Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: This week on Monster Talk, we talked with doctor Brian
Speaker 2: Regal about his new book, Searching for Sasquatch, Crackpots, egg
Speaker 2: Heads and Cryptozoology. It's an academic book about the history
Speaker 2: of the search for Sasquatch, yet not about sasquatch. I
Speaker 2: like the book and I enjoyed the interview. I hope
Speaker 2: you do too. But it does talk a lot about
Speaker 2: topics that monster hunters might find depressing. Is cryptozoology a pseudoscience?
Speaker 2: Is it a waste of time? Does real science care
Speaker 2: about monsters? Does science suppress the secret existence of mystery apes?
Speaker 2: Or has it simply withdrawn from the quest, smarting from
Speaker 2: hoax after hoax, but secretly hoping that someday the beast's
Speaker 2: scorps will hit the lab table.
Speaker 3: Tune in and find out.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant, hairy creature Part eight.
Speaker 4: In Luckness twenty four, a mile long bottomless lake in
Speaker 4: the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 3: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 2: Monster tal Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm your host Blake Smith and together with Ben Radford,
Speaker 2: a Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and doctor Kieren Stoles now a
Speaker 2: CSI research fellow and paranormal investigator. We examine monsters in
Speaker 2: their place and science and legend. In a moment, we'll
Speaker 2: hear an interview with doctor Brian Regal, but first I
Speaker 2: wanted to take a moment.
Speaker 3: And talk about a few things that are going on
Speaker 3: with the show.
Speaker 2: Scheduling and running this show is a lot of work,
Speaker 2: but it's work I find immensely rewarding. We may be
Speaker 2: experimenting with the format a bit in the future and
Speaker 2: you may hear some new voices behind the interview mics.
Speaker 3: It's my goal to keep the show fresh and to
Speaker 3: work hard to get more shows out per year.
Speaker 2: I've got some very interesting guests lined up and some
Speaker 2: thought provoking topics. I do hope you'll enjoy the many
Speaker 2: things we're going to try, and did you let us
Speaker 2: know what you like and what you don't like. We
Speaker 2: try to be accessible and on internet forums, Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 2: and email we try to respond to your feedback. We
Speaker 2: hope you will give our Facebook fan page a try.
Speaker 2: There you can find out what's happening between episodes. Plus
Speaker 2: meet lots of other listeners and join them and complaining
Speaker 2: about the ridiculously random schedule of Monster Talk. Also, you
Speaker 2: can find out where our next public appearances will be,
Speaker 2: such as the upcoming Monster Investigations workshop we'll be hosting
Speaker 2: at the Amazing Meeting in July.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: If you attend TAM and come on Thursday, July fourteenth,
Speaker 2: you could take a workshop on investigating monsters that features
Speaker 2: the entire cast of Monster Talk. Plus I think there's
Speaker 2: going to be some other notable guests and whatnot.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Come on out, though, we're going to be there. We're
Speaker 2: talking about getting to shake hands with the trio who
Speaker 2: brought you the awful truth about how dangerous it is
Speaker 2: to be an amoruth slug. Where else can you get
Speaker 2: content like that? Well, normally I would just say Monster Talk,
Speaker 2: but now apparently also TAM.
Speaker 3: So I hope to see you there. Now on with
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 5: Morebstrtle All right, you want to talk about Brian Reegle's new.
Speaker 2: Book, Yeah, so searching for Sasquatch Crack, Yeah, Eggheads and Cryptozoology.
Speaker 2: So you know a lot of these books from academic
Speaker 2: presses are expensive.
Speaker 3: Yes, tell me about that, mister, I'm been publishing.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for asking, as someone who has published
Speaker 5: with a couple academic presses, most recently, of course, the
Speaker 5: University of New Mexico Press, which published my book Tracking Chubacabra,
Speaker 5: which is actually one of its best selling titles for this,
Speaker 5: for this, for this the season, which I'm pleased about.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, part of what happens, of course, it's the
Speaker 5: it's the economics of book published titles that come from
Speaker 5: academic presses such as the one we're going to discuss today.
Speaker 5: I think I think it's the the palm Grave Studies
Speaker 5: in the History of Science and Technology is the name of.
Speaker 3: The press, and Paul Grave McMillan, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Paul Grave McMillan. You know what what happens is there's
Speaker 5: a bit of a trade off there because the academic
Speaker 5: presses tend to be of course much more scholarly and
Speaker 5: academic h and therefore they're much more reliable, But they
Speaker 5: don't necessarily have the commercial appeal or the push behind it.
Speaker 5: You know that you would see, uh, with the with
Speaker 5: the major you know, commercial marketers such as you know
Speaker 5: Avon or or you know HarperCollins, or what have you.
Speaker 5: So because they don't expect to sold as many books,
Speaker 5: they have to price them accordingly. So they sort of
Speaker 5: they do the math on it, and they figure, well,
Speaker 5: we can sell x many books, you know, at this price,
Speaker 5: but if we don't think we're going to sell them
Speaker 5: any books, and we need to recoup our expenses by
Speaker 5: by jacking up well I won't say jacking up, but
Speaker 5: by by increasing the price on the titles cover the.
Speaker 3: Price the print run, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2: So there's some minimum price required for making a run
Speaker 2: of these hardcover books, and they have to guess on
Speaker 2: the expectations when they have to, they have to make
Speaker 2: a guess of how many they might sell, and then
Speaker 2: price some according to how much it will cause to
Speaker 2: cover that on the print run.
Speaker 5: That's exactly right. And you know, especially when you're talking
Speaker 5: about something with a title like you know, searching for
Speaker 5: sasquatch Uh. It's a great title, and it's you know,
Speaker 5: it's a fine book, but you know, the book as
Speaker 5: it's presented, and I'm looking at it right now, it's
Speaker 5: an attractive book, but it's not necessarily, you know, going
Speaker 5: to be a New York Times bestseller, no matter what
Speaker 5: you do with it. So that's that's sort of tough.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I mean, looking at it is a
Speaker 2: fantastic book. Having read it, it's it's very academic in
Speaker 2: the tone of the book is very academic. It's got references,
Speaker 2: and the references aren't too Monster hunting books. They're too
Speaker 2: actually published articles and other.
Speaker 5: Or worse, he had The references aren't to their friends blog, right, Hey, I.
Speaker 2: Don't think that's hurts your book at all to be
Speaker 2: referencing my blog.
Speaker 5: So I'm just saying, right.
Speaker 2: So the entry the entry price was that it was
Speaker 2: it eighty five I think.
Speaker 5: I think at one hundred and fifteen. Wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Three thousand dollars?
Speaker 5: It was fairly expensive.
Speaker 3: I'll check it right quick.
Speaker 2: We'll get it right Amazon, Brian Riegel. Amazon's Hey, it's
Speaker 2: eighty five dollars. It's on sale for sixty eight at Amazon.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 3: I would like to read this book on a kindle.
Speaker 3: I actually, you know I have to say this is
Speaker 3: and I know.
Speaker 2: Your book just came out on a candle as well.
Speaker 2: Now all your books or your two most recent books
Speaker 2: are both available in Kendle.
Speaker 5: Now, yes, my two most recent ones.
Speaker 2: So love reading academic books on the candle because you
Speaker 2: can bookmark them and put notes in, share your notes
Speaker 2: with other people.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic, so cool, very fun.
