Speaker 1: You're listening to an air Wave Media podcast.
Speaker 2: The ten Million Dollars Bigfoot Bounty is over. This show
Speaker 2: has spoilers, This show has the S word. This show
Speaker 2: has the most astonishing pun I've ever managed. On Monster Talk,
Speaker 2: We've got DNA, we've got NDAs, we've got A and
Speaker 2: d's join us as we talk with doctor Todd des
Speaker 2: Hotel and Natalia Reagan about their experiences as scientists. In
Speaker 2: episode eighty four, New MT on the Bounty.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant, hairy creature.
Speaker 4: Part eight part mats in Luckness, a twenty four mile long,
Speaker 4: bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 5: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 3: Monster.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Monster Talk, an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine.
Speaker 2: I'm your host Blake Smith and today doctor Karen Stolslow
Speaker 2: and I will revisit the scientists who joined us back
Speaker 2: in episode seventy six, just before the premiere of the
Speaker 2: Spike TV TV show The ten Million Dollars big Foot Bounty.
Speaker 2: Doctor Todd Desottel was our very first guest on this show,
Speaker 2: and as one of the best known scientists looking at
Speaker 2: Bigfoot evidence today. He's an expert primatologist and DNA researcher
Speaker 2: who teaches it NYU that Tyier Reagan is an anthropologist
Speaker 2: and comedian as well as a science promoter. Together, they
Speaker 2: joined Dean Kan, who's perhaps most famous for his portrayal
Speaker 2: of Superman on the TV show Lewis and Clark as
Speaker 2: judges of the contestants seeking Bigfoot on the show. Will
Speaker 2: reveal the outcome of the show in this interview, So
Speaker 2: if you want to watch the eight episodes first, they're
Speaker 2: all available on Spike TV's website, and a link to
Speaker 2: that is in our show notes It Muster.
Speaker 6: Talk, do Mobsttle.
Speaker 2: We want to welcome back Todd Desotel and Italia Reagan,
Speaker 2: who recently did the ten million dollars big Foot Bounty
Speaker 2: television show.
Speaker 6: So the show's over and we would like.
Speaker 2: To talk about how they felt about the outcome, So
Speaker 2: welcome back to Monster Talk. I think the number one
Speaker 2: question I expect our listeners are wondering is do you
Speaker 2: think the science messages that you talked about trying to
Speaker 2: communicate were successfully able to survive the editing process to.
Speaker 4: A degree, not as much as obviously we would have liked,
Speaker 4: you know, for every minute of science that actually made
Speaker 4: it on the air, you know, we film, you know,
Speaker 4: minutes to our's worth, and in the final edit a
Speaker 4: lot of it was sort of dramatically reduced. So I
Speaker 4: was a little disappointed with that, but I do think
Speaker 4: we did get.
Speaker 5: Some of our main points across pretty well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like there's a fight between science and
Speaker 1: spectacle when you have any sort of reality television show.
Speaker 1: And for as much science as we filmed, there were hours,
Speaker 1: countless hours of whether it was real or generated drama
Speaker 1: between contestants that, of course the American public feasts upon.
Speaker 1: And so as much as we wanted more science to
Speaker 1: get out there, I think they did the best they
Speaker 1: could with what they could do. And that's why we
Speaker 1: produced the web series called Talking Shit with Doctor Todd Natalia,
Speaker 1: hoping to kind of get out the core messages we
Speaker 1: wanted to get out on the show, not knowing it
Speaker 1: was kind of a preemptive attempt to get the science
Speaker 1: out there, without knowing how much would make the show.
Speaker 7: Spinal cut, that's a very fitting name.
Speaker 6: We'll link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 7: Did they producers, if I say, do it at some
Speaker 7: points less science, guys, and more drama.
Speaker 5: Not to us, because I couldn't do less science.
Speaker 4: I was doing DNA analyses and Natalia was out in
Speaker 4: the field with them trying to make sure that they
Speaker 4: follow sort of the proper protocol, so there was really
Speaker 4: no way to sort of step that down.
Speaker 5: Where it came out.
Speaker 4: Was at the end of every episode, in the so
Speaker 4: called elimination.
Speaker 5: Round, where.
Speaker 4: You know, they would bring up each team, they would
Speaker 4: say something for a minute and Natalia or I and
Speaker 4: sometimes Dean would just sort of summarily dismiss them or
Speaker 4: say good work. And that's where I think a lot
Speaker 4: of the people who criticized the show seem to think
Speaker 4: that that's all we did, when in reality we did.
Speaker 5: A lot more.
Speaker 2: As much as you dealt with poop. It seems like
Speaker 2: every round was an elimination round.
Speaker 4: That's a nice one, Like, you know what, I I
Speaker 4: thought of that, Zach, Wow.
Speaker 5: Thanks, I've never done them.
Speaker 4: We had every other word and joke for it, but
Speaker 4: I never ever made the connection to the elimination.
Speaker 8: It was a real show.
Speaker 7: But yeah, he needed like there, I think as a consultant, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 7: And it was great because they wanted to include as
Speaker 7: some humor in the elimination round.
Speaker 9: And so, you know, Todd and I would do our
Speaker 9: best to come up with any sort of jokes we
Speaker 9: would see with the samples that came in, and and
Speaker 9: and the thing is, because it's such a the elimination round,
Speaker 9: it ends up being edited down to seven minutes or so.
Speaker 1: That night. Usually we shot for maybe nine hours, and
Speaker 1: each team would bring in between five to six, sometimes
Speaker 1: even more samples. So we literally sat down and talked
Speaker 1: to them about every sample, went down and actually gave
Speaker 1: them notes and critique their elimination and great depth and detail.
