Speaker 1: Big Food and Beyond.
Speaker 2: With Cliff and Bulbo. These guys are your favor It's
Speaker 2: so like say subscribe and raid it.
Speaker 1: Live, Stock and.
Speaker 2: Righteous, go on yesterday and listening, watching always keep its watching.
Speaker 1: And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay.
Speaker 2: All right, Bobs, how you doing man?
Speaker 3: That's pretty rough. I know, yeah, it's it's hard for
Speaker 3: the last couple of days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is not a good time right now. But
Speaker 2: we've come to celebrate a life not more than our
Speaker 2: loss necessarily. I mean, I know that's hard to do,
Speaker 2: especially when the loss is as great as the one
Speaker 2: we experienced this week. Of course, everybody knows everybody, doctor
Speaker 2: Jeff Meltrim passed away this past week, and it is
Speaker 2: a terrible blow to the community. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 2: horrible blow to the community and also personally as well.
Speaker 2: I mean everyone in the show here. It was a
Speaker 2: good friend of doctor Jeff Meltrum. He stayed at my
Speaker 2: house a number of times, and he loved my dog,
Speaker 2: you love my wife, and like it just that's a
Speaker 2: good good friend. We're all very fortunate to have had
Speaker 2: Jeff in our life in any way at all. But
Speaker 2: I think that the focus here isn't it shouldn't really
Speaker 2: be on what we've lost, but rather than what we've gained,
Speaker 2: you know, rather what we've gained here, because the bigfoot
Speaker 2: field would be very, very different if Jeff had never
Speaker 2: existed at all, and so many of the things that
Speaker 2: we just take for granted nowadays are because of Jef. Essentially,
Speaker 2: we can look back and it's very easy to tell,
Speaker 2: like what Jeff has given us as a community, at
Speaker 2: least academically, shall I say, you know that what he's
Speaker 2: given us personally, and you know, the smiles, the jokes,
Speaker 2: the you know, the star Trek trivia, whatever else that
Speaker 2: you know from Jeff is yours and subjective and personal.
Speaker 2: But we have kind of a timeline marker, a calibration marker,
Speaker 2: what we knew or thought about sasquatches before Jeff showed
Speaker 2: up on the scene. And that is, of course, doctor
Speaker 2: Grover Krantz's book Big Footprints, which is the first edition,
Speaker 2: and I want to specifically say the first edition, not
Speaker 2: Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, which is pretty much the same book
Speaker 2: with some addendums in it, you know, with some pendicies,
Speaker 2: I guess editions because in nineteen ninety two, when doctor
Speaker 2: Krantz published Big foot Prints, he was the guy. He
Speaker 2: was the scientist who had studied this subject for years
Speaker 2: and years and years, and he published pretty much what
Speaker 2: he thought of the thought or knew at the time.
Speaker 2: But when he did the second edition, and I'm afraid
Speaker 2: I don't have off the top of my head the
Speaker 2: date of the second edition versus the first, but one
Speaker 2: of those appendices, one of those additions that he added
Speaker 2: to his book was the arrival of doctor Meldrum on
Speaker 2: the scene. You can look at what Krantz wrote and
Speaker 2: then compare it to what doctor Meldrum wrote, and also
Speaker 2: really compared to what we all know and take for
Speaker 2: granted at this moment, in that kind of gauges how
Speaker 2: much doctor Meldrum has added to the field. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I mean, I might struggle with words a
Speaker 2: little bit sometimes during this podcast because I don't see
Speaker 2: how his contribution it might even be the sing his
Speaker 2: participation in the subject might be the single most important
Speaker 2: thing that's ever happened. I'd say so, Yeah, on par
Speaker 2: with the PG film itself, or the nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 2: Jerry Crew Footprints or anything else for that matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean even people that are in a big
Speaker 3: Foot don't realize how much Jeff contributed. I mean, he's
Speaker 3: a he was a brilliant guy. I mean he was
Speaker 3: his expertise, like you know, primate locomotion and the adaptation
Speaker 3: of biopedalism. I mean, I mean in his own field,
Speaker 3: he was a top notch guy. And then compared to
Speaker 3: the big Foot film, there's just no one else of
Speaker 3: his stats. I mean, Bennanaga was great, and he was,
Speaker 3: you know, a serious researcher and he made contributions, but
Speaker 3: Jeff was like, I mean, he was just like a
Speaker 3: like another level on a discovering things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think if if you were to look at the
Speaker 1: backgrounds of many of the people that were previously involved,
Speaker 1: Let's say, hypothetically, if there was a great expert in
Speaker 1: primate dentition, what would they have to evaluate as regards
Speaker 1: to sasquatch. It's not like we have a lot of
Speaker 1: things that sasquatches have bitten or chewed, right. You know,
Speaker 1: within any discipline, you have many sub disciplines and these
Speaker 1: sort of laser focused kind of specialists, and so generally
Speaker 1: he was a physical or biological anthropologist and an anatomous
Speaker 1: but his specialty was, you know, bipedal locomotion and the
Speaker 1: evolution thereof, and specifically the anatomy of feet in this
Speaker 1: suite of adaptations. And so the biggest body of existing
Speaker 1: Sasquatch evidence consists of footprints. And so there really was
Speaker 1: no one better suited to tackle this subject than he
Speaker 1: was as a singular figure.
Speaker 2: And to contrast that, you know, I'll go back to
Speaker 2: Krantz for a moment. Krantz when he wrote his book
Speaker 2: Big Footprints and later on Big Sasquatch Evidence, the same thing,
Speaker 2: he noted that there was a considerable amount of flexibility
Speaker 2: in the Sasquatch foot, but he didn't put a word
Speaker 2: on it. He didn't slap that mid tarsal joint on there.
Speaker 2: He didn't explain it how that the foot flex is
Speaker 2: behind the metatarsals. He didn't do any of that. And
Speaker 2: it's not because he didn't he wasn't aware of the words,
Speaker 2: or he didn't understand the concept or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It's really because Krantz is more of a bone guy
Speaker 2: in general. He was osteologist or something like that. If
Speaker 2: I remember correctly, that specialty in physical anthropology, So bones
Speaker 2: in general were kind of his gig from what I understand,
Speaker 2: and I've never met Krantz. Of course, he passed away
Speaker 2: before I had a chance to connect with him. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Jeff's gig was was anatomy and physiology and the anatomy
Speaker 2: of the primate foot and the adaptations for bipedalism. So
Speaker 2: it took Jeff to even recognize. It took someone with
Speaker 2: the eyes to see, as I often say, what we're
Speaker 2: looking at in sasquatch footprints. And of course the greatest
Speaker 2: example of this is the famous photograph from the Patterson
Speaker 2: Gimblin film site by Lyle Labberty. You know of that
Speaker 2: very very famous print with the mid tarsal pressure ridge
Speaker 2: right behind it. If you notice on that picture there's
Speaker 2: a stick on the left hand side sticking into the ground,
Speaker 2: and everybody kind of assumed, assumed for years, decades, literally decades,
Speaker 2: that that stick was underneath that ridge, and that's why
Speaker 2: that ridge was there, because the sasquatch stepped on the
Speaker 2: stick and it didn't push down, and that ridge is
Speaker 2: actually what made that pressure ridge what we now know
Speaker 2: is a pressure ridge. You can just look at the
Speaker 2: photograph and it doesn't line up exactly, but that's what
Speaker 2: people thought. That was the best guess. Now, Krantz probably
Speaker 2: could have figured that out, but it took someone with
Speaker 2: a specialty in sasquad or an eight feet in general
Speaker 2: to do so. And that's what Jeff did. I think
Speaker 2: he published it somewhere around the year two thousand. I'd
Speaker 2: have to double check here. I'll see if I can
Speaker 2: pull that up, but he basically published it and said, hey, guys,
Speaker 2: that's what that is, and that also explains all these
Speaker 2: other marks in the foot as well. And you can
Speaker 2: see that same feature in so many of the other footprints,
Speaker 2: footprint photographs and footprint casts. And it was in that
Speaker 2: one thing alone, which I would say ninety percent of
Speaker 2: big foot nerds or officionados or fans or researchers know about.