Speaker 5: I have to I have to use the old school
Speaker 5: method of a mechanical pencil point zero five and writing
Speaker 5: in the margins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's okay too, But then if you want
Speaker 2: to share them, you have to go photocopy or notes
Speaker 2: or give your book away. But I was gonna say
Speaker 2: Searching for Sasquatch also very suitable for kindle, So hopefully
Speaker 2: he'll get that out in that no pictures unlike your
Speaker 2: two books, which both have lots and lots of photos,
Speaker 2: but I think they look great on the candle. But
Speaker 2: his book has no photos whatsoever.
Speaker 5: So right, and in fact, that's kind of a I
Speaker 5: did notice that, and I was somewhat disappointed. I don't
Speaker 5: know whether that was a publisher decision or he just
Speaker 5: couldn't come up with anything for it, But I mean
Speaker 5: there's I don't know, it'd be it'd be interesting to
Speaker 5: find out why there were no pictures in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could ask that, say, what no pictures?
Speaker 5: I want pictures?
Speaker 3: Well, I guess it's kind of in keeping with Bigfoot, right.
Speaker 5: Right, that's that's good. That's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, zing moretal.
Speaker 2: Before we get started, I want to say thanks for
Speaker 2: coming back and joining us again.
Speaker 6: No problem, my pleasure.
Speaker 2: All right. I'll do an intro here, and as you
Speaker 2: may recall, the show is recorded and we do edit it,
Speaker 2: so if you screw something up, we can you know,
Speaker 2: redo it or whatever.
Speaker 6: So okay, I'll try to use any bad language.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well then we're we can beep that out.
Speaker 5: No, no, that's fine, Like it's good.
Speaker 3: For the ratings.
Speaker 2: If you want to do a little nudity, we that's
Speaker 2: okay to uh no, you don't want that.
Speaker 3: It's not what I want, Brian, it's what the listeners want.
Speaker 5: But it's what the people want.
Speaker 6: Whatever, whatever the market demands, that's what we'll give them.
Speaker 5: A right good.
Speaker 2: Brian Regal is an assistant professor for the History of Science, Technology,
Speaker 2: and Medicine in the Department of History at Keing University.
Speaker 2: He's a return guest, having joined us before on our
Speaker 2: very first Skeptic sponsored episode to discuss werewolves and Charles Darwin,
Speaker 2: and now he's back as the author of the new
Speaker 2: book Searching for sasquatch, Crackpots.
Speaker 3: Eggheads and crypto Zoology.
Speaker 2: All right, So, Brian, your book title sounds somewhat confrontational,
Speaker 2: which seems at odds with the academic, historical tone of
Speaker 2: the text inside it.
Speaker 3: So what does that title mean to you?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well that this is. My original plan for the
Speaker 6: title was called Crackpots and Eggheads colon amateur's Professionals and Cryptozoology,
Speaker 6: but the good people at Paul Gray McMillan thought that
Speaker 6: this would be a better title, so so I went
Speaker 6: with that. But yeah, it's it is. It is a
Speaker 6: little on the country virtual side, and I've already been
Speaker 6: I was told before the book went into production that
Speaker 6: people would be upset with this, but I forged ahead
Speaker 6: anyway because I thought it was important and I don't
Speaker 6: use those terms in a negative, confrontational way. They're actually
Speaker 6: sort of I use it in an endearing kind of way.
Speaker 6: Crackpots of course being amateur naturalists monster enthusiasts, and the
Speaker 6: eggheads being a professional scientists. I actually got the terms
Speaker 6: from Renny Dehinden and Ivan Sanderson, so I didn't actually
Speaker 6: make them up. When I was doing the research for
Speaker 6: this book, which took me, this is the end of
Speaker 6: a five year research project. When I was working on this.
Speaker 6: When I began working on it, and I was reading
Speaker 6: all these original texts and letters and diaries and things,
Speaker 6: and I came across these terms and I thought it
Speaker 6: was jackpot. There's my title right there, Crackpots and Ahead.
Speaker 6: So that's why I went.
Speaker 1: And so, Brian, how is this book different from a
Speaker 1: book about the subject of cryptozoology in general, Well.
Speaker 6: This is really a history. I think it's the it's
Speaker 6: the first time or if I may for a home
Speaker 6: and think the best history of cryptozoology, not cryptozoology broadly,
Speaker 6: but mostly the part of cryptosology that deals with manlike monsters,
Speaker 6: what I like to call anomalous primates. And what I
Speaker 6: did was, I'm really not I say this in the introduction,
Speaker 6: I'm really not interested. This book is not about proving
Speaker 6: whether Bigfoot does or doesn't exist. It's not a debunking book.
Speaker 6: But it's not a sort of a hay geography either.
Speaker 6: I wanted to do a scholarly analysis of what I
Speaker 6: thought was a really interesting field and see if I
Speaker 6: could trace where this comes from, how does it begin?
Speaker 6: And at the heart of it is the crackpots today kids.
Speaker 6: Concept is the relationship between amateur naturalists and professional scientists
Speaker 6: and how they have interacted and sometimes come to blows,
Speaker 6: sometimes work together in order to create a new field,
Speaker 6: or at least attempt to create a new field of
Speaker 6: scientific study.
Speaker 5: Well, Bran, I was going to say, having read your book,
Speaker 5: it was really cool for me to to see uh,
Speaker 5: sort of broader illustrations of many of the people that
Speaker 5: I had I had read about, you know, everybody from
Speaker 5: Krantz to de Hindon to Tom Slick and all that.
Speaker 5: So that was it was I thought one of the
Speaker 5: things that your book did really well was sort of
Speaker 5: flesh out these these otherwise sort of dry names in
Speaker 5: the history of crypt zoology. Right, So in in your
Speaker 5: in your book you talk about a lot of leaders
Speaker 5: of the field. Which of those really stood out to
Speaker 5: you as being the most interesting when you were researching
Speaker 5: the book?
Speaker 6: Well, that's uh, that's part of the most interesting aspect
Speaker 6: of this. The book focuses on Growers, and that's partly
Speaker 6: because I think he's an important figure in the story
Speaker 6: of the growth of cryptozoology, but also quite frankly, for
Speaker 6: the simple material fact that so much of his material.
Speaker 6: His letters and diaries and correspondence are available. The Krantz
Speaker 6: papers are at the Smithsonian at the National Anthropological Archive.
Speaker 6: And when I'm a professional historian, and when I do
Speaker 6: start a project on someone or some topic, the first
Speaker 6: thing I ask is where are the letters, Where are
Speaker 6: the correspondents, Where are those inside discussions? Where are the notebooks?
Speaker 6: Where are the copies where people scrolled sort of wacky marginalia.
Speaker 6: And that's what I look for. And well, a few
Speaker 6: people had tried to do this on a limited basis before,
Speaker 6: no one had ever really done or attempted to do
Speaker 6: a major survey of these correspondences. And so that's how Krantz.
Speaker 6: That's part of the reason why cran sort of comes
Speaker 6: to the to the foe. But the most disappointing for me,
Speaker 6: the most disappointing part of this project was ready to Hindon,
Speaker 6: who is an incredibly interesting character. Uh, Unfortunately his papers
Speaker 6: are not as available as Krantz were. What I my
Speaker 6: original idea was to run to run a parallel biography
Speaker 6: krant and to Hindon. But as I said, the Hinden
Speaker 6: papers are out there, but they are in collections, and
Speaker 6: they're in places which I tried to get access to
Speaker 6: but was on was unable to And so he there
Speaker 6: is a good bit of material on him available through
Speaker 6: other people's collections. Uh. And so I was able to
Speaker 6: flesh out something of his, of him as a person,
Speaker 6: but not as much as I would.
