Speaker 1: Big food and be on with Cliff and Bubo. These
Speaker 1: guys are your favorites, so like to say subscribe and
Speaker 1: raid it live star s and me.
Speaker 2: Grates on us today.
Speaker 3: And listening watching Lin always keep its watching.
Speaker 2: And now you're hosts Cliff Barrickman and James Bubo Fay,
Speaker 2: Hey Bobes. What's happening?
Speaker 4: Hey Cliff? How much? How's it going?
Speaker 2: It's going alright, just be another beautiful day hanging out.
Speaker 2: Gonna talk to a great guest today about a great
Speaker 2: subject I'm kind of excited about. But we should probably
Speaker 2: let Darby talk about that. So why don't we just
Speaker 2: bring Darby on and we'll start talking. How you doing Derby?
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm doing well?
Speaker 2: How are you good? All right? Pushing forward? So thank
Speaker 2: you so much for coming on, and you have such
Speaker 2: an exciting project here. But before we get going on that,
Speaker 2: I was looking up. I was gonna try to familiarize
Speaker 2: myself with your biography. And the nearest I correct me
Speaker 2: if I'm wrong, but the nearest I can figure is
Speaker 2: you're kind of You're a librarian of some sort. You're
Speaker 2: a research of a variety of subjects, and it seems
Speaker 2: like you're a facilitator more than say an instructor or
Speaker 2: something like that. Is that is that correct? That a
Speaker 2: good way to categorize you. Well, I am an instructor
Speaker 2: as well. Yeah, I'm on faculty at North Carolina State University.
Speaker 2: My primary faculty appointment is as a librarian. But as
Speaker 2: as you know, Cliff, not not doing the sorts of
Speaker 2: things that most people think of when you think of
Speaker 2: a librarian. But also I do teach, and I am
Speaker 2: very much involved with research and my work as a librarian,
Speaker 2: especially for many many years, my job has been to
Speaker 2: help put together and support highly interdisciplinary research teams to
Speaker 2: tackle really tough questions. So to put together the right
Speaker 2: people and to help translate between feel in such a
Speaker 2: way that people can deal with real world issues that
Speaker 2: require expertise that's coming from a number of different areas.
Speaker 2: Now that is this is this is your role here
Speaker 2: needed Because the disciplines don't tend to speak to one another.
Speaker 3: That is sometimes the case. Experts in different disciplines oftentimes
Speaker 3: either don't know how to speak to one another or
Speaker 3: sometimes don't realize that they're asking questions along similar lines
Speaker 3: or about similar subjects in ways where they could be
Speaker 3: working together and getting further that way. Sometimes they don't
Speaker 3: know how to speak one another's language, and so I
Speaker 3: play this role of matchmaking and translating and facilitating.
Speaker 2: For you. You must be kind of familiar with a
Speaker 2: huge number of disciplines then to even know what's going
Speaker 2: on to any of them, realize that there might be
Speaker 2: connections that could be made between them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much so. In fact, I'm usually the person
Speaker 3: in the room who knows the most about everything and
Speaker 3: the least about any given subject.
Speaker 2: I am also one of those people, which is why
Speaker 2: I became an elementary school teacher. I was pretty good
Speaker 2: at everything, but not really great at anything in your
Speaker 2: career path or in your personal life, because obviously these
Speaker 2: things intersect on a regular basis for everyone. What led
Speaker 2: you down the path to sasquatch Well?
Speaker 3: I had been teaching courses for a number of years,
Speaker 3: and particularly been teaching courses about how science works. Not
Speaker 3: just the sorts of things that say you might have
Speaker 3: taught your students in elementary school of how science says
Speaker 3: it works, no hypothesis and testing and experimentation, those sorts
Speaker 3: of things, but also culturally speaking, how science works. What
Speaker 3: are the economic structures that underlie scientific research. What are
Speaker 3: the ways that people communicate with one another, How do
Speaker 3: scientists communicate with the general public as well as with
Speaker 3: one another, with funding agencies, with government, with industry, and
Speaker 3: how science scientific discoveries are applied in the real world.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot that goes into science that oftentimes
Speaker 3: even scientists are not fully aware of themselves. And so
Speaker 3: I've been teaching classes on that for a great many years,
Speaker 3: and I came upon this idea that I thought would
Speaker 3: be really interesting of looking at fringe sciences or people
Speaker 3: doing scientific work in areas that are oftentimes not considered
Speaker 3: science that might be might be referred to as pseudoscience
Speaker 3: or dismissed in that way, And I thought it would
Speaker 3: be very interesting to teach a course and this is
Speaker 3: what I started doing that looked at some of these
Speaker 3: areas and ask these questions of why are these subjects
Speaker 3: dismissed by quote unquote mainstream science or the general public.
Speaker 3: Are they being dismissed for good reason? What can that
Speaker 3: teach us about the ways that we make decisions, the
Speaker 3: ways that cultural aspects play into our scientific questions and practices.
Speaker 3: And so I started engaging with some of these fields,
Speaker 3: including the field of sasquatch research or sasquatch investigation, and
Speaker 3: it was very very interesting to me, and one of
Speaker 3: the things that I really wanted to do with my
Speaker 3: students was to challenge them to look at the very
Speaker 3: best evidence in each of these areas, because, as you know,
Speaker 3: there are lots of people making lots of claims, and
Speaker 3: you can find lots of silly things in any of
Speaker 3: these fringe or paranormal or edge science fields. You can
Speaker 3: find plenty of things to make fun of, but it's
Speaker 3: much more challenging to deal with the best potential evidence
Speaker 3: in these areas and see what it says. Because any
Speaker 3: potential evidence is actually evidence of something. So the question is, really,
Speaker 3: let's figure out what it is.
Speaker 4: Do you have a list of the best evidence that
Speaker 4: you're going to focus on right now?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think that there are a number
Speaker 3: of areas where there are interesting questions to be asked
Speaker 3: with regard to potential sasquatch investigation. In my current study,
Speaker 3: the one that I'm leading with my colleagues now that
Speaker 3: we're talking about today, I really wanted to look at
Speaker 3: the physical biological evidence that could potentially yield DNA, and
Speaker 3: the reason for that is that DNA is really the
Speaker 3: gold standard for the establishment of a species. And that
Speaker 3: is of course one of the big questions, or one
Speaker 3: of the big hypotheses, that the sasquatch phenomenon could potentially
Speaker 3: be explained at least in large part by a unique
Speaker 3: biological species. You don't know unless you look at the evidence,
Speaker 3: unless you examine the evidence what it is. And that's
Speaker 3: something that I found was that there were people who
Speaker 3: were finding hairs, that were people who were finding other
Speaker 3: sorts of physical samples, and they were asking me, where
Speaker 3: can I send to have this tested? How do I
Speaker 3: how do I go about that? And I really found
Speaker 3: that I couldn't find a commercial labor or a university
Speaker 3: or any any anywhere really that I could really feel
Speaker 3: confident saying, yeah, this is the place to send this
Speaker 3: if you have a potential unknown And so that's why
Speaker 3: I got together a team and created that myself with
Speaker 3: his study.
