Speaker 1: Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. These guys
Speaker 1: are you favorites, so like say subscribe and raid.
Speaker 2: It, tip, stay and me.
Speaker 1: Greatest con yesterday and listening watching always keep its watching.
Speaker 1: And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay, Hey, Bobs,
Speaker 1: what's happening Man?
Speaker 3: Not much, Cliff, just excited for this guest. This is
Speaker 3: the most part event for a while. Our members are
Speaker 3: like really pumped up about it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, ladies and gentlemen, you don't want
Speaker 1: to listen to Bobo and I any longer. Let's listen
Speaker 1: to our guests. Darby or cut He's returning to Bigfoot
Speaker 1: and Beyond to give us some updates on the North
Speaker 1: Carolina State University projects. And of course his title is
Speaker 1: Director of Interdisciplinary Collaborations and Projects. Is that right or partnership?
Speaker 1: Sorry parts, Darby. There has been a lot going on
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. The Bigfoot community in general is clamoring
Speaker 1: for some sort of update, and you've been promising for
Speaker 1: months and months that when there are updates you will
Speaker 1: come back on BigMan and Beyond. So thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming, Darby. How you doing men, I'm doing well,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for having me. I welcome
Speaker 1: the opportunity to come back on the podcast because I
Speaker 1: think I'll have such a reach to the community and
Speaker 1: I'd like to update as many people as possible and
Speaker 1: one go. So Darby, hell, let's let's in case there
Speaker 1: are some new listeners or in case there's some people
Speaker 1: out there who don't know what's going on, tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about the project, what you're trying to do,
Speaker 1: and you know how long it's been going on, and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. Just a brief overview.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So the project that you're referring to is actually
Speaker 4: to give the first update is actually now one of
Speaker 4: several projects that I have going effect an entire research
Speaker 4: program now related to the Bigfoot or Sasquat phenomenon. But
Speaker 4: the crown jewel of that, I think that from the
Speaker 4: perspective of most people, is the DNA study. And it
Speaker 4: was just over two years ago that I launched a call.
Speaker 4: I think that's the last time I was on the
Speaker 4: podcast was about two years ago, launched a call for
Speaker 4: biological specimens that people think maybe or alleged to be
Speaker 4: from Sasquatch, and my rationale for that, well, the long
Speaker 4: rationale for that one is that I think this is
Speaker 4: a very interesting phenomenon field that needs more scientific inquiry.
Speaker 4: And these people have been finding these oftentimes very interesting samples,
Speaker 4: mainly hair samples, but other types of biological samples for
Speaker 4: essentially decades, and there have been very very few credible
Speaker 4: scientific and academic analyses of these samples.
Speaker 1: How long has this project been going on? Like, what
Speaker 1: is it three years now?
Speaker 4: It's been a little over two years since the project launched.
Speaker 4: Of course, I spent several years before that getting things
Speaker 4: in place for the project, and so we are at
Speaker 4: this point. We are rolling along with things. What I
Speaker 4: continue to learn is that the pace of science is slow.
Speaker 4: I've tried to be optimistic about how fast we could
Speaker 4: accomplish certain things, and it takes time. But I will
Speaker 4: say that we are doing something that is really historic
Speaker 4: with regard to this question. As I mentioned, there have
Speaker 4: been only there have been only that I've been able
Speaker 4: to find two formal academic studies, and together they published
Speaker 4: results for I believe it's eleven samples from North America,
Speaker 4: all of which were determined to be known species. So
Speaker 4: there really hasn't been a lot of work done in
Speaker 4: a formal way, and in fact, where we are now,
Speaker 4: we've already been able to do genetic analysis on dozens
Speaker 4: of samples, and we haven't published yet, but when we publish,
Speaker 4: we will have increased the data set in this area
Speaker 4: by many, many, many times what it has been previously.
Speaker 1: Now, what makes your study different than all your predecessors,
Speaker 1: besides that you're going to have more samples, and also
Speaker 1: that you're actually going to do something with it instead
Speaker 1: of like just because a lot of these previous studies
Speaker 1: that people hear about in the big book meter are
Speaker 1: essentially just just rumors, you know. So, but your study
Speaker 1: is a little bit different, and I think has to
Speaker 1: do with the backing of the university of some degree.
Speaker 4: Well, it is a formal study, and that was something
Speaker 4: that was really significant to me because I have found
Speaker 4: that there have been a number of cases over the
Speaker 4: years where individual faculty researchers at universities have become interested
Speaker 4: in looking at samples, have taken samples and you looked
Speaker 4: at them, never published results, never said exactly how they
Speaker 4: analyzed the samples. In some cases those samples have been lost, misplaced.
Speaker 4: They had the best intentions of looking at the samples,
Speaker 4: but they sat in their office for years, if not decades.
Speaker 4: In one case in particular, I was trying to help
Speaker 4: one Bigfoot investigator see if he could recover his samples
Speaker 4: after a faculty member at another university had taken them
Speaker 4: and then unfortunately passed away. And so that was one
Speaker 4: of the things that was really important to me because
Speaker 4: I feel like this has been a this has been
Speaker 4: a community in many ways that's been burned a lot
Speaker 4: in the past, been burned by people who are say
Speaker 4: that they're going to do a credible study and then
Speaker 4: that's not what comes about, or who have taken samples
Speaker 4: and not given people feedback on what the findings were.
Speaker 4: And so I wanted to approach this in a very again,
Speaker 4: a very formal way, and that means that you know,
Speaker 4: even if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow,
Speaker 4: there would be a mechanism at the university to reach
Speaker 4: out to the participants in the study, those who provided samples,
Speaker 4: and let them know it had come of those return
Speaker 4: the samples. This sort of thing. I did not want
Speaker 4: to be another one of those people who didn't do it.