Speaker 5: Like to have. And I think you said that that
Speaker 5: most of Krantz's papers are at the Smithsonian, right right,
Speaker 5: If I'm not mistaken. Krantz himself is is it the Smithsonian?
Speaker 6: I think he left his body to h to this owning,
Speaker 6: along with his dog Clyde. Uh. And there he's on display,
Speaker 6: his his he wanted his he wanted his skeleton articulated
Speaker 6: along with the dog and put on display mimicking photograph
Speaker 6: of him and his dog. And that's what happened that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was Yeah, that was a last time I
Speaker 5: was in Rushing d C. I was there and I
Speaker 5: was just looking at it, and I was like, grow
Speaker 5: over Krantz. What if I heard the name of Like
Speaker 5: is that him?
Speaker 6: And it was?
Speaker 5: I was sitting there looking at it, Yeah, and it was.
Speaker 5: And then it was interesting because I think I was
Speaker 5: the only person in the room. There were probably a
Speaker 5: couple dozen people there who who knew you know about
Speaker 5: his his his connection to Bigfoot, because it was actually
Speaker 5: not mentioned on the display. And uh, well, it's.
Speaker 6: An interesting mounting of of a human and a dog
Speaker 6: skeleton together. That's really what's most interesting.
Speaker 2: I think he had bad teeth, by the way, I
Speaker 2: just saw that actually covered on an online magazine. So
Speaker 2: we'll put a link to that in the show notes
Speaker 2: and you can actually see the photo that is based
Speaker 2: on and the actual display and a really nice article
Speaker 2: explaining how it came to be that Grover Krantz was right.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm not sure if the dog is actually his
Speaker 6: first dog, Clyde. It might be. I've seen some conflicting
Speaker 6: descriptions where it said it was Clyde, and I saw
Speaker 6: some others where he said no, it was a later dog.
Speaker 6: But it's an Irish wolfhound. And the dog Clyde was
Speaker 6: probably his best friend in his whole life. It's a
Speaker 6: really interesting relationship. And in the book I argue somewhat
Speaker 6: that Clyde dies around the time that Krantz really sort
Speaker 6: of becomes immersed in Bigfoot studies, almost to the point
Speaker 6: where I think that, you know, there was something where
Speaker 6: he was so attached to this dog and had lost it.
Speaker 6: Now he's going to turn those feelings onto this, this
Speaker 6: creature in the woods.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the coverage of Krantz in the books really interesting,
Speaker 2: and at one point you quote him as saying, nobody
Speaker 2: outclasses me, at least not.
Speaker 3: Since Leonardo da Vinci. Right.
Speaker 2: Is it possible that egoism could have put blinders on
Speaker 2: him when it came to examining disconfirmatory evidence to his theories.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what's interesting about him. One of the things which
Speaker 6: is interesting about him is that he early on, by
Speaker 6: the mid seventies, I think he has become convinced that
Speaker 6: Bigfoot's real, and he thinks that it's real because of
Speaker 6: evidence which to his mind. He's a trained paleoanthropologist. I mean,
Speaker 6: he goes to he goes to UKEL. Berkeley, which is,
Speaker 6: you know, a center and still is a center, a
Speaker 6: major center of anthropological paleoanthropological research. So he is schooled
Speaker 6: in a in a powerful academic ty edition. He's not
Speaker 6: an amateur by any sense of the stressing the imagination.
Speaker 6: He's a professional scientist, and to his mind, he sees
Speaker 6: evidence which clinches it for him, particularly the Bosberg prints
Speaker 6: to cripple footprints, and then the dermal ridges and then
Speaker 6: some other things as well. And once he's made that decision,
Speaker 6: you know, he just moves forward and he really doesn't
Speaker 6: take much into consideration. I mean, he doesn't believe every
Speaker 6: single thing he sees. He understands that there's a lot
Speaker 6: of hoaxing out there and a lot of misidentification, but
Speaker 6: he thinks there is enough evidence that proves these creatures
Speaker 6: are real. And he never really looks back.
Speaker 1: And so was he ever really challenged by his colleagues.
Speaker 6: Well, not really, and that's partly because most of his
Speaker 6: colleagues don't believe in anything he's doing. He's mostly dismissed
Speaker 6: by the mainstream.
Speaker 1: They were being indulgent of him to some extent.
Speaker 6: Or world up to some of the people who worked
Speaker 6: in the department at Washington State University, the anthropology department
Speaker 6: had said essentially that, well, you know, Grover's a really
Speaker 6: good guy and he's a smart guy in all, but
Speaker 6: we just sort of, as you said, we just sort
Speaker 6: of indulge him on this and we don't really we
Speaker 6: don't really believe this is even there. But he does
Speaker 6: other good works, so we're willing to overlook the sasquatch stuff,
Speaker 6: and he never receives any sort of grants or research
Speaker 6: money for the sasquatch work. He pays for all of
Speaker 6: it out of his own pocket. And there are times
Speaker 6: where he doesn't get promoted right away. I mean, he
Speaker 6: eventually makes full professor, but that's after twenty years. That's
Speaker 6: a long time to wait to become a full professor.
Speaker 6: And part of the reason that he did finally right
Speaker 6: before he retired. Part of the reason why he did
Speaker 6: get promoted was that a young scientist named John Bodley,
Speaker 6: who started after him a couple of years after him.
Speaker 6: They had become friends, and Bodley eventually rose to the rank,
Speaker 6: became chair of the department, and he really pushed in
Speaker 6: the mid nineties to get Krantz promoted and managed to
Speaker 6: get the squeak by and so he did get promoted,
Speaker 6: But had Bodily not put in that effort, Krantz would
Speaker 6: have finished out his days as an associate, not a
Speaker 6: full professor.
Speaker 5: Well, brig, I'm just realizing that many of these names
Speaker 5: are familiar to the four of us, but maybe not
Speaker 5: necessarily to our listeners. So I'm wondering if you could
Speaker 5: if you could sort of sketch out or paint a
Speaker 5: picture of Grover Krantz and t. Hindon and maybe Sanderson,
Speaker 5: just you know, in a couple of paragraphs, just for
Speaker 5: people who aren't familiar with them.
Speaker 6: Krantz again, it was a trained piler methropologist PhD. In
Speaker 6: human evolution studies who joined the faculty of Washington State
Speaker 6: University in nineteen sixty eight, and he was primarily doing
Speaker 6: work on on Homo erectus fossils. And he had been
Speaker 6: intrigued by the idea of bigfoot and sasquatch for some
Speaker 6: years and had kind of informally been keeping up on
Speaker 6: it and collecting information. And then in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 6: there is a sighting in a tiny little town called Bossburg, Washington,
Speaker 6: up near the Canadian border. And since the campus or
Speaker 6: the University of Washington University is at Pullman, Washington, not
Speaker 6: very far from there, over the Thanksgiving holiday, jumps in
Speaker 6: his car and he drives up there to investigate, and
Speaker 6: he sees what comes to be known as the Cripplefoot tracks.
