Speaker 1: Big Food and Beyond.
Speaker 2: With Cliff and Bobo.
Speaker 3: These guys are your favorites, so like say subscribe and
Rade it stuck s me.
Speaker 2: The greatest gone Bush.
Speaker 1: Today and listening watching limb always keep its watching. And
now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bobo Fay.
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, this is Cliff, and you're listening to Bigfoot
and Beyond with Cliff almost always Bobo and Matt Prutz
around here somewhere as usual. Bobo is not here today.
He is off doing more important things. We're giving him
a pass, which is all fine and good, we all
need one every once in a while. But filling in
his exceptionally large shoes will be Matt Prut. Matt, you
look lovely today, even though you're in Nashville and I'm
over in Sandy, Oregon.
Speaker 2: I can't see you. I'm just imagining you looking lovely.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that I do wear a size twelve, what
size shoe does, but where imagine it's larger.
Speaker 3: Well, that's an interesting story, if I remember correctly, like
this happened on finding Bigfoot. Actually about three or four
years or so into finding Bigfoot, Bobo on the road somewhere.
I think he messed up his shoes or like damage
them or something, and he had to go get a
different set of hiking boots. And so he went into
a shoe store or maybe his RII or.
Speaker 2: Something because it was hiking boots. I don't remember exactly
where it was.
Speaker 1: But he was.
Speaker 3: Really excited when he came back with his new boots
because he told me this story where like, oh I
would and sat down. Do they measured my feet? And
he had been wearing the wrong size shoes for about
fifteen twenty years, and he'd been wearing shoes that were
too small for him. So, if I remember correctly, Bobo
wears a thirteen shoe, but he had been wearing twelves
for the previous decade or two. Then he'd never quite
understood why his feet.
Speaker 2: Hurt all the time.
Speaker 3: Classic, Hey, Robo, Bobo, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2: See?
Speaker 1: So I do wonder what we'll have to ask him?
What is boot size?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 1: Either way, I can't fill his exceptionally large shoes. That's
not possible.
Speaker 3: No, when people asked me, like how tall is Bobo?
I said, well, he's six foot four wearing boots a
little over seven feet with his personality on I think
that's quite accurate. Yeah, larger than life anyway. But we'll
miss him for this week or whatever, but he'll be back.
Fear not, Bobo will return. You know, it's like the
cat that came back the very next day.
Speaker 1: Anyway, what are we doing, Matt, Well, we got a
lot of great feedback on the recent episode that we
had done where we were reviewing paper that John Green
wrote and presented at the nineteen seventy eight UBC conference
that was included in Manlike Monsters on Trial. We talked about, oh,
if this goes well, we shouldn't do this as a
recurring feature to see what other classic papers or papers
from the previous era from the Four Horsemen or that
ilk that generation might still hold up, what things we
would quibble with or have contentions with. And so I
found another paper that was in a great compilation book.
I know, it was one of the early books that
you read that was called the Sasquatch and Other Unknown Hominids,
And it was a paper by Grover Krantz that he
actually presented at that same conference at the University of
British Columbia in seventy eight. But The paper was not
included in Manlke Monsters on Trial, but was included in
this volume that Krantz was one of the editors of.
So I was going through various articles there and reread
this one, and I thought, this one is just as
relevant today, I think, as it ever was, and so
I thought that would be a fun one to do
a reading and review of to see if it holds
up in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, you know.
Speaker 3: And after you sent me the link to the article
and I started reading it, I said, oh, this is
one of the ones that really really put me on
my path and led me here today. I remember back
in cal State Long Beach Library when it first ran
across Sasquatch literature of any type. I remember reading this article.
There are certain phrases in here that just like popped
in my mind and said, oh, that's it.
Speaker 2: That's it. I remember that. I remember that.
Speaker 3: I remember that, And of course I've read a lot
of stuff anyway, don't get me wrong, But I specifically
remember this being one of the early eliest papers that
I read on the Sasquatch that kind of got me
fired up about it, because there's some stuff in here
that resonates to this day very very strongly with me,
you know, very very formative, shall we say, you know absolutely.
Speaker 1: There was a few positions that I was reading him
state and I was like, oh, yeah, I've that resonates
with me very much, and I can identify with that
very much. And I guess we can just go through
it like the previous paper. We just go paragraph by
paragraph and see what holds up and what doesn't. But
you know, one of the things when I wrote the
Phenomenal Sasquatch, I was really trying to look at both
of the sort of like diametrically opposed positions and see that, like, no,
they actually have a lot in common in a lot
of ways. And you know, when you point out the
strengths and errors of either one, you often find yourself
sort of like in a no man's land, because very
often people want a very binary answer. You know, it's real,
it's imaginary. You know it's true, it's false, and so
if you're like, well some of it's true and some
of its faults, a lot of people would think, oh, well,
you're just pandering to everyone. It's like no, actually, you
get rejected by both sides. And I've found that many
times in many different places, not just in this subject,
but in others. So I loved when I was rereading
this that he opens the paper saying, quote, there are
many people who believe there's a species of giant Harry
hominid living wild in the forested mountains of western North America.
There are also many who are equally convinced that no
such animal exists, except in some people's imaginations. I'm here
going to alienate almost everybody by attacking both positions, which
I thought was just great.
Speaker 2: It fantastic.
Speaker 3: You can't be true to yourself and the sasquatch subject
without pissing people off on both sides.
Speaker 1: Honestly, Yeah, a lot of my favorite thinkers sort of
occupy that space, you know, in that they sort of
straddle to worlds and they show that like, actually the
divide is kind of imaginary and there is a bridge
or you know, the chain with many links in it
linking the two sides. But they tend to be sort
of alienated by both sides. So I was like, oh,
it's funny that Krantz was feeling that in seventy eight,
you know, when he wrote this, only ten years ind
of his investigation.
Speaker 3: Well, his next sentence says it all right there, I mean,
his next sentence is astounding and it should be shouted
from the mountaintops, in my opinion, go for it. Well, yeah,
The next sentence goes on to say, after he says
I'm here, I'm going to alien at everybody by attacking
both positions. The next sentence says, with only a few exceptions,
those who hold a firm opinion on this matter, either
four or against the existence of this animal, are doing
so without adequate knowledge. I think that holds up in
twenty twenty six pretty well. Yeah, yeah, with the recent
flat of the Patterson Gimlin film stuff, everybody was arguing
this or that, and with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever. They
had not seen the documentary that, they didn't know what
was in it, they didn't know. All they had was rumors.
And again, with only a few exceptions, those who hold
a firm opinion on this matter, either for or against
the existence of this animal, or a film or a footprint,
whatever you know, are doing so without adequate knowledge. That
says so much. I'm constantly pretty bent out of shape
and not really excitable. I mean, yes, and no, ben
out of shape means like a, you know, I'm pretty
pissed about it and brooding about it or something, and
that's not really the case. I just kind of shake
my head and say, yeah, that's why I'm not a
people person. But people who are commenting about the Freeman
foot or footage or the footprints or any case, any
of these cases and are so so invested in it.
Generally speaking, most of these people have not seen the cast.
Like so on the Freeman cast collection, I read a
lot of stuff saying how this cast or this cast
or this cast is fake or this event was fake.
And to my knowledge, almost and that's being generous, almost
nobody has actually examined the cast. Literally, they're just saying, oh,
it's fake. Why do you say that? Well, Dehindon thought
it was, yeah, but why do you say that? And
they don't have an answer. They don't have an answer.
There's always somebody else's opinion.
Speaker 1: And I think every one of us is guilty of that.