Speaker 4: Absolutely buy the book and correctly and so, like I say,
Speaker 4: it took quite a few years of planning and paperwork
Speaker 4: and all of that before the call even launched, and
Speaker 4: then I had to wait for samples to start coming in.
Speaker 4: And then the important thing about this study is that
Speaker 4: I am going to be with my collaborators looking at
Speaker 4: these things very deeply. What's really important is to look
Speaker 4: at these to the level that I can really say
Speaker 4: at the end of it that we did our due diligence.
Speaker 4: We truly investigated each and every one of these samples
Speaker 4: to the point that we feel absolutely comfortable with reporting
Speaker 4: this information. These are the findings. So it's a process
Speaker 4: that unfortunately takes a long long time, but at the end,
Speaker 4: everyone who's providing a sample will get those individual results
Speaker 4: and can take those to the bank.
Speaker 1: So so many studies that have come before have come
Speaker 1: back unknown this or unknown that. So there's what I
Speaker 1: hear is that that will not be an acceptable answer
Speaker 1: from your study.
Speaker 4: Well the other studies that have come back with those findings.
Speaker 4: I think it's important to parse out what those findings
Speaker 4: mean because in most cases unknown it can mean a
Speaker 4: couple of different things, and it really doesn't mean what
Speaker 4: most people hear when they hear that it was unknown.
Speaker 4: When somebody, just a member of the public here is oh,
Speaker 4: this sample it came back is unknown, they think, oh, wow,
Speaker 4: this is an unknown species. This is something we don't
Speaker 4: know what it is, And that really isn't the case.
Speaker 4: That's the rumor. That's oftentimes what media productions, television shows
Speaker 4: will lead you to believe, because hey, that sounds really
Speaker 4: interesting and salacious and it gets viewers. But unknown really
Speaker 4: means as a result, really means either we couldn't determine.
Speaker 4: But the same really means we couldn't determine what the
Speaker 4: sample is and we either couldn't determine it because the
Speaker 4: sample itself was so degraded that we just couldn't get
Speaker 4: that data out of it, or it means that we
Speaker 4: didn't do deep enough testing to be able to differentiate that,
Speaker 4: you know, what that is from other like species. And
Speaker 4: I think that's really important because I've seen this happen.
Speaker 4: I've seen this happen again again, for example, on television
Speaker 4: shows where they will do a basic level of genetic testing,
Speaker 4: a level of genetic testing that wouldn't be able to
Speaker 4: tell you, for example, the difference between one primate and
Speaker 4: another or between you know, and including humans. Okay, it
Speaker 4: would just say well, okay, we know this is primate,
Speaker 4: and then they they leave it at that, They go, wow,
Speaker 4: it's primate and it's unknown, you know, like it's unknown
Speaker 4: which primate it is.
Speaker 3: Shouldn't the hair morphology be able to give you some
Speaker 3: answers to that, just the structure like on a electron microscope.
Speaker 4: Well, sometimes yes. But what's really significant about the hair
Speaker 4: morphology is that the art of identifying animal hair is
Speaker 4: something of a lost art now. There are not so
Speaker 4: many people who do that anymore, especially for especially for
Speaker 4: species North American species, And there's a lot that we
Speaker 4: still don't know about the morphology of certain animal hair
Speaker 4: because it can differ the morphology or the appearance of
Speaker 4: the hair. The features of the hair can differ on
Speaker 4: different parts of the body or depending on whether it's
Speaker 4: part of an undercoat or an overcoat, and there are
Speaker 4: so many various factors, many of which just haven't been documented.
Speaker 4: And there really are very very few people who are
Speaker 4: doing that work anymore because genetic testing has come so far,
Speaker 4: so why would somebody invest the time in really trying
Speaker 4: to figure out how to identify microscopically a hair when
Speaker 4: they can run a quick and dirty genetic test and
Speaker 4: in most cases determined pretty quickly the species. It's an
Speaker 4: interesting situation. I've got a colleague at INC State, one
Speaker 4: of whose students just in the last couple of years
Speaker 4: discovered a new feature of lemur hair. And this was
Speaker 4: an undergraduate who found something that science did not know,
Speaker 4: and in part was able to do that because they
Speaker 4: were about the only person in the world, maybe the
Speaker 4: only person in the world that year, who is even
Speaker 4: really looking at lehmar hair and it's morphology. And I
Speaker 4: think that's one thing that is really significant to understand
Speaker 4: is that science has a wonderful understanding of the world,
Speaker 4: but it's an understanding that has gaps because there are
Speaker 4: lots and lots of questions that we've never asked before.
Speaker 4: And that's what comes back to my study is that
Speaker 4: there are these questions that have never been asked before.
Speaker 4: What are what are these things that people are finding,
Speaker 4: these these hairs, these other biological samples that people are
Speaker 4: finding that for them correlate with what they think maybe
Speaker 4: bigfoot or sasquatch encounters or other evidence, or or these
Speaker 4: hairs that may be morphologically unusual that we can't readily identify.
Speaker 4: And so this is what's really important, is looking at
Speaker 4: these things, because the scientific tools are wonderful way of
Speaker 4: understanding our world, but they can only help us understand
Speaker 4: to the extent that we use them to ask questions.