Speaker 6: And these were bigfoot tracks that had some strange kind
Speaker 6: of anatomical anomalies to them, and it looked to him
Speaker 6: like one of the creature's feet had been broken at
Speaker 6: one point and healed badly, And he had been He
Speaker 6: had done a lot of work on human locomotion and
Speaker 6: also human locomotion and foot structure foot morphology, and when
Speaker 6: he looked at these cripple foot tracks in his mind,
Speaker 6: he said, no one could possibly hoax this. No one
Speaker 6: would know to hoax this in the way that it
Speaker 6: was hoaxed that he or the way that it looked,
Speaker 6: And so he said, the only other explanation is that
Speaker 6: it's real. And he becomes a convinced believer that these
Speaker 6: creatures are real, and he spends the rest of his
Speaker 6: thirty plus year career trying unsuccessfully to prove their real
Speaker 6: and to convince his colleagues that they're real. His primary
Speaker 6: nemesis was a Swiss Canadian named Ready de Hinden, who
Speaker 6: had been born in Switzerland, had been deposited in an
Speaker 6: orphanage for a while, managed to get out of the orphanage,
Speaker 6: saw a series of work farms as a kid. When
Speaker 6: he came of age, he went off on his own,
Speaker 6: wandered around post war Europe for a little while, and
Speaker 6: eventually immigrated to Canada winds up in British Columbia, and
Speaker 6: he has very little formal education, yet he's a very
Speaker 6: naturally intelligent guy. And he sees reports of sasquatch which
Speaker 6: are just starting to sort of get some media play
Speaker 6: in the nineteen fifties, and he becomes fascinated by it
Speaker 6: and he determines to go find out what this thing is.
Speaker 6: And where Krantz has a lot of formal academic schooling,
Speaker 6: the Hinden has none, and so these two guys sort
Speaker 6: of go off on a parallel journey. In the book,
Speaker 6: I refer to Hindon as the anti krants You know,
Speaker 6: he has no actual scientific training, but he's deeply passionate
Speaker 6: about this, and they form this kind of love hate
Speaker 6: relationship that takes them through the rest of their lives.
Speaker 6: The hind Krant dies I think a year after the
Speaker 6: Hinden does, and so that sort of makes up the
Speaker 6: base of the book. And then there's other characters like
Speaker 6: Ian Sanderson, who is a Scots naturalist, Cambridge trained. He
Speaker 6: actually has an undergraduate degree in biology, and he too
Speaker 6: becomes fascinated by these things, and he comes to America
Speaker 6: and decides to track down track down these creatures. He's
Speaker 6: a he's a professional science journalist. He does a lot
Speaker 6: of writing. Sanderson is never an academic, uh, which is
Speaker 6: part of his resentment of the academic world, because he
Speaker 6: thought he we should have been an academic. But he
Speaker 6: spends his life hustling by writing articles and things, a
Speaker 6: lot of famous articles that are well known in the field.
Speaker 6: And he too, will you know, spend his life trying
Speaker 6: to prove these creatures are real.
Speaker 2: In particular, I thought you did a good job of
Speaker 2: painting Ivan Sanderson as kind of a tragic figure who
Speaker 2: gets on this sort of quest to find something that
Speaker 2: he may never be able to prove. Did you get
Speaker 2: the impression at the end of his life he still
Speaker 2: believed sincerely that these mystery apes were still out there. Oh.
Speaker 6: I think they all did. I don't think any of
Speaker 6: them ever really lost a belief that these creatures were real.
Speaker 2: I wanted so bad for Ivan Sanderson to have kind
Speaker 2: of like a paranormal Wild Kingdom, you know, not paranormal,
Speaker 2: but you know, a cryptozoological Wild Kingdom show.
Speaker 3: But he seems.
Speaker 6: Sure he wanted to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just comes across as that sort of fifties
Speaker 2: explorer with the British accent, putting on the khakis and
Speaker 2: the pith helmet, and now he goes.
Speaker 6: Sure, yeah, right, Well, all these guys were real characters,
Speaker 6: and not in a kind of artificial way, but genuine characters,
Speaker 6: genuinely unusual, interesting people.
Speaker 1: So, Brian, one of the most commonly heard claims about
Speaker 1: cryptozoology is that scientists ignore the arguments and evidencing, dismisspeak
Speaker 1: foot out of hands. Your book seems to debunk that myth,
Speaker 1: as you provide many examples of somecientists who did take
Speaker 1: big foot seriously. Could you talk about that a bit
Speaker 1: for us?
Speaker 6: Oh? Sure. One of the other major threads in my
Speaker 6: book is within history, we have this notion of the
Speaker 6: heroic narrative, or the grand narrative, or the meta narrative,
Speaker 6: these kind of big ideas, big statements that cover broad fields,
Speaker 6: and so you know, if you want to know about
Speaker 6: something that's sort of a conventionalism says this field is
Speaker 6: about that. And the heroic narrative of monster hunting, certainly
Speaker 6: in the twentieth century, was that these amateur naturalists, they're
Speaker 6: the ones who are really passionate about this, and they
Speaker 6: go around and they do lots of research, and they
Speaker 6: go out into the field and they try to they
Speaker 6: fight against the odds to bring the knowledge of these
Speaker 6: creatures to the public. And you have the scientists who
Speaker 6: sort of reject all of this out of hand and
Speaker 6: and say, no, this is silly, and and uh, you know,
Speaker 6: these these these monster hunters are just sort of crackpots
Speaker 6: who don't know what they're doing. They're just running around
Speaker 6: the woods, and so we dismiss whatever they say. And
Speaker 6: the reality here is that it's not really quite that easy.
Speaker 6: There were scientists and still are even today who believe
Speaker 6: these creatures are real and work to try to uh
Speaker 6: prove that. They worked as hard to prove these things
Speaker 6: real and believed as much as any of the amateurs did.
Speaker 6: And so this notion that you can draw this nice
Speaker 6: straight line with you know, believers and amateurs on one
Speaker 6: side and non believers and professional scientists and the mainstream
Speaker 6: on the other just doesn't really hold up.
Speaker 5: In your book, you talk a fair amount about the
Speaker 5: Russian and the Soviet cryptozoologists who are also interested in
Speaker 5: in in the yet and all that, was there any
Speaker 5: scientific collaboration going on among the Cold War rivals, or
Speaker 5: what was the status on that, yeah, well there was.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's a whole tradition of monster hunting in Russia,
Speaker 6: the Almasti and the Almas that are very big foot
Speaker 6: like creatures, and a similar kind of pattern developed over
Speaker 6: there where you have professional scientists and amateurs interested in
Speaker 6: this and tracking that information and analyzing data. One of
Speaker 6: the big differences between the Americans or the western is
Speaker 6: not just Americans, but the Westerners and the Russians is
Speaker 6: that the Russians actually received some state support early on.
Speaker 6: There was actually a Snowman Commission in Russia in the
Speaker 6: nineteen fifties because there had been some sightings by several
Speaker 6: respective scientists in Soviet Russia, and so as a way
Speaker 6: of getting at the bottom of this, the Russian government
Speaker 6: actually put together Snowman commission to investigate the phenomena and
Speaker 6: to support some expeditions into the Palmeer Mountains. It doesn't
Speaker 6: last that long because after after one or two expeditions
Speaker 6: and they don't find anything, the Russian government essentially turns
Speaker 6: their backgund says, well, that was a big waste of time,
Speaker 6: and the Snowman Commission is decommissioned, and that sort of
Speaker 6: leaves the the monster enthusiasts on their own to go
Speaker 6: to their own devices, and that never really happens here.
Speaker 6: There's really never any official state or academic support for
Speaker 6: a monster hunting in America.
Speaker 2: And we didn't need it. We had millionaire Tom Slick, right, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 2: there was.
Speaker 6: A benefactor involved the the the enigmatic Texas oil millionaire
Speaker 6: Tom Slick, who actually supports puts up the money for
Speaker 6: a number of expeditions in Asia define the Yetti and
Speaker 6: here in the States to find Bigfoot. It would have
Speaker 6: gone on supporting this head died tragically young in a
Speaker 6: plane crash.