Speaker 1: And at a certain point you can only say so
Speaker 1: much about you know, the poop that they brought in exactly,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to really give the qualitative notes on
Speaker 1: their bear shit.
Speaker 8: You know, they can only show so much.
Speaker 1: So we try to, you know, put in as much
Speaker 1: information as we could with each sample and hopefully include
Speaker 1: a little bit of humor, although they really white for
Speaker 1: the serious, dramatic donn dah side of the elimination.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah, that's what came across. But I can't
Speaker 7: believe that nine hours down to seven minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if the elimination is
Speaker 1: exactly that, but it's it's not that long.
Speaker 8: But yeah, we would.
Speaker 5: We would freeze await nights. We were out there till
Speaker 5: past three in the morning.
Speaker 4: We had to wait for dark, and it would go
Speaker 4: till three in the morning. Every time the camera stopped rolling,
Speaker 4: you know, the three of us would just huddle around that.
Speaker 5: Fire pit because it was just balln on in cold.
Speaker 5: At least for Deane and I. I don't know what
Speaker 5: Natalia felt.
Speaker 8: Why just shaking in their shelves.
Speaker 2: That's That's a great lead into this question that I have.
Speaker 2: Did Dean kin did he seem unusually weak or ill
Speaker 2: during the evening shoots?
Speaker 4: There was one or two where he had some signific
Speaker 4: can allergies. Yeah, and we'd have to do a couple
Speaker 4: of retakes between sneezes.
Speaker 2: That Actually, that makes perfect sense for me because what
Speaker 2: I had heard was that his one real weakness is cryptidnight.
Speaker 7: He's been waiting to use that. Nice Another question that
Speaker 7: is on the tip of everyone's tongue is about justin.
Speaker 4: The Big One though, Did you lose track of the
Speaker 4: Big One?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I've never found the Big One.
Speaker 8: Do you have any sort of samples from this specimen.
Speaker 4: Hair, blood, flesh, bones, has it been analyzed yet?
Speaker 5: Yeah? And feral human, whereas the most common result so
Speaker 5: feral human.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't tell if the humans fharal from their DNA.
Speaker 4: Justin says he sent out a sample and it came
Speaker 4: back as faral human.
Speaker 5: There's no such thing as feral human. Pharah is just
Speaker 5: the behavior.
Speaker 4: So if Justin killed a feral human, he actually killed
Speaker 4: a human and he's committed murder.
Speaker 6: When Todd called him out on that, that was my
Speaker 6: favorite moment in the series.
Speaker 7: I think did he kill any more feral humans?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 1: During filming Justin he talks a big talk, now, doesn't he?
Speaker 1: But I see, I don't believe the thing he says.
Speaker 4: So so a point I wanted to raise is, unfortunately,
Speaker 4: having you know, been thrust headlong into this and occasionally
Speaker 4: seeing the blog posts and Facebook posts and other things,
Speaker 4: is a lot of people complained that it was a
Speaker 4: rigged show. You know, that the network had picked a
Speaker 4: priori who was going to win and who to keep
Speaker 4: and all.
Speaker 5: Of that stuff.
Speaker 4: But that's one thing, and I've posted and written about this,
Speaker 4: that is absolutely not true. Going back to the Paola
Speaker 4: scams and some of the early televised game shows where
Speaker 4: there were controversies.
Speaker 10: A whole series of laws have been passed on this
Speaker 10: because this was technically classified as a game show because
Speaker 10: you had contestants competing for prizes and they have to
Speaker 10: be fair.
Speaker 5: We would have walked away from it.
Speaker 4: I mean, why would we put our reputations online if
Speaker 4: it was gamed so to speak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we actually had ann that was in charge of
Speaker 1: all the compliance rules. We actually had to, you know,
Speaker 1: sit down and had a meeting at the very very
Speaker 1: very first day of shooting. Everybody had to sit down
Speaker 1: and talk about this is this is a game.
Speaker 8: There are rules.
Speaker 1: You must comply with these rules and we took that
Speaker 1: very seriously. And I note that Todd and I every
Speaker 1: time we had an elimination, there was a sit down
Speaker 1: meeting between he and I and then Christine discussing, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we didn't agree and we had to really kind
Speaker 1: of have a little customer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a lot like grading.
Speaker 4: You know, as a professor, I have to rank the
Speaker 4: students in my class, and oftentimes you have utterly objective
Speaker 4: criteria the actual score they had on a test.
Speaker 5: But if you're in a seminar.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it gets a little more subjective where you have
Speaker 4: to say, well, these guys spoke up more and better
Speaker 4: and more logically and stuff.
Speaker 5: So but it, I mean, it really was to me
Speaker 5: like being.
Speaker 4: A teacher, you know, being a professor and grading them
Speaker 4: and when you grade somebody's at the bottom end of
Speaker 4: the curve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean things like looking at their field work,
Speaker 1: whether they work together well as a team. My big
Speaker 1: idea that I pushed was their ability to amend any
Speaker 1: sort of theories that they had as they gained more information.
Speaker 1: If somebody was you know, digging in their heels on
Speaker 1: a theory that wasn't holding any weight and they weren't
Speaker 1: giving us any good evidence, it made it easier for
Speaker 1: us to let them go. But when you know, one
Speaker 1: of the wonderful things for me is somebody who studies
Speaker 1: field primatology is to hear them start talking like scientists
Speaker 1: talking about their hypotheses.
Speaker 8: I never thought would ever say or utter those words.
Speaker 1: You know, I think David who was a David Lauer
Speaker 1: who was like our hypothesis and he was great. They
Speaker 1: really were coming up with changing their ideas and trying
Speaker 1: new things.