Speaker 1: And of course, asking questions is basically one of the
Speaker 1: first steps of the scientific process. And a lot of people,
Speaker 1: it seems to me, have this idea of what science is,
Speaker 1: and they think incorrectly that science is kind of just
Speaker 1: a body of knowledge that, you know, the White Tower,
Speaker 1: you know, academics guard and keep themselves. Well. No, no,
Speaker 1: the sciences. I say this often that science really should
Speaker 1: be a verb of some sort. I'm going to science
Speaker 1: that and figure it out, you know, because science is
Speaker 1: a process about asking questions and making a guess and
Speaker 1: seeing if you can gather information that supports your guests,
Speaker 1: you know, and if it doesn't, then you change your guess,
Speaker 1: like what what's going on here?
Speaker 4: No, And that's what I try to get across to
Speaker 4: my students is that science begins with curiosity, wondering about
Speaker 4: something and then trying trying to understand it. And I
Speaker 4: think that's that's where I think the question of questions
Speaker 4: around Bigfoot or Sasquatch phenomenon are people ask me all
Speaker 4: the time, you know, why why don't scientists take this
Speaker 4: more seriously? And why are there not more people doing
Speaker 4: these studies? And I think really a lot of that
Speaker 4: has to do with the fact of where, you know,
Speaker 4: where Bigfoot kind of sits culturally for us. I mean,
Speaker 4: you ask most people in this country about that, and
Speaker 4: they think that it's a joke. I do also think
Speaker 4: that in media and and in social media, we find
Speaker 4: that nearly all of the folks who are engaged with
Speaker 4: Bigfoot or Sasquatch already have more or less made up
Speaker 4: their minds about the answers to potential questions. And I
Speaker 4: think that that that dynamic, it's represented through this very buying,
Speaker 4: very understanding of you know, Bigfoot believers versus Bigfoot skeptics, right,
Speaker 4: and these are really ways of talking about two groups
Speaker 4: that have already made up their minds about about the evidence.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
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Speaker 1: Well, Darby, your project's been going on for a number
Speaker 1: of years now. I don't know, I know that sometimes
Speaker 1: you actually do put an ear on this podcast and listen.
Speaker 1: And you've heard me say before that this is going
Speaker 1: to take some time. Give Darby some space. And I
Speaker 1: also have been commenting about how extraordinarily cautious and conservative
Speaker 1: you have been with this study so far, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1: We don't need zelots out there, like use car salesmen
Speaker 1: shilling their stuff here. And since this particular subject, the
Speaker 1: sasquatch subject, has been a target of ridicule and hoaxes
Speaker 1: and all sorts of you know, snake oil salesmen for decades.
Speaker 1: We need something like this, right, like some a conservative
Speaker 1: of sober perspective looking at this mystery. What can you
Speaker 1: tell us about your study? Because I know there's a
Speaker 1: lot you can't say. I guess it's me really the
Speaker 1: long way around to saying that there's a lot you
Speaker 1: cannot say because you are being appropriately conservative with this study.
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about what's been going on? Though?
Speaker 1: What can we know?
Speaker 4: It's interesting for me because I do recognize that there
Speaker 4: have been a lot of people who've been waiting for
Speaker 4: projects such as this. I've had people offering samples to
Speaker 4: me who literally found them twenty plus years ago and
Speaker 4: haven't trusted sending them to anyone previously, haven't had somewhere
Speaker 4: to send them, or haven't trusted you know, those who've
Speaker 4: asked who said they're going to look at them. And
Speaker 4: I take that as a huge compliment that those people
Speaker 4: trust me enough just to send them to me, and
Speaker 4: I take that trust very seriously. That's part of this
Speaker 4: is that I want to make sure that the results
Speaker 4: that I deliver our rock solid, that they are a
Speaker 4: true understanding of what this potential evidence is. So that's
Speaker 4: one thing I think I've also come to realize that,
Speaker 4: you know, people are impatient, and people's understanding of a
Speaker 4: lot of their understanding of the science comes from television shows.
Speaker 4: And I'm not talking about the paranormal shows or the
Speaker 4: Bigfoot shows or what have you. I'm talking about things
Speaker 4: as simple as like CSI, where we're used to seeing, Oh, okay,
Speaker 4: here this DNA was this DNA was found scene of
Speaker 4: a crime, and within less than an hour, we have results.
Speaker 4: We've got the you know, they spit out the home
Speaker 4: address of the perpetrator and there we go, and it's
Speaker 4: quite easily done, right, And it doesn't work that way
Speaker 4: in the real world, and especially doesn't work that way
Speaker 4: in the real world when it comes to a research
Speaker 4: project where you're dealing with potential unknowns. I think people
Speaker 4: see also in the news, they see a lot of
Speaker 4: amazing things, almost magical seeming things that folks are able
Speaker 4: to do with DNA in terms of identifying suspects and
Speaker 4: finding trace evidence at crime scenes and things like that.
Speaker 4: And people think, well, way, if it's if they're doing
Speaker 4: these amazing things, then why can't we be applying that
Speaker 4: with it to the big photo sasquatch question? And the
Speaker 4: answer to that really comes on what's hidden, what's really
Speaker 4: obfuscated in the media about how genetic analysis works, and
Speaker 4: that is is that so much of our understanding of
Speaker 4: it is based on the data sets that we have.