Speaker 2: So this is a university sponsored study, Is that correct? Well,
Speaker 2: it's university sponsored in the sense that most studies are
Speaker 2: university sponsored. What that means really is that in this case,
Speaker 2: there are there are four of US faculty colleagues who
Speaker 2: have who are collaborating on this, and who have set
Speaker 2: the scope and the parameters of the study. And we
Speaker 2: are all on faculty at NC State University, so it's
Speaker 2: university sponsored in that sense. The other thing is is
Speaker 2: that it is a it is an official study. And
Speaker 2: so I've gone through the paperwork. I had to go
Speaker 2: through what we call Institutional Review Board approval, which is
Speaker 2: our ethics committee that make sure that when we do
Speaker 2: any research that we are treating both both humans and
Speaker 2: animals with respect and care and properly ethically. So you
Speaker 2: had to fill out probably a mountain of paperwork for
Speaker 2: this thing and then somehow still squeeze it back, squeeze
Speaker 2: it through rather knowing that this is kind of a
Speaker 2: sasquatch study, but you couldn't put sasquatch in the forefront, right,
Speaker 2: So how did you get around that? You know this
Speaker 2: is and.
Speaker 3: This isn't a sasquatch study, and what we're really interested
Speaker 3: in in this case and this is what the name
Speaker 3: of the study is. It's a study of allegedly morphologically
Speaker 3: anomalous physical samples. So what does that mean? Basically, that
Speaker 3: means this is a study of biological specimens that people
Speaker 3: have found that they claim have unusual traits or unusual appearances,
Speaker 3: or something unusual about them, and that is what we're
Speaker 3: studying now. This comes from my own hearing and talking
Speaker 3: with folks, particularly in the Bigfoot community, who have found samples,
Speaker 3: for example, found hair samples that folks who are actually
Speaker 3: very good at identifying hair of known species in North
Speaker 3: America cannot identify. There are certain properties to these hairs
Speaker 3: that they reportedly have in common, and yet they don't
Speaker 3: look like those of known species. That's an interesting question.
Speaker 3: What are these So these are the types of questions
Speaker 3: that we're trying to answer. What are these things? Every
Speaker 3: physical sample that will be submitted to us is a
Speaker 3: sample of something we don't know what it is unless
Speaker 3: we look at it. Why wouldn't we want to look
Speaker 3: at these?
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 2: Bogo will be right back after these messages. So three
Speaker 2: to six months doesn't seem like a long time right
Speaker 2: in Bigfoot Land. It's not very long because we've been
Speaker 2: looking for sasquatches for decades and decades and decades. But
Speaker 2: when you think about what can happen in three to
Speaker 2: six months, Like, what would you do in three to
Speaker 2: six months? I'm going to give me six months go
Speaker 2: squad of course, of course, And how much do you
Speaker 2: think is going to get done during that time in
Speaker 2: squatch and you're going to see one in six months?
Speaker 2: Probably not, But in three to six months, what you
Speaker 2: can see if you're not going to see a sasquatch
Speaker 2: is thicker, fuller hair regrown from Hymns our sponsor. Hymns
Speaker 2: not bad for just three to six months.
Speaker 4: What if you start using Hymns now in six months,
Speaker 4: just imagine that thick, full crop up there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because Hymns will give you a convenient access to a
Speaker 2: range of hair loss treatments that work all from the
Speaker 2: comfort of your couch.
Speaker 4: They make it pretty simple, man. They use real doctors,
Speaker 4: it's clinically proven ingredients on they use like finesteride and monoxaville.
Speaker 2: And I love that. I had no doctor visits because
Speaker 2: first of all, doctors, who wants to go see a doctor?
Speaker 2: Nothing personal doctors. But also you make an appointment now
Speaker 2: you get in August or something forget that. So this
Speaker 2: process is simple and one online. And I know you
Speaker 2: have access to the internet because you're listening to us
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 4: You can pick how you want to do it, like chewbowles,
Speaker 4: oral spray, serum treatments, whatever, whatever you want. I mean,
Speaker 4: they can work with you in customersage, with your preferences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it could be a one time thing, it
Speaker 2: could be ongoing care. No insurance is needed at all,
Speaker 2: and it's all at one low price and that covers
Speaker 2: everything from these treatments to the ongoing care if you
Speaker 2: so choose.
Speaker 4: Well, nonway, I said, the proofson the pudding, and there's
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of subscribers that trust it and you
Speaker 4: give it positive reviews. So there you go.
Speaker 2: There's your pudding, thick hairy pudding. Search your free online
Speaker 2: visit today at hymns dot com slash beyond.
Speaker 4: That's hi ms dot com slash beyond for your personalized
Speaker 4: hair loss treatment options.
Speaker 2: Hymns dot com slash beyond results vary based on studies
Speaker 2: of topical and oral monoxidal and finasteride Prescription products required
Speaker 2: an online consultation with a healthcare provider who will determine
Speaker 2: if prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply. See website for full
Speaker 2: details and important safety information.
Speaker 3: So at this point what we've done. We just launched
Speaker 3: the online intake survey at the tail end of May,
Speaker 3: so we started. We've had a trickle of offers coming
Speaker 3: in thus far, and it's just started to pick up
Speaker 3: over the last couple of weeks. So at this stage,
Speaker 3: as of this recording, I am starting to reach out
Speaker 3: to those folks, starting to arrange brief interviews with them.
Speaker 3: I have some questions to learn and make sure that
Speaker 3: we understand a bit more about the samples and the
Speaker 3: circumstances under which they were found, and then at that
Speaker 3: point we'll be giving those folks instructions as to how
Speaker 3: to physically submit the samples that we're prioritizing at this time.
Speaker 3: So I imagine that certainly by early September or so,
Speaker 3: I imagine we will have the first sam bulls in
Speaker 3: hand on campus and in the lab.
Speaker 2: So let's think about it from a user perspective first,
Speaker 2: and then we'll talk about it from the mechanical side.
Speaker 2: I guess your side of things. So if someone likes say,
Speaker 2: I found sasquatch footprints and they went by a tree,
Speaker 2: and there were a number of strange hairs on the tree,
Speaker 2: and I collected them. Now of course, I'm perhaps slightly
Speaker 2: better equipped than your average Joe in the forest. I
Speaker 2: would put these underneath the microscope and take a look
Speaker 2: at them. If I couldn't easily identify them as bear
Speaker 2: deer or anything like that, and I wanted to submit them,
Speaker 2: what would I do? Well, what you would.
Speaker 3: Do is you would you would go to the intake
Speaker 3: survey form that's online.