Speaker 8: And for science is about innovation.
Speaker 1: It's about trying new things and if it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: try something new.
Speaker 4: Towards the end of the show, I think the H
Speaker 4: word was used as much as the S word.
Speaker 2: So tying into the concept of grading. Was there any
Speaker 2: cheating going on? Did you see anybody trying to plan
Speaker 2: evidence to pass it off as reel or anybody acting
Speaker 2: a little dodgy.
Speaker 5: I don't want to sound like Bill Clinton, but to
Speaker 5: find cheating.
Speaker 4: If you are ahead of another team and you stomp
Speaker 4: out the footprints or use your paddle and erase.
Speaker 5: The footprints, you take a sample.
Speaker 4: There's a bunch of fur on the ground, you take
Speaker 4: a sample of it, and then you start spitting on it,
Speaker 4: you know, so that it becomes contaminated.
Speaker 5: Is that cheating or are you pushing to win? Playing
Speaker 5: to win? You know? So, and we saw that on camera.
Speaker 4: I mean I didn't see that out in the field
Speaker 4: because I actually did not go out in the field
Speaker 4: during their hunts with them. Natalia went out at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the hunts and sometimes at the ends. But
Speaker 4: you know, we couldn't track all the teams all simultaneously,
Speaker 4: even though they're out there alone. There was a cameraman
Speaker 4: and a sound band exactly just a few feet away
Speaker 4: from each team.
Speaker 1: They generally played nice when I was with them, and
Speaker 1: I would go out with them actually usually for the
Speaker 1: initial test around, and I would just kind of ask
Speaker 1: them about their strategies, and they all played kind of
Speaker 1: nice while I was there.
Speaker 8: I think they knew they would get I scored in red.
Speaker 1: They didn't, but I do know seeing additional footage from
Speaker 1: the cameraman that was that were with them for all
Speaker 1: those hours out in the field, that they did, you know,
Speaker 1: try to play to win, and that sometimes that means
Speaker 1: playing a little dirty.
Speaker 4: And Natalia and I, you know, after they came back
Speaker 4: from the hunt, while the DNA analyzes were being carried out,
Speaker 4: I would basically start them. But I had a technician
Speaker 4: with me throughout the whole trip. Actually I had several technicians,
Speaker 4: and so while things were incubating or things taking a
Speaker 4: little bit of time or some of the easier steps,
Speaker 4: we Natalia and I would be in the cabin are
Speaker 4: out at a picnic table with all of the evidence
Speaker 4: that they brought in, plus footage and all the pictures
Speaker 4: that yes, they took. So we spent hours a day
Speaker 4: going you know, basically, from you know, mid morning until
Speaker 4: nine at night, we were going through the evidence, you know,
Speaker 4: almost a whole day long, and they would pull up, well,
Speaker 4: here's the cameraman for this team, here's you know. So
Speaker 4: I would look at this tooth and say, well, this
Speaker 4: looks like it's from a deer, and they were swearing, oh, no,
Speaker 4: it's from this, And then the cameraman recorded them taking
Speaker 4: a deer jaw on, breaking it to pull a tooth out. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so yeah, gotchya again. Is that cheating or playing to win?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's I'm sure that's expected in any kind
Speaker 4: of game show, even if it's just trying to psych
Speaker 4: out your opponents. But they could physically try to do
Speaker 4: stuff as well, to reduce the evidence out there for
Speaker 4: other people, or to make theirs look better whatever.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and we did. I mean it was kind of nice.
Speaker 8: It was.
Speaker 1: We really were kind of building our cases for them
Speaker 1: and our question and we you know, we came up
Speaker 1: with usually a series of eight questions per team, if
Speaker 1: not more, trying to get to the bottom of why
Speaker 1: they brought in these samples, what about them made them
Speaker 1: think it was was bigfoot? We gauge their answers and
Speaker 1: that helped us decide whether or not they were going
Speaker 1: to stay or go.
Speaker 8: They had to defend themselves just like you would defend
Speaker 8: a dissertation.
Speaker 4: I was basically working with eighteen people who probably wouldn't
Speaker 4: be grad students under my supervision, maybe Michael Merchant.
Speaker 7: But speaking of evidence, was there any solution to that
Speaker 7: bigfoot that was caught on the fleet camera that the
Speaker 7: two didn't go chasing.
Speaker 4: After one early in the season, They didn't follow up
Speaker 4: on it and nothing was seen there. Later in the
Speaker 4: season they claimed they had, you know, the best best
Speaker 4: footage since Patterson Gimlin and it was another team's cameraman
Speaker 4: or soundman. And we know that actually taking a leak
Speaker 4: probably you know, taking a.
Speaker 5: Dump feet behind the rest of the team. That's why
Speaker 5: it was an individual.
Speaker 4: But the early one, I don't think we have a
Speaker 4: clue as to what it was. But it was also
Speaker 4: just fuzzier than well, it was typical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to have scale when it's night vision
Speaker 1: two if there's not something.
Speaker 4: Fle I mean, it's it's cool, but you're never going
Speaker 4: to get.
Speaker 5: Decent positive id.
Speaker 4: Off of Fleaer at night unless it's a camera trap
Speaker 4: and they're like three feet away from it.
Speaker 7: It looks good on TV either, right, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 8: Very dramatic.