Speaker 2: I mean, we went from nineteen sixty seven to about
Speaker 2: the year two thousand before we knew what we were
Speaker 2: looking at. And that one thing is because of doctor Meldrum,
Speaker 2: you know, and so many of the other givens of
Speaker 2: what we think we know about suasquatches today also come
Speaker 2: from him. But that's that's probably one of his major
Speaker 2: contributions right there. And I want to point out major
Speaker 2: contributions because there were so many minor ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he also everybody everyone, like when you were
Speaker 3: like discussing with a skeptic or someone at your family
Speaker 3: dinner or whatever, like at the bar, you're talking to
Speaker 3: someone and they you'd always bring up Melgium. Everyone brings
Speaker 3: up Melgium. Like, well, there's doctor Jeff Melguman in Outaho
Speaker 3: State and he's an anthropologist, and he noted the mid
Speaker 3: tarsal break and showed that how it looks like the
Speaker 3: same as print from like one point eight million years ago,
Speaker 3: you know. You you see that same kind of foot structure
Speaker 3: and the god the Australiopithoscene. And uh, I mean like
Speaker 3: everyone everyone used him, and he helped us may look
Speaker 3: less crazy to other people, you know, because this academic
Speaker 3: qualified guy was saying these things and showing and giving
Speaker 3: examples and showing how how it works. It was he
Speaker 3: helped everybody. He helped everybody out. You know.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's that is so very true because for him
Speaker 1: to articulate that well and so many different iterations, and
Speaker 1: to show the temporal context and the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: when this first emerge, which he even observed in the
Speaker 1: original crew cast, you know, which he's talked about at
Speaker 1: linked in a number of interviews that in that famous
Speaker 1: newspaper photograph, you know, it's the surface of the track
Speaker 1: is or the cast is parallel to the lens, and
Speaker 1: you know, they use these big bright flashes to illuminate
Speaker 1: the scene, and so it looks like a pretty flat
Speaker 1: sort of two D object. But then he was able
Speaker 1: to examine the actual cast and there's the mid tarsal
Speaker 1: pressure ridge right there, going back to fifty eight. But
Speaker 1: so for him to show that this feature is present
Speaker 1: in these tracks and that it would only be later
Speaker 1: that Lucy would be discovered Australlio Pithecus a Forendus and
Speaker 1: then the lay Totally tracks, you know, the Australopithosen tracks
Speaker 1: that you're referring to many years after the Patterson film.
Speaker 1: I think Lucy was officially discovered at least presented to
Speaker 1: the world in either seventy three or seventy four, and
Speaker 1: then the laya Totally tracks shortly thereafter, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: but around that same timeframe. And so for him to
Speaker 1: put into context, like how is it that you know,
Speaker 1: if these were hoaxed that people could include a feature
Speaker 1: based on fossils that hadn't been unearthed yet to understand
Speaker 1: that an animal like this would have this physical adaptation
Speaker 1: to that environment. That's a crucial component of the evolution
Speaker 1: of bipedalism. And for him to teach us all about
Speaker 1: that through numerous podcasts and documentaries to where just like
Speaker 1: Bobo said, someone could be sitting at a campfire or
Speaker 1: a bar and articulate that and show that, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this is pretty compelling evidence. And I know Meldren would
Speaker 1: often say like, if there is a smoking gun thus far,
Speaker 1: it's that, And he taught us all that.
Speaker 2: And the smoking gun that he mentioned to me one
Speaker 2: time was when he went to China, of course, for
Speaker 2: I think it was only a monster quest, and he
Speaker 2: spoke to the ranger who had observed a Yeheren, the
Speaker 2: Chinese version of a sasquatch at some distance and he
Speaker 2: had really nice observation of the thing. And then after
Speaker 2: the animal left, he went down and cast footprints that
Speaker 2: were on the side of the creek or whatever it
Speaker 2: was crouching next to. And when doctor Meldrum met him
Speaker 2: for the first time through a translator, because the gentleman
Speaker 2: didn't speak any English. He had he showed doctor Meldrum
Speaker 2: the cast that he had made in China of the
Speaker 2: Ya wren, and that that mid tarsal pressure ridge was
Speaker 2: right there. It was right there, even to the point
Speaker 2: where there was a there's this like this heart shape,
Speaker 2: like this double bump sort of feature and in between
Speaker 2: two of the bones that are make up that jumble
Speaker 2: of bones right underneath the ankle. And uh, that same
Speaker 2: feature was in the Yareen cast. And then like Jeff
Speaker 2: got really excited, of course, and then he pulled out
Speaker 2: the Patterson Gimlin cast, the one that I mentioned earlier
Speaker 2: that Lyle Laberty had photographed, and they compared the two
Speaker 2: and it was just spot on, spot on, including that
Speaker 2: even that little double bump heart shape feature in the print.
Speaker 2: You can see that same feature in the Patterson Gimlin
Speaker 2: cast as well. And again that's that's a function of
Speaker 2: two of the couple of bones. I'd have to go
Speaker 2: back and double check, because unlike Jeff, I don't know
Speaker 2: all the bones in the ankle area. Unfortunately, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to up my game though, because Jeff is now gone,
Speaker 2: I can't rely on him anymore. And you know, it's
Speaker 2: also of interest about these two castle one from China
Speaker 2: and the one I think was from the nineties and
Speaker 2: the one from northern California, is that that feature of
Speaker 2: the footprint is made by the push off and downwards
Speaker 2: and backwards motion where the metatarsals end, you know, the
Speaker 2: back end of the metatarsals, so the bones looked up
Speaker 2: and that thing pushes down and back and raises that
Speaker 2: mount of dirt there. It was at the same place
Speaker 2: proportionally in the foot, which is of great significance because
Speaker 2: the bones in a Sasquatch foot are not proportionally similar
Speaker 2: to humans. You know that they are different. The metatarsals
Speaker 2: have been shortened, the ankle segment or the heel segment
Speaker 2: have been lengthened. The ankles move forward on the foot,
Speaker 2: and you can tell that by certain markers in the foot.
Speaker 2: So the fact that the Sasquatch footprint from the sixty
Speaker 2: seven matched this other foot from China in the ninety
Speaker 2: nineties or whatever it was, is really stunning. Is very
Speaker 2: very stunning. Where you have the same flexible foot feature
Speaker 2: showing the same anatomical signatures in the same place proportionally
Speaker 2: in the foot like that is a smoking gun, and
Speaker 2: that cannot be I mean, I don't know that they
Speaker 2: I'm going to say it can't be ignored, but clearly
Speaker 2: most scientists are kind of ignoring that. But that is
Speaker 2: an astounding, astounding congruence between two very diverse pieces of
Speaker 2: evidence from different times and places and literally continents. And
Speaker 2: you know what's so fascinating about this is is and
Speaker 2: one of the final things that I remember doctor Meldrum
Speaker 2: telling me about in this particular story when he visited Chanl,
Speaker 2: China and met this gentleman, is through the translator, you know,
Speaker 2: after you know, the excitement of comparing the two footprint
Speaker 2: casts was over and they saw the congruency and they
Speaker 2: really felt they like, oh, there's something this is so interesting.
Speaker 2: Through the translator, the ranger in China asked doctor Meldrim, so,
Speaker 2: do you have anything like the wild man in America?
Speaker 2: He had never heard of bigfoot or sasquatch never, but
Speaker 2: yet he had a footprint that if you would have
Speaker 2: just picked it up and shown it to anybody with
Speaker 2: the eyes to see, you know, doctor Meldrim, or even
Speaker 2: me or somebody, they go, oh, yeah, that's a sasquatch.
Speaker 2: Footprint and here's why. That is a huge congruence. And
Speaker 2: if there ever is a smoking gun, that's it. Stay
Speaker 2: tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and Bobo
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Speaker 1: restrictions and important safety information. And you know what else
Speaker 1: that brought to mind was that another I say early,
Speaker 1: I mean Meldrim had already been involved for a number
Speaker 1: of years by this point, but early for me is
Speaker 1: that kind of mid two thousands point where Jeff had
Speaker 1: started to do the three D scans of the track
Speaker 1: collection that he had amassed thus far, and that there
Speaker 1: was that interactive thing on ISU's website where you could
Speaker 1: move the three D scans in sort of like digital space,
Speaker 1: and we will you know, we'll talk about this later,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to put together a repository of links
Speaker 1: for listeners to check out. But one of the slides
Speaker 1: that he used in presentations often as the consequence of
Speaker 1: those scans, was showing you know, all those Tipmus casts
Speaker 1: that we've seen photographs of you. I mean, you guys
Speaker 1: have been lucky enough to see the actual cast, but
Speaker 1: for the rest of us, you know, reading books or
Speaker 1: watching documentaries, we only see those two D photos. But
Speaker 1: for him to take those ten consecutive casts that Tipmas
Speaker 1: took at the Patterson site, lay them essentially on their
Speaker 1: sides in digital space, to see the midfoot flexibility expressed
Speaker 1: to varying degrees in every single footfall, you know, with
Speaker 1: these degrees of difference, some more exaggerated than others. But that,
Speaker 1: to me is such a remarkable thing to show people,
Speaker 1: because you know, when I first saw him do it
Speaker 1: in presentations, it was powerful. And then he released that
Speaker 1: slide and various slides with those scans and other papers,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I've shown those two people, because
Speaker 1: most folks just see the two D photographs and they
Speaker 1: think about that sort of two D look that the
Speaker 1: two tracks for example, that Roger and Bob cast the
Speaker 1: most perfect ones that they do look kind of flat,
Speaker 1: you know, but then to show no, actually, this midfoot
Speaker 1: flexibility is present in every single one of those tracks
Speaker 1: and two varying degrees which a carve stomper cannot accomplish.