Speaker 4: So for example, when you're talking about identifying a human
Speaker 4: a particular human, or a human particular family, or humans
Speaker 4: particular regions of the world, or whatever it may be,
Speaker 4: you have to understand that we have so much data,
Speaker 4: We have so many human sequences, medical research and all
Speaker 4: all all that there has been so much work done
Speaker 4: on analyzing human genetics, for example, that we can do
Speaker 4: a whole lot more with that, right, Whereas when you
Speaker 4: start to work even with even with known species, there's
Speaker 4: a whole lot less that we know, for example, even
Speaker 4: about bears. So if you if you if you want
Speaker 4: to find out about bear populations and things like that,
Speaker 4: there's there's a whole lot less data to work with. Well,
Speaker 4: take that to a potential unknown species where you have
Speaker 4: essentially no data to work with, and it's a it's
Speaker 4: a completely different undertaking. And so that's that's part of it,
Speaker 4: is that the bioinformatics problem is not a small one.
Speaker 4: The bioinformatics basically refers to how you do data analysis
Speaker 4: on DNA sequences in order to glean information from them.
Speaker 4: That's huge, right there.
Speaker 1: It's a large obstacle, but it's not insurmountable. So what
Speaker 1: does one do faced with such an obstacle. It's not insurmountable,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, but it just means that it takes a
Speaker 1: lot more time, It takes a lot more cautious analysis,
Speaker 1: and it takes you know, these samples are requiring a
Speaker 1: some of them, a much deeper level of sequencing than
Speaker 1: they might if we had a large DA you know,
Speaker 1: if they fit that what is already in our database.
Speaker 1: And so I guess the best example of this is
Speaker 1: if we were if we were looking for a known
Speaker 1: species in a place where that species is not known
Speaker 1: to be. And I've actually got a project now doing that,
Speaker 1: collaborative project doing that with regard to mountain lions or cougars.
Speaker 1: And we can talk more about that another time if
Speaker 1: you're interested. But we're looking to see there are a
Speaker 1: lot of reports of these in a place where they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be, and we're looking to see, you know, are
Speaker 1: they in this place where they shouldn't be. That's such
Speaker 1: an easy question when it comes to it, because you
Speaker 1: can analyze the data and we know exactly what sequences
Speaker 1: to look for to find a known species, even in
Speaker 1: a place where it shouldn't be when we're looking for
Speaker 1: a potential unknown species, that is an infinitely work upplicated question. Again,
Speaker 1: not an insurmountable one, because all species on the planet
Speaker 1: are related, but it's a much, much, much bigger proposition.
Speaker 1: But yet here we are two plus years into the
Speaker 1: study and you're still doing it. That that, at least
Speaker 1: to me, implies that there's some promising results that have
Speaker 1: not gotten to the bottom. You haven't got to the
Speaker 1: bottom of yet, So there's enough here that keeps you going.
Speaker 4: Well, there's enough here that keeps me going, both in
Speaker 4: terms of there are a number of samples that have
Speaker 4: come in that we haven't been able to get to
Speaker 4: yet for various reasons. There are still a few samples
Speaker 4: that are being found that are trickling in on a
Speaker 4: somewhat regular basis and most exciting. And I again, you
Speaker 4: know me, I will be very conservative in the way
Speaker 4: that I put this, But what I'm finding is that
Speaker 4: I'm finding samples. I have found samples that are still
Speaker 4: interesting to me after several levels of analysis. And let
Speaker 4: me put this in perspective. I did listen to your
Speaker 4: DNA episode that you did a month or so ago,
Speaker 4: and I thought y'all did a pretty good job with that.
Speaker 4: I did here. I did hear my metaphor reflected in
Speaker 4: your discussion there of thinking about thinking about DNA sequencing
Speaker 4: as the different levels of resolution of say a photograph. Okay,
Speaker 4: And I think that's a great way to think about it.
Speaker 4: Just that you start out and you're you're looking at
Speaker 4: something and you say, okay, here is maybe a highly
Speaker 4: pixelated image.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Well, sometimes you can look at even a highly pixelated image,
Speaker 4: you could tell what it's a picture of. He might
Speaker 4: not have to do anything more than just look at it. Now.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you might have to say, okay, now, if I
Speaker 4: really want to look at this image better, maybe I
Speaker 4: get out a magnifying glass, and now I look with
Speaker 4: a magnifying glass, I blow it up, and I look
Speaker 4: more carefully, and now maybe I can identify what's in
Speaker 4: the picture. Okay. Great. And so you have these level
Speaker 4: upon levels of magnification that you might go through, and
Speaker 4: the DNA study works in much the same way where
Speaker 4: we start off with these. You know, we start off
Speaker 4: by looking just at the morphology. There have been a
Speaker 4: few samples that we've been able to identify pretty readily
Speaker 4: just from just just from looking at them. There have
Speaker 4: been a number of studies that you know, once we
Speaker 4: do Boba mentioned the electron microscopy, Once we do electron microscopy,
Speaker 4: it becomes very clear. Okay, this is a classic presentation
Speaker 4: of say, raccoon hair. All right, great, Then we get
Speaker 4: into the genetic analysis. And I think one of the
Speaker 4: other misconceptions that people have is they think DNA analysis
Speaker 4: is one thing, and it really isn't DNA analysis. There
Speaker 4: are probably one hundred different subspecialties of DNA analysis, And
Speaker 4: so when I work with geneticists, you know, geneticis is
Speaker 4: not one kind. There are geneticists over here who do
Speaker 4: this type of thing and don't understand what their colleagues
Speaker 4: in this other subfield of genetics really do, and vice versa,
Speaker 4: and so it gets very complex very quickly. But essentially,
Speaker 4: what we're doing is the first test that we might
Speaker 4: do might be the the quicker and the less expensive
Speaker 4: tests that only gets you resolution to a certain level,
Speaker 4: all right, and that level.