Speaker 4: I actually learned a lot on this series myself and
Speaker 4: in fact our our use of environmental DNA, the stuff
Speaker 4: from insects and other stuff I had never done before
Speaker 4: in my own research, and we've now incorporated that into
Speaker 4: our research, in fact taking it even further and submitting
Speaker 4: several grants using even more sophisticated technologies, next generation sequencing
Speaker 4: technologies and so on, to do all sorts of neat
Speaker 4: stuff with environmental DNA to actually scan the environment for
Speaker 4: all of the organisms that are out there. I probably
Speaker 4: would have eventually come around to that in my research,
Speaker 4: but this show really prompted me to really think about
Speaker 4: it more and talking in my lab meetings where like, hey,
Speaker 4: we could do this in this different context. I actually
Speaker 4: learned and gained something from the show.
Speaker 7: It's pretty cool, it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I learned a great joke because I'm a field primatologist,
Speaker 1: so most of my time has been spent in the field,
Speaker 1: and so I got to get a lot of hands
Speaker 1: on lab experience. And then also, I mean, the environmental
Speaker 1: DNA is something that I work in conservation and that
Speaker 1: can be extremely effective in an area where it's hard
Speaker 1: to find a specific individual group of individuals, and you
Speaker 1: can do kind of an ecological survey without ever having
Speaker 1: to see them if you're using mosquitos or any sort
Speaker 1: of inviting insects. And it was great, honestly, as somebody
Speaker 1: wh would go out and watch the teams. I love
Speaker 1: watching Dave and Dan go out and use themselves as
Speaker 1: bait while catching leeches.
Speaker 8: That to me was amazing tenacity.
Speaker 4: And we got horse DNA out of one of the
Speaker 4: leeches that blatched on to David. They snapped it off
Speaker 4: before it drew blood on him, and when we tested
Speaker 4: that sample, clearly a horse had walked through that swamp
Speaker 4: not too long before and had a leech bite it
Speaker 4: and fall off and it went after something equally big.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sorry, Dave.
Speaker 7: I wonder if they're going to be listening into this,
Speaker 7: I hope So, Hello.
Speaker 2: So do you have any idea what the sounds were
Speaker 2: that got one of the cast members to say, that's
Speaker 2: a big.
Speaker 6: Football right there.
Speaker 8: Sound alone?
Speaker 6: Well, hey, you don't talk about them that way. They're
Speaker 6: nice people.
Speaker 5: Well, I was gonna say that there's a double meaning there.
Speaker 5: It could be alone, or.
Speaker 4: You also have to remember, I mean one of the
Speaker 4: one of the banes of all these guys looking for
Speaker 4: Bigfoot is hoaxing. So even if it wasn't another team member,
Speaker 4: we weren't in the middle of Epps Well, we were
Speaker 4: in the middle of absolutely nowhere, but there were other
Speaker 4: people around. And I know if I was a seventeen
Speaker 4: year old kid and I knew there was a film
Speaker 4: company filming a Bigfoot show in my region, I would
Speaker 4: be out there every night screwing around with them. You
Speaker 4: hear that sound, and is it a natural animal?
Speaker 5: Is it a human doing it?
Speaker 4: If it's human, is it even the cast and the crew,
Speaker 4: I mean they're human as well. Could a PA out
Speaker 4: there around and around?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that was during the Yeah, that was during
Speaker 1: the finale, and I know that Michael and Kat had
Speaker 1: I think it was them who had done that. And
Speaker 1: they are those SAP people who heard the sound. So
Speaker 1: the guy in front desk at this at this park
Speaker 1: knew that there are people that are looking for Bigfoot.
Speaker 1: So who knows?
Speaker 7: I having some fun with them exactly?
Speaker 8: Why not? I was on TV?
Speaker 7: Yeah, hear me, Well, you guys were talking about baiting
Speaker 7: Bigfoot a bit earlier, and one of the weirdest parts
Speaker 7: of the show for me was when one of the
Speaker 7: teams said that they were using chimp and human menstrual
Speaker 7: wafers to try and find Bigfoot. So what was that about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have no idea where that comes from?
Speaker 5: Is all? So here I can.
Speaker 4: Use the age word and hypothesize it's it's at least
Speaker 4: folklore that, for instance, fairs are attracted to peanut butter
Speaker 4: and menstruating women, So don't go camping with peanut butter
Speaker 4: sandwiches and a menstruating woman. And I can only hypothesize
Speaker 4: that that got transferred, if.
Speaker 5: You will, to sort of the Bigfoot world. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: don't know how.
Speaker 4: It's not really a testable hypothesis, but it's just something.
Speaker 4: And maybe next time I see the guys, i'll or
Speaker 4: talk to them. I'll ask them where did you get
Speaker 4: that idea from?
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny because they say that human men are
Speaker 1: attracted to women, making me sense it that they're ovulating,
Speaker 1: not men's streat Usually it's quite the opposite of it.
Speaker 1: And let us bleed for six days and then they'll
Speaker 1: let us come out and talk to them.
Speaker 8: And fraternize. But yeah, I guess there's that idea that
Speaker 8: that bigfoot think at.
Speaker 1: Yeah. At one point, the delightful Stacey Brown said he
Speaker 1: would tear down a female sasquatch if presented before him.
Speaker 1: So because sasquatch is considered such a close relative to
Speaker 1: anatomically modern humans, I guess it would maybe be attracted
Speaker 1: to our own species, and vice versa in the case
Speaker 1: of Stacy.
Speaker 8: So maybe that was that's their thinking.
Speaker 6: Well, we can't say this bait doesn't work period.
Speaker 8: Isn't there another scene?
Speaker 6: I have been limited.
Speaker 7: They're on top.
Speaker 1: There's different cycles in which these these bait periods work.
Speaker 7: So wasn't there another scene where a couple of the
Speaker 7: guys were following the females because they thought at some
Speaker 7: point they're going to be on the rag.