Speaker 2: Okay, And by the way, we will have that. We
Speaker 2: will have that link in the show notes below, so
Speaker 2: anybody who wants to take a look at it, whether
Speaker 2: you have samples or not, the link will be in
Speaker 2: the show notes below.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for that. I appreciate y'all getting
Speaker 3: the word out. So the first thing you would do
Speaker 3: is fill out well, I mean, the worst thing you
Speaker 3: would do, obviously is collect the sample. And folks ask me, hey,
Speaker 3: what's the best way to collect the sample? And there
Speaker 3: are certainly lots of folks out there who describe good
Speaker 3: techniques for sample collection, But the most important things to
Speaker 3: do are to try to collect the sample if you can,
Speaker 3: in a sterile way, so with sterile gloves or sterile instruments.
Speaker 3: Most samples, if they're hair or something like that, something
Speaker 3: that isn't moist wet, you know, like blood or something,
Speaker 3: but hairs. Most of the samples that folks are offering
Speaker 3: thus far, it's best to collect those into a paper
Speaker 3: envelope and stick them in the refrigerator or the freezer.
Speaker 3: So that's the best way to store samples. Collect and
Speaker 3: store samples. So then you would fill out the online survey,
Speaker 3: at which point, like I say, I'll be reaching out
Speaker 3: to people to then schedule a brief interview by phone
Speaker 3: or on the computer or what have you. And at
Speaker 3: that point we'll be asking folks, will be identifying, you know,
Speaker 3: which samples we want to get in some priority order,
Speaker 3: and we'll be testing those. Anyone who submits a sample
Speaker 3: in that form can choose whether they want to be
Speaker 3: identified publicly identified with their sample or whether they want
Speaker 3: to be completely anonymous, because some people want to be
Speaker 3: identified and some people just want to know what something
Speaker 3: is and they don't want anybody to know that they
Speaker 3: had anything to do with sasquatch. Either one is fine.
Speaker 3: Under no circumstances will we be disclosing specific locations where
Speaker 3: samples were acquired. Will be giving general locations, but everybody
Speaker 3: who submits a sample will receive the results for their sample,
Speaker 3: and what sort of timeline would that be. Well, here's
Speaker 3: the thing, Cliff, real science is not a speedy process.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying not to promise a specific timeline to
Speaker 3: folks other than we'll do it as well. We will
Speaker 3: do these things as quickly as we can. But that
Speaker 3: could depend on a large number of factors. So if
Speaker 3: the sample, if the sample that's submitted is something that
Speaker 3: we come in, we look at it, we run a
Speaker 3: test and oh it pops up. Oh this is a
Speaker 3: black bear, and it's very clearly black bear. And you know,
Speaker 3: you may get a response in a matter of a
Speaker 3: couple of months. If it's a sample that is more
Speaker 3: degraded that we have were having trouble pulling sequencing information
Speaker 3: out of, we may be working with it for a while.
Speaker 3: It really just depends on so many things that are
Speaker 3: beyond our control or the control of the people submitting
Speaker 3: these things as to how long it could take. But
Speaker 3: I do promise you you will receive response, You will
Speaker 3: receive a report for your sample.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would have to be extraordinarily careful, of course,
Speaker 2: because if you say, for example, it happened a sasquatch
Speaker 2: hair is submitted, it's in good shape, it passes the
Speaker 2: microscopic analysis, and the DNA comes back, is what the
Speaker 2: hell is this? Right? Even then it would have to
Speaker 2: be tested and retested because a false positive in this
Speaker 2: particular scenario could sink everything. It could just make the
Speaker 2: subject and the study just a laughing stock. So you'd
Speaker 2: have to be extraordinarily careful and just very very conservative
Speaker 2: in how you assess the samples. Especially if it seems
Speaker 2: that we're onto the right thing for the first time.
Speaker 3: Well absolutely, and if that is, if that is a
Speaker 3: finding of the study, that's one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: one of the reasons that I have recruited the team
Speaker 3: that I have, because these folks are absolutely tremendous and
Speaker 3: this team is when you receive a report, you're going
Speaker 3: to know that that's what it is. If what you said,
Speaker 3: If if there is a sasquatch out there to be
Speaker 3: found and there are samples submitted and we find that, well, uh,
Speaker 3: this team is going to you know, very carefully document
Speaker 3: that and present that again if that's if that's the finding.
Speaker 3: You know, at this stage we haven't looked at any samples.
Speaker 3: The salient point here is is that we don't know
Speaker 3: what the samples that will be receiving are until we
Speaker 3: look at them. And that's what makes this really exciting
Speaker 3: is that there are a lot of rather interesting sounding
Speaker 3: samples out there that have not been looked at by
Speaker 3: a credible scientific team, and so I'm really excited to
Speaker 3: see what our results are.
Speaker 4: So, so there's four of you on the team. Who
Speaker 4: are there are three people with their credentials.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there are well, there are four of us
Speaker 3: on the core team, myself and then two geneticist, genomicists,
Speaker 3: and one microscopist so microscope expert, think of that. And
Speaker 3: so this is the core team. And this team also
Speaker 3: has a lot of expertise in forensics and wildlife forensics
Speaker 3: as well. So this is the core team. But the
Speaker 3: fun thing about this is is I also have a
Speaker 3: whole host of experts in particular areas who are ready
Speaker 3: to come on and join us if and when we
Speaker 3: find an interesting specimen in their area of expertise. And
Speaker 3: these are faculty researchers not just from NC State, but
Speaker 3: from across the country. So, for example, I have someone
Speaker 3: on board who is a physical anthropologist and an expert
Speaker 3: in all things osteo. So if a bone or tooth
Speaker 3: sample that is interesting is submitted for this study, she
Speaker 3: is ready to jump on board and get involved and
Speaker 3: really excited about it. But again, if we don't have
Speaker 3: something in her area of expertise, well she's going to
Speaker 3: stay in the bigfoot closet for now.
Speaker 4: For that genome, for doing the full genome. YEA, you
Speaker 4: always hear stuff like last time we talked to Meldery,
Speaker 4: we said about four hundred and thirty four hundred and
Speaker 4: forty thousand for a full genome sequencing? Is that like,
Speaker 4: is us go asked about your budget, like how it
Speaker 4: got approve that conmerce they give you, and then like,
Speaker 4: when you hear those high numbers, is that going to
Speaker 4: be cut way out? Since these guys are on faculty staff,
Speaker 4: like they're already paid through the university, How does that work?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, But specifically Meldrum said in the six figure range,
Speaker 2: and most of that would be for personnel.
Speaker 3: Right, and so that is probably pretty reasonable to expect
Speaker 3: if you were going to go out and hire and
Speaker 3: hire the work done by someone who might know what
Speaker 3: they're doing. Now, in this case, since we have the
Speaker 3: we have the machines, on campus that are availed to us,
Speaker 3: where we can do nuclear DNA sequencing for those samples
Speaker 3: that may warrant it. Then you know, we have an
Speaker 3: in house price schedule that looks quite a bit different
Speaker 3: than that, to be honest, and because my colleagues are
Speaker 3: the ones with the expertise. Not having to hire my
Speaker 3: colleagues to work on our own study, that actually reduces
Speaker 3: the cost dramatically.
Speaker 4: How many you'd run, like further with your budget you
Speaker 4: have for the year, like, how many samples do you run,
Speaker 4: like twenty or fifty or.