Speaker 3: Dart excuse me, I just want to ask real quickly,
Speaker 3: can you tell us, like, because I know a lot
Speaker 3: of people like me, especially like are interested in the numbers,
Speaker 3: Like can you tell us how many samples made it
Speaker 3: pass like the initial hair inspection, how many made it
Speaker 3: past the initial like the basic genetic tests. Can you
Speaker 3: tell us like the kind of like numbers like that.
Speaker 4: Well, I you know, I hesitate to put too many
Speaker 4: numbers to it right now, but I'll give you a ballpark.
Speaker 4: So I've had I have I've had over one hundred
Speaker 4: samples that have been offered, and you know, we've brought
Speaker 4: through several levels of analysis, more than two dozen of those.
Speaker 4: And of those there's there's there's only a you know,
Speaker 4: really only a couple at this point that are really
Speaker 4: potentially interesting. And and there's several though that I'm going
Speaker 4: to bring to the next level of analysis, which will
Speaker 4: really be able to That's about the I don't want
Speaker 4: to say it's the highest level of the deepest level
Speaker 4: of sequencing we can do, but it's it's it's approaching that.
Speaker 4: And as you can mentioned, each of these tests, they're
Speaker 4: they're increasingly laborious, they're increasingly expensive. So there's this kind
Speaker 4: of triage process, but I hesitate to This has been
Speaker 4: part of the thing. People always ask, well, what about
Speaker 4: the results? What about the results? And I think this
Speaker 4: is something that people need to understand and why I've
Speaker 4: been a little reluctant to really release results or give
Speaker 4: numbers yet because well, for a number of reasons, the
Speaker 4: numbers that I can give you now aren't necessarily uniformly
Speaker 4: representative of everything in the study. Okay, For example, we
Speaker 4: have focused in the first the first rounds of analysis,
Speaker 4: we have focused on the I'll say, I hate to
Speaker 4: use this term, but let's say the less precious samples.
Speaker 4: So the samples the hair samples, for example, that are
Speaker 4: more robust that there's more hair there, because any genetic
Speaker 4: testing is going to be at least mildly destructive of
Speaker 4: the sample. So we haven't yet proceeded to samples where
Speaker 4: there's a single hair.
Speaker 1: We haven't.
Speaker 4: We haven't looked at those yet. We probably will very
Speaker 4: soon because I feel like our techniques are working really well.
Speaker 4: We're getting getting really solid results on the ones that
Speaker 4: we have been testing.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 1: Bobo will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 4: Part of it is being extremely cautious and making sure
Speaker 4: that we because these samples are precious to the people
Speaker 4: providing them. I've had I've had a couple of folks
Speaker 4: who have actually traveled to NC State from a thousand
Speaker 4: or more miles away to hand the liver their samples
Speaker 4: because they're that valuable and special to them.
Speaker 3: I think people should do as much face to face
Speaker 3: handing over that stuff. Because I was trying to get
Speaker 3: some hairs from Cindy does, and she does like kind
Speaker 3: of you know, basic level hair identification for people, whether
Speaker 3: she's got a microscope. She's up in DC, Canada, and
Speaker 3: she sent me. She sent me hairs a couple of times.
Speaker 3: I was going to make a sasquatch brew with a
Speaker 3: brewing company and we were going to use the yeast
Speaker 3: off the sasquatch hair, and they got picked off in
Speaker 3: the in the mail. I mean, how some like like
Speaker 3: they said that I got a letter saying that I was.
Speaker 3: It said, uh, you're you cannot bring in animal parts
Speaker 3: from other countries. So I'm like, how in the hell
Speaker 3: will they know there's a single or two hairs folded
Speaker 3: inside of an envelope that you know, like just normal mail,
Speaker 3: Like how how would they know there's a hair in there?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Now, I will say I received my package from Cindy
Speaker 4: perfectly fine.
Speaker 1: In good order.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: Now, I will say that there are some potential legal
Speaker 4: issues with sipping those samples, but a certain certain types
Speaker 4: of samples and things like that. But that was part
Speaker 4: of the paperwork that I had to do with the
Speaker 4: university and with the you know and and such, was
Speaker 4: to make sure that when people send me those types
Speaker 4: of samples, they're they're coming in the right way and
Speaker 4: they're you know, delivered in the right way. So I
Speaker 4: had to I had to do a paperwork to make
Speaker 4: sure that that would happen.
Speaker 3: Because if it's an it turned out to being a
Speaker 3: dangerous species, then you could be in trouble kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's a little. I think with with
Speaker 4: found samples especially, it's a little. I think it's unlikely
Speaker 4: that you know, hair for example, would be something that
Speaker 4: would get too much scrutiny, although crossing borders definitely that's
Speaker 4: a that's a that's a difference. I do think that
Speaker 4: there are certain guidelines when it comes to things like
Speaker 4: for example, shipping blood samples and things like that, things
Speaker 4: that could potentially contain pathogens, things that could be dangerous too,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean, could be dangerous to postal employees
Speaker 4: if a package like that were to start leaking, you know,
Speaker 4: could it could it pass along a disease to someone? Well,
Speaker 4: that's yeah, that's something we got to think about and
Speaker 4: something we need to prepare for and make sure that
Speaker 4: those packages are labeled and shipped properly. And so that's
Speaker 4: part of why I tell everyone, you know, don't ship
Speaker 4: me anything until you've talked with me, and you know,
Speaker 4: I know that it's coming, and I've given you the
Speaker 4: instructions on how to send that, because I don't want
Speaker 4: things to you know, go missing in the mail. I
Speaker 4: will say, knock on wood that I have not had
Speaker 4: any any sample that somebody talked with me first told
Speaker 4: me they were shipping and shipped to me. That I
Speaker 4: have not any sample that has been hasn't arrived in
Speaker 4: perfect perfect condition.