So I don't want to come out of gate with
us sounding like, you know, we're castigating others, because there's
there is undoubtedly a mountain of things in my mind
and memory that I have a quote unquote firm opinion
on that I just don't know enough about because either
I've not investigated it because I'm just not that interested
in it, or you know, if you're studying some element
of like history or whatever the case may be in school,
or you run across the documentary or read a reference
in a book, like most of the time you'll go, Okay,
well that's that, and you just move on. And if
someone were to say, hey, what are the facts about this,
you would just repeat that proposition that you would taken
in and say, oh, yeah, that's it. History shows that X, Y,
and z, and so it's like we all have, you know,
some degree of that. So some epistemic humility is necessary
for all of us of like, yeah, well I don't
know enough to know what I don't know or what
I do know for things that I haven't investigated.
Speaker 2: But yeah.
Speaker 1: There's another great line from Kranz's book where it's said
something along the lines of like, if you would ask
most people what the preferred benefits of something like the
internal combustion engine versus the steam engine, most people would
just go, I don't know. But if you ask people
like is the sasquatch exist? They'd give you a very
emotionally charged like, of course it does or it absolutely cannot,
you know, even though they know just as little about
that as they would about some other thing. So so yeah,
there's we're all going to have those places where we
have firm opinions based on inadequate knowledge, for sure.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: And you know one example where I am I'm not
gonna say guilty, because I think it's actually a kind
of a good thing sometimes as long as you don't
put too much of your own self into it, as
long as you don't identify too strongly with it. But
an example for my own life is, you know, I
have always been very interested in the footprints since the
nineteen nineties, you know, started my bigfoot cast collection back
in the nineteen nineties, you know, so I started learning
about it and looking at literature, mostly Krantz at that time,
until doctor Meltram published his book and then what two
thousand and six or eight or whenever that was somewhere
in there, and I would take their word for it.
But now, after all these years, and having been exposed
to so many footprints in not only casts but also
in the ground footprints, I'm now taken their knowledge or
that they've bestowed upon me, or their their interpretation. I
guess I should say and then made it my own,
because now at this point in the game, I can
see a lot of things in the footprints, both in
the ground and in casts that I recognize, and I've
seen repeated examples to the point where when doctor Meldrim
was still alive, I could bring up like, have you
noticed this?
Speaker 2: And there are I.
Speaker 3: Can probably think about five or six, seven times maybe
more that Jeff goes, you know, I have noticed that,
and then we started talking about what we what he
thought was going on, and then he would explain it
in anatomical terms, you know, using like the Latin terms
of this and that, but I would just say it
in my language, you know, like, well, look at my hand,
like I think it's doing this, and I'd move my
hand in certain ways. He goes, yeah, that's because this,
you know. And so at a certain point, I think,
speaking as a teacher a former teacher, I think all
good learners start off with that sort of knowledge that
somebody else has built. You take that, you synthesize it
into what you're doing, and then you build upon that.
So as far as like the knowledge from other people.
And you know that I'm a big proponent of not
giving away your power to other people. That's really kind
of unfair for me to say, because that's where things start,
but unfortunately, a lot of times, for many, many, many people,
that's also where it ends. And I think that maybe
it should be that ball should be picked up and
carried further.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Oh, certainly that's every one of our responsibilities and opportunities.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we all start in the same spot by listening
to somebody that we respect and believe, and then hopefully
we kind of test that. It's like a mini version
of the scientific process. We test their hypothesis with the
evidence that we see to see if it stands up.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo.
Will be right back at these messages.
Speaker 1: You know, this next section. Even reading this, I sort
of like anticipate the pushback from people. But again, these
are Krantz's words, and he existed within, you know, a
scientific and academic framework and hierarchy, so this is his statement.
So you know, I might have opinions that would equally
be based on other people's expression of their experience. But
I don't want it to seem like I'm attacking the
scientific establishment. But Krantz says, quote, the scientific establishment is
overwhelmingly on record as denying any reality to the sasquatch,
this is not surprising. Science is generally not in the
business of investigating the unknown, but rather it is working
out minor details of principles that are already accepted. See
I don't I guess I could understand why he might
have that feeling, But I do think science should generally
be in the business of investigating the unknown. But I
don't know. I can already like since the ruffling of
feathers that that statement would provoke in people.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and no, I think that.
Speaker 3: But when you look at academia in general, or even
the think tank folks, you know those sort of scientists,
because scientists don't only work in universities. When you look
at what most of them are doing. And he did
say science is generally not in the business of investigating
it on Maybe that's not Maybe that's not the best
way to phrase that sentence, because like we'll take the
theory of gravity for example, gravity is a theory. It's
not considered a law. Of gravity to my knowledge, as
a theory of gravity because of what that next sentence is,
they're still working out minor details of principles that are
already accepted.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Another great example is evolution, right, and I don't want
to get into the weeds on that one, but again,
evolution as a general whole is accepted by the scientists,
and then there's minute details that are still being worked out,
which is why it's a theory of evolution, right, And
you can go down the list theory after theory after theory.
They're still working out the kings that the super minor details.
And I think that's largely true. And of course the
big bold scientific discoveries like homofluiesiensis or something like that,
that is also usually done by scientists and often done
accidentally and sometimes on purpose, but often accidentally. This sasquatch
subject is going to be one that's probably going to
be done on purpose, although not necessarily it could accidentally
be solved as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that Krantz
probably didn't do himself many favors by having that sort
of because he certainly was a bit of a maverick
and a renegade, but he would be on the attack
more so than he would be on the defense of
his own thes Or maybe I would say he was
attacking his you know, perceived enemies as often as he
was defending his own thesis. As ruffled a lot of
feathers and probably still continues to do so, because when
I would refer to those things or allude to those
things saying, well, according to the scientists who have pursued this,
here the obstacles that they faced in their careers, I
would get accused of you know, oh, you're blaming the
scientific establishment. I'm like, no, not really, I'm trying to
express the pattern that these other people have expressed in
their own lives. But so maybe I'm being a little
too cautious now just reading this. But he goes on
to say that the sasquatch, if proven, would certainly be
something new and previously unknown. Science has a vested interest
in its own infallibility, So to find out it has
completely missed something as big and potentially important as the
sasquatch would be to admit to a certain degree of failure.
It is easier to deny the existence of such creatures
than to look for them. Well, that's obviously true.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Having denied their existence, science then becomes obligated to refuse
to look for them and can no longer avoid the
issue by claiming it didn't know about the situation. And
I do think that to some degree has held out
to be true. Like we've talked about the circular logic,
you know, I quote Mike Mays often because as Mike
talked about having a hair sample that was purportedly from
one of the big black cats, you know, the mystery
black panthers of North America, trying to get people to
analyze it, and I'm saying like, hey, what do you have?
And he said, well, I think I have evidence of
a black panther. Say oh, well, there's no such thing.
And Mike would say something like, well what would it
take for you to be convinced that there was such
a thing. Oh well, I'd need to see evidence. And
then he'd say, well will you look at this? And
they're like, well, that can't be evidence because there's no
such thing. And so I do think as a general
broad stroke that seems to be fairly true to this
day is that, well, once you deny the existence, it
makes it a easier to continue to deny the existence
than to look for it. But then also once that
existence is denied, then you can refuse to continue looking
for it. And you know, like he says, no longer
avoid the issue by claiming it didn't know about the situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course science is all about testing what
you think you know to make sure it stays true.
And scientists wouldn't like who admit that that processes could
be flawed or maybe there's some kinks or monkey wrenches
thrown into that somehow, you know, they would have a
lot of egg on their face because the sasquatch thing
is would be such a potentially important discovery. And it's
also you know, as Kranz said in other works or
maybe even in this article somewhere that it's it's literally
in our own backyard. So how could you know America
United States of America often put forth, its most advanced
country in the world, have missed this thing that's just
walking around, and especially that it's an animal, you know,
like an ape or whatever. And the sciences probably think that, well,
we could, we would have certainly got around it that
one by Now, how can an animal have eluded us? Say, well,
don't underestimate them. That's how And I do have a
certain degree of I try to have a certain degree
of sympathy because I could imagine someone holding the position
that it's just impossible. Like if someone came to me
and said, hey, I found god Zella's scale on the
shore of this beach, and it would be like, well,
I don't care how good it looks to you or
what you think you have, there's no way that Godzilla
exists and that you found some or you know, a track,
a Godzilla track, or whatever the case may be. And
so I would probably be very hard pressed to expend
the time and energy to look at something that I
was absolutely convinced to my core was impossible, And so
I try to try to empathize and go, Okay, well,
that's that's how many of these people see the sasquatch phenomena.