Speaker 3: Well, see, this is the thing. We don't have a
Speaker 3: set budget for this project. And the reason we don't
Speaker 3: is that there are quite a few different needs and
Speaker 3: quite a few different goals that this project can potentially
Speaker 3: help us to achieve. One of those that's really important
Speaker 3: is training of PhD students in genetics. So our PhD
Speaker 3: students in genetics who work in the labs of my
Speaker 3: two colleagues who are collaborators, they need to teach these
Speaker 3: students anyhow, and they see this as a really interesting
Speaker 3: way of having the students work with true unknowns or
Speaker 3: with unusual samples, and so this is a great way
Speaker 3: for them to be able to train their PhD students,
Speaker 3: like I say, which they need to do anyway, Right,
Speaker 3: they need to be studying samples of something, So why
Speaker 3: not the samples that are associated with this study. In addition,
Speaker 3: the team we've talked about ideas that might help push
Speaker 3: forensic understanding forward, So that might help develop new forensic
Speaker 3: techniques that could be that could be useful again, not
Speaker 3: just for this study or for this topic, but could
Speaker 3: be very useful in the field for all kinds of things.
Speaker 3: And so, and these are just a couple of examples.
Speaker 3: There are some other things that some other outcomes that
Speaker 3: we are imagining from the types of samples that we'll
Speaker 3: be looking at. So a lot of the costs of
Speaker 3: the study are costs that are already being born. Anyhow,
Speaker 3: if you have to you know, if you have to
Speaker 3: have a PhD student studying a sample of something, well
Speaker 3: it's going to be the same cost whether studying a
Speaker 3: sample from this study or a sample from some other study.
Speaker 4: Right, How hard a sell is it to the university
Speaker 4: to fund this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's interesting. I mean again, it's not a
Speaker 3: funding issue per se, because the funding is is the
Speaker 3: funding that is already happening through the labs.
Speaker 4: Like the institutional reputation that they're worried about.
Speaker 3: That there is not really a concern with institutional reputation
Speaker 3: because of the way that we are framing the study again,
Speaker 3: because we're looking at this, We're looking at samples. We're
Speaker 3: looking at specimens that are something right, and it's a
Speaker 3: matter of figuring out what they are. We are not
Speaker 3: going out there. This is not a study about looking
Speaker 3: for Bigfoot. This is a study of looking at seemingly
Speaker 3: unusual physical samples to determine what they are. Now we
Speaker 3: know that a number of these samples are coming from
Speaker 3: the Bigfoot community. They are the result of folks having
Speaker 3: an experience they feel as a sasquatch and then finding
Speaker 3: these specimens in connection with that. Well, there's still interesting specimens,
Speaker 3: so we certainly don't want to be prejudiced against those specimens.
Speaker 3: In fact, I think, if anything, the experiences that people
Speaker 3: are having in conjunction with finding these types of samples
Speaker 3: make them all the more interesting to me for us
Speaker 3: to take a look at.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after these messages. So we talked
Speaker 2: a little bit about the user's side, like someone like
Speaker 2: me who might get a sample and want to submit it.
Speaker 2: We talked a little bit about the budget and how
Speaker 2: you got this past the gatekeepers at the university, and
Speaker 2: basically how you sold the idea, which is brilliant. Of course,
Speaker 2: then it was fantastic because working with unknowns that could
Speaker 2: yield a real fantastic mind altering a discovery is just brilliant.
Speaker 2: But what does it look like from your side, like
Speaker 2: your team, When after I fill out, I fill out
Speaker 2: the computer survey thing, my name, this and that, whatever,
Speaker 2: I still have the sample, you get that email. What
Speaker 2: happens in from that? And we'll just use an example
Speaker 2: of a hair because obviously if you have a bone
Speaker 2: or a flesh or blood tissue sample, it would be
Speaker 2: probably a slightly different process. But we'll just deal with
Speaker 2: hair for now because that's probably I'm guessing that'll probably
Speaker 2: be what the majority of the samples you get or
Speaker 2: be hair samples. So what would that look like from
Speaker 2: your end, from when you receive that email to when
Speaker 2: I don't know, when you put the sample down. I
Speaker 2: guess I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, again, we have to prioritize the samples that we're
Speaker 3: looking at.
Speaker 2: How would you prioritize something like that?
Speaker 3: We don't have a Folks ask me, you know, what's
Speaker 3: your formula. We don't have a set formula for that.
Speaker 3: But certainly what we're interested in is we're interested in
Speaker 3: looking at First of all, we're interested in looking at
Speaker 3: samples that appear to be the most interesting and that
Speaker 3: appear to be the freshest, most likely to yield genetic information. So,
Speaker 3: for example, if you were to offer us a hair
Speaker 3: that you found twenty years ago and it's been in
Speaker 3: your garage, that's going to be a much lower priority
Speaker 3: than someone who's who says, hey, here's a hare that
Speaker 3: I found last week, and by the way, I put
Speaker 3: it under a microscope, and it's got a little bit
Speaker 3: of flesh attached to it, and it doesn't look like
Speaker 3: a known animal.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, but now the user, the users aren't going
Speaker 2: to be able to determine that. That would have to
Speaker 2: be I mean, on your end, someone like me or something. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: I've got a microscope. I'm that level of nerd. But
Speaker 2: the average Joe who may have seen a sasquatch and
Speaker 2: wanted to submit a sample. They wouldn't know that. So
Speaker 2: you just get a hair and a story essentially on
Speaker 2: an email.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, and to give you an idea. So there's
Speaker 3: a a sample that was offered to us that sounds
Speaker 3: interesting because the person offering it reported seeing a sasquatch
Speaker 3: one night. He said it was peeking out at him
Speaker 3: from behind a pine tree. He went back the next
Speaker 3: morning and in the sap of the pine tree found
Speaker 3: a hair stuck there. And so he collected that. And
Speaker 3: that was just several months ago. That, to me, is
Speaker 3: much more interesting than this is not one that was offered,
Speaker 3: but this was something that somebody talked with me about
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago. Someone who says, hey, I
Speaker 3: have a clump of hair that I think is sasquatch hair.
Speaker 3: And I say, well, what makes you think it's sasquatch hair?
Speaker 3: Why is it interesting to you? And they say, well,
Speaker 3: I found it stuck fifteen feet up in a tree.
Speaker 3: And what else would be fifteen feet up in a tree?
Speaker 3: Could it be the hair of a sasquatch? Sure, of
Speaker 3: course you don't know until you look at it. But
Speaker 3: of course there are plenty of other things, you know,
Speaker 3: There are things that climb trees, there is wind, there
Speaker 3: are birds that use clumps of hairs nesting material, and
Speaker 3: they can fall down. You know, there are lots of
Speaker 3: ways that hair could get fifteen feet up in a tree.
Speaker 3: So again we have to look at and it'll depend
Speaker 3: on how many how many things are offered to us,
Speaker 3: but we have to be able to put these in
Speaker 3: some sort of priority order, because we're not looking to
Speaker 3: just test any and every hair that someone finds in the.