Speaker 1: I think an interesting question. But I've had some discussions
Speaker 1: with you about this particular aspect of it. See see
Speaker 1: you get a you get a hit. In a year
Speaker 1: and a half from now, you've published in nature sasquatches
Speaker 1: are accepted to be real animals. That's going to cause,
Speaker 1: at least for a short period of time six months
Speaker 1: or a year or two or three, a big kerfuffle
Speaker 1: in pale an anthropology and paleoanthropology and the bigfoot community
Speaker 1: and biology in general, et cetera. What preparations are you
Speaker 1: preparing for? What preparations are you making now for that eventuality?
Speaker 1: Because I think you're going to do it, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to deal with a lot of problems that
Speaker 1: none of us foresee.
Speaker 4: Well, let me let me back up a second cliff
Speaker 4: before I get to that question, And I just want
Speaker 4: to say, the question that I'm getting more than anything
Speaker 4: is really, uh, where you know, where are the findings?
Speaker 4: Where are the results? You know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: And as I say, as you can imagine because I
Speaker 4: started talking about that, that's sort of almost like a
Speaker 4: triage system where you know, we use deepening deepening levels
Speaker 4: of analysis, and some of the samples start to be
Speaker 4: identified each step along the way, and then some still
Speaker 4: maintain their interest and really require a much more deeper
Speaker 4: level of analysis. So what that means is and I've
Speaker 4: thought about this and This is an imperfect metaphor, but
Speaker 4: I'll toss it out there. I think about in terms
Speaker 4: of releasing results. For example, I could start releasing results
Speaker 4: as we had them, but that would start to give
Speaker 4: the impression that everything that we're finding is a normal animal.
Speaker 4: It's it's definitely you know, there's It might start to
Speaker 4: suggest that there's nothing there. It would be like if
Speaker 4: you were like standing outside of the emergency room and
Speaker 4: you start watching people go in, and the first people
Speaker 4: that start coming out, you know, they've just they've taken
Speaker 4: their temperature and they've stuck a band aid on them
Speaker 4: and they've sent them home. And you start realizing there's
Speaker 4: all these people coming out and they just gave them
Speaker 4: a band aid. So you wonder, well, why do we
Speaker 4: even have an emergency room anyway, because everybody's just getting
Speaker 4: a band aid and coming out, And what you're not
Speaker 4: seeing is the smaller number of people who went in
Speaker 4: there and they're not out yet because well, they might
Speaker 4: be in surgery for a grave condition. So you could
Speaker 4: easily start to say, well, wait a second, i'm looking
Speaker 4: at it. I'm looking at a samp. I'm looking at
Speaker 4: samples that are not representative necessarily of the whole and
Speaker 4: so and that, and as you can imagine, that's what's
Speaker 4: going to happen. I mean, that's what's already happened with.
Speaker 4: You know, lots of people don't send them to me
Speaker 4: because it doesn't look interesting to them. It looks exactly
Speaker 4: like a raccoon pelt or bare hair or what have you.
Speaker 4: And so they they've already you know, and so that's
Speaker 4: what I'm you know. So the one thing is I
Speaker 4: don't want to I don't necessarily want to feed. I
Speaker 4: don't necessarily want to feed the people who say, well,
Speaker 4: there's no there, there, there's no this is not worth studying,
Speaker 4: because as you can imagine, there's going to be. My
Speaker 4: expectation heading into this was that most of the samples
Speaker 4: that I received, at the very least most if not all,
Speaker 4: the samples I received, would be identifiable as an own species.
Speaker 4: So I was at a bigfoot event in Oregon this
Speaker 4: summer and somebody asked me, you know, what percentage of
Speaker 4: the samples that you get do you suspect to be
Speaker 4: sasquatch versus a known species? And I turned that question
Speaker 4: back around on the person. I said, well, what do
Speaker 4: you think you're the you're the person who spends time
Speaker 4: investigating reports and talking to witnesses and things like this.
Speaker 4: What would you expect? What what what percentage of things
Speaker 4: that people might think or sasquatch do you think would
Speaker 4: actually be sasquatch? And he says, well, I don't know,
Speaker 4: maybe one, one or two percent. And I said, well,
Speaker 4: I said to the crowd, because it's a crowd of people,
Speaker 4: many of whom are active investigators, like you might know
Speaker 4: better than I. You know from your perspective, you know,
Speaker 4: what do you think? What percentage? And I said, how
Speaker 4: many of you say? One hundred percent, no hands, fifty
Speaker 4: percent no hands, twenty five percent no hands, you know.