Speaker 1: They don't see it the same way that we do.
I still think we would be further along if but again,
they're not necessarily obligated to entertain every idea that comes
across their desk. That you know, someone has what they
think is something of scientific value. But I'm sure it's
one thing for people like myself or Mike Mays or
you know other of us that are like citizen scientists
to be frustrated by that. But I'm sure Krantz's frustration
was much greater because he did have the qualified disciplinary
expertise obviously, was a tenured professor, like he probably should
have been taken a little bit more seriously than Joe Sixpack.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what I would hope from scientists is it would
be I guess, an analogy if that's right word, an
analogy of of what I would hope to get out
of scientists who are confident sasquatches aren't real, is that
you know, you know what frogging is?
Speaker 2: Have you ever had that?
Speaker 3: Frogging is a term where people end up living in
your house without you knowing. No, it's a thing, It
absolutely is a thing. Yeah, So frogging said, the act
of breaking into someone's home and covertly living within their walls,
usually through like a crawl space or something like that.
That sort of thing. That's what frogging is. And there's
a I mean, the reason I know about it is
because Melissa there's a horror movie about this. Of course
there is, right, And so I've saw some horror movie
back into day. I can't remember what it's called about frogging,
but apparently this actually happens. It's rare, of course, because
how would most people would know there's a person living
in their house, but they usually access the house through
some crawl space or live in the attic or basement.
You know, they get that sort of thing. It's a
kin a squatting, but the people are actually home, you
know sometimes. I mean a lot of these people are.
They travel for work or something, so it makes it
easier for them. But I would like to think it's
something like that for scientists. Like if someone came up
to me and said, dude, there's a frogger in your house. Man,
there's somebody frogging in your house, and I would go what.
But when that person after I wrote them off, I
would so I would start looking around the house for
evidence of this, like could that be true? Or some
dude or some woman living in my house? And I
would look at all the nooks and crannies and start
exploring and looking for evidence. And I think it's the
same sort of thing with sasquatches or today and scientists.
I would hope that scientists upon hearing that sasquatches might
be living in your house, your backyard, your local forests,
that maybe they would go what now, and then start, well,
what do other PhDs have to say about it? And
of course a problem with a lot of PhDs and scientists, unfortunately,
the ones who have written skeptical books, which I think
is a good thing, of course, is that they go
to the old standbys, you know, the Bossberg tracks, which
I think are real, by the way, but Ivan Marx
was involved. He later went on to hoax and they
hold that up as evidence that Bossburg isn't real, although
to be fair, d Hinden also had some concerns about that,
about Ivan Marx's involvement, you know, or any number of
other things. You know that the skeptical folks usually go
to the well, well worn trails that have already been
put out there by other skeptics and whatever online and
this put in a book, you know. But still I
think the frogging analogy is an interesting one that could
be used with the scientists say, like, you look around
the house, you know, there might be a candy wrapper
somewhere that maybe there is somebody living in your house,
so be careful. That is a great analogy. I'd never
never heard of that, and certainly hadn't.
Speaker 1: Thought about that before, but that that is a really
good analogy.
Speaker 3: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
Will be right back after these messages, He continues.
Speaker 1: You know, I won't read the whole next paragraph that
says fairly redundant to the paragraph we just read, But
he basically says, you know, that scientific establishment that he
describes is made up of individual scientists, and you know
the establishment is built out of their accumulated knowledge. But essentially,
any individual scientist is hard pressed to go against the
accepted doctrines or the axioms of each of their disciplines.
Then he moves on to say that, you know, basically,
as a consequence, many major scientific breakthroughs are made by
amateurs or by those who are only marginally involved in
the field in question. These new ideas are first regarded
as heresy by the establishment, but eventually many of them
become accepted when more authorities look at them with open
minds or generation passes. On the other hand, it must
not be forgotten that the vast majority of new ideas
do not turn out to be true. We read about
those few new ideas which worked, but our history books
say very little about the ninety nine percent that were
and still are foolishness. One of the tasks of the
scientific establishment to weed out these incorrect ideas and to
accept only those few which are true. The trouble is
that after debunking ninety nine silly ideas, it's easy to
get into the habit and then miss the next one
that might be right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's first sentence. There many major scientific
breakthroughs are made by amateurs or by those who are
only marginally involved in the field in question. That's probably
the most important sentence of any book that I've ever
read in my life, because I remember reading this one
man at the time, I was toyed around at the
idea of being a professional astronomer and physicist. I mean,
I've said that story many times until Calculus two kicked
my ass and I said, well, I don't whatever whatever
Calculus two is, I don't want to do that for
a living, you know, because it was very, very difficult.
I could probably do it now. I think I'm just
more emotionally and intellectually mature now that I was in
but anyway, that, like many major scientific breakthroughs, were made
by amateurs. I mean I even read an article about
it a decade and a half ago that's on my website.
That is the most powerful sentence that I had read,
and I didn't realize how that would change the rest
of my life, literally the rest of my life. So
when I saw this sentence, when you sent me the article,
I said, oh, yeah, yeah, that's where I got that from.
Clearly I totally remember that, totally remember that. And it's
true because I mentioned the astronomy and physics thing. Is
because the reason I mentioned the astronomy and physics thing
is because the vast majority of new comets, for example,
are discovered by amateur astronomers, people with nice telescopes or
even small telescopes in their backyard or out in the
woods or something in dark skies scanning the horizon. Because
as Krantz kind of alludes to, you know in this article,
professional astronomers, you know, they're on telescopes, like the giant
telescopes that are very very expensive, and they were using
their grant money to specifically study one particular thing, perhaps
a certain star or galaxy or nebula or something, and
they're spending their time and grant money on that telescope
studying that one thing, trying to work out minute details
about it. Essentially, they don't have the luxury perhaps of
scanning the horizon for unknown fuzzy objects, you know, which
end up to be new comments, you know, because there's plenty.
I mean, there's there's probably billions of comets, you know,
trillions of commets in the universe. But and every once
whilst one cruises by that no one has ever cataloged before.
And it's only the people out there who are having
fun with their telescope and sometimes trying to find these scenes.
Because there's a couple of amateuristronomers that have discovered multiple
new comments because that's their thing, and sometimes they were
discovered on accident. And that's exactly the same as the
bigfoot thing, exactly the same. When I read that article,
I realized, well, I'm a scientifically minded guy. I like
science in general. I'm kind of a nerd, and I
like going to the woods. This is something that I
can contribute to. This subject is something that I might
be able to participate in and maybe slight maybe make
a difference someday, and boy, that changed the clearly changed
the rest of my life in a way that I
had no idea about.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing I think that has changed a
lot since Krantz wrote this in nineteen seventy eight when
he says, you know, we hear very little about the
ninety nine percent of ideas that were and are foolish,
and that you know that history doesn't record those things. Well,
now there's we've removed many steps of you know, gatekeepers,
which is very beneficial. That's the reason that we have
this podcast and can communicate directly to people. But everything
has a cost and a benefit, and so yeah, there's
right now, you know, you're you're always swimming in a
sea if you're in social media or quote unquote independent media, YouTube, podcast,
et cetera, is that all new ideas are out into
the arena, and some take hold because they're more outrageous
or entertaining or captivating, or they reach into a certain
part of us that we respond to. And so yeah,
I think historically he's right that like, yeah, well, you know,
we only remember the few new ideas that worked out.
