: you'll be doing your part to make this field a
Speaker 2: place where honest conversation is still possible. Before I start
Speaker 2: wrapping this up, I want to come back to something
Speaker 2: I touched on earlier because I think the tension between
Speaker 2: entertainment and truth seeking is more central to this problem
Speaker 2: than people realize. There's a version of the Bigfoot world
Speaker 2: that's pure entertainment. The TV shows with the thermal cameras
Speaker 2: and the dramatic score, the YouTube channels with the breathless
Speaker 2: titles and the blurry thumbnails, the merchandise, the tourism, the
Speaker 2: cons that version of Bigfoot is a product, and I'm
Speaker 2: not knocking it. People enjoy it. I produce content myself.
Speaker 2: There's nothing wrong with engaging with this subject because it's fun.
Speaker 2: But the entertainment version of Bigfoot is structurally invested in
Speaker 2: a specific narrative, the narrative that Bigfoot is real, it's
Speaker 2: out there, the next expedition could be the one, and
Speaker 2: the mystery is always just one step away from being solved.
Speaker 2: That narrative is the engine of the entertainment machine. Without it,
Speaker 2: there's no show, no channel, no industry. So the entertainment
Speaker 2: side has a built in reason to resist anything that
Speaker 2: complicates the story, not out of dishonesty, not because the
Speaker 2: people involved don't care about truth, but because truth might
Speaker 2: not be entertaining, truth might be ambiguous, truth might not
Speaker 2: fit into a forty two minute episode, and this creates
Speaker 2: a dynamic that most people in the community don't even recognize,
Speaker 2: let alone talk about. The entertainment machine becomes a kind
Speaker 2: of immune system. Anything that threatens the narrative triggers a response,
Speaker 2: not a coordinated conspiratorial response, just a natural, organic, structural one.
Speaker 2: Creators who depend on the Bigfoot is real narrative for
Speaker 2: their livelihood are going to push back against anything that
Speaker 2: puts that narrative at risk. Audiences who consume that narrative
Speaker 2: for enjoyment are going to resist anything that spoils the story,
Speaker 2: and the whole ecosystem without anyone consciously deciding to do so,
Speaker 2: mobilizes against the threat. That's what's happening with Capturing Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: not because there's some cabal of Bigfoot creators working together
Speaker 2: to suppress it, but because the documentary, by its very nature,
Speaker 2: threatens the narrative that the entertainment machine depends on, and
Speaker 2: the machine responds the way machines always respond automatically. If
Speaker 2: you can see that dynamic for what it is, you
Speaker 2: can start to step outside it. You can enjoy the
Speaker 2: entertainment for what it is and still ask the hard
Speaker 2: questions without feeling like you're betraying anything, because you're not.
Speaker 2: You're just operating in two different modes and having the
Speaker 2: awareness to know which one you're in at any given moment.
Speaker 2: This is the same force that powered the Scope's trial.
Speaker 2: The trial was never really about truth. It was about
Speaker 2: selling newspapers and putting Dayton on the map. The actual questions,
Speaker 2: the ones about education and governance and the relationship between
Speaker 2: science and religion, were too messy, too resistant to clean storytelling,
Speaker 2: to be useful to anyone running the show. So the
Speaker 2: show ran itself and truth got buried. I'm not calling
Speaker 2: out the entertainment side of this community. What I'm saying
Speaker 2: is that there's a difference between enjoying a narrative and
Speaker 2: seeking the truth, and it matters which one you're doing
Speaker 2: at any given moment. If you're here for fun, great,
Speaker 2: no judgment. But when your fund requires other people to
Speaker 2: stop asking hard questions, you've crossed a line. When your
Speaker 2: enjoyment depends on nobody examining the evidence too closely, You've
Speaker 2: crossed a line when you attack a researcher for expressing
Speaker 2: curiosity about a documentary because that curiosity threatens the story
Speaker 2: you prefer. That's not entertainment anymore, that's something else. The
Speaker 2: entertainment consumer wants a satisfying story, the researcher wants an
Speaker 2: accurate answer. Those are different goals, and the trouble starts
Speaker 2: when one camp tries to impose its rules on the other.
Speaker 2: So where does this leave us? The Capturing Bigfoot documentary
Speaker 2: is out there, The claims it makes aren't going away.
Speaker 2: Whatever footage it contains is going to be discussed, debated,
Speaker 2: and picked apart for years. That train has left the
Speaker 2: station regardless of what any of us do today. The
Speaker 2: only question is how we handle it. We can do
Speaker 2: it the scope's way. Our sides, dig our trenches, throw
Speaker 2: grenades until everyone's exhausted and nothing's been resolved. Let the
Speaker 2: loudest voices drive the conversation, let the algorithm do the sorting.
Speaker 2: Let the narrative swallow the evidence, and the performance swallow
Speaker 2: the inquiry, and the entertainment swallow the truth. Or we
Speaker 2: can actually watch the documentary, look at the footage, bring
Speaker 2: everything we've got, the experience, the expertise, the critical eye,
Speaker 2: and apply it honestly to what's in front of us.