Speaker 1: And so that whole project of his and what came
Speaker 1: out of it, I think was a major contribution too.
Speaker 1: And that's still early days for Jeff.
Speaker 2: And his intent, of course was to be able to
Speaker 2: share footprint casts with scientists and other qualified individuals around
Speaker 2: the world. And because these scanning the apps, we have
Speaker 2: them on our phone now. But you know, this is
Speaker 2: a long time ago. This is ten to fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: or more twenty years ago. It was a different world
Speaker 2: back then, and I had the privilege of watching a
Speaker 2: number of footprint casts be scanned at ISU one time
Speaker 2: when I went out to visit doctor Meldrum. It took
Speaker 2: a number of footprints that I had cast and brought
Speaker 2: them down to the lab and it was a long,
Speaker 2: grueling process. I mean, it probably took fifteen minutes for
Speaker 2: each one cast, I'm guessing, And of course it's much
Speaker 2: higher resolution than the stuff we have on our phones.
Speaker 2: It still is good technology, but it's gone so much
Speaker 2: further at this moment. So and then you know, nowadays
Speaker 2: on your phone you can tap two locations on a
Speaker 2: cast or a footprint or of whatever it is, or
Speaker 2: anything of the skin of a room, and it'll tell
Speaker 2: you the distance. And that was his intent he wanted.
Speaker 2: He was telling me one time he wanted to do
Speaker 2: this thing where you can take two footprints of seemingly
Speaker 2: the same individual and then lay them over one another,
Speaker 2: and if the opposite footprints just flip it, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: because you can do that digitally so well. And if
Speaker 2: you color one one color and color the other casts
Speaker 2: another color digitally, like yellow and green, where the overlap
Speaker 2: should be blue, right, and where they're different, you should
Speaker 2: see the yellow and green, and that would show differentiation
Speaker 2: in toe positions, depths, flexion, and a number of other
Speaker 2: anatomical features that he was great, greatly interested in. And
Speaker 2: those files are out there. Those files are out there,
Speaker 2: and he uses them every once in a while in
Speaker 2: his publications and saying there's fascinating things. But to get
Speaker 2: back to the Patterson Gimlin thing where you mentioned Bob
Speaker 2: Titmas's ten casts in a row regardless of quality, one
Speaker 2: of the other things that stood out, which makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: And again, but it took someone like Jeff to point
Speaker 2: it out. I think, you know, because sometimes you don't
Speaker 2: see the obvious until somebody points it out. And I've
Speaker 2: had pleasure of pointing things out to Jeff too. We
Speaker 2: can tell that's right in a while too. But when
Speaker 2: you look at all ten of those prince in a row,
Speaker 2: especially from the top down, like that perpendicular perspective before
Speaker 2: he turns it, you know, forty five degrees or ninety
Speaker 2: degrees to the angle of the camera, the prince are
Speaker 2: many of them are are different sizes, you know, some
Speaker 2: are two or three inches longer than the other ones,
Speaker 2: Which goes back to this idea that I'm always harping
Speaker 2: on that footprints are not the shape of the foot,
Speaker 2: They're the shape of the damage done to the ground
Speaker 2: by the foot, right. I say that all the time
Speaker 2: most presentations. That comes out of my mouth several times.
Speaker 2: But when you look at the prince flat, you know,
Speaker 2: laying flat on a table, so to speak. There's two
Speaker 2: three four inches in difference between those many times. But
Speaker 2: if you look at where the mid tarsal pressure ridge is,
Speaker 2: or the evidence of the inflection in the foot at
Speaker 2: least to the toes, those do not vary very much.
Speaker 2: Those don't don't vary probably more than a half an
Speaker 2: inch or something like that, which which is the kind
Speaker 2: of variance you would expect. And the reason is when
Speaker 2: a sasquatch walks, and and everything I'm saying, everything I'm saying,
Speaker 2: is because Jeff taught us, by the way, But when
Speaker 2: a sasquatch walks, the foot flexes in the in the
Speaker 2: mid part of the foot right underneath the ankle, while
Speaker 2: that big jumble of bones are right behind the mid
Speaker 2: of tarsals. And then the push off of the foot therefore,
Speaker 2: the force with all that weight behind it as the
Speaker 2: animal walks to the next step is on the entirety
Speaker 2: of the front half of the foot. And to take
Speaker 2: it even one step further. And I talked to Jeff
Speaker 2: about this.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: No longer ago than June, doctor Meldrim and I had
Speaker 2: shared an airbnb for Charlie Raymond's conference back in June,
Speaker 2: and we didn't have a ride anywhere. So we woke
Speaker 2: up in the morning, had breakfast together, and had a
Speaker 2: seven hour, six and a half seven hour conversation because
Speaker 2: there's nothing else to do. And so I was talking
Speaker 2: to him about the things I've seen in the field
Speaker 2: and stuff, and he pretty much agreed with me on this.
Speaker 2: Is that So the push off on the front half
Speaker 2: of the foot like that which pushes down into the ground,
Speaker 2: because that's where the greatest forces and it's the part
Speaker 2: of the gait that has the greatest amount of force,
Speaker 2: that's the deepest part, And so that wouldn't be expected
Speaker 2: to have a great degree of variance in it, whereas
Speaker 2: the heel strike and stuff. Push makes the prince and
Speaker 2: the patterson gimlin thing longer, you know, that expects. But
Speaker 2: the toes, the toes on a sasquatch aren't used to
Speaker 2: the same degree as in human beings as far as
Speaker 2: the force upon push off. They seem to be more
Speaker 2: of like a stabilization thing. Yeah, there's a little bit
Speaker 2: of force on him that toes do impress, you know,
Speaker 2: but many, many, like a significant percentage of the sasquatch
Speaker 2: footprints that I have personally observed the ground. The toes
Speaker 2: sometimes barely register. You know that the toes are there
Speaker 2: for stabilization and grasping and that sort of thing, but
Speaker 2: the force is not on the toes, which makes sense
Speaker 2: because the toe. And this is another thing I remember, Jeff,
Speaker 2: I don't know what TV show this is in, but
Speaker 2: this is before I even met the guy. I think
Speaker 2: I remember him saying that the toes of a sasquatch
Speaker 2: are probably about as long as your fingers are, and
Speaker 2: therefore can be expected to have about the same level
Speaker 2: of prehensibility, you know. And you know, they're not grabbing
Speaker 2: pens and writing or something with them, or they're not
Speaker 2: changing the channel on those old fashioned TVs, you know,
Speaker 2: with their toes like I did when I was a
Speaker 2: kid or whatever. But but they're used for stabilization and
Speaker 2: then kind of grasping the substrate to some degree. And
Speaker 2: these are all things that doctor Meldrum showed us.
Speaker 1: Oh, he was incredibly generous with those things. You know.
Speaker 1: As you were describing all that, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: a number of other things. You know, I don't really
Speaker 1: want to make comparisons to people that passed. I just don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be fair to the people
Speaker 1: that passed, But obviously there's a history of people sort
Speaker 1: of hoarding evidence or what they find. And it's pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable that Jeff wanted so many eyes on those casts
Speaker 1: and then realizing the difficulty it would be to fly
Speaker 1: people to Idaho, or the difficulty of transporting that cast
Speaker 1: collection around, that he endeavored to have them represented in
Speaker 1: digital space so that scientists from around the world could
Speaker 1: lay their eyes on him and interact with him. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's a pretty generous thing that doesn't happen very
Speaker 1: often in Sasquatch, where he let alone all the willingness
Speaker 1: to you know, it's sort of like the consummate professor
Speaker 1: teacher sharing the gift of knowledge. Because yeah, so, like
Speaker 1: Boba mentioned, like you're mentioning, so many of these things
Speaker 1: we've learned came from his willingness to talk on camera
Speaker 1: to seemingly like anyone who would show an interest because
Speaker 1: I used to listen to him on you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of blog talk radio shows, you know, early internet radio,
Speaker 1: pre podcast that sort of thing, and he really was
Speaker 1: extremely generous with this knowledge and those discoveries and his
Speaker 1: willingness to share is pretty unique in the history of
Speaker 1: Sasquatrey not to dine great people of the past, but
Speaker 1: not everyone was as generous.