Speaker 4: And I go down the way and I found that
Speaker 4: in that group, the overwhelming maturity thought that about one
Speaker 4: percent of samples might be the real deal. Well that's
Speaker 4: really interesting to me. Now I have no basis. I
Speaker 4: have absolutely no basis at this point for answering that
Speaker 4: question myself. I need more data. I need data to
Speaker 4: even note that there's a species there. But that was
Speaker 4: interesting to me that the Bigfoot investigators felt like I
Speaker 4: might get about you know, one percent, that's one in
Speaker 4: one hundred. Well, how many examples then do I need
Speaker 4: to look at in order to even to find what
Speaker 4: they expect will be one in a hundred, well at
Speaker 4: least one hundred, right, Yeah, And so that's part of
Speaker 4: what keeps me going is that you know, we again
Speaker 4: we don't have This is a this is a data
Speaker 4: poor field in many ways. And I talk about that
Speaker 4: with my other projects as well, because the DNA study
Speaker 4: is just one of these. I have data science projects
Speaker 4: I have, I have e DNA projects. I have a
Speaker 4: new acoustics project that's starting up, audio project. In all
Speaker 4: of these areas we have we have a lot of
Speaker 4: anecdotal data, but we don't have a lot of data
Speaker 4: that we can really do a whole lot with. And
Speaker 4: that's what I'm looking to change with with my entire
Speaker 4: research program. And so with regard to the DNA study,
Speaker 4: you know, if if those investigators are right, and one
Speaker 4: in one hundred samples is going to be sasquatch right
Speaker 4: and again, and I already know also that I'm going
Speaker 4: to much more quickly identify the ones that are obviously
Speaker 4: not sacequatch right, so I could release results, you know,
Speaker 4: if one in a hundred is the correct guess I
Speaker 4: could release, you know, a couple one hundred or more
Speaker 4: results that are all normal animals, and we still wouldn't
Speaker 4: have achieved that. So do I want to do that?
Speaker 4: Do I want to give the impression that there's no
Speaker 4: there there until I know I don't. That's a tough one.
Speaker 4: But people are clamoring for results, and I want to
Speaker 4: be able to give results. I want to be able
Speaker 4: to show them momentum of the study, so that because
Speaker 4: I want people to be able to still when they
Speaker 4: find something interesting, I want them to submit it because
Speaker 4: I need the I need the good samples. And so
Speaker 4: I thought about, you know, do I need I think
Speaker 4: I I think I'm at the point I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 4: gonna just throw this out there. But I think I'm
Speaker 4: at the point where I'm thinking, well, I need to
Speaker 4: start letting some of these people know. But with the
Speaker 4: understanding that there's gonna be a lot of caveats there.
Speaker 4: One is that again, it's it's easiest and quickest to
Speaker 4: identify things that are known species. So the first people
Speaker 4: that get results are going to be disappointed. Right. The
Speaker 4: other thing, though, the flip side of it, though, is
Speaker 4: those who don't get results right away. I would have
Speaker 4: to also understand that, you know, well, no news is
Speaker 4: good news, and that maybe they found what they what
Speaker 4: they what they think they've got. Maybe they'll get those
Speaker 4: results down the road. But at the same time, there
Speaker 4: would be a lot of caveats, a lot of reasons
Speaker 4: why I don't have results for them yet, and those
Speaker 4: those things would include one I mentioned that we haven't
Speaker 4: we haven't proceeded to the samples that are very small,
Speaker 4: that are single hairs yet. So somebody could have given
Speaker 4: me a single hair early in the submission process and
Speaker 4: i haven't looked at it yet, so I'm not going
Speaker 4: to have data for them yet because it's a single
Speaker 4: hair in some cases, you know, I'm I'm always very upfront.
Speaker 4: I'm not looking for Bigfoot as a species. I'm looking
Speaker 4: to explain the Bigfoot phenomenon, what it is that people
Speaker 4: are experiencing, the sorts of the sorts of things that
Speaker 4: people correlate with an idea of bigfoot or sasquatch, and
Speaker 4: I'm looking to explain that. Well. I may hold back
Speaker 4: on some of these because, for example, I may find
Speaker 4: that I'm already starting to question whether certain experiences, types
Speaker 4: of experiences that people have that they associate with Bigfoot
Speaker 4: may actually the analysis that I'm doing maybe pointing towards
Speaker 4: particular species known species that seem to correlate with those
Speaker 4: types of reports. I'll give you an example, and this
Speaker 4: is not a real example. I'm just going to make
Speaker 4: this one up. But let's say, you know, people say, okay,
Speaker 4: there are tree breaks, right Bigfoot does these tree breaks,
Speaker 4: and you know, okay, there's these tree breaks going on.
Speaker 4: Well what if you know, what if I were to
Speaker 4: find that, you know, hey, when people are collecting hairs
Speaker 4: off of tree breaks, they generally turn out to be
Speaker 4: bear hair, and we might say, okay, well maybe bears
Speaker 4: are really accounting for those tree breaks, or maybe they
Speaker 4: turn out to be I don't know, whatever else it
Speaker 4: may be, or trying to explain that that situation. I
Speaker 4: will say that another example of why I might not
Speaker 4: release data right away. I have I have at least
Speaker 4: one sample where I know what it is. Okay, I
Speaker 4: know it's a known species, but I'm trying to figure
Speaker 4: out how this sample from this known species possibly got
Speaker 4: into the context in which it was found. I'm really
Speaker 4: curious about that.
Speaker 3: Well, can you tell us what the most compon like
Speaker 3: three most the top three most commonly misidentified samples you get,
Speaker 3: is it like bear, deer, horse? Like can you tell
Speaker 3: us what the three are?
Speaker 4: I will say it's a diverse mix. That's that's That's
Speaker 4: one thing that's really interesting to me is that I
Speaker 4: haven't found, for example, thus far, I haven't found that like,
Speaker 4: oh ninety percent of the time it's bare, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, that's you know which is which? That in
Speaker 4: itself is really interesting because I think that one of
Speaker 4: the one of the things that you know, there's there's
Speaker 4: show that knee shirk skeptical argument that like, oh, somebody
Speaker 4: saw a bigfoot, ah, they saw a bear and they
Speaker 4: were mistaken. So I'm not, at least thus far seeing
Speaker 4: that like, hey, it's it's usually a bear. I'm seeing
Speaker 4: a wide range of identifications. I'll say that.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 1: Bobo will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 4: I do appreciate y'all constantly reminding folks to please be patient.