But right now it's like, think about how many theories hypotheses,
conspiracy theories, on and on that are massive that you
know from channels or podcasters or whatever. They have huge audiences,
and you know, time will tell which ones are correct
or incorrect. But I think his metric that you know,
ninety nine percent of them will not be correct. But yeah,
that's that has definitely changed significantly. Is that I would
almost argue that there's a larger audience for the you know,
incorrect or foolish new ideas than there are for the
correct ideas. But only time will tell what things floating
around now will eventually be confirmed and then held to
be true for decades or maybe centuries. We won't know
in our lifetime. But that has definitely changed from the
nineteen seventies until now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the information age has changed everything, of course. And
the difficulty and I think the importance of the scientific
process now is to apply it to the vast amount
of information that we're bombarded with constantly. That does that
make sense? That does this hold true with what I
personally observe? In other words, does it hold up to
the evidence?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And like Krant said, like most of stuff doesn't, which
is fine too, you know, And at the same time,
a lot of that stuff. When I when I read this,
the kind of reminded me about is that I had
somebody criticized. He's criticizing me not that long ago. I
forget on what platform. But it doesn't really matter. I
guess that every time I go out, I find something,
But that's not true at all. I think it was
a comment on one of my videos or something. It
probably the public YouTube because that's where most of the
trolls live. That wouldn't be inside my membership in the
museum or anything like that. So I think I put
something out and they say, every time you go out,
I can't believe blah blah blah, this and that or
whatever he's you know, And I said, well, that's because
I don't make videos about more than nothing happens, you know,
But why would I put that out right? So you
don't see the eight times in a row I go,
you know, one or two days a week and I
don't find anything at all, And then that one time,
like every two or three months, I make a video
out of and he's always finding stuff. No, you just
I'm not going to bore you with, you know, eight
to ten hour trips to the Woods, where I find
absolutely nothing. You know, that's not what people want to see. Oh,
I definitely understand that. I do think the difference in
today's world was, you know, Krant said, the trouble is,
after debunking ninety nine silly ideas, it's easy to get
into the habit.
Speaker 1: And miss the next one that might be right. And
today it'd be like, the trouble is that after debunking,
you know, ninety nine million silly ideas, because that's kind
of what you're confronted with on a monthly or yearly
basis online, you know. So so, But at least he
does seem to have a little sympathy there, like, hey,
I understand why they they gloss over some of these.
He continues to say, the more unlikely a new thing
may seem to be, the more the more proof is
required for its acceptance. You know, he lists things like
the sasquatch is more unexpected than something like a new
species of chipmunk, for instance, And so he leans into
which he will lean into for the remainder of his career,
which you'd already lean into a bit by that point.
But the proof required in this case is an actual specimen.
Nothing less will suffice. The scientific establishment rightly demands that
this proof be produced before it can be taken seriously.
But the establishment also refuses to look for this specimen,
and even goes so far as to actively discourage those
who would look for it. I think that's that's definitely
how true. It's not like any institution has taken up
that charge yet, despite a growing body of evidence that
to some people might be more of the same as
was on offer in Krantz's day. You know, more examples
of tracks, more examples of anomalous hair, more testimonial anecdotal claims,
more audio recordings, et cetera. But nonetheless thereas more, even
though it might be quote unquote more of the same.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we've spoken at length on the podcast here
about an actual specimen. Nothing less will suffice. And I
still do think that's true. Although the pathway to the specimen,
as we've mentioned before or has certainly become a little
bit better paved. You know, for example, DNA. You know,
we talk about that quite a bit, you know, with
RBS situation and the project and everything. So DNA, which
actually is a piece of the body, of course, don't
forget that it's a part of the body, you can
use that, but that would just pave the way to
actually collecting a specimen at some point. You know, we've
talked about that at nauseum.
Speaker 1: Of course, he goes on to say research funds are
given to projects which are certain to produce usable results. Unfortunately,
sasquatch hunting works against extreme odds, and here negative results
are of no value, which I think is completely relevant
because you know, in many other scientific disciplines, like whatever
results you get, even if they're not the results you're
looking for, do have some kind of value, especially if
you were, you know, testing for you know, a certain
chemical compound to see if it has this effect or
that effect, you know, like maybe a medicinal or health
benefit or something like that. But I do think the
research fund the argument about research funds being given to projects,
there was a I've heard it said a few different ways,
but a rebuttal to Sagan's you know, extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence being that, Yeah, well, extraordinary evidence requires either
extraordinary luck or extraordinary investigation, and extraordinary investigation typically requires
extraordinary funding. And I think all that's fairly true. But
then I've heard other people say no, extraordinary claims require evidence, period,
you know, not necessarily extraordinary evidence. So I don't think
there is any sort of a consensus about that yet.
But I don't think anything he said in that particular
paragraph has changed very much or would require an update
to make sense in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Not to the question he's asking, because his question is
a binary answer, yes or no. Is the Sasquatch real?
And I'm at that sort of thirty thousand foot level,
that large landscape overlook there, that's where negative results have
no value. Like you go looking and you don't find
one that negative result has and no real value because
maybe the Sasquatch, if it is real, was not there
or around there at that time. But I will say
that when when you start zooming in at the smaller
level questions, the more minutia. Again, like what we referred
to earlier, I do think negative We all know that
negative results do actually hold value. Like if I'm trying,
like in my research areas, if I'm trying to find
when the Sasquatches are there, and I go there and
they're not there, and I don't find sign of them,
that is actually is of value.
Speaker 2: So I think on.
Speaker 3: Binary gross overview questions like is the sasquatch real? Then yeah,
he is correct, But I would only take issue with
that last sentence there money more zoomed in level.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Yeah, I mean I took
that as in, like, you know, if you're testing for
some other natural phenomena or testing again, let's say like
a chemical compound and its effects, you know, whatever effects
are produced, even if their negative results have some value
maybe to some other medical intervention or to some other
field or sub discipline of the same field. Whereas like
if you're looking for something that you find no trace of,
it's like, yeah, well, we could have already told you
that the force was only full of squirrels, bears, and deer.
Like you know, you're you're we funded you, and like
what you produced that negative results is of no value
to like, we can't use that data for our fields.
You know, it's not going to teach us anymore or
less about squirrels, bears or deer. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Mm hm yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's a level of questioning
there yes or no question, as opposed to an exploration
of a more subtle question that might have a more
subtle answer, stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with
clipp and Bogo will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 1: And I do think these next paragraphs we don't have
to get granular about. But he he sort of lays
out like there's a large amount of real and imaginary
evidence presently available which supports the existence of the Sasquatch,
but fortunately much of it is not reproducible because it's
in the mind of observers. He talks a bit about,
you know, the physical evidence being photographs or plaster casts,
which are one step removed from the original, and so
the authenticity can and should be questioned. No eyewitnesses could
be questioned, et cetera, but accounts or one step away
from reality. But I think the more important thing is
that he says few scientists have been willing even to
look at or listen to the available information. Of those
who are willing, only a small fraction have had the
opportunity to see the footprints or to talk to witnesses.
Mostly this is because they fear their scientific reputations would
be damaged if it became known that they were even
interested in such things, let alone investigating them. I do
think that holds up to be true because how many
people have we communicated with who are like, hey, can
you leave my name off the email please, or like hey,
I love the podcast, please don't publish my name. And
I do think that there is that fear of like
even expressing an interest. I mean, how many times have
you if you're entertaining any idea because it captivates you,
or you're like, well, maybe there's something here that you know,
if you were reading a book about a subject or
watching a documentary about a subject, that a friend of
yours or somebody might walk in and see that and go,
oh my god, you believe that crap. It's like, hey, wait,
just because I'm looking at it doesn't mean I accept
it wholesale, doesn't mean I believe it all. I'm just
looking at it, you know, I'm just paying attention to
see what's there, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of fun I kind of put
all those into like a thought experiment, you know, like
like I don't think Atlantis was a thing, but like
it's a fun thought experiment. And maybe by examining that
thought experiment, you can find oh yeah, that came from
this or this particular mythology or whatever, and maybe there's
some truth to that mythology.