Speaker 5: Just so basically the claim that again we sort of
Speaker 5: touched on this before, but the claim that I sometimes
Speaker 5: here that the reason we haven't found bad evidence for Bigfoot,
Speaker 5: for example, is because there's no money behind it or
Speaker 5: there's no real effort. It doesn't sound like that's quite true.
Speaker 6: Well, there has been money behind it, and now today
Speaker 6: in the early twenty fourth century, you have a number
Speaker 6: of television shows and TV series that pump money into
Speaker 6: the search with the same results.
Speaker 2: So there's always this sort of romanticized view of the
Speaker 2: search for Yetti. You've got skilled mountain climbers coming back
Speaker 2: with stories.
Speaker 3: You've got this millionaire. There's a story.
Speaker 2: About Jimmy Stewart being involved in stealing the parts. Your
Speaker 2: book was the first to ever inform me about the
Speaker 2: involvement of the CIA and the search for the yetty,
Speaker 2: can you talk about.
Speaker 5: That little bit?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I'm not actually the first person to talk
Speaker 6: about this. Lauren Coleman has actually done some work.
Speaker 3: Sorry Lauren, but there but.
Speaker 6: There is some really interesting, intriguing uh intelligence connections here.
Speaker 6: A number of the uh, what we might call the
Speaker 6: Golden Age monster hunters, Ivan Sanderson, UH, Georgie Agayino, and
Speaker 6: Carlon Kuhn. UH. They all had intelligence backgrounds. Againo was
Speaker 6: an OSS agent in the Far East.
Speaker 2: UH.
Speaker 6: Cohn was a OSS agent in North Africa. And supposedly
Speaker 6: Ivan Sanderson had British intelligence British naval intelligence connections. Uh.
Speaker 6: There had been accusations of that Peter Byrne, the another
Speaker 6: one of the grand old men of of monster hunting,
Speaker 6: that he had intelligence connections. It's been alleged that Tom
Speaker 6: Slick had CIA connections and that they were contacted and
Speaker 6: that when they especially in the Asia phase. Because you
Speaker 6: have to remember the sort of geopolitical situation that's going
Speaker 6: on in the nineteen fifties. Ti Bet and Nepal are
Speaker 6: right there, up next to China, wedged in between India,
Speaker 6: which was still part of the British Empire, and you know,
Speaker 6: the Chinese Revolution had taken place, and they had invaded Tibet,
Speaker 6: and things were, you know, were really hopping over there.
Speaker 6: And in the middle of it, there's a monster, and
Speaker 6: so this is an excuse for Westerners to come looking
Speaker 6: for this thing. And the Chinese, for example, and the Russians,
Speaker 6: we're both convinced that all these guys were spies. The
Speaker 6: guys on the western side were convinced that all the
Speaker 6: Russians who were running around were spies. Everybody seems to
Speaker 6: have been spying on everybody else. Life Magazine was involved.
Speaker 6: And while I was never able to actually prove one
Speaker 6: way or another what was happening, it's clear that there
Speaker 6: was some Western intelligence involvement in the Tibetan Nepal YETI search.
Speaker 1: These are Bigfoot conspiracy theories.
Speaker 6: See well, I'm not sure for it really was a
Speaker 6: conspiracy theory and that it has no basis. I think
Speaker 6: it does have some basis. I think what happened is
Speaker 6: these guys had. There's two things going on. You had
Speaker 6: this group of guys who are genuinely interested in going
Speaker 6: to Central Asia and proving once and for all that
Speaker 6: the Yeti exists. They just happened to have intelligence connections
Speaker 6: and are going to a place where in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 6: the US government, the British government, the government of India
Speaker 6: would be very interested to find out what's going on
Speaker 6: along the Tibet China border. And so these these elements
Speaker 6: kind of collide in an almost comical way. There's this
Speaker 6: Russian name Lusanovich who is living in Nepal who wants
Speaker 6: to when he hears about the existence of the Yeti,
Speaker 6: he wants to get nets in a cage and throw
Speaker 6: a net over the over the yetty and bring them
Speaker 6: back alive. And Carl Kuhn wants to do the same thing.
Speaker 6: And so you have all these guys running around and
Speaker 6: they're all spying on each other and in the end
Speaker 6: they don't find anything. If so, if the US or
Speaker 6: the UK thought that they could get intelligence on China
Speaker 6: added these monster hunters, I don't think it really worked.
Speaker 1: And how has the search for Bigfoot revolved over the
Speaker 1: decades in terms of who's looking for them and why
Speaker 1: and with what tools and methods.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well that's an interesting evolution as well. You start
Speaker 6: off with these sort of elite monster hunters, these individuals,
Speaker 6: lone individuals. The guys running around looking for the YETI
Speaker 6: in the poll are mostly professional mountaineers, British mountaineers. And
Speaker 6: then you get some Americans in there, Peter Byrne who's Irish,
Speaker 6: He's in there as well. And then you come action
Speaker 6: shifts back to North America, Western Canada, Western United States,
Speaker 6: and then you get guys like Ready to hind In
Speaker 6: and John Green, a Canadian journalist who gets very interested
Speaker 6: in all this. And then Tom Slick comes over and
Speaker 6: he starts flowing money into the North America search, and
Speaker 6: he brings Peter Byrne with him, and then that's when
Speaker 6: Grover Krant gets involved. But by say, oh the mid
Speaker 6: nineteen eighties, that group, that sort of individual approach begins
Speaker 6: to wayne. In Tibet, you had what I call the
Speaker 6: mountaineering approach. You have these big groups of people, which
Speaker 6: is the YETTI searches were modeled on traditional mountain climbing projects.
Speaker 6: We have lots of people porters carrying like a long, live,
Speaker 6: very romantic scene of a long line of porters heading
Speaker 6: off into the distance carrying boxes on their heads. As
Speaker 6: the as the group of Western explorers upfront leads everything
Speaker 6: and that kind of dissipates. They try the expedition approach
Speaker 6: here in the States for a little while, but that
Speaker 6: doesn't really work out, and so what happens is it
Speaker 6: evolves into these sort of loane researchers, maybe in pairs whatever,
Speaker 6: really enlarge groups moving around the Pacific Northwest looking for
Speaker 6: these things. By the nineteen eighties, a kind of new
Speaker 6: animal comes along, and that's the that's the monster hunting group.
Speaker 6: And that's the kind of American invention or American slash
Speaker 6: Canadian invention where you have local people. The early guys,
Speaker 6: the Golden Age guys, they went wherever the evidence led them.
Speaker 6: They had to go to China. They went to China,
Speaker 6: they had to go to Tibet, they went to Tibet,
Speaker 6: they had to go to Canada, you know, wherever they went.
Speaker 6: But the low cool guys, which is sort of make
Speaker 6: up the bulk of monster hunters now, they tended to
Speaker 6: stay in their own neighborhoods and they would collect groups
Speaker 6: of like minded individuals and they would search for whatever
Speaker 6: monster was supposedly located in their area. And then by
Speaker 6: the end of the century into the twenty first century,
Speaker 6: you see a kind of resurgence of the elite monster
Speaker 6: hunter and English cryptosologists sort of come back to the forefront,
Speaker 6: and you have individuals like say Richard Freeman, who travels
Speaker 6: the world in search of cryptids and they're sort of generalists.
Speaker 6: Where on the American side, now you have people who
Speaker 6: look just for Bigfoot. In the English tradition, you have
Speaker 6: cryptosologists who look for Lackness monster or mechillan Benbe or
Speaker 6: Chupicabra or the Iran Pendec. They sort of they go
Speaker 6: where the monsters lead them. And that's sort of the
Speaker 6: state we're at. Now. You have these kind of elite
Speaker 6: globe trotting cryptosologists, and then you had the local groups
Speaker 6: looking for just their particular monster and their particular neighborhood.