Speaker 3: Oh, he was unreal generousal this time. I mean I
Speaker 3: used to feel bad for him. You know, they're like, God,
Speaker 3: you gotta you know, you go to these conferences or whatnot,
Speaker 3: and you know, you got to deal with these people
Speaker 3: that have like these crazy ideas or like just no
Speaker 3: clue what they're talking about. And he'd listened to him
Speaker 3: and you know, like try to kind of gently correct
Speaker 3: him and show him like what the facts on certain
Speaker 3: things were, and he just his patience was unreal. I mean,
Speaker 3: he was such a gentleman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, imagine how many times have you guys
Speaker 1: seen him explain to someone the mechanics, you know, the
Speaker 1: function of midfoot flexibility, because so many people see those
Speaker 1: fixed casts and they think that that's the way the
Speaker 1: foot is shaped, and they'll think that that's a feature
Speaker 1: of the foot itself, rather than like, no, that's a
Speaker 1: record of how the foot interacted with the substrate. And
Speaker 1: I've seen him teach that lesson so many times to people,
Speaker 1: which requires a lot of general It would be a
Speaker 1: lot easier to say, I just go read my book
Speaker 1: and leave me alone, you know. But he was very
Speaker 1: generous to teach.
Speaker 2: And nearly every every time I observed him sharing that
Speaker 2: knowledge with somebody at a conference or whatever. You know,
Speaker 2: you watch him for two or like a minute and
Speaker 2: a half or something like that, and he starts getting
Speaker 2: excited about it. He starts getting like his body motion
Speaker 2: gets more animated, his voice starts going, and he starts smiling,
Speaker 2: like he gets really excited about that kind of I mean,
Speaker 2: he was a he was a nerd man. He loved
Speaker 2: what he did, and he loved the teaching aspect, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and it was it was always a treasured moment to
Speaker 2: see him doing what he loved, which is teaching about
Speaker 2: something that he got really got excited about, you know.
Speaker 3: And he was hilarious.
Speaker 1: I hope those track scans become you know, there used
Speaker 1: to be a portal on the ISU website through like
Speaker 1: his portion of the I s U website, there was
Speaker 1: a portal the Virtual Footprint Archive, and so that data
Speaker 1: must exist somewhere. Do you guys know if he had
Speaker 1: the same intentions with you remember the three D scan
Speaker 1: that was done of the Scuokum cast that Jeff was
Speaker 1: involved with.
Speaker 2: I don't want with that was that's pretty ancient technology, though,
Speaker 2: it'd be interesting to dig that up or see if
Speaker 2: he has that, or if Rick Nole has that, or
Speaker 2: who has that. Who knows what happened to that.
Speaker 1: I'm just assuming like he had the same intention is
Speaker 1: that it's going to be really hard to get you know,
Speaker 1: the cast to places. You know, John Green had sort
Speaker 1: of proposed that that they should travel take the cast
Speaker 1: on tour to various universities to have people evaluate it.
Speaker 1: But you know, maybe that's where that seed was planted,
Speaker 1: with Jeff saying, well, if we create a digital version
Speaker 1: of this in three D space, we can share with
Speaker 1: people that way. But he really did a lot to
Speaker 1: try to bring this subject to his peers and colleagues
Speaker 1: and just to the world, just in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: that project being one of many examples of trying to
Speaker 1: share that in a really literal and figuratively a high
Speaker 1: resolution manner, you know, not just some paper with a
Speaker 1: black and white, you know, two D picture in it,
Speaker 1: but really trying to bring this information to people. And
Speaker 1: those are huge contributions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and talk about the generosity of his time he
Speaker 2: was lamenting to me. This is back in June again
Speaker 2: when we had that wonderful conversation for six hours or so.
Speaker 2: He's lamenting to me that he's he felt bad about
Speaker 2: starting to have to say no to some podcast requests
Speaker 2: because he says, well, you know, like I don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of time, and these people sometimes they only
Speaker 2: have twenty five or thirty people listening, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to take an hour and I just don't have that
Speaker 2: kind of time, and I feel terrible. He was lamenting
Speaker 2: about not being able to help the little guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was always telling him, don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: I was always something like, dude, like you're just you're
Speaker 3: burning your time, Like your time is too vital. I
Speaker 3: mean a lot of people don't know he had six boys,
Speaker 3: six sons. I mean he's busy, dude, a full time
Speaker 3: job and squatching. I mean he was slammed for time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't have a lot of time, and he
Speaker 2: just kept getting busy and busier and busier. He was
Speaker 2: doing all these appearances and whatnot, trying to share his knowledge,
Speaker 2: trying to you know, bring people back down the earth
Speaker 2: about sasquatches. And then yeah, and when I say that
Speaker 2: it'd like to kind of just like dispel a lot
Speaker 2: of these paranormal ideas, you know, because he knew that
Speaker 2: that didn't really serve the subject, unfortunately, and then it
Speaker 2: drove his colleagues away and made him look bad. And
Speaker 2: he didn't do it because he looked bad. He always
Speaker 2: spoke about the subject in a scientific, biological manner because
Speaker 2: he thought that the subject deserved that, and to go
Speaker 2: to fanciful lengths to explain things through paranormal means does
Speaker 2: no service to the animals nor the subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did more to legitimize the pursuit, certainly in
Speaker 1: the last twenty five years, but to your earlier points,
Speaker 1: maybe more than any other single individuals, or at least
Speaker 1: any single individual scientist or academic that's ever been involved
Speaker 1: in this subject. From designating a name, you know, an
Speaker 1: IGNO taxon, to the footprints and using the Patterson film
Speaker 1: site footprints as the sort of type specimen for the
Speaker 1: Igno taxon, things of that nature really serve to legitimize
Speaker 1: what is seen by most people as an outlandish or
Speaker 1: preposterous sort of idea or pursuit. And I can't think
Speaker 1: of anyone who's done more good to legitimize this asquatch
Speaker 1: than Jeff's done in the last twenty five years.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 2: Bobo will be right back. After these messages. He wrote
Speaker 2: a paper called the Ichno Taxonomy of Giant Hominoid Tracts
Speaker 2: in North America. So let us pause on that just
Speaker 2: for a minute, because this really gets to me in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. This is a great example of
Speaker 2: kind of what who Jeff was in a scientific and
Speaker 2: someone manner at the same time. You see that from
Speaker 2: what I understand if I remember correctly, and Jeff told
Speaker 2: me this story more than once. There there was a
Speaker 2: conference going on and he submitted this paper. It was
Speaker 2: about the Ichno taxonomy. Okay, Now, taxonomy is the is
Speaker 2: the study or the science I guess of naming animals.
Speaker 2: You know, we all know that there's a genus and
Speaker 2: species name that it's in Latin, you know, Homo sapiens,
Speaker 2: you know, or some americanas like that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: where there's a genus and a species name. That's what
Speaker 2: taxonomy is.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: In Linnaeus back in you know, several hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: he kind of made up that system and we all
Speaker 2: follow it at this moment. Ichno taxonomy is the naming
Speaker 2: of basically the naming of species, or maybe not the
Speaker 2: species itself, but giving a name to the footprints that
Speaker 2: come from a certain species, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And there was this conference going on, and so he
Speaker 2: submitted this paper to it on one hand because it
Speaker 2: was kind of funny in a way that yeah, I
Speaker 2: can do this and there's no rules against it. See,
Speaker 2: in taxonomy, you need a type specimen, a hollo type,
Speaker 2: you need a species sample, you know, to name something.
Speaker 2: But in Ichno taxonomy you need a footprint. And this
Speaker 2: is they use Ichno taxonomy for things like dinosaur footprints
Speaker 2: for example, or the Leatoli tracks. We don't really know
Speaker 2: that it was Australopithis and Australopithecus affensus that made those,
Speaker 2: but Ichno taxonomists have attributed it to that species, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's what ichno taxonomy kind of is. So we
Speaker 2: have lots of footprints of sasquatches, and he used the
Speaker 2: Patterson Gimlin film subject as the prime example and kind
Speaker 2: of proposed a name, proposed a name for the uh
Speaker 2: They call it an Ichnogenus an ignospecies, you know, describing
Speaker 2: those footprints, you know, so like there was a species
Speaker 2: that made those. But I believe, and I could be wrong.