Speaker 2: How did that mythology arise?
Speaker 3: That's the sort of thing that I think is fun
to look at, even in things I don't believe in.
That's how I got to the Bigfoot thing anyway, Like
it's like, well, that would be fun to look into,
even though I what's so sure there was anything to it.
And then the deeper I looked, I realized, oh my god,
there's actually very very sound same things involved in this,
not just what you know TV or know that sort
of at the time, because this is back in the nineties,
TV was saying sometimes you know, crystal skulls and all
that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Indeed, so I think that attitude still holds kind of true,
and we are lucky that there are more and more
scientists getting interested. But like we've talked about on this
podcast before, I think people from outside of the biological
anthropological realms might have an easier time. You know, if
someone is like a studying folkloristics or something from the
social sciences, or you know, from a psychological perspective, they
can say, hey, we're not really trying to answer the
question of whether such a thing exists. We want to
understand the effect that it has on observers or the
effect that it has on claimants, you know, And so
that doesn't quite get into the like is it real
or is it not real? Question? And so I still
we do get outreached from primatologists, biological anthropologists, wildlife biologists,
et cetera. But usually they're like, leave my last name
out please, So I understand like that, I think that
is still going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly it was punished, and I mean maybe not directly,
but indirectly punished for his interest in the subject. Which
is crazy that you're gonna be punished for your interest
in a question. You know that last sentence. Expertise in
one field does not make one an authority across the board.
I love that. I love that question, and in a
way it almost it stings me though, a little bit,
because I'm not an expert in anything.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: That's why I became an elementary school teacher. I found
myself not really really great at any one particular thing,
but pretty good at most things that I tried, Like
if I was interested in I got pretty good at it.
But I wasn't an expert, you know, like guitar playing
for example. Yeah, I've got a degree in guitar. I
can play, I can sit in with pretty much anybody.
But I'm not a great great player, and I ever
will be. But I'm pretty good. I'm good enough, and
I feel that that is my particular strength, which is
why I when at elementary school teaching, it makes sense
multiple subjects, you know, you teach multiple subjects, and I
think that same thing I bring to the big foot
field as well, where whereas you do have to kind
of defer to experts in various things. Whether it's stock
Jeff Meldrum, who was literally an expert on foot anatomy.
I think he's a great jumping off point to see
if what he says holds up, because his interpretation of
the foot structure is very very good. Right, Or Bill
Muns on creature suits. I've never made an ape suit before.
I'm going to defer to Bill Muns on that one
and see if it holds up and does what he
says make sense for example?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: But yeah, so that last sentence actually kind of resonated
with me, not only because I'm not an expert in anything,
but I'm okay, across the board. You know, I know
a little bit about a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: So what's very useful to have a foot in both
places if you can help it. You know, not that
there's just two places, but broadly speaking from my own experience,
if you looked at the psychological social sciences and or
maybe even like the humanity's realm, you know, whether it's
studying mythology, focalistics, social psychology, psychology, et cetera, et cetera,
and then the life sciences realm you know, biology, physical anthropology, ecology,
et cetera. There's very few people that straddle both of
those worlds. And so when you see debates between those people,
because that's sort of the classic argument is like the
cultural anthropologist versus the physical anthropologists or biologists, you know,
where it's saying like, hey, these are just the elements
of folklore, these are just mythological figures, These are the
product of you know, archetypal figures, et cetera. And so
they will see in the vast array of data, you know,
they have a certain set of lenses on that sort
of filter everything out except that which is relevant to
their field. Right, so they see a whole host of
things that are completely the product or the consequence or
the manifestation of psychological processes, folkloristics, things that do have
like mythological origins or at least spread through like mythological
means and carry with them mythological motifs and themes and
tropes versus the biologists is sort of the opposite when
you see those people debate very often, like one of
them will get the other one into a corner that
they don't understand well and throttle them. So it's easy
for you know, a meldrum to get someone like that
in a corner and describe the inferred foot morphology or
certain aspects of like the evolution of bipedalism or the
evolution of humans and non human primates, and it's all
basically Greek to the other, you know, expositor of their field,
and then vice versa. So trying to say, like, well,
can I have something of a grasp on like both cannons,
both bodies of literature, I'm trying to I'm certainly not
an expert in any of it, you know, I'm trying
my best to read as much as I can and
grasp it and take in as much, but again, like
one and a half semesters of community college and that's
about it. But I do think that's a really helpful
thing to try to be as much a generalist as possible,
because what I see is a lot of consilience. I
see like, oh, these sides actually agree with each other
in a lot of ways. They're just they use different
nomenclature and they're looking at the same thing from different angles.
But there is a lot of agreement. And that's just
a helpful thing to do, is to try to not
just exist in one corner, or at least be dragged
out of that corner into a corner that you don't
understand without you know, you want to walk into that
corner of your own volition and make sense of it
if you can help it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I love this next part. We'll see if this holds
true in your experience.
Speaker 3: Before you go on. Before you go on, don't we
have a robo boba that says yep, so yeah, but
we should pipe that in every once in a while.
Speaker 2: It'll be funny, for sure.
Speaker 1: I love this next paragraph, So you can tell me
if this holds true in your opinion in these days.
But he says the true believers are also generally as
uninformed as the skeptics. Reading a few books and articles
presenting a favorable view hardly qualifies one as being knowledgeable
on the subject Sasquash enthusiasts are notorious for the way
they accept and repeat stories without any attempt at verification.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely absolutely, And of course social media amplifies that
as well, not only in the spreading of perhaps misinformation
that people can grab onto and say is true, but
like just recently, I saw somebody was defending the Patterson
Gimlin film online and they totally misquoted the number of
tracks that were documented at the scene, for example. And
so people sometimes take little things and they amplify it
nowadays on social media to show off like something I guess,
I don't know. There's just so many examples of It's
so so, so many examples of this where people think
something is true about it but they're actually incorrect, and
they just keep repeating the stories, and then of course
somebody else picks it up. Oh so and so said this,
and they keep repeating the stories, keep repeating the stories
without going to either the primary sources or checking the
evidence for themselves. And that makes sense. I feel like
I'm meandering, but I'm trying to get to a point.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm.
Speaker 1: Noting that definitely makes sense, and we see that happening
all the time, and you know, I try my best.
I think we all do, but there's plenty of times
that things come up spontaneously that I haven't read about
or thought about in you know, sometimes months, sometimes years,
and I just think it's as in my experience, Like
I always try to say, look as I understand it,
if I remember correctly, I think it's this, but you
might want to go double check that. And to me,
it's just that simple, rather than saying like, oh, it's undeniably,
it's conclusively, you know. And I think we do see
a lot of that, And it's a human tendency because
you might have a certainty and you want other people
to arrive at the same certainty, and so you use
language to influence their degree of certainty. But like, it's
funny because you mentioned the like, we're still in the
midst of this Patterson Gimblin debacle, and the documentary covering
this thing hasn't been released yet, and so only a
couple of people within the Sasquatch community have seen it.
And so you know, Krantz goes on to say, here,
because you're talking about people repeating stories without an attempt
at verification. So Krantz says, quote, I know one investigator
who insists on two accounts of each siding, but it's
satisfied if both of them heard about it from the
same source. My own experien suggest that the probability of
truth of each account is cut in half for every
human it passes through. What a direct eyewitness tells me
is only fifty percent probable. If I hear it from
an intermediary, its likelihood drops to twenty five percent. Third
person accounts are wrong seven times out of eight, and
so on. Many believers paid no attention to this problem
of lowering probability of truth. And I've seen that play out.