Speaker 5: Yeah they were.
Speaker 4: My favorite line was it's too bad they weren't ragging.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, you know nothing of the.
Speaker 8: Capital K Show. And I think my mother just about
Speaker 8: dies at that point.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, so what did you guys actually like
Speaker 1: best about the experience and what did you not like?
Speaker 6: What means like just pros and cons.
Speaker 4: Well, just from the physical experience, I had never been in.
Speaker 5: Just such beautiful territory.
Speaker 4: I mean to wake up in the morning and go
Speaker 4: running for a while with Mount Adams off your right shoulder,
Speaker 4: Mount Hood off your left shoulder, having elk and bobcat
Speaker 4: and coyotes bound across the dirt road in front of
Speaker 4: you while you're running, hearing the stuff at night and
Speaker 4: smelling pine and the ganja. It just physically stunning, stunning environment.
Speaker 5: The crew were really great and hard working. I mean
Speaker 5: we worked hard.
Speaker 4: I mean it was pretty darn ruling work on top
Speaker 4: of all of the other stuff, but really bonded with
Speaker 4: a lot of people throughout, and even the people we
Speaker 4: were renting from. Our cooks, wonderful cooks, all of that stuff,
Speaker 4: so that was great.
Speaker 8: Todd covered most of what I loved, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a gorgeous region of the United States that
Speaker 1: I've never really spent any time in the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 1: and so being able to we both are runners.
Speaker 8: He runs.
Speaker 1: He wakes up earlier than I do, so he would
Speaker 1: run the early route, I'd run the later. Out there
Speaker 1: was a neighboring Outpaka farm. I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time talking to these indifferent alpacas that seem to enjoy
Speaker 1: ignoring me rather than engaging in my conversation, pretty much
Speaker 1: by myself, and just yeah, getting to know so many
Speaker 1: people in a way because you're working hard with them
Speaker 1: when you're when stress levels are high. On these shows,
Speaker 1: it's really nice to work with a team of people
Speaker 1: that really know how to pull together and form the
Speaker 1: sort of camaraderie. I grew up in the film industry,
Speaker 1: so I've always appreciated film shoots, and it was I
Speaker 1: never really been on location for thirty days. I've done
Speaker 1: location shoots, but never like that. So there comes a
Speaker 1: point where you feel like family and you.
Speaker 8: Leave and you miss them like you would miss family.
Speaker 1: You sometimes get annoyed like you would with family, but
Speaker 1: at them at the end of the day, it felt
Speaker 1: I liken it to summer camp, but very hard summer camp,
Speaker 1: because we worked our keysters off, like like Todd said,
Speaker 1: And this for me the science, like I said, I
Speaker 1: wasn't a lab person, so for me to be able
Speaker 1: to be a part of something like that, I felt
Speaker 1: like I was learning so much, but also teaching contestants
Speaker 1: that might never take a class like this. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was all around an exceptional experience with.
Speaker 4: Some of the drama and the fighting and bickering.
Speaker 5: That got to me a bit.
Speaker 4: It's like, I don't have that really that much with
Speaker 4: like my graduate students. Obviously they work together and they're
Speaker 4: not really directly competing.
Speaker 5: With each other.
Speaker 4: But it was kind of like teaching a large class
Speaker 4: of premads where they had to beat the other guy
Speaker 4: out because they were competing for real tangible stuff, not
Speaker 4: just an a ar. And as they were competing for
Speaker 4: a ten million dollars or one hundred thousand dollars, that's
Speaker 4: that's a real deal, and that can bring out a
Speaker 4: little bit of ugliness and people, and so that was tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was there were moments when the stress level
Speaker 1: got a little high, and sometimes you know, I hated
Speaker 1: seeing them fight with one another, but I also I
Speaker 1: really loved how they cooperated almost more than competed with
Speaker 1: one of each other. I like pointing that out that
Speaker 1: they really did cooperate oftentimes far more than they fought
Speaker 1: with one another.
Speaker 8: A really tough thing for me because they made me.
Speaker 1: If you watch the show Folks at Home an elimination round,
Speaker 1: I was the person that had to go to the
Speaker 1: cabin and call the teams back, which I hated.
Speaker 8: And the directories.
Speaker 1: You know, look at me and say no more tears,
Speaker 1: because it really was tough because, like I said, we
Speaker 1: grew to love these people like family. Even though you
Speaker 1: might not agree. I'm you know, I'm kind of the
Speaker 1: tree hugging hippie. I'm not a hunter, but I don't care.
Speaker 1: These people were in many ways wonderful, and it was
Speaker 1: very tough to send them to the fire where I
Speaker 1: knew one of them one of those teams is going home.
Speaker 8: So judging was very tough.
Speaker 1: And also judging DNA and making choices based on what
Speaker 1: the evidence they brought in based on what was available
Speaker 1: to them was tough. Was very hard, and doctor Todd
Speaker 1: and I really had to kind of back go back
Speaker 1: and forth and really make some tough decisions.
Speaker 8: And sending people home knowing that this was their dream
Speaker 8: was very difficult.
Speaker 4: Given that nobody brought the gold and turred in, it
Speaker 4: was sort of who did least poorly? Yeah that sometimes
Speaker 4: when not one team brings in real evidence of Bigfoot,
Speaker 4: how do you judging what's the worst effort?
Speaker 5: Yeah, is tough.
Speaker 4: It's like there's no a's It's like these are all
Speaker 4: d's and f's, which is the worst f.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, if you could have what would you have changed?
Speaker 7: If you guys had been the producers of the show.