Speaker 2: Forest, of course not so say you have a good sample,
Speaker 2: say that this person who saw the sasquatch and there's
Speaker 2: a hair associated with it, or you know, you get
Speaker 2: another sample that seems very promising to you. What is
Speaker 2: the process at that point I'm assuming, I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: just guessing here to you'd probably put under microscope first,
Speaker 2: talk to your microscope dude or a gal, and then
Speaker 2: and then move forward from there. Or what actually does
Speaker 2: happen up to the point.
Speaker 3: Absolutely well, the first thing is obviously, yes, we will
Speaker 3: be looking at it microscopically. If we if we get
Speaker 3: a specimen in and it looks you know, like for example,
Speaker 3: this this hair that was found in the in the
Speaker 3: sap of the pine tree. If we put it under
Speaker 3: a microscope and it looks exactly like the hair of
Speaker 3: a gray squirrel, which are common to that area and
Speaker 3: climb up trees all the time. If it looks exactly
Speaker 3: like that, it's a classic presentation. Well we've identified it
Speaker 3: at that point. We don't need to move on to
Speaker 3: genetic analysis to say it's a grey squirrel. But then
Speaker 3: you know what we'll be doing is we'll be looking
Speaker 3: at these things in step wise, a step wise way throughout,
Speaker 3: so we'll be looking first. We'll be looking first at
Speaker 3: the morphology, so again the appearance of these through the microscope,
Speaker 3: seeing what is readily identified. If we find things that
Speaker 3: aren't readily identified, or that look somewhat unusual or really unusual,
Speaker 3: or whatever it may be, that's when we'll move on
Speaker 3: to genetic analysis. And we're going to proceed with that
Speaker 3: very cautiously because one of the things that we don't
Speaker 3: want to do is we don't want to be destructive
Speaker 3: any more than we need to be. We don't want
Speaker 3: to be destructive of the samples that we receive. And
Speaker 3: this is one thing that told me that I had
Speaker 3: recruited the right team. Was at our very first team
Speaker 3: meeting back when. It was one of my colleagues who
Speaker 3: said we to treat every sample that comes to us
Speaker 3: as precious, because these samples are going to be precious
Speaker 3: to the people who are submitting them. And I was like, wow,
Speaker 3: I couldn't have said that better myself. And so we're
Speaker 3: going to be proceeding very cautiously in the least destructive
Speaker 3: ways possible, and we're going to be we will go
Speaker 3: as far with the analysis as we need to go
Speaker 3: in order to determine what the sample is. So with
Speaker 3: a hair sample, will you know, certainly looking at it microscopically,
Speaker 3: first looking at the mitochondrial DNA, and then again, if warranted,
Speaker 3: taking that to the step of looking at the nuclear DNA,
Speaker 3: looking at the full genome.
Speaker 2: So with hair samples, and again, correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: I don't know very much in general, But there's no
Speaker 2: there's no nuclear DNA, there's just mitochondrial DNA. Do you
Speaker 2: think that, unless, of course you have the follicle? I remember, correctly.
Speaker 2: But let's just say that you have a partial hair sample,
Speaker 2: and it could the mitochondrial be enough to indicate the
Speaker 2: presence of a new species potentially?
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, I you know, I do think that we
Speaker 3: would we would want to try to have multiple samples
Speaker 3: certainly where we would find that. I do think that
Speaker 3: having like one sample with mitochondrial DNA was different would
Speaker 3: be really really interesting, but probably not enough, you know,
Speaker 3: certainly to establish a species. You know, the interesting thing
Speaker 3: is is that you know, when people submit a hair sample,
Speaker 3: oftentimes yes, we don't know will that sample have the
Speaker 3: follicle in it? Will that sample actually have a skin
Speaker 3: cell still attached where where where it came out of
Speaker 3: the body, And certainly the skin cell would contain a
Speaker 3: complete genetic sequence, So again you're you're absolutely right. Hair
Speaker 3: is generally not going to give us a full genome,
Speaker 3: but a sample that one thinks of as hair could
Speaker 3: potentially do so.
Speaker 2: And I guess it doesn't come down to one sample
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, because this is science
Speaker 2: and you want repeatability, and certainly sasquatches are real animals,
Speaker 2: and people start sending you a flood of hairs, a
Speaker 2: very small percentage of those hairs will probably represent sasquatch.
Speaker 2: And I'm assuming by comparing the results of these anomalous samples,
Speaker 2: that's where the real, the real positive affirmation is really
Speaker 2: going to lie is the repeatability of the same novel sequences.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? If we just get one novel sequence again, that's
Speaker 3: a really fascinating result. That would be that alone would
Speaker 3: be enough to keep us looking and looking and looking. Perhaps,
Speaker 3: but yes, it's it's the idea of having multiple of that,
Speaker 3: and so in an ideal world, at a minimum, I think,
Speaker 3: if you're if you're if if the idea is, if
Speaker 3: you're asking me, what would it take to establish a species,
Speaker 3: I think that actually as few as say, three samples
Speaker 3: coming from three different locations but that share the same
Speaker 3: novel sequence, I would think that that that in and
Speaker 3: of itself, something as simple as that simple ha, right,
Speaker 3: something as you know, as as little as three samples
Speaker 3: could could be enough to essentially prove species.
Speaker 2: Fantastic. Now, one of the things that we spoke about
Speaker 2: when we were speaking in person last in Tennessee, where
Speaker 2: I met you face to face. Something I believe that
Speaker 2: sets this the study apart from the many many other
Speaker 2: studies that have kind of come up empty after all
Speaker 2: this time, is that this study isn't dependent upon you.
Speaker 2: And I think that's an important thing we probably want
Speaker 2: to put out there, because I imagine a lot of
Speaker 2: our perhaps slightly more conspiratorial minded listeners out there are thinking, well,
Speaker 2: this is just going to have more positive results, and
Speaker 2: the results are going to go missing. You know, the
Speaker 2: Smithsonian is going to take them, the roth Childs are
Speaker 2: going to send their spy team in and take them,
Speaker 2: or whatever sort of you know fantasies are out there.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know. I'm not a conspiracy guy.
Speaker 2: I don't buy any a lot of that stuff. But
Speaker 2: what would stop the samples after they're submitted, especially the
Speaker 2: positive hits, if such a thing does exist, what would
Speaker 2: stop them from being lost or mishandled, or going into
Speaker 2: the Smithsonian where all the illuminati of the world will
Speaker 2: burn them in some sort of ritual.
Speaker 3: Well short off an absol catastrophe, and you know, we
Speaker 3: don't need to talk about a nuclear event or.
Speaker 2: Something like that.