And like one of the people who saw the documentary
and it's he gives a very interesting account because he
had gone to a screening of the documentary there in
Austin at south By Southwest and then went home and
recounted to the camera like, here's what I remember from
what I just saw. So I always think, well, yeah,
if you're gonna if you're going to take his recollection
his opinion of what he just saw. That's the place
to go to, because that's as fresh as it gets.
And lots of people have seen that video. But then
I'll see, now that it's been whatever a week or
a week and a half, people saying, well, this guy said,
and then they'll they have this much more elaborate and
detail tailed, hyper elaborate version where it's like, wait a minute,
he didn't say all those things, and so you're not
doing him any favors by attributing things to him that
he didn't say. And also you're not doing yourself any
favors by you know, exaggerating and embellishing, even though I
don't even think that's quite intentional. It's like, you know,
they're hearing sort of what they wanted to hear, and
then people take that third person's version and go, yeah, well,
the documentary says this is that like wait a minute,
First of all, you haven't seen the documentary. If you
wanted a second hand source, go to the guy's original
video made thirty minutes later. Not a post from someone
who saw the original video last week and has you know,
imagined what it might represent for a week and then
posted an elaborate version, you know what I mean. So
that is definitely a pervasive problem, probably in this and
every single other area of human interest.
Speaker 3: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bobo will be right back after these messages. Yeah, And
when I read this, of course, I realized, Oh, this
is a far more elegant way to put my rather
brutish and clumsy statement of like I don't trust what
people say, you know, because that's two bull in the
china shop, you know, And I tend that direction anyway.
I tend to be a bull in the china shop,
and I'm not very nuanced in what I say sometimes,
you know. But this way, like, oh yeah, direct witness
stills me. It's fifty percent probable.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure the fifty percent is accurate or not
doesn't really matter really, but the fact that it drops
in credibility with every step between you and the actual occurrence.
Let's say, like a witness, for example, seese a Sasquatch.
I often talk about the filters that those people saw
it through, the cultural filters, the language filters, the environmental
filters and whatnot, and then they convey what they saw
to me. I have to take all those filters in mind,
because I have my own filters as well, So all
the actual sighting itself has passed through all these different
filters on the witnesses side and then the linguistic side
conveying that information to me, and then passing through my
own filters as well, because we all have these filters
in front of our eyes that we perceive reality through.
And I'm trying to see the reality of what this
person observed, right, I mean, I just love the way
that Krantz said it. So, yeah, somebody tells me something.
It's he says fifty percent probable, which kind of to
me suggests like if he's lying or not or something
like that. But I like the I don't think that's
what he meant, but that's what the language suggests. I
do think that is fifty percent accurate, you know, like
that that's a squishy number that we can kind of
hold on to. I like that a lot, And then
if somebody else says something in the meantime, then that
drops another fifty percent.
Speaker 1: So the next paragraph, we don't have to read the
whole thing. I think this would be the one major quibble,
but he had said that people gathered stories about by
peterle Harry monsters from almost all parts of the world
under the mistake and impression that this strengthens the argument
for their existence, and he says actually does the opposite.
The more widespread land animal is claimed to be, the
less likely it is to be real. And I think
the thing I would quibble with there is that the
old idea that they are all the same species. For example,
what people describe in terms of the almas and the almasti,
which seems to be altogether different, whether it's you know,
a real animal or a folkloristic thing is man sized,
you know, visible like a longer neck like a human,
has much more like a human than a very large,
powerful ape. But it's always referred to as like the
Russian Bigfoot, the Soviet sasquatch, and on and on and on,
where it's like they're not really describing the same thing
anymore than you would, you know, describe a cheetah and
an African lion and a mountain lion as a tiger
collectively to go, well, tigers couldn't exist in all those places.
It's like, well, I mean they're big cats, but that's
about where it ends. You know, They're not really the
same thing. And to me, that's probably the basis of
this argument of Krantz's. It's like, well, the sasquatch, you know,
quote quote unquote sasquatch couldn't not possibly live in all
these places, Like he says, some reputable scientists would study
a possible primate in North America and parts of Eurasia,
but when you throw in South America, Africa and Australia
for good measure, they will back off. I don't think
he's differentiating between something like the Iran pindeck and the
Almas and the Sasquatches, being like, oh, these are different
things in different places.
Speaker 3: No, although in his book he does give an nod
to the the iring pindeck and Sadapa and whatever as
a different sort of thing altogether. But nowadays, with the
larger context of the multiple species hypothesis of Hominin's, you know,
like this makes a lot more sense, you know, Sanderson
basically the first book, it's become full circle now to Sanderson,
where he's being kind of acknowledged by some at least
as being yeah, you're kind of on the right track.
All these different things do or could exist, I guess
is a better way to say it throughout the world,
especially with this idea of relatominoids that doctor Meldrim was
championing in his last few years. Here, it does make
a lot of sense actually, based on the new paradigm
of human evolution.
Speaker 1: I guess he does kind of extend that he does
say here the possibility of multiple species of such animals
might avoid this problem, but it only serves to raise another.
For science to admits one large species of unknown primate
is difficult enough to swallow. To claim there are still
more of them only strains to the breaking point whatever
credibility there may have been. And I just don't agree
with that. Like again, if we used big cats as
an example, like, yeah, there are big cats in the
Americas and in Africa and in Asia, you know, and
so it's there. There's plenty of things that are related
genera and species that I don't think pose any sort
of a problem to the existence of any one or another.
And especially if you say, well, there are apes in
Africa and Asia, why not one more continent? I don't
think would be a problem. But I guess I can
try to understand he's being hyper conservative there.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and it goes back to that previous sentence
about how scientists, you know, don't like to be wrong. Basically,
how they sometimes treat science as or religion in a
way like the belief system rather than a process.
Speaker 1: This I think you would agree with, because this is
one of our most frequently discussed talking points. He says
much potential support from individual scientists is lost when the
enthusiasts bring in irrelevancies or downright impossibilities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that says it all right there. That says it
all right there. That's my argument. It's not even an
argument against the paranormal. It's just a constant. It's what
I say is a consequence of paranormal claims about sasquatches
that individual scientists are going to run from the subject.
There's one thing to say, Yeah, there's an animal species
that we can actually find or actually here, you can
find sign of them, you can find footprints, you can
find foraging sites, you can find people who've seen them.
And then suddenly, oh no, there's an all powerful forest god,
a forest spirit that protects us and wants us to
succeed and you know, and I don't know, eats dog
food out of your back porch, like it starts sounding
pretty weird. And why would a scientist look into something
that sounds like there is no possibility of you know
what I mean?
Speaker 1: And the things he mentions are pretty tame in comparison
to the wild, supernatural, mystical, you know, paranormal claims. He
just says, I'm reminded of an otherwise excellent newspaper article
on the evidence for sasquatch that was utterly destroyed by
the writer's reference to a large petrified heart he'd examined.
Many hair samples have been collected, and some could not
be identified, but this just means they could be from
some part of the pelt of a known animal that
had not been analyzed. Equal samples can also be studied,
but these can never prove a new animal exists. I've
been shown many photographs purporting to be of sasquatches, which
are in fact just chance combinations of light and shadow
and vegetation. If even half of these pictures were real,
the sasquatch must be a very common wild animal in
North America. So he basically says, to close that paragraph
in my opinion, people who push for the acceptance of
the above kinds of data have lost their credibility and
one might well be suspicious of any kind of information
they have. Oh, Krantz, if only you had lived to
the deep into the Internet age.
Speaker 2: Oh I know, I know, you know.
Speaker 3: And that also reminds me of John Bindernogle actually in
a way, because John's one of his drums. He beat constantly,
was always put forth the best evidence, which contrasts to
what I think he was saying, is like, don't put
out the bad stuff. It might actually be evidence. For example,
like the footprint cast that I'm getting Adam in my
research area that most of them wouldn't convince anybody that
is even a footprint when you look at what actually
it comes out of the ground in the form of plaster.