Speaker 2: I don't know everything. I barely know anything I feel
Speaker 2: most days, but ichno, taxonomy is the naming of the
Speaker 2: footprint thing, not necessarily the species. Whlthough they're kind of
Speaker 2: tied together and agree and if if I'm incorrect and
Speaker 2: you happen to know, let me know. But he said, well,
Speaker 2: we have footprints for this, and it would be a
Speaker 2: fun way to get the sasquatch thing in front of
Speaker 2: a conference of scientists who are kind of interested in footprints,
Speaker 2: because I think it was a nicdo taxonomy conference that
Speaker 2: was going on at the time. So yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a great way to get this kind of evidence in
Speaker 2: front of these kinds of people and hopefully it'll turn
Speaker 2: a few heads and maybe even lure a couple of
Speaker 2: the other mainstream scientists over to the dark side so
Speaker 2: they can study sasquatches a little bit. And I don't
Speaker 2: know if he was successful in that, but it kind
Speaker 2: of shows Jeff's number one scientific rigor because being interested
Speaker 2: in the sasquatch thing, Jeff had to be very very
Speaker 2: conservative with his claims. He had to back them up rigorously.
Speaker 2: So anybody, if you're going to present a paper like
Speaker 2: this to a conference, he's got to make sure all
Speaker 2: his tease or crossed and ezer dotted and all that jazz,
Speaker 2: you know. So but also shows a sense of humor
Speaker 2: because he knew that it would ruffle some feathers. He
Speaker 2: knew that going into this, but he did it anyway
Speaker 2: because frankly, he was a badass when it came to
Speaker 2: stuff like that. He was more than willing to smile
Speaker 2: and ruffle a few feathers along the way, especially when
Speaker 2: he knew that he did a good job with the
Speaker 2: paper and there's no reason, no foundation for it being rejected.
Speaker 2: And of course he was rejected a few times in
Speaker 2: various paper publications because of a sasquatch subject. But in
Speaker 2: something like this, they let us slide through, They let
Speaker 2: it go through, and he was just so pleased about it,
Speaker 2: and he thought that really gave him a kick. I
Speaker 2: remember talking to him several times about this paper and hopefully,
Speaker 2: you know, it turns some heads like like he was hoping,
Speaker 2: and maybe even did bring a few scientists into this
Speaker 2: area of interest.
Speaker 1: So absolutely. I pulled up the paper and I'll put
Speaker 1: that in those links too. It looks like it was
Speaker 1: published in two thousand and seven and the ichno genus
Speaker 1: and species was anthroportepez Amora borealis North American eight foot,
Speaker 1: which is certainly a mouthful. So good luck spell in that, folks,
Speaker 1: But just click the link in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that'll be on the next Bobo appearance on
Speaker 2: Sasquatch Chronicles. For the trivia thing, you know that maybe
Speaker 2: they should do a spelling be next time instead of
Speaker 2: trivia with you bobs.
Speaker 1: You know what came to mind when you guys were
Speaker 1: talking about this stuff too, is that one aspect of
Speaker 1: Jeff's pursuit of the Sasquatch that I was always super
Speaker 1: interested in and I only ever got bits and pieces
Speaker 1: of from various interviews. He was a pretty avid field researcher.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: He was deeply involved with those Six Rivers expeditions that
Speaker 1: Richard Greenwell led, but he also had the North American
Speaker 1: ap project and did a lot of field work with
Speaker 1: John Mainzinski in the Northwest and the Inner Mountain, West Wyoming, etc.
Speaker 1: And so you guys probably know a lot more about
Speaker 1: his field research, but I was always curious to learn
Speaker 1: more about all that.
Speaker 2: Well, hopefully in the next few weeks we'll have a
Speaker 2: guest on that can enlighten us a little bit more,
Speaker 2: because you know, one of the things I'd earned when
Speaker 2: I was at Walla Walla. I went to Walla Walla,
Speaker 2: Washington to some stuff in the Blues a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago, and I managed to finally track down a
Speaker 2: historic bigfooter named Brian Smith, who of course is best
Speaker 2: known for the Cueterville, Idaho cast from two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: I believe, but I have a lengthy interview with Brian
Speaker 2: over lunch, and Brian saw a Sasquatch in ninety two.
Speaker 2: I actually saw two of them walk in front of
Speaker 2: his car in nineteen ninety two, and that kind of
Speaker 2: put him on the trail there, you know. And he
Speaker 2: only met Paul Freeman once, but he was very active
Speaker 2: in the Blues. He mostly hung out with West Summerland,
Speaker 2: but he ran across doctor Meldrim at some point and
Speaker 2: became a member of doctor Meldrum's nonprofit research group called
Speaker 2: the North American Eight Project, and I think Minezinski was involved.
Speaker 2: Derek Randalls, I know, was involved. Brian Smith was involved,
Speaker 2: and doctor Meldrim was the head of it all and
Speaker 2: stuff was a nonprofit somehow associated with the ISU, the
Speaker 2: Ido State University. But Brian was telling me stories about
Speaker 2: being in the field with doctor Meldrum. They used to
Speaker 2: stay in a cabin up on Biscuit Ridge somewhere, which
Speaker 2: is one of these hills above the Wallah Walla. There's
Speaker 2: a woman gave them access to her cabin, if I
Speaker 2: remember right, and they used to stay there and then
Speaker 2: do field work day and night, I guess, you know,
Speaker 2: but they had a place to stay there. There's a
Speaker 2: lot about the field work of doctor Meldrim that I
Speaker 2: honestly don't know about. And that was one of the
Speaker 2: fascinating things about having conversations, you know, casual conversations with Jeff,
Speaker 2: is that he would bring up, you know, this time
Speaker 2: that he was at West Summerlin's house and you know,
Speaker 2: and his wife would do this, and like it's like
Speaker 2: all these personal relationships that he had with some of
Speaker 2: the greatest names in Bigfoot, or the most legendary names
Speaker 2: in Bigfoot, you know, whether it is you know, West
Speaker 2: Summerlin or Paul Freeman, or doctor Krantz, for example, I
Speaker 2: like little things. To me, the minutia is always the
Speaker 2: most meaningful in a lot of ways. You know. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like when they say, don't forget that the
Speaker 2: good old days are actually what's happening right now. You
Speaker 2: know that kind of thing, like the little things count
Speaker 2: and that, you know that kind of thing. But I
Speaker 2: remember doctor Krantz as far as that's concerned. One time,
Speaker 2: doctor Meldrum went to visit doctor Krantz in his lab
Speaker 2: at Pullman in Washington, and they got out all of
Speaker 2: Krantz's footprints from a certain area and then kind of
Speaker 2: made a gradient of them. They like, he said, they
Speaker 2: laid him across the hallway, is what he told me.
Speaker 2: Where they Okay, well, this cast like this one over here,
Speaker 2: cast A. We know that that's like cast. We know
Speaker 2: that's the same individual as cast B here, right, And
Speaker 2: this one here looks a lot like Cast C. So
Speaker 2: A and C must be the same. And they just
Speaker 2: kept doing that where there's like a dozen or twenty
Speaker 2: footprints across the hallway, and when you look at A
Speaker 2: and you know Z on the other side, they don't
Speaker 2: look very much alike. But since there's a connection from
Speaker 2: A to B and B two C B. You know
Speaker 2: that gradient exists, then you know A and Z must
Speaker 2: be the same, you know, that kind of logic sort
Speaker 2: of thing. And he said, yeah, so where do we
Speaker 2: cut it off? And that was like the way one
Speaker 2: of the ways that doctor Krantz and doctor Meldrum started
Speaker 2: looking into the recurrence of individual sasquatches over time is
Speaker 2: by looking at the variation that is possible in the
Speaker 2: sasquatch foot. And then of course that got Jeff's brains
Speaker 2: moving and stuff you know about because he knows the
Speaker 2: inner workings of the food pretty much better than most
Speaker 2: people do, you know, ninety nine percent or more of
Speaker 2: everybody on the planet obviously, and he said, well, that
Speaker 2: really got him moving on that sort of thing. You know,
Speaker 2: it's just like little little stories of behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: I've always appreciated and those are some of my most
Speaker 2: treasured kernels of knowledge that I've picked up from Jeff.
Speaker 3: I was shocked first of all in the field of them,
Speaker 3: because I thought I thought it was like some ivory tower,
Speaker 3: you know, geek, you know, never got outside man. He
Speaker 3: was an outdoors when he and he track and he
Speaker 3: he knew like what you know because he spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time with Myrion Chinsky too. He learned so
Speaker 3: much from Myrian Chinsky, you know about you know, the
Speaker 3: food sources and you know medicinal plants. And I was
Speaker 3: I was surprised. I was pretty stuck, you know, going
Speaker 3: out with them and getting in the woods of them
Speaker 3: and learning from him.
Speaker 4: Am I remembering correctly, Cliff, that there was a sort
Speaker 4: of like a similar interaction with you and Jeff where
Speaker 4: you would pointed out two of the Blue Mountain casts
Speaker 4: and say like, hey, Jeff, I think these are the
Speaker 4: same individual and he sort of realized that one was
Speaker 4: pronated one supernated. Am I remembering that story correctly?