Speaker 3: But no, I mean, this is this is why I
Speaker 3: was determined to set this up as a as a
Speaker 3: as a real study. This is not me, as a
Speaker 3: faculty member at NC State saying, hey, send me these samples,
Speaker 3: I'd like to take a look at them. I spent
Speaker 3: years putting together the right team going through the paperwork
Speaker 3: with the university, so they said, I had to go
Speaker 3: through this ethic ethics review. Part of that ethics review
Speaker 3: is having a plan so that when somebody submits a
Speaker 3: sample and we say we're going to give you your results,
Speaker 3: there is a plan in place that that person will
Speaker 3: receive those results even if something goes wrong, even if
Speaker 3: something happens to me, if I die, you will still
Speaker 3: get your results. And that's something that's very important. You
Speaker 3: say about all these studies that have happened in the past,
Speaker 3: but there aren't actually all these studies that have happened
Speaker 3: in the past, Cliff, in terms of looking at them
Speaker 3: as actual studies. There was the Brian Syke study, which
Speaker 3: is the only other university study of any alleged sasquatch
Speaker 3: DNA ever, and that was a very limited study. They
Speaker 3: looked at a very small number of samples. Other than that,
Speaker 3: folks looking at these things in university settings have been
Speaker 3: individual researchers who have been doing this on the side
Speaker 3: out of personal interest, as a favor to someone. In
Speaker 3: a few cases, universities I know some universities offer a
Speaker 3: similar service to a commercial lab to where they'll look
Speaker 3: at a sample for the general at the general public
Speaker 3: pays to have those samples examined, but there hasn't been
Speaker 3: a large scale university study period that's been inclusive of
Speaker 3: this potential evidence. And that makes a huge difference. Because
Speaker 3: I was talking with a bigfoot investigator a couple of
Speaker 3: months ago who had collected some very interesting samples. A
Speaker 3: few years ago, a faculty at a university I shall
Speaker 3: not name said hey, I'd like to take a look
Speaker 3: at those in my lab, and he sent them off
Speaker 3: to this faculty member who was very well intentioned and
Speaker 3: just never got back to him, never got back to him,
Speaker 3: never got back to him, And so I asked him,
Speaker 3: I said, well, who was this? Let me try to
Speaker 3: reach out faculty of faculty and I found out that
Speaker 3: this faculty member was deceased, and I'm trying to I'm
Speaker 3: trying to get to the right person in his former
Speaker 3: lab to find out whether these samples are still around.
Speaker 3: But I'm almost certain we're going to find that when
Speaker 3: he passed away, they weren't part of an official study,
Speaker 3: so they just got discarded, is what I'm sure would
Speaker 3: have happened. When something is not part of an official study,
Speaker 3: you're really reliant on you, really relying on the individual.
Speaker 3: And again I think a lot of very well intentioned
Speaker 3: faculty have taken samples from folks and not given back
Speaker 3: the type of the type of report, the type of information,
Speaker 3: or any information in some cases, again despite the best
Speaker 3: of intentions.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Speaker 2: Will be back after these messages.
Speaker 3: So Cliff, you may recall several years ago we had
Speaker 3: some conversations online and you had guested in my university class,
Speaker 3: and thank you again for that. That was a wonderful
Speaker 3: time for the students.
Speaker 2: I am still an educator at heart.
Speaker 3: Well it shows and it's great. But at that time
Speaker 3: you and I had discussed one on one. You had
Speaker 3: come into possession of a very interesting sample, and I
Speaker 3: know you were saying to me, Hey, I'd love to
Speaker 3: send this to you. I'd love for your folks to
Speaker 3: look at this. And I know at the time I
Speaker 3: said to you, I said, hold on, hold on, I
Speaker 3: don't want to take it yet. I did not want
Speaker 3: to be that person who takes samples again with really
Speaker 3: great intentions, but outside of an official study, because I
Speaker 3: feel like I owe it to folks that if they're
Speaker 3: going to submit, they need to know that they're going
Speaker 3: to get back good results, they're going to get them
Speaker 3: back regardless again, regardless of me, and that they're going
Speaker 3: to be treated with respect.
Speaker 2: And was that the mattress prints? Is that what you're
Speaker 2: referring to?
Speaker 3: Indeed, yeah, and I know we're talking about ways that
Speaker 3: you might be able to submit part of that now.
Speaker 3: I would be talking that over with my team at
Speaker 3: our next meeting to see how we might work with
Speaker 3: a sample like that.
Speaker 2: I was thinking, Macy can, like the other night has
Speaker 2: fallen asleep and these are the sort of things that
Speaker 2: put me to sleep. I guess at the end of
Speaker 2: the night, I guess, although it gets me too excited
Speaker 2: and worried about stuff, so I can't actually sleep. It's
Speaker 2: a horrible circular thing I live in. But I was thinking,
Speaker 2: maybe send you like a cute like a square centimeter
Speaker 2: or something like that of a place where I know
Speaker 2: that it's stepped and I don't know, there's lots ways
Speaker 2: we can do that. And also I did have the
Speaker 2: foresight of collecting the soil off of the fabric itself,
Speaker 2: and I still have that in my files. It has
Speaker 2: been refrigerated. Unfortunately I didn't was unaware of that component.
Speaker 2: But it's in my files in a paper bag, so
Speaker 2: there's also that. I'll talk about that later off the air.
Speaker 2: Of course. Back to the question I was going to ask,
Speaker 2: is that you mentioned various others I said studies, but
Speaker 2: perhaps that's not the right word, projects that have been
Speaker 2: done over time. And I didn't you mention to me
Speaker 2: when we were in Tennessee a few weeks ago about
Speaker 2: using or looking at least at other people's data to
Speaker 2: kind of like in the same way that doctor Haskell
Speaker 2: Hart did with the Sasquatch genome project. He just used
Speaker 2: their data and came up with different results. Are you
Speaker 2: looking for other former projects, I guess, and trying to
Speaker 2: get a hold of their data as well, And if so,
Speaker 2: for what purpose?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, I have been trying to do that, and
Speaker 3: that has been I've been trying to do that over
Speaker 3: the last several years. And that's been a rather frustra
Speaker 3: frustrating process, Cliff. And it's been rather frustrating because what
Speaker 3: I find is that there really haven't been that many
Speaker 3: analyzes done period. There really isn't data to look at
Speaker 3: hardly at all. In fact, when Haskell heart did his
Speaker 3: interpretation of the Ketchum at all study data that you're
Speaker 3: referring to. Ironically, that is the only real data sequencing
Speaker 3: data that has been made available by anybody who's looked
Speaker 3: at alleged sasquatch samples. So one thing that the Ketcham
Speaker 3: team did right was it eventually, at least after they
Speaker 3: self publish their paper, they did release that data so
Speaker 3: that Haskell and myself and others can take a look
Speaker 3: at that. Now, in the case of that study, with
Speaker 3: the data in hand, it's easy to see that the
Speaker 3: interpretation that was given by that team is wrong. Now
Speaker 3: Haskell has looked at that and noted a few interesting,
Speaker 3: potentially interesting things in the data, but these are really
Speaker 3: just questions at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's interesting because at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, Haskell is not a geneticist. He's a chemist.
Speaker 2: He's a retired chemist, and just realized that, well, biology
Speaker 2: and DNA we're just big old bags of chemistry walking
Speaker 2: around talking to each other. At the end of the day.