Speaker 5: And so where do you think that that's going to
Speaker 5: lead us? I mean, you do you do you think
Speaker 5: that the golden age of the of this this sort
Speaker 5: of investigation has died along with Krantz and Slick in
Speaker 5: renee or do you think that there's going to be
Speaker 5: resurgence or what do you think it'd look like, you know,
Speaker 5: in twenty or fifty years.
Speaker 6: Well, most of the most of the elite what I
Speaker 6: call the elite monster on today are they're not quite
Speaker 6: the I mean this's early characters, but they're not quite
Speaker 6: the flamboyant characters like the Ivan Sanderson's and the ready
Speaker 6: to Hindus. And I mean in a good way. I
Speaker 6: don't mean to detegrate that this. There's several people do
Speaker 6: really good work now and if anybody's going to find this,
Speaker 6: you know, prove this these things to be real, it'll
Speaker 6: be them. But they are of a different of a
Speaker 6: different style, I guess.
Speaker 5: Than the Golden Age, right, But I guess what I
Speaker 5: meant was not so much that the characters that are
Speaker 5: looking for them, but in terms of where you think
Speaker 5: it'll be. I mean, do you think that in twenty
Speaker 5: years or one hundred years people will still be looking
Speaker 5: for Bigfoot? Do you think that it'll eventually be abandoned
Speaker 5: if there's no evidence, or what do you think is
Speaker 5: going to happen with that?
Speaker 6: Well, that's a you know, that's prophecy, is not really
Speaker 6: my area, but I you know, who knows. I mean,
Speaker 6: if if nothing is ever found, then it may very
Speaker 6: well just sort of gradually peter out and and we'll
Speaker 6: find some other odds thing to look for. But if
Speaker 6: some of these things ever do turn up to be real,
Speaker 6: I think that'll give you know, a real resurgence, a
Speaker 6: real shot in the arm. I think if somebody brought
Speaker 6: in a bigfoot carcass tomorrow, there'd be a huge resurgence
Speaker 6: in individuals, that the groups that currently exist would would
Speaker 6: expand and get even more active, and I think a
Speaker 6: lot more people would get involved in it. Well.
Speaker 5: One of the things that jumps out to my mind,
Speaker 5: you know, just sort of comparing over the history of
Speaker 5: bigfoot research specifically, is, of course the evolving technology you
Speaker 5: have what remains to be the best evidence by many,
Speaker 5: by many people's estimation of the Patterson film, which of
Speaker 5: course was shot in sixty seven. And yet these days,
Speaker 5: you know, cameras are lighter than ever before, they're better
Speaker 5: than ever before, and so you know, today's cryptozologists and
Speaker 5: monster hunters have far better technology at their disposal. So
Speaker 5: you would think that that would that would influence the search,
Speaker 5: right you would think.
Speaker 6: I mean the just as you said. I mean, there's
Speaker 6: all this technology available, small handheld cameras which give really
Speaker 6: high quality footage, yet we still I mean just recently,
Speaker 6: I think last month there was some some some really
Speaker 6: laughably fake footage came out of a supposed bix of
Speaker 6: crossing a highway somewhere in the in the rural South.
Speaker 6: And I mean, if it's all fuzzy and blurry, uh,
Speaker 6: you know, if you can't in the early twenty first century,
Speaker 6: with all this high tech gadgetry, if you can't get
Speaker 6: a clear picture of this thing when it's twenty set
Speaker 6: away from you, you know we never.
Speaker 2: Will fair enough, Yeah that, yeah, Well, you know when
Speaker 2: we had you on before, you talked about the way
Speaker 2: that the theory of evolution kind of got rid of
Speaker 2: were wolves, right, so.
Speaker 6: Well contributed all well, true.
Speaker 2: True contributed to the demise of well as a plausible scenario. Right,
Speaker 2: So you know that makes perfect sense, of course. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, history is not prognostication. You know that it's
Speaker 2: looking back and I'm looking forward. I mean, you can
Speaker 2: make conclusions.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure maybe it is wrong to even ask
Speaker 3: you how things are going to turn out.
Speaker 2: I'm interested to see myself. Obviously, there's a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2: Give you an example, like some arguments just stay around forever, right,
Speaker 2: one is Krantz was popular.
Speaker 3: Krantz like to say.
Speaker 2: That you never found the bones of large animals in
Speaker 2: the forest, which Ben and I looked into, and it turns.
Speaker 3: Out you do it. Yeah, I know. It was just interesting.
Speaker 3: Krantz had some interesting positions.
Speaker 2: They all did, and and and these these characters, they
Speaker 2: they've done such an interesting job of making high drama
Speaker 2: out of the search for an animal in the way
Speaker 2: that some real legitimate scientists looking for lizards won't get.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't get front page for that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. There's no question there. Just making comments anyway,
Speaker 2: But speaking of a big events that did take place,
Speaker 2: did get a lot of coverage, and things that come
Speaker 2: up again in conversation. The Minnesota ice man is a
Speaker 2: big case, and now we've talked about it in an
Speaker 2: entire show on the Minnesota ice Man. It's a long
Speaker 2: as a complex story and we don't have to recount
Speaker 2: the whole thing here. But in your take on things,
Speaker 2: what did you think the biggest lesson for the cryptozoology
Speaker 2: field was from that whole fiasco.
Speaker 6: Well, one of the things that I do go on
Speaker 6: at length about the Minnesota Iceman in the book and
Speaker 6: looking at in particular how the Smithsonian institution reacted to it.
Speaker 6: And this is another example of this idea that there
Speaker 6: were scientists who are very interested in this. When Ivan
Speaker 6: Sanderson and Bernard Hoovelman's the Belgian cryptozoologists, when they hear
Speaker 6: about the Iceman, they go and look at it, and
Speaker 6: they look at it, they see, they take some pictures,
Speaker 6: they draw it, and they start telling people about it.
Speaker 6: And a number of people who had been sort of
Speaker 6: tangentially involved in the Yetti period they're now the Smithsonian.
Speaker 6: People like Dylan Ripley, who have been an ornithology who
Speaker 6: had who had also been ass man and an asia specialist.
Speaker 6: He had been involved in the in the Yetti hunt.
Speaker 6: He's now the president of the Smithsonian. And John Napier,
Speaker 6: who had also been involved in the YETI stuff, wrote
Speaker 6: the first academic book on an almost primates. He's also
Speaker 6: working at at the Smithsonian. A number of other individuals
Speaker 6: who have YETI big for connections at the Smithsonian, and
Speaker 6: so they say, well, let's go find out about this,
Speaker 6: and the Smithsonian rallies the energy of the federal government
Speaker 6: to go and find this thing. And they say, if
Speaker 6: it's there, we're going to get it. We're going to
Speaker 6: bring it back here, and we're going to study it.
Speaker 6: And that's going to be that. And they're very excited
Speaker 6: about it. And there is a whole string of internal memos.