Speaker 2: But in the ground.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've I've shown lots of people prints in
the ground. It's like, oh yeah, I totally see that.
But when you pour plaster into it, which is really
the shareable part. I can show photographs as well, but
it's more meaningful and to show a cast, and they
are more analyzable. I'm not sure if that's the right word,
but able to be analyzed. At least benner Nooggle is
always saying, put forth the best stuff, because if you
put forth the weak stuff, then they're just gonna stop
coming around, you know, like like the boy you cried
wolf sort of thing, even if like oh, yeah, well maybe,
but if you show them something that is a footprint
one hundred percent, then they oh, well, okay, let's take
a look at this and find out what's going on here.
They actually have some meat to chew on, so to speak,
as opposed to the like the flimsy squishy evidence, and
which I produce a lot of. I produce a lot
of very very flimsy, squishy evidence because tracks in the
ground are not easy to cast in any sort of
dessordable form. But yeah, so that reminds me the bendern
Noggle drum.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least for me, because there's a number
of things I've seen and collected in terms of documentation
out in the field recorded you know what I think
are vocalizations, but they are certainly not as close and
crisp and clear as the best example. So I always thought, well,
in terms of like the best of its class, if
what I have and collect is not of equal or
higher quality than the best of its class. I should
probably just sit on it and save myself the headache
and heartache of trying to explain it and defend it,
knowing that like, well, hey, if this collection of much clearer,
better recordings has not you know, won over the argument
or the bioacousticians, then I should probably save myself the
headache and not assume that my example of lesser quality.
Speaker 2: Will you know what I mean? Now?
Speaker 1: I shared among you know, researchers and other friends and
as data points, but not necessarily like thrust it in
front of the scientists and say, what do you think
of this?
Speaker 2: You know, how do you like them? Apples?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I remember listening to a great episode of the Meat
Eater podcast with Steven Ronella, and they were talking about
that Brian Sike study, Yeah, and saying like, oh, of
all the hair samples we got, you know, none of
them turned out to be conclusive proof of Bigfoot or
YETI And you know, Renella is a hunter conservationist. He's
not a squatch or by any means. But he had said, man,
you just know there's some dudes sitting in his house
holding his shoe box right now, going, yeah, well, they
ain't seen these hair samples, And I thought, dude, if
you only knew how true that was. Yeah, I do
like the line here with Krant says certain conservationists had
taken up the cause of protecting the Sasquatch, and they
speak in favor of extending various laws which prohibit shooting one.
These local laws are intended mainly to protect innocent bystanders,
including farmers, cows, and lawmen, rather than the Sasquatch itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's certainly, I mean certainly in regards to
the Scamania County law, which has passed probably around the
time that this article was published, because at this point
he says somewhere in this article, how many footprint casts
or footprints he's examined and witnesses that he has spoken to,
And it was a fairly small number. I forget where
that is. I'm kind of scanning for right now, but
it wasn't it like two or something like that, Or
is that we even't gotten there yet? Maybe that's further
on in the article. But I had something like thirty
somethings casts. I remember something like that. And I know
when he wrote big footprints his book, and in ninety
one ers when he published that one, I think the
number had run the sixty something if I remember right,
So this is fairly early in his big footing career.
So this is probably talking about this Comania County law
which was largely to protect you know, jackasses and monkey
suits essentially, and it was also published, by the way,
on April first, of you know, sixty nine or whatever
year that was, so kind of that go along with
that April Fools thing. Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and
beyond with Cliff and Bobo will be right back. After
these messages, he.
Speaker 1: Continues to you know, along the lines of collecting a specimen.
He kind of makes the same arguments that he's made
in many other places, and so I don't necessarily think
we have to belabor all that about the need to
collecting a specimen. But he's essentially in this paragraph just
stating that, you know, no real legislation is going to happen,
No public officials are really going to do anything about
this until a specimen is collected. So all this other
activity on that behalf of or on the part of
conservationists to protect sasquatches on their behalf is really fruitless
without a specimen.
Speaker 3: The only contention I would have there is that, let's take,
for example, that fifth grade class where we had the
teacher on her name escapes me at the moment where
they're going around county to county and having them past
city ordinances that literally have no teeth whatsoever. But it
does raise public awareness and kind of make Sasquatches the
good guy in a sort of public public relations way.
I think that it does do some sort of good
on that level, whatever that's worth. And actually, maybe through
their lack of understanding of the law, maybe it would
stop somebody from shooting one, which is both good and bad. Yeah, yeah,
I definitely think there would be updates to that. In
twenty twenty six. Now, other things have happened that have
created new little precedence here and there. I understand the
sentiment of this next paragraph.
Speaker 1: I would quibble with it a bit, but he does
say many sasquatch investigators have stated their intentions to provide
sufficient proof without killing a specimen. These people are in
keen competition with each other for this success. The scientific
establishment will simply take over, assuring us they knew all
along the creatures were real and will exclude all amateurs
from further investigations. Anyone who seriously thinks the sasquatch should
not be taken does not really want their existence to
be proven, And I think we've probably elucidated those points
a lot in the last few years that we've been
doing this podcast. But I think there are plenty of
genuinely serious investigators who really do want proof to be discovered,
that are not necessarily engaged in or endorsing or pursuing
the collection of a specimen who should be taken seriously.
Speaker 2: You know, oh, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 3: There are lots of people who don't want a sasquatch
to be killed out of compassion, but that doesn't mean
they don't really want the existence to be proven.
Speaker 2: I think I'm one of them.
Speaker 3: Actually, I don't want to shoot a sasquatch, But at
the same time, I think I think it's probably fair
to consider myself a sasquatch researcher. I think that's appropriate.
But I do want their existence to be proven. But
I'm also want to know, you know, illusions that a
couple of these things are not going to be killed
when they're when they're taking you know, when they're when
they're real, so to speak, you know, when they're proven.
So so compassion doesn't mean you're you're against them being discovered,
just means you don't want to pull the trigger. You know,
I don't. I don't hunt deer for the same reason,
you know, And I've got nothing against anybody who does
hunt nothing at all, but I don't want to do it.
Speaker 1: I agree. I don't think it's for the citizen to
take up I think it's better left to institutions. But
there's the catch twenty two is that institutions won't take
up the charge without something like conclusive proof, which would
probably be a specimen or a major portion of one.
But hopefully, like you mentioned, DNA is a portion of
a specimen, and maybe that would do it.
Speaker 3: But I also disagree with this, that the scientific establishment
will exclude all amateurs from further investigations. I strongly disagree
with that, and I've had conversations with multiple scientists and PhDs.
You know, Darby included. You know, Darby says no, no
after if we get the thing done, and he still
doesn't know. If we get this thing done, we're still
going to need people like you, is what Darby and
I talk about. I had the same conversation with Leela
from the Kentucky Project as well. It's like, no, this
is one of those one of those fields like astronomy,
where amateurs are going to have to play a large role.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There's no way that like the North American Bigfoot Center,
you know, which is like is slowly becoming this this
beacon here in my area of Oregon, when somebody sees
a sasquatch, we're going to get some of those reports
and proof is in the pudding, you know. At the
beginning of the month, I took a footprint find and
did an investigation as well as a sighting report. Somebody
saw a sasquatch on May first, or I mean it's
trying to you know, March first. Rather, there's no way
that like that information is going to be like useless,
and I'm going to be I'm going to be poo
pooed upon by the academics when that after these things
are real. I think the museum and other serious investigators,
serious and sober minded investigators are going to be key
to studying sasquatches after they're proven to be real, which
is part of the reason I'm in the game right now.
I think it's cool and I want to participate.