Speaker 2: That's what life is, just chemistry essentially, And I think
Speaker 2: he kind of taught himself what he needed to know
Speaker 2: to kind of do the examination of the data. So
Speaker 2: it's neat that someone outside the discipline, I think, paid
Speaker 2: attention to it and is perhaps drawing attention to these things.
Speaker 2: And it's maybe because he is outside of the discipline,
Speaker 2: it's a perfectly normal thing that he just doesn't have
Speaker 2: that knowledge to explain. Or maybe it's just a new
Speaker 2: set of eyes looking at something from a different direction
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't get from the inside of that discipline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what Haskell has done there is he's raised
Speaker 3: a really interesting question, but it's a question that simply
Speaker 3: cannot be answered with the data that we currently have.
Speaker 2: The data might be available for a couple of these
Speaker 2: previous studies, right, so does the data do you any
Speaker 2: good or do you actually need the physical samples to
Speaker 2: make any progress on this?
Speaker 3: Well, the data, in one sense, the data could do
Speaker 3: some good, and I think that One of the things, though,
Speaker 3: is that I've found that the data just simply isn't there.
Speaker 3: There are On the one hand, I've found that there
Speaker 3: are far more rumors of genetic analyzes having been done,
Speaker 3: in fact, overwhelming more rumors of genetic analyses being done
Speaker 3: than actual analyses that have been completed. And it's really
Speaker 3: interesting to me because, as I said, I've spent years
Speaker 3: trying to track down every example that I can of
Speaker 3: an analysis that was done a genetic analysis. And so
Speaker 3: when someone says, oh, you know, my friend had a
Speaker 3: sample tested and it came back from the lab as
Speaker 3: such and such, I've said, okay, well who's your friend?
Speaker 3: May I contact them? And again and again what I
Speaker 3: find is I contact the friend and they say, oh, no,
Speaker 3: that wasn't me, that was my other friend. Like oh, okay,
Speaker 3: well what's your other friend's name? And then I go
Speaker 3: and I talk with that person and they say, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I didn't say that I had a genetic analysis done.
Speaker 3: I said, the sample that I found looked like the
Speaker 3: sample that was featured on one of the Snelgrove Lake
Speaker 3: episodes of Monster Quest where they got such and such
Speaker 3: a result. And I kid you not half a dozen
Speaker 3: of the specific DNA analyses that had been shared with
Speaker 3: me verbally, I traced back to that one same episode
Speaker 3: of Monster Quest where someone was talking about that and
Speaker 3: it had become misinterpreted in a game of telephone. Again,
Speaker 3: I think everybody trying to be sincere, but everybody believing
Speaker 3: that it was their friend who had this sample tested.
Speaker 3: I have found actually very few instances where there was
Speaker 3: a sample actually tested or somebody claims that they actually
Speaker 3: had it tested, and far far fewer than that where
Speaker 3: somebody can actually show me a report. And so there
Speaker 3: really don't seem to be that many practically none that
Speaker 3: have been done. So that's really interesting there. Really we're
Speaker 3: operating in a space where there isn't really any data
Speaker 3: at all, and so that's why we need to.
Speaker 2: Produce some Absolutely, and will the data from this study
Speaker 2: be shared publicly or will how will it be packaged
Speaker 2: up and shared with other scientists even for that matter, Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 2: the data from this study will be shared. I'm not
Speaker 2: promising a particular timeline for that that It depends on
Speaker 2: a number of factors and certainly depends on what we
Speaker 2: find as to how we go about sharing that.
Speaker 3: It will be public, yes, indeed.
Speaker 2: Now, will the negative hits also be made public? Like
Speaker 2: when you get a black bear sample, the black bear sample,
Speaker 2: and that'll be put out as black bear. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: to the public as well as the sample owner.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the idea. Yeah, we're planning, and you know,
Speaker 3: we're certainly planning publication out of this. You know, what
Speaker 3: we are obviously, what we publish and where we publish
Speaker 3: and when we publish. All these things are going to
Speaker 3: depend on, you know, what are the results that we
Speaker 3: are getting. There are quite a few rather interesting results
Speaker 3: that we could have. There are lots of things that
Speaker 3: can help push science forward. I know that your listenership
Speaker 3: is particularly interested in what if we were to find
Speaker 3: an unknown species? And in that case, I think that's
Speaker 3: where it's particularly interesting because in that case we probably
Speaker 3: would hold back at least for a while on sharing publicly.
Speaker 3: We would certainly have it peer reviewed, but from sharing
Speaker 3: publicly the the sequencing the sequence data of a of
Speaker 3: a novel species, simply because it wouldn't necessarily be ethical too,
Speaker 3: uh to put that information out there publicly until we
Speaker 3: understood something about that species. What are its numbers, what
Speaker 3: are the what are the factors that may be impacting it?
Speaker 2: What it?
Speaker 3: You know, what are its social customs? You know, these
Speaker 3: all these sorts of things of culture, if you will,
Speaker 3: those things would all be very important. Because we don't
Speaker 3: know at this page, I mean what we don't have
Speaker 3: any idea, I mean, I don't have any idea whether, uh,
Speaker 3: such a species even exists. If it does, what is
Speaker 3: it like?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Is it endangered? Do we need to make sure it's
Speaker 3: on the endangered species list before we release this information?
Speaker 3: What are what are those steps? Need to think very
Speaker 3: careful because we want to be ethical about how we
Speaker 3: how we we release not the information that it exists,
Speaker 3: but release specific information that could potentially be used to
Speaker 3: threaten that species.
Speaker 2: If you did get a positive and my god, there's
Speaker 2: something out there, there's a thing out there, and it's
Speaker 2: it's it's it's here on the evolutionary tree, and blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, you had all this that that you had
Speaker 2: all the stuff that DNA could tell us about the
Speaker 2: next step, the actually echo the actual ecological study of
Speaker 2: these things would basically have to start from ground zero
Speaker 2: because of the dubious nature of the vast majority of
Speaker 2: the data that has been gathered thus far, even siding reports. Now,
Speaker 2: luckily there's probably enough siding reports set statistically, you could
Speaker 2: probably do some stuff and squeeze some information out of
Speaker 2: it because the outliers would separate themselves. But between the
Speaker 2: cultural and just the filters that the investigators who listen
Speaker 2: to these reports, who recorded these reports even even they're
Speaker 2: like cultural perspective and all that comes into play here.
Speaker 2: And this isn't a this is not an objective database.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of subjectivity in here, as there would
Speaker 2: be with any soft evidence like testimony. I imagine a
Speaker 2: thorough ecologic study of these these critters would be five
Speaker 2: or ten years down the road, because scientists who've been
Speaker 2: denying their existence for so long, no, far less than
Speaker 2: you know, us amateur investigators do at this point, even
Speaker 2: though much of probably what the vast majority of bigfooters
Speaker 2: think will probably be proven wrong at some point, you know,
Speaker 2: or certainly vastly refined. Are you suggesting that if you
Speaker 2: did get a hit that you think would be strong
Speaker 2: enough to prove the species, at least to geneticists who
Speaker 2: understand the sort of data, that it may not be
Speaker 2: announced for until an ecological study is done on the animal,
Speaker 2: which could take five or ten years.