Speaker 2: We can disagree without going to war. We can hold
Speaker 2: uncertainty without treating it like defeat. We can separate what
Speaker 2: we believe from who we are just enough to let
Speaker 2: new information in. We can be the community this subject deserves.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure we will. If I'm honest, I think
Speaker 2: most people will default to what they've always done. The
Speaker 2: tribal pull is strong, the backfire effect is real. The
Speaker 2: platforms are designed to push us toward conflict and away
Speaker 2: from thought, and this community has a long, well practiced
Speaker 2: history of eating itself. But I hear from people who
Speaker 2: want something different. I read the messages. I see the
Speaker 2: comments from people who came to this subject out of
Speaker 2: genuine wonder and stayed because the questions matter to them,
Speaker 2: and who are looking for a place where honest thinking
Speaker 2: is more valued than tribal allegiance. That's what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to build through my shows, through my books, through the
Speaker 2: stories I share, through my documentaries, through this newsletter, through
Speaker 2: every conversation I have about this subject. A space where
Speaker 2: asking questions isn't disloyal, where changing your mind isn't weakness,
Speaker 2: where the truth matters more than the team. If you're
Speaker 2: nodding right now, I want you to know something. There
Speaker 2: are more of us than you think. We're just quieter
Speaker 2: than the people doing the screaming. One hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: two remarkable men stood across from each other in a
Speaker 2: small courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee, and argued about the nature
Speaker 2: of truth. One appealed to reason, one appealed to faith.
Speaker 2: The crowd cheered for their side. The papers wrote the
Speaker 2: story they wanted, The country picked its teams, and when
Speaker 2: it was done, nobody had learned a thing. The Butler
Speaker 2: Acts stayed on the books. It was still illegal to
Speaker 2: teach evolution in Tennessee public schools after the trial. The
Speaker 2: law wasn't repealed until nineteen sixty seven, more than forty
Speaker 2: years later. I don't want that to be the story
Speaker 2: of Capturing Bigfoot. I don't want it to be the
Speaker 2: story of the Patterson Gimlin film, and I don't want
Speaker 2: it to be the story of this community. I want
Speaker 2: us to do better than Dayton. I want us to
Speaker 2: look at the evidence instead of each other, to hold
Speaker 2: our convictions with confidence and our minds with openness, to
Speaker 2: remember that we're all here because something, at some point
Speaker 2: in our lives didn't fit inside the world. As we
Speaker 2: understood it, and instead of looking away, we kept looking.
Speaker 2: That's what brought us to this field. That courage, that
Speaker 2: refusal to stop asking and think about what that means.
Speaker 2: Think about where you were when this subject first grabbed you.
Speaker 2: For me, it was the woods of North Georgia. I
Speaker 2: was a kid. I didn't have theories, or tribal affiliations,
Speaker 2: or an audience to perform for I had an experience
Speaker 2: I couldn't explain, and I had a question I couldn't
Speaker 2: put down. That question has driven me for nearly forty years,
Speaker 2: through a career in law enforcement, through decades of field work,
Speaker 2: through conferences and late nights and arguments and frustrations and
Speaker 2: moments of genuine wonder. That question is still the point,
Speaker 2: not the answer I hoped for, not the team I
Speaker 2: belonged to, the question, and the willingness to follow it
Speaker 2: honestly wherever it goes, even if it goes somewhere I
Speaker 2: didn't expect. Even if it goes somewhere that means rethinking
Speaker 2: things I've believed for a long time, even if it
Speaker 2: means standing up in a room full of people I
Speaker 2: respect and saying I looked at this, and here's what
Speaker 2: I think, and I know some of you aren't going
Speaker 2: to like it. That's the price of admission for honest inquiry,
Speaker 2: and it's a price I'm willing to pay. The question
Speaker 2: is whether enough of us are willing to pay it
Speaker 2: to make a difference. I think about the people I've
Speaker 2: met in this community who still carry that original spark.
Speaker 2: The witness in Kentucky who had a siding twenty years
Speaker 2: ago and still goes back to those woods every fall,
Speaker 2: not to prove anything to anyone, but because the question
Speaker 2: won't leave him alone. The retired teacher in Oregon who
Speaker 2: catalogs track casts with the kind of patients most people
Speaker 2: reserve for things that pay a salary. The biologist I
Speaker 2: know who won't put her name publicly to her interest
Speaker 2: in this subject because she's seen what happens to people
Speaker 2: who do, but who still spends her weekends analyzing habitat
Speaker 2: data because the question matters to her more than the risk.
Speaker 2: Those people are the real backbone of this field. Not
Speaker 2: the loudest voices, not the biggest channels, not the most
Speaker 2: combative debaters, the quiet, persistent, honest ones who keep doing
Speaker 2: the work because the question won't let them stop. Those
Speaker 2: people deserve a community that matches their integrity, and right now,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure we're giving them one. Don't let tribalism
Speaker 2: take it from you. If there's new footage connected to
Speaker 2: the Patterson Gimlin film, I want to see it. I
Speaker 2: want to turn it over. I want to understand what
Speaker 2: it shows and what it means. Not because I know
Speaker 2: the answer, because I don't, and I'm okay with that.
Speaker 2: I think not knowing and being willing to say so
Speaker 2: might be the most honest position anyone in this field
Speaker 2: can hold. The PGF has been debated for nearly sixty years.
Speaker 2: It will survive one more documentary. The real question is
Speaker 2: whether we will. I'll be back with more soon, including
Speaker 2: my full take, once I've sat down and watched the
Speaker 2: documentary start to finish. Until then, keep your eyes open.
Speaker 2: You're thinking sharp, and your ego a little smaller than
Speaker 2: your curiosity. And if someone asks you what you think
Speaker 2: about the new film, try something that takes real guts.
Speaker 2: Try saying I don't know yet, but I'm willing to look.
Speaker 2: You'd be amazed how much power is in those words
Speaker 2: when you actually mean them. That's what separates a researcher
Speaker 2: from a fan, an investigator from a cheerleader. The willingness
Speaker 2: to not know, the willingness to look anyway, the willingness
Speaker 2: to let the evidence speak louder than the tribe you