Speaker 1: Aimen to that. So for these final two paragraphs, I
think a lot of this holds true and is relevant,
and we were seeing a lot of this right now,
he says. At this point, the burden of proof is
still on the believers. Until a specimen is produced, the
skeptics will continue to hold the field. It is possible
to prove something exists by producing it. The reverse is
not possible. One does not prove a non existence with
positive evidence. The failure to produce a specimen continues to
be strong evidence against the Sasquatch. The skeptics deny the
existence of the Sasquatch because they see no evidence for it.
The fact that they refuse to look at what evidence
there is available and try to discourage the gathering of
more data seems not to bother them at all. The
believers act as though the case has already been proven
and the Sasquatch should be accepted and protected right now.
It's interesting that many of them also oppose bringing a
definitive proof in the form of a body. It is
almost as though the sides are drawn and neither one
really wants the issue settled. They would rather fight than
find out. Both sides are getting a lot of mileage
out of the existence of the opposing side. Each side
has a group of people that can criticize and make
fun of. A concerted effort might prove one side wrong,
and perhaps neither side wants to risk that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that's almost like foreshadowing of social media. Yes,
I don't know. Kramtz is a prophet as well. Yeah,
he's just basically yeah, Yeah, there's gonna there's gonna be
the thing called Facebook. You guys are gonna love it,
You'll all hate each other. It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: It's just funny to see that, Like even back then
in you know, like I totally understand the skeptical position
because there's many things that I'm equally skeptical of, right,
but so that hasn't and shouldn't really have changed, and
that you know where the skeptical side says, well, hey,
we don't see evidence for it, We're gonna wait for
more evidence, and he's right to sort of say, well,
they also don't look at what evidence there is, and
they also discourage the gathering of more evidence. So those
things aside for him to say in seventy eight, well,
the believers acts though the case has already been proven,
and the sasquad should be accepted and protected right now.
And that was on a much more limited data set
than we're dealing with today. And yeah, a lot of
us still believe. I think Benner Ningel argued quite well
that like, well, hey, discovery has already happened, it just
hasn't been recognized. So that's almost like the counter argument,
you know, It's almost like Krantz would in broad strokes
paint Benner Nagel into that same category. Mm hm totally,
which I think, you know, Bennernagel's case was a heck
of a lot stronger than you know, most enthusiasts cases
are about, you know, what constitutes you know, proof, discovery, evidence,
et cetera. But it is interesting that that same dichotomy
about like Krantz pushing back against like he started the
paper with, like I'm going to piss people off on
both sides of this argument, and saying to believers like, hey,
I know you think you've already made your case, but
you haven't. You failed thus far, And that that was
there wasn't as much like humil. You think there'd be
more humility in nineteen seventy eight of people saying like, hey,
we got to push this thing forward, we got to
get there. But obviously he was dealing with a cohort
of people that were saying like, no, we've the balls
already in the end zone. We've already scored. Like they
just haven't recognized us, that the establishment has not smiled upon.
Speaker 2: Us for our victory yet. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved wanting something to be true. Maybe a
good reason to investigate it. But wanting something to be
true does not constitute any evidence that it is true. Man,
If that's not, if that's not something that we're seeing
right now, it's I don't know what is man. God
Krantz has had such a flare for subtly twisting knives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should read that in last paragraph, because we
haven't even touched on that one yet.
Speaker 2: Oh we didn't.
Speaker 3: I thought we'd try that. I'm going to read this
whole thing here and just listen to the rye, dark
twisting of knives that Krantz was just excelled at here. Unfortunately,
both sides argue strongly from what they want to be
true rather than what they know. Wanting something to be
true maybe a good reason to investigate it, but wanting
something to be true does not constitute any evidence that
it is true. As it stands now, most of the
people on one side of this argument, and all, in
my judgment, of those on the other side, have not
thoroughly investigated both sides of the issue. They would be
a lot more reasonable if they would just honestly admit
they don't know for sure. But who expects reason in
a subject like this, You know, there's a little to
hinden in Krantz.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he definitely was a disagreeable dude, absolutely, absolutely, much
more reasonable I think than perhaps might have been in
some ways.
Speaker 3: But I'd never met to Hinton nor Krantz, so I'm
not really one to know. But from what I understand
about Krantz, and this is largely indirectly from Larry Lund,
who knew Krantz very well, and doctor Meldrum who told
me lots of stories about doctor Krantz or whatever else.
Just he had that sort of dark up your sense
of humor, you know, and he like, for example, that
famous clip in one of those early documentaries where he's
he's talking about the Bossberg tracks where he saist, you know,
whoever had whoever you know made these if these are fake,
whoever made these had a da vincially like level of
intelligence that was way smarter than me. And I don't
think a person like that exists. Yeah, if you watch closely,
his lips start to curl up into a rise smile
right afterwards, because that was his sense of humor. And
I think that he just liked the kind of you know,
flick and poop at people and in a subtle sort
of up your sort of way. And I just love
that he expressed that trickster element of his personality in
this particular paragraph. So I wish I could have met him.
I just wish I could have met him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is important. Like we talked about having
a foot in both worlds and sort of trying to
bridge the two. Like he says, most of the people
on one or the other side have not thoroughly investigated
both sides of the issue, and that's such an important thing.
We talked about this on a member's only episode once,
but I don't think we talked about it on the
main side. But you know, if you're looking at any
argument where there are two totally opposed narratives. You know,
two cases presented. You have to know both of them
if you're going to say that you prefer one because
if you say, well, this is the truth and the
other side is nonsense, well you have to know that
other side because what you're essentially making is a preference.
You're saying, I prefer this story over the counter story.
But if you don't know the other story, then your
your preference has no validity. I think I used the
lame example of like, well, if you say that you
know the Big Mac is the greatest burger ever, and
you've never had any other Hamburger, then it's like, well,
you really don't have a preference. You just kind of
have a position of ignorance. You've only ever been exposed
to one thing. And I see that over and over again.
Speaker 3: It's important to know the opposition, so to speak, and
you know, and not to hurt into like a sports
game or something, but you know there's a big game.
You know the coaches are setting the other team's plays, right,
And that's why I strongly advocate towards skepticism and most things,
and it's not all things right, be super skeptical. And
so when a new skeptic publishes a book, and this
happens pretty frequently, read it. Read it to see if
it holds up. You might be surprised. You know, they
probably have some good points, and they probably have some
bad points. But that's also true of the skeptical side
of things. They must be reading. They must read the literature. Otherwise.
You know, if I hear once again that you know,
so and so said this is fake and they're therefore
it is, that tells me the veracity of their arguments,
and I'm not probably not going to read too much
more of them. In the same sort of way that
if somebody reads an article where somebody claims something about
sasquat stuff and they know it's not true, they're what
they say from now on isn't going to hold any
weight either.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's that great John Stuart Mill quote to paraphrase,
that's like the person who only knows their side of
the argument knows little of that.
Speaker 2: There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1: But that is the thorough reading review of Krantz's article,
Sasquatch Believers Versus the Skeptics. I don't know if it's
available online. Anywhere, so I had to like transpose it
from a written book. So if I can't find a
linkable version online, I'll put a link in the show
notes and I'll just copy paste this and format it
on our Patreon and make it a free post. So like,
anybody listening to this can click it and it'll take
it to our Patreon and you can read this article
in its entirety.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week, and we're going to be
tackling another article from The Skeptical Inquirer actually in our
members side, so if you want to be a member,
go check that out. And also, did you know we
have t shirts. We have t shirts available from sasquatchprints
dot com, so go check those out and if you
like it, buy one. It helps us a little bit.
And if you don't like them, that's cool, draw a
picture of us send it to us.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for listening, and we'll talk to
you next time. Keep a squatchy. Thanks for listening to
this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond. If you liked
what you heard, please rate and review us on iTunes,
subscribe to Bigfoot and Beyond wherever you get your podcasts,
and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Bigfoot and
Beyond podcast. You can find us on Twitter at Bigfoot
and Beyond that's an N in the middle, and tweet
us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag Bigfoot and
Beyond