Speaker 1: As somebody who studies primates, I would have loved to
Speaker 1: have gone to a primate center because a lot of
Speaker 1: these contestants thought that Bigfoot was indeed a descendant of
Speaker 1: ancestral primate.
Speaker 8: Most of them thought gigantipithecus.
Speaker 1: But going to a primate center and allowing them to
Speaker 1: watch how primates move because they had all these theories
Speaker 1: about their locomotion, and to just show them how they
Speaker 1: move and how what they eat and just kind of
Speaker 1: understand primates a little bit better. I thought that would
Speaker 1: have been such an awesome opportunity. And there is the
Speaker 1: organ primate center that would have been a great I think.
Speaker 1: I think it also would have been a great opportunity
Speaker 1: for comedy. Monkeys do monkeys and apes do funny things,
Speaker 1: and I would love to have heard their commentary, the
Speaker 1: contestants commentary as they watched them do those funny.
Speaker 4: Things, especially when monkeys and apes were throwing shit at them.
Speaker 7: And as long as you kept justin away from them
Speaker 7: as well, Yeah, yeah, just.
Speaker 8: Away from everything.
Speaker 4: I would have liked to be able to show them
Speaker 4: a little more detail of how the DNA analyses worked,
Speaker 4: how we actually obviously I can't give them a lecture
Speaker 4: on the plymerase.
Speaker 5: Chain reaction or PCR, but I would have liked to try.
Speaker 4: And I mean I did it to ten to sixteen
Speaker 4: year olds last week at the World Science Festival here
Speaker 4: in New York. I think the American television public would
Speaker 4: be up to that, and then just show them here's
Speaker 4: actually what a DNA signature in this case looks like,
Speaker 4: and here's the database we're comparing it to.
Speaker 5: I would have liked to show a little bit.
Speaker 4: More of the sort of nitty gritty of it, just
Speaker 4: so that they, again would better understand it, because I
Speaker 4: did get a lot again on the interwebs and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. I would get comments about, well, you said
Speaker 4: it was human DNA, Well what if Bigfoot is a human?
Speaker 4: So well, if it's human, it's a human. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to explain that is it's hard to explain.
Speaker 4: So I would have liked to be able to delve
Speaker 4: a little bit more into the precise nature of the
Speaker 4: kind of analysis that my technicians and I carried out
Speaker 4: to even less doubt about the results in the arbitrariature
Speaker 4: and so on.
Speaker 5: If we could have shown that level of depth and detail.
Speaker 4: I mean, again, this is for a large lay public,
Speaker 4: so one has to do it properly.
Speaker 5: But I think I have a lot.
Speaker 4: Of experience doing that, and I think again, if I
Speaker 4: was producer editor, I think I would have taken a
Speaker 4: bigger shot at that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't have loved to have sat down with
Speaker 1: all the teams and had them each tell me exactly
Speaker 1: what their theory is going into it. Where is bigfoot,
Speaker 1: what does it look like, what is this locomotion, what
Speaker 1: does its diet? What is its reproductive strategy, and really
Speaker 1: kind of come up with a composite And I think
Speaker 1: you even better have each team's idea and be drawn
Speaker 1: out and a picture, and so we could literally look
Speaker 1: at what each team's idea of Bigfoot looks like, and
Speaker 1: then we can talk about human variation, just to get
Speaker 1: and also to get a really good idea before we
Speaker 1: walk into this competition what they're thinking, because we kind
Speaker 1: of came in it really.
Speaker 8: Cold, not knowing what each team thought.
Speaker 1: You know, little bits and pieces here and there, but
Speaker 1: being that we were the judges, we couldn't speak to
Speaker 1: them so much about what their theories were because we
Speaker 1: were not funny predicament of being judges and their contestants
Speaker 1: in the time that we weren't shooting the show, we
Speaker 1: weren't really allowed to talk about their ideas too much.
Speaker 8: It would have been, really, I think, an awesome opportunity.
Speaker 1: For us to hear what they think and get an
Speaker 1: idea of what this individual or this new species looks
Speaker 1: like and.
Speaker 4: What I would have liked to then see, you know again,
Speaker 4: the professor and me coming out sort of an exit
Speaker 4: interview with each of them.
Speaker 5: You know, how did their.
Speaker 4: Views change, if they changed at all? You know, from
Speaker 4: what they learned on the show, both either from Natalia
Speaker 4: or I or from the other contestants.
Speaker 5: Do they now have.
Speaker 4: A different vision, a different picture of Bigfoot after having
Speaker 4: gone through the show and been exposed to this stuff.
Speaker 4: So did they learn? Would to me have also been
Speaker 4: an interesting thing.
Speaker 8: It also would have been nice if there were no eliminations. Honestly,
Speaker 8: it would have.
Speaker 1: Been really nice had there just been an expedition. I
Speaker 1: think the elimination wasn't necessary because I.
Speaker 7: Think reality TV for you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the formula.
Speaker 8: Actually it's changing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, eliminations are not working as well as they used to,
Speaker 1: and so that's why I think it would have been
Speaker 1: even better if they were only eliminated if need be,
Speaker 1: because it took away from other drama that I think
Speaker 1: could have been more entertaining.
Speaker 8: Because trust me, they could.
Speaker 1: They could definitely create their own drama when given the opportunity.
Speaker 5: So TDD.
Speaker 2: I think when we talked last time, you mentioned you
Speaker 2: had talked to Lloyd's of London about the odds on this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: do you know what they actually gave I mean, obviously
Speaker 2: the well, I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't think they ever put uh, you know, despite
Speaker 4: being British and loving to put odds on beds, I
Speaker 4: don't think they ever put a number on it. I
Speaker 4: like to say that it's not zero, but it's it's
Speaker 4: in the near vicinity of it, adjacent to it, in
Speaker 4: the vicinity.