Speaker 6: You see that this is the advantage of the historical
Speaker 6: approach when you when you take this position of go
Speaker 6: look for the paperwork at the Smithsonian, there's a there's
Speaker 6: a whole pile of memos and interoffice letters and correspondences
Speaker 6: where the Smithsonian is a beehive of activity anticipation over
Speaker 6: the Minnesota Iceman. They think they're on the verge of
Speaker 6: finding a real creature, and they find just just decide
Speaker 6: to go to their work and drive in Sanderson because
Speaker 6: he's made connections with Frank Hanson, the guy who has
Speaker 6: the iceman, and Dylan Ripley, the president of the Secretary
Speaker 6: of the Smithsonian, says, I'm just going to go to
Speaker 6: the source. And he just calls Frank Hanson and says, dude,
Speaker 6: you know, we want to see this thing. We'll pay
Speaker 6: you for it. We'll give you credit for it, and
Speaker 6: Hanson immediately starts backpedaling like crazy and say, well, I
Speaker 6: don't have it anymore. It's gone, well I have is
Speaker 6: a fake. And so eventually what happens is they, the
Speaker 6: guys at the Smithsonian decide this thing is a fake.
Speaker 6: We got fooled. It's a carnival trick that looks really good,
Speaker 6: but it's not what we think it is, and so
Speaker 6: they're going to give up on it. And that is
Speaker 6: I use that story as an example of of why
Speaker 6: scientists are often and academic institutions are so hesitant to
Speaker 6: get involved in monster hunting because they want facts. They
Speaker 6: want evidence. Scholars want the goods. They don't want stories,
Speaker 6: they don't want you know, bad video, they want concrete facts.
Speaker 6: And there were lots and lots and still are scientists
Speaker 6: and other scholars who were perfectly willing to accept these
Speaker 6: creatures as real, but they wanted to see the facts.
Speaker 6: And every time they got a fact into a corner,
Speaker 6: they found out that it was a hoax. And you know,
Speaker 6: that can only happen so many times before people decide,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm not going to I've spent you know,
Speaker 6: an individual might say I spent twenty years getting my position.
Speaker 6: I'm not going to risk it by endorsing one of
Speaker 6: these things and then two months later find out it's
Speaker 6: a fake. And so when when cryptozoologists complain about how
Speaker 6: mainstream science won't support what they're doing, this is the reason,
Speaker 6: because you can't just bring them nonsense. You have to
Speaker 6: bring them facts. I know plenty of pale We haveth
Speaker 6: apologists who would kill to get a chance to examine
Speaker 6: a big foot carcass. They would love it. They looked
Speaker 6: forward to it with great anticipation, but no one's ever
Speaker 6: bought them one.
Speaker 5: I think that you make a great point with that,
Speaker 5: and I'm glad. I'm glad you're pointing that out. One
Speaker 5: other quick question about the Minnesota ice man, is there
Speaker 5: anybody today, even today that you know of, that still
Speaker 5: believes it was real?
Speaker 6: You know, it's one of those things where it was
Speaker 6: so close, you know, so many people got so excited
Speaker 6: about this was going to be it, and then it
Speaker 6: turned out to be nothing. I'm sure there are still
Speaker 6: people around who think it it was.
Speaker 5: Real, Okay, I just didn't know if there's any prominent people, not.
Speaker 6: That I'm aware of, But that doesn't mean there aren't
Speaker 6: any out there.
Speaker 1: So, Brian, what are the main arguments for and against
Speaker 1: cryptozoology as a legitimate science.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess part of the reason when when cryptozoologists
Speaker 6: are asked about this, they often put forward a number
Speaker 6: of examples, things like the okapi, a kind of a
Speaker 6: kind of antelope with long horns from Africa and a
Speaker 6: very interesting stripe body pattern, and of course the megamouth
Speaker 6: shark and the perennial cryptozoology showstop or the seilcan and
Speaker 6: they say, well, here are examples of animals which were
Speaker 6: not We're either thought to not exist or we're known
Speaker 6: only from the fossil record. And then but a band
Speaker 6: they find live ones. The problem with that argument is
Speaker 6: that cryptozoology had no part in the discovery of those animals.
Speaker 6: They're all discovered by accident by non cryptozoologists. The basic
Speaker 6: definition of what a cryptid is is a creature, which
Speaker 6: is a folkloric creature. It's known for folklore. There are
Speaker 6: a local ledge or stories or whatever that these things exist.
Speaker 6: And what you do is you grow up and you
Speaker 6: try to find out whether these stories had basis in reality.
Speaker 6: The problem with the Olcappy and the megamouth shark and
Speaker 6: the cela can't, just to name a few examples. Is
Speaker 6: they're not really mythological creatures. They were essentially unknown completely
Speaker 6: before they were found, so there really was no cryptozoological aspect. Now,
Speaker 6: the capy, I might be wrong on the ocapy may
Speaker 6: have had some Western folklore about it, but certainly not
Speaker 6: the megamouth shark or the felcn. They were just discovered.
Speaker 6: It's one day somebody comes around the corner and being
Speaker 6: there it is, you know, creatures that no one even
Speaker 6: suspected were there. Cryptids are creatures which are suspected of
Speaker 6: being there but which have not yet been proven.
Speaker 1: And if any cryptos religis have a favor responded to
Speaker 1: that observation.
Speaker 6: Not that I'm aware of, but the the pro part
Speaker 6: of the story is that there are creatures undoubtedly out
Speaker 6: there that we don't know of, and very little time
Speaker 6: goes by when new organisms are discovered. All the time,
Speaker 6: insects and birds and flowers and even fairly largish animals
Speaker 6: are still discovered on a fairly regular basis, but nobody
Speaker 6: gets really quite worked up about them because they don't
Speaker 6: usually have a popular mythological aspect to them.
Speaker 5: I have a question about your book in general. There's
Speaker 5: one thing that was missing from its two and forty
Speaker 5: eight pages. There's lots of references, there's lots of notes,
Speaker 5: but there are no illustrations or photographs.
Speaker 6: Can you explain what that is and what everybody complains about? Yes,
Speaker 6: and inisting together. Oh man, there's no pictures. It's not
Speaker 6: a coffee table book.
Speaker 5: Is that your defense? It's not a coffee table book.
Speaker 6: Well, the actual answer to that question is there were
Speaker 6: lots of pictures I wanted to use. I found a
Speaker 6: lot of really cool unknown pictures of Quover Krantz that
Speaker 6: the Smithsonian has found some other things, but there was
Speaker 6: a certain cost factor that the publishers didn't want to
Speaker 6: pay for the pay for the rights to use them.
Speaker 6: The image that's on the cover is from my own collection.
Speaker 6: That's from a Bickerstaff's Boston Almanac from the seventeen eighties,
Speaker 6: a drawing which looks for all the world like Bigfoot,
Speaker 6: but it's actually a crude copy of a famous illustration
Speaker 6: from the British the pioneering British private college Edward Tyson
Speaker 6: in his book Anatomy the Pigmies. But when I saw it.
Speaker 6: I said, oh, that's I gotta I gotta have that,
Speaker 6: and so we put on the cover.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, I'll pay for it. I'll forgive you for
Speaker 5: the for the for the lack of illustrations, because it
Speaker 5: is it is a damn fine book.
Speaker 6: But I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: I wish you had some some art in there. Maybe
Speaker 5: maybe the second edition.
Speaker 2: Well, if you do a sequel, I have some really good,
Speaker 2: clear pictures of Bigfoot if you need them.
Speaker 6: Okay, great, great, Yeah, books without pictures, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 6: And there were a number of people who originally were
Speaker 6: going to let me use photographs and artwork, but then
Speaker 6: change their minds.
Speaker 3: So okay. So we've talked a lot about the people.
Speaker 3: We've talked a lot about the history.