Speaker 2: That's absolutely correct. Yeah. One of the times I was
Speaker 2: in his lab because and I don't remember when this was.
Speaker 2: It might have been when I was in filming in
Speaker 2: bokatell and finding Bigfoot. I'm not sure, because I know
Speaker 2: we filmed in his lab. But I went back the
Speaker 2: next day, like Jeff invited me back the next day,
Speaker 2: and I kind of, you know, ran rampant through his lab.
Speaker 2: But I've been to his lab with him probably three
Speaker 2: or four times. I don't remember exactly how many times.
Speaker 2: But on one of these occasions, Jeff had work to do.
Speaker 2: You know, he's a professor, he's got emails, he's got
Speaker 2: things to do, grading papers or whatever whatever you had
Speaker 2: to do. And his lab is you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of big. I mean maybe thirty feet by twenty feet
Speaker 2: or something like that, I don't know. And there's a
Speaker 2: small little area that's like probably ten by ten or less,
Speaker 2: and that's where his desk and computer and books and
Speaker 2: stuff are, and the rest of it's just you know,
Speaker 2: like science nerd stuff, you know, footprints and all that jazz.
Speaker 2: So he had stuff to do at his desk, so's
Speaker 2: he said, well, yeah, why don't you rummage through the drawers, man,
Speaker 2: see what's of interest here for you? And I go
Speaker 2: all right, you know, and then he went to go
Speaker 2: or I don't know how you could work like over me,
Speaker 2: giggling like a schoolgirl outside every two minutes about something.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know how he could do it
Speaker 2: focus with me making so much noise and my shrieks
Speaker 2: of glee as I went through the drawers and looked
Speaker 2: at various casts and things like that. I'm exaggerating a
Speaker 2: little bit but not that much. But at one point
Speaker 2: I pulled out two casts, and one of them was
Speaker 2: from West Summerland, and one of them was from Paul Freeman.
Speaker 2: I think it was nineteen eighty six and nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: One of them was from I think the Freeman. One
Speaker 2: was from a place called Yellow Jacket, which is over
Speaker 2: by Tiger Saddle and the Blue Mountains and the other places.
Speaker 2: The other one is from a place called Indian Camp,
Speaker 2: which is some miles away, maybe five miles away or
Speaker 2: something like that, maybe seven at the most.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: But I was looking at the two prints, and one
Speaker 2: of them, the toes were across the top, and then
Speaker 2: the other one of the toes were slanted diagonally down
Speaker 2: the side. But I was looking at it and the
Speaker 2: toes stood out to me in an interesting way. And
Speaker 2: I brought them to Jeff and I said, Jeff, I'm
Speaker 2: sorry interrupting or whatever you're doing what you do? And
Speaker 2: I said, are these the same individual? And he goes,
Speaker 2: let's take a look, and stood He stood up and
Speaker 2: he says, I've always kind of thought that, but now
Speaker 2: that you're saying it, let's really take a look at this,
Speaker 2: you know, And then we eate them both down, and
Speaker 2: I said, well, look at the shape of the big toe,
Speaker 2: because that's something i'd noticed at that point in my life,
Speaker 2: because I mean, I'm surrounded by footprint casts. I mean,
Speaker 2: both of you guys have been in my garage. It's
Speaker 2: ridiculous around here. I'm surrounded by footprint casts every time
Speaker 2: I go anywhere in my house. And so I said,
Speaker 2: look at the big toe. I mean, halex is really
Speaker 2: a differentiator as far as individual sasquatches go. I'm completely
Speaker 2: confident of that, in the same sort of way that
Speaker 2: you know, the tail fins of whales are used to
Speaker 2: identify individual whales, or the dorsal fins of orcas or
Speaker 2: great white sharks are used to identify individual animals, you know,
Speaker 2: just like you know our faces are used for human beings,
Speaker 2: like I know what Matt looks like, I know what
Speaker 2: Bobo looks like. These other identifiers and other animals are
Speaker 2: pretty they stand out, and the halex, the big toe
Speaker 2: on sasquatch footprints is one of those things that stands
Speaker 2: out to at least me, because I've seen so many
Speaker 2: footprint casts and I'm surrounded by them all the time.
Speaker 2: But the halex on. Both of these are very very similar,
Speaker 2: and I say what he's and they're about the same length,
Speaker 2: and they weren't that far apart. So Jeff laid him
Speaker 2: down and we started talking about it, and and he goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think they are. And then he started talking about
Speaker 2: the supernation and pronation of the foot. And you can
Speaker 2: imagine how how happy that made me. Is Like, even
Speaker 2: though Jeff had kind of considered that before, he had
Speaker 2: never really done the grunt work of getting it down
Speaker 2: and moving it around and comparing the two and and
Speaker 2: and and again. To Jeff's credit of being a fantastic
Speaker 2: and humble human being, he would he would say that, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: Cliff Barrickmhan was in my lab and he pointed this
Speaker 2: out to me, and I'd always thought so, but it
Speaker 2: was it was, you know, through through U. I mean,
Speaker 2: we did that, and I think that's so That's just
Speaker 2: I almost said the F word there. It's so cool
Speaker 2: to have been able to, I guess, be there or
Speaker 2: pointed out, you know, or nudge him to like confirm
Speaker 2: my thought. I mean, I don't know what I did,
Speaker 2: but I was there and it was cool. And I've
Speaker 2: even seen it just yesterday. I think I saw maybe
Speaker 2: today I saw a diagram of those two casts with
Speaker 2: an explanation underneath it, and I'm thinking, yeah, that's I
Speaker 2: was there. That's cool. That was really neat when that
Speaker 2: quote unquote discovery was made. And I'm thrilled that Jeff listened,
Speaker 2: you know, because you would think that somebody of his
Speaker 2: stature wouldn't need to listen to the little guy like me.
Speaker 2: It's just really cool.
Speaker 3: Well that happened. I was like, damn, Cliff, you made it.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm just lucky enough to know the guy. You know,
Speaker 2: stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Speaker 2: Bobo will be right back. After these messages. The few
Speaker 2: times I've heard him speak and my name came up
Speaker 2: for something that I contributed in some sort of way,
Speaker 2: that makes me feel good, you know.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like you mentioned earlier, the Jerry Crew footprint. You
Speaker 2: know how that that the Jerry Crew footprint. From a
Speaker 2: certain angle, you can see that there's a mid victual
Speaker 2: pressure ridge there. But I could never been noticed before
Speaker 2: because the cast was you know, kind of hidden away
Speaker 2: in the Crew family collection and no one really had
Speaker 2: access to it. But that's something that you know, Bobo
Speaker 2: and I kind of had a small part in a
Speaker 2: way because the first time that the cast had been
Speaker 2: brought out into public was when we were filming Finding Bigfoot.
Speaker 2: The producers for Finding Bigfoot got a hold of the
Speaker 2: crew family and Wade and John came out to the
Speaker 2: site and we got to see the actual cast. We
Speaker 2: were like amongst the first people in Bigfoot Nerd Nerd Bill,
Speaker 2: you know that, to actually see the actual cast in
Speaker 2: decades and decades and decades, and I took I took
Speaker 2: several pictures of it, of course with permission from John
Speaker 2: Crue and Wade, and it was it's that photograph that
Speaker 2: I sent the Doctor Meldrum that he used for that comparison.
Speaker 2: It's just another cool thing that I was accidentally involved in,
Speaker 2: and I'm just so thankful that I had a chance
Speaker 2: to contribute something. I'll send that article over right now
Speaker 2: and you can link it in the show notes below
Speaker 2: about the Supernation, and it has photographs of those two casts,
Speaker 2: and actually this particular article even has photographs of the
Speaker 2: cast from China and the Labrity casts and as well
Speaker 2: as the tipmus stuff too. So I'll send that over
Speaker 2: to you right now.
Speaker 3: Excellent.
Speaker 1: I mean we haven't even talked about his book yet.
Speaker 2: No, just kind of buddy, we haven't even mentioned relatominoids.
Speaker 2: The scientific context in which sasquatches certainly reside this idea
Speaker 2: that species that were probably once more abundant on the
Speaker 2: planet are now in small, isolated pockets all throughout the world.
Speaker 2: And that's what sasquatches certainly are some sort of relict
Speaker 2: species that still exists. That goes to Jeff as well,
Speaker 2: like giving scientists a reason to think sasquatches could be real.