Speaker 5: Of it, but not zero.
Speaker 4: Obviously, they were pretty confident that they weren't going to
Speaker 4: have to lay out the ten million, and we're thus
Speaker 4: willing to do it.
Speaker 5: This is rumsfeld unknown.
Speaker 4: Unknowns, too many unknown numbers to go into that particular equation.
Speaker 7: And you guys were talking about the contestants changing over
Speaker 7: the course of the show. Were there any contestants who
Speaker 7: seem to have their faith in Bigfoot shaken at any point?
Speaker 8: No, No, I am not.
Speaker 5: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I think the true believers coming in never changed. I
Speaker 4: think some of the bigger skeptics, the professional hunters and photographers.
Speaker 4: Maybe one or two of those teams became more open
Speaker 4: to the idea. But I think some of the teams
Speaker 4: never really bought into the story, you know, of the
Speaker 4: hunters and photographers rather than the so called squatchers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely think that maybe, you know, I know
Speaker 1: that Sheeny and Kristen came in as hunters and they
Speaker 1: actually gravitated a lot towards you know, Stacy and Dave
Speaker 1: in their theories and seemed to kind of pick up
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 8: I don't know if necessarily deep.
Speaker 1: Down they believe more or if they just you know,
Speaker 1: for camera, we're going to believe more because I mean
Speaker 1: again that that's what that's what the show wants, and
Speaker 1: and you know, that's what you have to sometimes give.
Speaker 8: To get in the show.
Speaker 1: But they they did, you know, when they came to
Speaker 1: elimination rounds, they talked like they believed in the beginning,
Speaker 1: they kind of didn't know, you know, jack about about
Speaker 1: Bigfoot or sasquatch theory, and and you know, by the
Speaker 1: time they left, which they stayed really late in the game,
Speaker 1: which I was super proud of them for doing. They
Speaker 1: stepped up their game quite a bit by by sticking
Speaker 1: with those boys, and you know, and really putting it
Speaker 1: out there and and I guess being open to the
Speaker 1: idea they played the game.
Speaker 2: Well, did you guys track any of the forgive me,
Speaker 2: I didn't even mean that one.
Speaker 6: Did you guys find follow any of the stuff that
Speaker 6: was going on with Rick.
Speaker 2: Dyer, the perpetual Bigfoot hoaxer simultaneous to this show?
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, Unfortunately there are the two big stories out
Speaker 4: there in the wider community, were dire and catch them?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I followed ire.
Speaker 4: I read Lee Spiegel and the Huffington Posts weird news
Speaker 4: columns very very frequently. He's interviewed me on some of
Speaker 4: the stuff, and so, yeah, I was aware and skeptical.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a known fraudster guy who's been multiply
Speaker 4: charged with all sorts of fraudulent stuff, and so and
Speaker 4: the picture Hank, It was ridiculous.
Speaker 8: It looked like one of those they call those little
Speaker 8: treasure trolls.
Speaker 1: From Yes, Yeah, yeah, whatever. It just looked like a
Speaker 1: giant version of treasure troll.
Speaker 4: So I never bought into it in a minute. And
Speaker 4: the more he hemmed and hot about well, I've sent
Speaker 4: it out for DNA testing, and then oh, but I
Speaker 4: have a non disclosure agreement with the university that's doing
Speaker 4: As soon as you start covering up, oh you know,
Speaker 4: we can't tell you why or who or what.
Speaker 5: You just it died.
Speaker 4: Then I mean I never bought it in the first place,
Speaker 4: but when he was talking about the DNA and results
Speaker 4: will be out next week, but I have an NDA
Speaker 4: with the university, so we can't say who.
Speaker 5: Right then I knew for sure it was a hoax.
Speaker 2: Or do you know if did he apply to your
Speaker 2: show or was that just him trying to get free publicity?
Speaker 4: We had nothing to do with the casting whatsoever?
Speaker 6: Gotcha?
Speaker 4: So I have no knowledge of that. Unfortunately or fortunately.
Speaker 5: Gold spoiler alert before you say things like that.
Speaker 7: So the the ten million dollars, obviously it wasn't awarded,
Speaker 7: but Stacy and Dave won the competition, so they received
Speaker 7: one hundred dollars and that was supposed to go towards
Speaker 7: researching Bigfoot. So have you guys got any idea of
Speaker 7: how that's going.
Speaker 4: The guys who won, they have their own sort of organization.
Speaker 4: They hire themselves out and people pay them to spend
Speaker 4: the weekend running around looking for Bigfoot. And so they've
Speaker 4: they're continue I know they're continuing to do that. They're
Speaker 4: having a conference on the so called Florida Skunk ca
Speaker 4: Ape I believe in September.
Speaker 5: One of them was just out on the West coast at.
Speaker 4: The Hops and Squatch Hopsquatch conference. I think it's your
Speaker 4: drink beer and go looking for a squatch. Not sure,
Speaker 4: so I know they're still fully in the game.
Speaker 6: I think I prefer sascotch.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually, Notre Dame, we have both Todd and I both
Speaker 1: have friends at Notre Dame University, and they had a
Speaker 1: squatch and squatchart, a squatch and Scotch party for the
Speaker 1: opening night of Bigfoot Bounty, which both of us were
Speaker 1: regretfully could not be there, but we.
Speaker 4: Were at a pub in Manhattan actually doing the same
Speaker 4: thing exactly.
Speaker 8: We did have some scotch for squatch nice.
Speaker 6: We have a fan question.