Speaker 4: Real science takes time. It is happening. It is happening.
Speaker 4: We have already made more headway in identifying samples than
Speaker 4: all of the published scientific studies that preceded this by
Speaker 4: a factor of two to three at this point, and
Speaker 4: soon to be a lot more than that. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it is huge, It really is huge. The fact that
Speaker 4: I have been able to me, the fact that I
Speaker 4: am still interested in some of these samples after the
Speaker 4: levels of rigorous analysis that we've put them to, makes
Speaker 4: me very hopeful that we might find something interesting. There's
Speaker 4: still potential normal explanations for what I'm seeing. But I
Speaker 4: would say I hate to say this, I don't want
Speaker 4: to get people hyped up, But at the same time,
Speaker 4: I would say that if I were the person in
Speaker 4: Las Vegas who sets the odds that a new species
Speaker 4: would be identified, I think maybe those odds have ticked
Speaker 4: up a little bit for me.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying how high those odds are, because maybe
Speaker 4: the odds of finding in these species are what in
Speaker 4: a million, but maybe now they're two in a million.
Speaker 4: They've ticked up a little bit because I have. It
Speaker 4: hasn't been easy to dismiss all of the samples that
Speaker 4: I've looked at.
Speaker 1: One in a million. Going to two in a million
Speaker 1: just doubled our odds. I'm good with it.
Speaker 4: Man, So again, I don't want to get people too
Speaker 4: excited if it. You know, I've I worry a lot
Speaker 4: about the media, and you know all that. I think
Speaker 4: that people are used to hearing a lot of hyperbole.
Speaker 4: People hear things through the lens of what they want
Speaker 4: to hear, what they expect to hear, and I like
Speaker 4: to take it slow and steady, and that's what's happening.
Speaker 4: I want to continue to look at lots and lots
Speaker 4: of hopefully equality interesting samples, and I don't I don't
Speaker 4: do a lot of these podcasts anymore. I did it.
Speaker 4: I did several when I was first launching because I
Speaker 4: wanted to get the word out and get samples. I
Speaker 4: don't do a lot of these podcasts. I turned down
Speaker 4: tons and tons of events. Don't really do too many
Speaker 4: of those because I want to be doing the work.
Speaker 4: My goal is not to be a celebrity. My goal
Speaker 4: is to answer my own curiosity about what is going
Speaker 4: on here?
Speaker 1: Well, what can we do as a big Foot community?
Speaker 1: What do you need from us before we before we
Speaker 1: get off the air here and go record our members episode.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the biggest thing is is that again
Speaker 4: that patient's trusting the process. I think that I really
Speaker 4: because I'm not out there the I'm not the celebrity.
Speaker 4: I'm not getting out there and talking all the time
Speaker 4: and everything else. I think that I really rely on
Speaker 4: those of you in the community who are engaged, and
Speaker 4: particularly who work with people who might be finding interesting things.
Speaker 4: I rely on you to make sure that those things
Speaker 4: find their way to me. I also, quite frankly, I'm
Speaker 4: not a again, I'm not a big self promoter, but
Speaker 4: I will say that the funding helps. The funding helps considerably,
Speaker 4: and the more donations that I have to the project,
Speaker 4: to the research program, the faster things will go. And
Speaker 4: I have now set up and I hope you'll link
Speaker 4: in the show notes. I have recently updated my university
Speaker 4: website and that has ways that you can give directly
Speaker 4: to the research program through the university. I know that
Speaker 4: some people are not comfortable, you know, for whatever reasons,
Speaker 4: donating two universities. So I also have recently set up
Speaker 4: a private mission driven company. It's called Science Without Boundaries,
Speaker 4: and there are ways that people can also give through that,
Speaker 4: and that, again is a mission driven company. One hundred
Speaker 4: percent of anything that goes there goes into the research
Speaker 4: and the educational programs. That I run. And I also
Speaker 4: I also should mention, you know, when I do give
Speaker 4: talks and things like this, as you know, Cliff, because
Speaker 4: I gave one when I was out in Oregon this
Speaker 4: summer for the museum. Who did I have you write
Speaker 4: the check too?
Speaker 1: Oh? It was a Science without Boundaries.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I'm not taking a penny for myself, even for
Speaker 4: my speaking engagements, even you know, even when folks are
Speaker 4: offering me that i'm I'm I'm funneling that all through
Speaker 4: Science Without Boundaries, which again is a mission based company
Speaker 4: specifically to support the research and education.
Speaker 1: All right, Darby, Well, thank you very very much for
Speaker 1: this update. You are always welcome back on the podcast.
Speaker 1: If there's anything you want to share or any please
Speaker 1: to the public about a certain type of need you have,
Speaker 1: then of course all the things that Darby mentioned are
Speaker 1: going to be in the show notes. And we really
Speaker 1: sincerely appreciate the information and the work that you're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, keep the word out there, Just tell people, you know,
Speaker 4: hold on, be patient. Real science, real scientific results are coming,
Speaker 4: not as fast as any of us would like, least
Speaker 4: of all me, but they are coming.
Speaker 3: All right, I love it, man, You got me pumped. Up.
Speaker 3: I'm excited. This is good news. This is good news.
Speaker 3: So thanks so much for coming on and all right
Speaker 3: fleus reading, go over to our Patreon members group Beyond
Speaker 3: Bigfoot Beyond love to drive you over there for some
Speaker 3: more talking and so thanks for tuning in and until
Speaker 3: next week, y'all, keep it squashy.
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