Speaker 1: But man, when his book came out, say, I first
Speaker 1: discovered Jeff through Mysterious Encounters, which is so funny because
Speaker 1: I was just obsessed with that show, and that's where
Speaker 1: I first discovered Bubba too. So part of me is
Speaker 1: still like it's so weird to do a podcast with
Speaker 1: Bobo because I've been like Bobo was one of the
Speaker 1: first squatchers I ever saw, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: because he was in several episodes of that show. But
Speaker 1: that's where I first saw Jeff and then started following
Speaker 1: other things. Even though Legend Meete Science the documentary had
Speaker 1: come out prior to the show I didn't see that
Speaker 1: documentary until after I watched Mysterious Encounters. Boat was really
Speaker 1: interested in him and trying to track down interviews that
Speaker 1: were online, many of which were text interviews print interviews.
Speaker 1: But then I remember when the book was announced and
Speaker 1: I bought the book like immediately when it came out,
Speaker 1: when it hit shelves back in the days when you
Speaker 1: had to go to Barnes and Noble or Borders or whatever,
Speaker 1: to a physical bookstore to get new books, new releases,
Speaker 1: instead of having them delivered to your door. And I
Speaker 1: bought two copies. So I was so excited to read it.
Speaker 1: And you know, i'd been pursuing it for a couple
Speaker 1: of years at that point, and as one does, you know,
Speaker 1: you're trying to get everyone you know and care about
Speaker 1: to be as interested as you are. And so I
Speaker 1: bought a copy for me and a copy for my dad.
Speaker 1: You have to read this, even though I hadn't fully
Speaker 1: ready yet, but that book was super impactful because at
Speaker 1: that point I had only read a handful of books.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to track them all down at
Speaker 1: that point in time. So I'd read Krantz's book, which
Speaker 1: was the first book that i'd read, and I think
Speaker 1: I had already read Lauren Coleman's Bigfoot The True Story
Speaker 1: of Apes in America. I didn't even find a copy
Speaker 1: of Apes among us, I think, until after I read
Speaker 1: Meldrem's book. But so that was one of the first
Speaker 1: texts and just had a huge impact. And that was
Speaker 1: one of those things that set the bar of like
Speaker 1: I need to really get a grasp of the concepts
Speaker 1: and the language, etc. It was shortly thereafter, because I
Speaker 1: think Jeff's book came out in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: and then I enrolled in college and the first course
Speaker 1: I signed up for was physical anthropology, and that was
Speaker 1: all because I was so inspired by that book and
Speaker 1: well the subject in general. But it Crantz's book to
Speaker 1: some degree to me, Meldrims was more comprehensive, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's a little more up to date. But Miltrims
Speaker 1: was a bit more accessible to me at that time.
Speaker 1: But that has to be I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: guys think that's probably the best selling Sasquatch book of
Speaker 1: all time? I would think I.
Speaker 2: Think it's the most important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's someone I see everywhere, whether it's
Speaker 1: like new on shelves and used bookstores Like I just
Speaker 1: when you see that many copies of it out in
Speaker 1: the world, you think, man, a lot of people have
Speaker 1: bought this book. If new stores are keeping it in stock,
Speaker 1: and you know enough have been sold that you know,
Speaker 1: eventually people pass it on to the used bookshop and
Speaker 1: it's just a very it's the ubiquitous Sasquatch book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 3: Well, he had it, got it got a lot of
Speaker 3: press when it came out. One of the reasons it's
Speaker 3: got so much press is because Jane Goodall had just
Speaker 3: you know, recently given that NPR interview where she said
Speaker 3: she thought there were undiscovered, undiscovered really commentades around the world.
Speaker 3: Then she wrote that blurb on Jeff's book saying, you know,
Speaker 3: saying the same thing, saying, and Jeff came out here
Speaker 3: and he was at the Willow Creek Museum, you know,
Speaker 3: going through stuff and you know, like the old tracks
Speaker 3: and Cassie had there and documenting them. And I went
Speaker 3: out there and was, you know, kind of bugging him,
Speaker 3: like he didn't need me there, but I was just like,
Speaker 3: you know, I was trying to be like a gopher
Speaker 3: boy whatever whatever he needed. Then Jane Gettall was speaking
Speaker 3: that night in Arcada, doat Humble State University, which is like,
Speaker 3: you know, forty five minutes down on the coast, and
Speaker 3: so I gave I drove Jeff down there, and I
Speaker 3: bought three of his books, and uh, it was sold out.
Speaker 3: It was like I think there was fourteen hundred and
Speaker 3: sixteen hundred people there. And afterwards she came she came
Speaker 3: out in the lobby and was signing stuff and like
Speaker 3: you literally it was like a factory line, dude. It
Speaker 3: was like they they had a couple of people tell
Speaker 3: you like before you get to the front, like you
Speaker 3: only got like six seconds, and then they gave you
Speaker 3: little pieces of paper. You had to write your name
Speaker 3: and spell it properly, like you know, print it so
Speaker 3: that she could see it and sign real fast like
Speaker 3: say to so and so Jane goodall, and like it
Speaker 3: was and she was super tired. Was the last day
Speaker 3: of her like two month trip through America, like her
Speaker 3: big fundraising trip of the year, and the very next
Speaker 3: night she had to be back in London for like
Speaker 3: the biggest whatever that Wilderness Society over there is, I
Speaker 3: forget what it's called, but like the biggest one and
Speaker 3: it was that that night it's the biggest fun night,
Speaker 3: Razor Night for her chimp research projects, and so it
Speaker 3: was like a big deal and she was and you
Speaker 3: can just see she was so run down, but she
Speaker 3: gave a great talk. And when we were in line,
Speaker 3: people like there was people heckling me, going like oh,
Speaker 3: bigfoot stuff this and that, you know, and I was talking, smacking,
Speaker 3: like I was yelling at people like you're fools, like
Speaker 3: you idiot, you know. And Jeff was just like what
Speaker 3: the hell is going on? Like who am I with?
Speaker 3: You know, and and uh, we get up there and
Speaker 3: Jane Goodall he goes, he goes hi, Jane, I'm I'm Jeff,
Speaker 3: and she goes doctor Meldrum and she just stopped the line,
Speaker 3: and like, dude, it was like they had people like
Speaker 3: doing the Peter Burn and you're like avenue and pushing
Speaker 3: you away, going okay, nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: To buy, you know, like she had doing the Peter Burn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just pumping people through. And she stopped and for
Speaker 3: like five six, seven minutes, she talked to Jeff about
Speaker 3: the book. She signed our she signed up, she signed book,
Speaker 3: she signed a couple of books for him. She signed
Speaker 3: three for me, I think three for him, and I
Speaker 3: just looked for when we moved, I was looking for
Speaker 3: those books and I couldn't. Finally, when my house got
Speaker 3: ripped off by that guy was staying with me like
Speaker 3: years ago, I'm sure now I know he sold them,
Speaker 3: but uh, yeah, it was. It was really cool, like
Speaker 3: to see and like Jeff getting that validation, you know,
Speaker 3: in front of everyone, and you know, it was uh
Speaker 3: because he was he was kind of like a few
Speaker 3: people recognized him, not not too many, but a couple
Speaker 3: of people recognized him, and they kind of made, you know,
Speaker 3: snotty comments like jokes about it, and so uh. She
Speaker 3: she was very excited to meet Jeff. And I was
Speaker 3: telling her that we had just found those those nests
Speaker 3: up in uh North up by Rowed National Park. We'd
Speaker 3: found those nests up there, and she she really wanted
Speaker 3: to see him. They were still there, like they got
Speaker 3: kind of destroyed in the windstorms the next over the
Speaker 3: next two winners, they really got thrash, but she she
Speaker 3: wanted to go see. We were going to show them
Speaker 3: to her, and she was so excited. They just her
Speaker 3: team said, no, this is your biggest fundraiser. You have
Speaker 3: to go back, We have to leave for she was
Speaker 3: flying out on the midnight flight and going straight back
Speaker 3: right out of London and she was already burnt out.