Speaker 2: Has the loss of the Mohawks shaken Natalia's trust in
Speaker 2: Doctor Todd's skills.
Speaker 1: I actually when he picked me up from the airport,
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize him. When I did realize it was
Speaker 1: doctor Todd, I wept openly.
Speaker 8: It was a sad moment. I don't know who he
Speaker 8: is anymore.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: He made me coffee this morning, and I afraid to
Speaker 1: drink it. I didn't know what he'd put in it. No,
Speaker 1: I I I still trust him, but you know, he
Speaker 1: kind of was like Samson and and that was his
Speaker 1: that was his strength, you know.
Speaker 8: So yeah, yeah, he definitely I have to say this.
Speaker 8: He definitely has a height.
Speaker 1: When he puts on a hot he has a Heisenberg
Speaker 1: Walter White effect going on, you know. So at least
Speaker 1: I know where to get my my street math from right.
Speaker 8: Here next to me. Are there other.
Speaker 6: Biologists with mohawks that you know of?
Speaker 5: Michael Merchant.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he's a biologist.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 6: He's a biologist.
Speaker 5: He's he's a wildlife biologist.
Speaker 4: He actually has a degree in biology and he has
Speaker 4: worked on and off. I don't know if he's currently working,
Speaker 4: but he has worked for you know, the wildlife department
Speaker 4: in Maine. Yeah, so he's a he's a bona fide
Speaker 4: wildlife biologist.
Speaker 5: A degree in it. So I did not know of
Speaker 5: him or anything.
Speaker 4: And so that first day when we walked out, and
Speaker 4: I mean, and we're both like within a year of
Speaker 4: each other in age and stuff.
Speaker 8: It's just freaky looking at a mirror.
Speaker 4: As I would talk to friends and family, I would
Speaker 4: always sort of jokingly refer to that crazy guy with
Speaker 4: the mohawk, the other one from me.
Speaker 7: So, what happened to your mohawk? Then?
Speaker 4: It just took too much work. You know, you have
Speaker 4: to shave in front of a mirror. You got to
Speaker 4: go to a barber to get it tweet. I can
Speaker 4: do it now just in the shower without looking and
Speaker 4: not worry about product and any of that stuff. So
Speaker 4: figure into your fifties, eventually you gotta grow up a
Speaker 4: little bit, not too much, definitely.
Speaker 5: All right, Well.
Speaker 2: That's all we've got you guys, have anything else you
Speaker 2: want to say about the show that we didn't touch
Speaker 2: on that you want to get out to the listeners.
Speaker 5: We had a great time doing it.
Speaker 4: We could see how to do it differently, but we
Speaker 4: are appreciative.
Speaker 5: Of having the opportunity to have done it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a first of all, if you were a
Speaker 1: fan and you watch it, thank you, because I don't
Speaker 1: even think my family watched it. Again, enjoy them, Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, But that more than anything, we love doing
Speaker 1: the science.
Speaker 8: We really appreciated being able to work with.
Speaker 1: Individuals that might not have the opportunity to take any
Speaker 1: sort of genetic classes or understand primate behavior or morphology,
Speaker 1: and to work with them. And so it was an
Speaker 1: excellent opportunity to do science and a beautiful location with
Speaker 1: wonderful people, and I had honestly the time of my life.
Speaker 1: I've had a wonderful time. So I hope it translated
Speaker 1: on screen. They made me uberstone. By the way, I'm
Speaker 1: not as serious as I am on that show. I
Speaker 1: think they edited everything.
Speaker 8: I do. I do laugh and smile on occasion.
Speaker 5: I do have a tough time smiling.
Speaker 4: And that was That was one of the drinking games
Speaker 4: that my friends had is and.
Speaker 5: Nobody ever got drunk.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's pretty funny. All right, Well, thanks thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us and giving us a follow up on the show,
Speaker 2: and we'll put a link to your videos.
Speaker 4: Thank you for the opportunity, and uh just keep up
Speaker 4: the great work.
Speaker 6: You too, all right, see you guys later.
Speaker 2: Most thanks for listening to another episode of Monster Talk.
Speaker 6: I'm Blake Smith and.
Speaker 2: You just heard me and doctor Karen stoles Know interviewing
Speaker 2: doctor Todd dis Hotel and Natalia Reagan about their experience
Speaker 2: is working on Spike TV's ten million dollars big Foot Bounty.
Speaker 2: Monster Talk is an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The
Speaker 2: opinion is expressed on this show or those are the
Speaker 2: hosts and the guests, and do not necessarily reflect the
Speaker 2: opinion of Skeptic Society or Skeptic Magazine. If you would
Speaker 2: like to know their opinion, why not drop by your
Speaker 2: local magazine vendor and ask for a copy of Skeptic Magazine,
Speaker 2: or go to skeptic dot com and have a look around.
Speaker 2: Their opinion has to be out there somewhere and maybe
Speaker 2: you'll be the first to find it. I'm sad to
Speaker 2: report that the cruise we'd planned for October will not
Speaker 2: be taking place, but I hope to revisit the idea
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, so if that's up your alley, please
Speaker 2: stay tuned. Monster Talk theme music is by peach stealing monkeys.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 11: Hungry for more skepticism.
Speaker 3: Want to learn the truth about the scientific controversies of
Speaker 3: our time, then subscribe to Skeptic, the quarterly magazine Stephen J.
Speaker 3: Gould called the best journal in the field. To subscribe
Speaker 3: visit skeptic dot com today just.
Speaker 4: That uh you know, uh you know, uh uh you know.
Speaker 8: I hope you know.
Speaker 4: I can do it now, just in the shower without looking,
Speaker 4: and not worry about product