Speaker 2: What about, in particular the skeptics, Since this is kind
Speaker 2: of a show by skeptics, you talk a lot about
Speaker 2: the position that skeptics take on each of these people's work,
Speaker 2: and particularly in the Patterson case, for example, you talk
Speaker 2: about when Greg Long's book came out, how the skeptics
Speaker 2: dealt with that. Can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: how skepticism has informed or impacted the field of cryptology.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess it's the you know, it's the saying
Speaker 6: which you fight against. It's the thing which cryptosology fights
Speaker 6: against is skepticism, and it's a it's sort of a
Speaker 6: tired cliche now, but I think the only way that
Speaker 6: that skepticism is really going to change in any way
Speaker 6: is you have to prove beyond the shadow of doubt
Speaker 6: that these things are real. You have to bring it
Speaker 6: up body, live or dead. And that's the only way
Speaker 6: we're going to prove that these are real. It's the
Speaker 6: only way people will begin to believe them. I mean,
Speaker 6: I know that's a bit pedestrian, but there you are.
Speaker 6: All the photographs in the world are not gonna are
Speaker 6: not going to prove anything. You're not going to convince skeptics.
Speaker 6: You have to bring in some actual physical body parts,
Speaker 6: and you don't really need that much. I mean, the Gigantopithecus,
Speaker 6: which is the idol that Krantz believed that Bigfoot they
Speaker 6: evolved from, is really known by just a very few pieces,
Speaker 6: no post cranial material. It's just a few jaws and teeth.
Speaker 6: Yet it's completely accepted by the paleoorthropological community as having existed.
Speaker 5: You know, having known about Roger Patterson and his film,
Speaker 5: and reading both Greg Long's book and your stuff as well,
Speaker 5: it's my impression that Roger Patterson was kind of a dick.
Speaker 5: Is that of your impression?
Speaker 6: Sort of? I'm not sure if he was in you know,
Speaker 6: an Ange Learned eight, but he he wanted to succeed
Speaker 6: in Hollywood. He wanted to succeed in some way. He
Speaker 6: was born into a rural background, had spent time, had
Speaker 6: joined the US Army, had gone overseas, seen a bit
Speaker 6: of the world, and he wanted to expand his life
Speaker 6: beyond the fairly narrow confines of what he had been
Speaker 6: born into. He was a man with a lot of ambition,
Speaker 6: and he winds up with this film and he thinks
Speaker 6: that is going to sort of take him where he
Speaker 6: wants to go. One of the things that attracted me
Speaker 6: to this whole field is that these are all tragic guys.
Speaker 6: In all my writing, from my first book on, I've
Speaker 6: always been attracted to tragic characters, people who try to
Speaker 6: prove something that everyone else says can't be proved, or
Speaker 6: to show something is there that everyone else says it's
Speaker 6: not there. And that's that's why I start the book
Speaker 6: off with the line that this is a story about
Speaker 6: dreams that don't come true. These are all guys who
Speaker 6: and some women too, who put their whole lives into
Speaker 6: this thing and put all their money down on one
Speaker 6: throw of the dice and came up, what's the bad one?
Speaker 6: Snake eyes? The snake eye is the bad one going
Speaker 6: through wherever the bad one is. And yet, despite everyone
Speaker 6: telling them that that what they're doing is a waste
Speaker 6: of time, that they're they're they're chasing after something which
Speaker 6: is not there, they don't care. They just plow forward anyway.
Speaker 6: They are so committed to this, they're so wanting to
Speaker 6: do this, and in the end they failed. There is
Speaker 6: a very popular kind of plot device or narrative in
Speaker 6: storytelling where you have the hero, the scientist, who spends
Speaker 6: his life trying to prove that this thing or that
Speaker 6: thing doesn't exist. And they're they're ridiculed and there and
Speaker 6: there at their crackpots, and they're crazy, and they're this
Speaker 6: and they're that, And on their deathbed they're lying there
Speaker 6: and and just before they picked their last breath, some
Speaker 6: young acolyte comes bursting in, say, professor, they found it.
Speaker 6: You were right all along. Now everyone knows you were right,
Speaker 6: and oh the guy dies happy. But this is a
Speaker 6: story where these guys were literally on their deathbeds and
Speaker 6: no one comes bursting in, No one cares. It never
Speaker 6: gets proven. They go to their grades believing that these
Speaker 6: things were real, but but knowing that no one believed
Speaker 6: them that they were real.
Speaker 3: We like to ask our guests every time.
Speaker 2: Uh, we've only had two guests repeats so far, but uh,
Speaker 2: what's your favorite monster?
Speaker 6: My favorite? Oh, we're wolves obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, there, I didn't know asked you last time
Speaker 2: or not we added that question in uh kind of
Speaker 2: then we'll go back and check our record.
Speaker 6: Well, they're they're they're the great tragic monsters. Sure, I
Speaker 6: mean I think there are werewolves. I want to make
Speaker 6: that clear. I don't believe there are actually are werewolves,
Speaker 6: but you know, from a from a mythological point of view,
Speaker 6: I we sort of scided with the werewolves, thinking vampires.
Speaker 2: They are getting a lot more hot romance book action lately.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, a lot of teen girls apparently like the
Speaker 6: idea of a big, muscled, hairy guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so maybe we should change our question to our
Speaker 2: you team Jacob.
Speaker 3: Our team effort, I abstain on such a question.
Speaker 5: So not just teen girls, right, Blake?
Speaker 3: Right? No, no, no, no, no, no, it's not. Apparently it's
Speaker 3: also housewives.
Speaker 2: So, uh, I noticed that when I'm in the romance
Speaker 2: book book and Blake okay, yes, yes, I read vampire
Speaker 2: romans and uh and werewolves.
Speaker 1: Well I didn't know about that, but you did, so
Speaker 1: that you go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so you nailed it.
Speaker 2: Okay, she said, A my, You know, I don't just
Speaker 2: do ademmy with my monster research.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's well, thank you so much for coming back and
Speaker 2: talking to us again.
Speaker 6: My pleasure.
Speaker 3: We'll cut out the.
Speaker 6: Art.
Speaker 5: I didn't really say that, that's right, I never.
Speaker 6: Had anywhere you want.
Speaker 5: To you thanks a lot.
Speaker 2: We'll put at our show notes and hopefully you'll have
Speaker 2: great success with this.
Speaker 3: And again, thank you so much for being a part
Speaker 3: of our show.
Speaker 6: Pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot. All right.
Speaker 2: Monster Monster Talk is proud to be sponsored by Skeptic Magazine.
Speaker 2: Today's episode was about the history of the Hunt for
Speaker 2: Sasquatch and featured doctor Brian Regal discussing his newest book,
Speaker 2: Searching for Sasquatch, a link to which will be in
Speaker 2: our show notes. I'm Blake Smith, and my co hosts
Speaker 2: today were Ben Radford and doctor Karen Stoles. Now Monster
Speaker 2: Talks theme music is by Peach Stealing Monkeys.
Speaker 3: Thank you for.
Speaker 4: Want to stay abreast of the latest from Skeptic Magazine
Speaker 4: and the Skeptic Society. Want cutting edge skeptical articles delivered
Speaker 4: straight to your inbox every week, then subscribe to e Skeptic,
Speaker 4: the free electronic newsletter of the Skeptic Society. Visit skeptic
Speaker 4: dot com to sign up.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to buy any scale. I got all
Speaker 2: excited last night. I on the scale and it said
Speaker 2: I had weighed ten pounds less, and I was like, fantastic,
Speaker 2: and you know I'm a skeptic. So I got off
Speaker 2: the scale and got back on again, and it said
Speaker 2: you've lost ten pounds. I was like, fuck, hey, this
Speaker 2: is fantastic. And I got off again and got back
Speaker 2: on again. It says you lost five pounds, and I'm
Speaker 2: like you scale,