Speaker 3: No, No, I'm not suggesting that. What I'm suggesting, though,
Speaker 3: is is that if, for example, such a thing we're
Speaker 3: shown and there were a specific you know, there were
Speaker 3: specific novel DNA sequences that identified this species versus any
Speaker 3: other species on the planet, right, which is that's what
Speaker 3: DNA does. When you have a full genome, you have
Speaker 3: a new species, you have a known species. The problem
Speaker 3: then is that releasing the particular sequence could potentially put
Speaker 3: it in the hands of individuals or particularly potentially corporations
Speaker 3: to create primers specific for that species that could that
Speaker 3: could enable the species to be tracked down, hunted, so
Speaker 3: on and so forth. So again we're talking we're talking
Speaker 3: a what if scenario here. But it wouldn't be responsible
Speaker 3: of me to even if I think that there's a
Speaker 3: very small chance of that happening, it wouldn't be responsible
Speaker 3: of me to not think a little bit down the
Speaker 3: road about that. But even thinking about the just think,
Speaker 3: for example, about the pharmaceutical industry, Well, the pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 3: might be competing with one another to try to track
Speaker 3: down such a species that would presumably be closely related
Speaker 3: to human because of the possible discoveries to be had
Speaker 3: there and the possible money. Yeah, so I think the
Speaker 3: bottom line is just that you know, not the not
Speaker 3: the fact of a new species, but specific information about
Speaker 3: that species that could compromise a population. That's the information
Speaker 3: that might might need to be very close to the
Speaker 3: vest for a while. What's interesting to me about this
Speaker 3: is the range of folks who are really excited about
Speaker 3: this study. And I get it. I know that some
Speaker 3: people are using the term historic, and I have to confess, yes,
Speaker 3: it really is. To have the team that's working on
Speaker 3: this to have these things looked at in a scientifically
Speaker 3: credible way. That this is not just we're going to
Speaker 3: look at eight or twelve or fifteen samples and call
Speaker 3: it a day. It is historic. I find support, on
Speaker 3: the one hand, from folks in the bigfoot community who
Speaker 3: are convinced that this will be the study that's finally
Speaker 3: going to prove the Bigfoot as a species. I also
Speaker 3: have part folks who are more Scout in their ideas,
Speaker 3: who think, ah, this is finally going to be the
Speaker 3: study that looks at lots and lots of the quote
Speaker 3: unquote best samples and figures out that they're all known species,
Speaker 3: and maybe this Bigfoot thing will go away. I have
Speaker 3: people who say, Oh, this is going to find that
Speaker 3: Bigfoot is descended from the given family. I have others
Speaker 3: who say, Aha, this is what's finally going to show
Speaker 3: that it's descended from Paranthropus. You know, everybody has their ideas.
Speaker 3: Everybody has their thoughts as to what we'll find. I'm
Speaker 3: just really curious. I'm just really curious to see what
Speaker 3: do we have here? And it will be what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to summarize John Green into Hindon, something is making
Speaker 2: these footprints, and it sounds to me like you're just
Speaker 2: on a quest to find out what it is. Except
Speaker 2: now we're living in a more modern age. It's no
Speaker 2: longer just footprints. It's actually DNA and by aloe logical material.
Speaker 2: So fantastic.
Speaker 4: I'm excited.
Speaker 2: Well, Darby, thank you so much for coming on and
Speaker 2: sharing about the project. This is an exciting thing. I
Speaker 2: think any bigfooter who is looking at the goalpost here
Speaker 2: and wondering like, can we can we move the ball? Well,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't use sports metaphor, as you know me, but man,
Speaker 2: any bigfooter that wants wants some sort of resolution to
Speaker 2: this should be excited about this project. And I can't.
Speaker 2: I can't do anything else but wish you the best
Speaker 2: of luck. But I'll tell you I'm going to put
Speaker 2: my boots on the ground in my best areas and
Speaker 2: I'm going to put the word out to all the
Speaker 2: best researchers I personally know to participate in this, and
Speaker 2: of course it is open to anybody. If you have
Speaker 2: our listeners, if you have bigfoots on the property, this
Speaker 2: is an opportunity for you to participate as well. Who knows,
Speaker 2: it could be your sample to actually, you know, win
Speaker 2: the game here. So show that the links are in
Speaker 2: the show notes of places you can submit samples, like
Speaker 2: if you want to fill out the entry form for
Speaker 2: Darby's project, the link is in the show notes. And
Speaker 2: also something we didn't mention, this is an ongoing project.
Speaker 2: There is no I mean Darby said it several times,
Speaker 2: there is no. There's not necessarily a budget that is
Speaker 2: going to run out here. But it's not like they
Speaker 2: couldn't use a little extra money either. And there is
Speaker 2: a donation form. We'll put that link in the show
Speaker 2: notes as well. If you want to throw fifty bucks
Speaker 2: or five bucks, even how about a dollar anything towards it.
Speaker 2: It goes straight to the university. And this study is
Speaker 2: that correct, Derby? Is that the way people can help
Speaker 2: out and participate.
Speaker 3: Yes, any donations are a tax deductible donations to the
Speaker 3: nonprofit the North Carolina State University, and they are are
Speaker 3: earmarked for my research area. As you'll see.
Speaker 2: Online, fantastic. We're not shaking our tin cup. But some
Speaker 2: people out there may not have samples or may have
Speaker 2: no hope of getting any and maybe they want to
Speaker 2: participate in some other way as well. So there is
Speaker 2: that any final thoughts Derby before we get going.
Speaker 3: Well, I really appreciate I really appreciate y'all getting the
Speaker 3: word out. I think that we folks need to understand
Speaker 3: that we can't find what we're not offered samples of.
Speaker 3: So this is the opportunity for those who who feel
Speaker 3: like they have something compelling, this is the opportunity to
Speaker 3: present it. This is the opportunity to find out what
Speaker 3: it is. Bottom line, this is the opportunity and it
Speaker 3: depends on you.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Darby. We really appreciate your expertise,
Speaker 2: your talents and the opportunity to maybe get this thing done.
Speaker 2: And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for what you're doing it. Thanks for coming on, Sharon.
Speaker 4: All right, folks, you heard it here. You got Darby
Speaker 4: Orca from NC State University. They're on the case. So
Speaker 4: let's get up some samples and until next week you
Speaker 4: all know what to do. Keep it Squatchy.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
Speaker 2: If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
Speaker 2: us on iTunes, subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcast us, and follow us on Facebook and
Speaker 2: Instagram at Bigfoot and Beyond podcast. You can find us
Speaker 2: on Twitter at Bigfoot and Beyond that's an N in
Speaker 2: the middle, and tweet us your thoughts and questions with
Speaker 2: the hashtag Bigfoot and Beyond.