Speaker 3: So they didn't they didn't let her go, but she
Speaker 3: she really wanted to go. And but it was really
Speaker 3: cool seeing Jeff get like that validation, you know, such
Speaker 3: an important figure, you know, in the global community of
Speaker 3: you know, primatology.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean who And again this is not
Speaker 1: to disparage the people of the past in any way,
Speaker 1: but for someone to come along and right of work
Speaker 1: that's so good that it's endorsed by Jane Goodall, who
Speaker 1: did the first you know, observational field studies of chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: and George Shaller, who did the first observational field studies
Speaker 1: of mountain guerrillas. Like no other sasquatch oriented, writer, academic,
Speaker 1: you know, researcher, et cetera, got those sorts of endorsements period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Schaller and Goodall are pretty heavy hitters, like
Speaker 1: like Bobo said, on the global stage, not just like
Speaker 1: within their field, but you know Schawler's work with snow leopards,
Speaker 1: on and on and on. So that in itself speaks
Speaker 1: to you know, again, the legitimacy that he was able
Speaker 1: to bring to the pursuit of the sasquatch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And again it's because I think it's because of
Speaker 2: the bigfoot thing that he was so careful in his
Speaker 2: academic work, because clearly that's something that I don't think
Speaker 2: that a lot of bigfooters appreciate, is that, you know,
Speaker 2: bigfooting is fun and it's the subject that we all
Speaker 2: love and all that sort of stuff, but when you
Speaker 2: speak publicly about sasquatches, there's a certain responsibility that goes
Speaker 2: with that. In my opinion, that's maybe that's what irks
Speaker 2: me about the newer generation being a little flipping about it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's it deserves better. And I always
Speaker 2: felt that doctor Meldrum was the best ambassador for the
Speaker 2: subject in so many different ways because he did take
Speaker 2: the subject so seriously, yet he enjoyed it. But also
Speaker 2: he was so careful about everything, so conservative in his
Speaker 2: science and his claims and his thoughts. You know, he
Speaker 2: thought he would entertain interesting thoughts, of course, but like
Speaker 2: when if he came to I came to public publication,
Speaker 2: he knew that the eyes of the world were on him.
Speaker 2: He knew that, so his scholarship had to be impeccable,
Speaker 2: and I think by and large it was. I mean,
Speaker 2: it surpassed impeccability in so many ways. And it's so
Speaker 2: sad that he didn't live to get the recognition that
Speaker 2: he will eventually get.
Speaker 3: It makes me think they're going to discover, like recognize
Speaker 3: it soon, because of course I will be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he died just before like the the DNA results came out,
Speaker 3: or you know, it'll be something that gives me hope
Speaker 3: that it's going to happen sooner than later now, because
Speaker 3: I was thinking, like, God, it's gonna be so long
Speaker 3: for whatever happens. Nothing like it just that's the way
Speaker 3: the world works. Like Jeff passes away, then there's gonna
Speaker 3: be some breaking, like you know, whether you know the
Speaker 3: relatively short time in a few years or something.
Speaker 2: I feel that's true. And one of the reasons I
Speaker 2: started thinking that is I never really thought about it.
Speaker 2: But he was born in nineteen fifty eight, the same
Speaker 2: year that the word bigfoot was born in basically is
Speaker 2: born in nineteen fifty eight, And wouldn't it be just
Speaker 2: a kick if twenty twenty five, when he checked out.
Speaker 2: That's when it happened, you know. But I will say
Speaker 2: that Jeff's passing has ignited a fire in me to
Speaker 2: do the best job we possibly can to get this
Speaker 2: thing done. Doing it for Jeff Man. We're doing it
Speaker 2: for Jeff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, amen to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, he his voice was so sorely needed. And
Speaker 1: you know, he came at a time when Krantz was
Speaker 1: still around and when binner Nagel was still around, and
Speaker 1: really since binner Nagel passed twenty eighteen, Jeff has been
Speaker 1: the lone voice. He always had the sort of the biggest, strongest,
Speaker 1: most sober, considered and again desperately needed voice in the
Speaker 1: field of sasquatchery. But for the last seven years, in
Speaker 1: terms of academics and scientists, he's kind of been the
Speaker 1: lone voice, at least as far as anthropologists are concerned.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it has always set a standard that I've
Speaker 1: been trying my best to reach. I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: I tried to be a perpetual student and become like
Speaker 1: autodidactic and build a library about relevant discipline so that
Speaker 1: I could hopefully, you know, live up to you something
Speaker 1: that Jeff would take. Oh, you're you're a good student,
Speaker 1: you know, without having a degree byself. So in the
Speaker 1: absence of that mean he's very much a north star
Speaker 1: for me and many many people. So his absence leaves
Speaker 1: a massive void. But yeah, the only way to even
Speaker 1: think about filling that void is to say, like, well,
Speaker 1: we just have to aim as high as we can
Speaker 1: to reach the standard that Jeff said.
Speaker 2: And he would want that because one of his major pushes,
Speaker 2: because he recognized this that he recognized the fact that
Speaker 2: the scientists weren't paying attention as much as they probably
Speaker 2: ought to be. And so it's up to us, the
Speaker 2: citizen scientists, it's up to us to rise to their level,
Speaker 2: since I mean, since they're not doing it, they're in
Speaker 2: my opinion, they're not being responsible, you know, by looking
Speaker 2: into things that they're interested in and curious about. And
Speaker 2: some scientists might say that, well, it's because of the
Speaker 2: evidence doesn't hold up, and I say, malarkey, you need
Speaker 2: to look a little bit closer, you need to look
Speaker 2: a broader scope of the evidence. You need to look
Speaker 2: at the thing as a whole. The best evidence for
Speaker 2: Sasquatch is not one single thing. It's not the film,
Speaker 2: it's not a footprint. It's how it all goes together,
Speaker 2: and it's congruent. And I think that it's a it's
Speaker 2: a negligence of their duty in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: because and I can't blame them, you know, scientists, the
Speaker 2: academic scientists are looking at that GRANTMA and they're looking
Speaker 2: at ladder in their career, they're looking at that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. But I think that it's up to us, man,
Speaker 2: and especially since Jeff's gone now, it's up to the
Speaker 2: citizens scientists to get the job done because until then,
Speaker 2: the academics aren't going to move on it. No one's
Speaker 2: coming to save us. We got to do it. And
Speaker 2: that's the lesson that I took from Jeff. It's up
Speaker 2: to me, it's up to you. It's up to us
Speaker 2: to do the best job we possibly can and to
Speaker 2: rise to their level because they couldn't imagine stooping to ours. Well.
Speaker 1: So and again, I'll put together a big repository because
Speaker 1: there's so many great papers that Jeff wrote that were
Speaker 1: published in other places like the Journal of Scientific Exploration,
Speaker 1: a number of other sources that are available online, and
Speaker 1: so I'll have a big companion of all those things.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's any single sasquatch researcher who
Speaker 1: has been interviewed more than Jeff, again speaking to his generosity,
Speaker 1: So I will put together what you know, I I
Speaker 1: think are the sort of like best of the best
Speaker 1: interviews that cover a lot of ground. Thankfully due to
Speaker 1: his generosity, anyone who's just if you're hearing this for
Speaker 1: the first time the day of its release, or if
Speaker 1: you're hearing this in the year twenty thirty, you two
Speaker 1: can be a student of Jeff's even though he's gone,
Speaker 1: Like you can read his book, you can read these papers,
Speaker 1: you can listen to I would say, hundreds of hours
Speaker 1: of interviews and be a student of his, and I
Speaker 1: definitely encourage that. But I will do my best to
Speaker 1: create like a one stop shop repository what I think
Speaker 1: is the best of the best for our listeners, and
Speaker 1: I'll have that link in the show notes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's just it's I mean, we're talking
Speaker 3: about what a blow does for our community. And he's
Speaker 3: got six sons, a wife, I mean, you know, his
Speaker 3: other family members, nephews, nieces. I mean, he's leaven a
Speaker 3: big hole in a lot of hearts, you know, so
Speaker 3: deevis condolences to his whole family.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And on that personal side, you know, both of
Speaker 1: you guys spent a lot of time with Jeff. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I used to watch the mys Serious Encounters,
Speaker 1: so I've seen Jeff and Bobo taking Bob Gimlin to
Speaker 1: the Patterson Gimlin film site for the first time and
Speaker 1: however many years that was, And so I thought it
Speaker 1: would be fun, you know, maybe on the members side,
Speaker 1: if I could ask you guys about some of like
Speaker 1: the personal stories, personal memories, you know, adventures, funny times,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that'd be cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, there's some great musings and it's wonderful times
Speaker 2: with Jeff. I'd be happy to share.
Speaker 3: Those, Okay. Yeah, then we'll go over to the Patreon
Speaker 3: and from the members and we'll do some more personal yeah,
Speaker 3: because we got some fun with Jeff. He was he
Speaker 3: was as he's a fun guy tovie with. So okay, folks, well,
Speaker 3: like we set all our condolences to the Meldrum family
Speaker 3: and Jeff, we all miss you and love you, Bud.
Speaker 3: So thanks for listening and follow those links. If you've
Speaker 3: never read his stuff, check it out. Get his book
Speaker 3: read these papers mask on a link to in the
Speaker 3: show notes and learn, you know, just hit yourself on
Speaker 3: the on the squatch. It's more than just scary stories.
Speaker 3: So all right, well, thanks for tuning in focus. Until
Speaker 3: next time, y'all, keep it squatchy.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
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