Speaker 1: Ei the Friends. It's me Joshum for this WEEK'SYSK Select.
Speaker 1: I've chosen our twenty nineteen episode on the Yetti. It's
Speaker 1: really fun to talk about serious attempts people make to
Speaker 1: find cryptids, because we're just like tourists looking in on
Speaker 1: a world that's new to us and that turns out
Speaker 1: to be pretty neat. And if the story about Jimmy
Speaker 1: Stewart and here sounds familiar, we also recently covered it
Speaker 1: in our Tom Slick episode. So you're not experiencing deja vu,
Speaker 1: which is another episode that we did before. So you're
Speaker 1: not experiencing deja vu, which is another episode we did before.
Speaker 2: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 1: there's Charles w. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there
Speaker 1: somewhere over there, and this is Stuff you should Know.
Speaker 1: The Continuing Cryptozoology edition.
Speaker 3: Oh this finishes it right.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know about that. We've done Bigfoot, Lockness
Speaker 1: Monster YETI we haven't done like Mothman, the Chewpacabra Chewpacabra.
Speaker 1: That's a big one too. Yeah.
Speaker 3: This slender Man.
Speaker 1: Slender Man's more Internet folklore than anything.
Speaker 3: Did we do that one or did we think about
Speaker 3: it and.
Speaker 1: Not do it the latter of those two.
Speaker 3: If I remember correctly, I said it stinks or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I remember correctly, it hurt my feelings. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I think it was. I think we could do slender
Speaker 1: Man now. It was just so early on that it
Speaker 1: was very thin. Now I think it would be more robust.
Speaker 3: It was slender.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Well, today we're talking about the yetti,
Speaker 1: which is not slender, depending on which YETI you're talking about, Chuck,
Speaker 1: it's either enormous and and like eight feet tall, covered
Speaker 1: in gray or white or maybe sometimes reddish hair, sure,
Speaker 1: weighing four hundred five hundred pounds easily, Yeah, or actually
Speaker 1: it is kind of slender. It could be basically what
Speaker 1: amounts to a wild hippie, basically a somebody who likes
Speaker 1: to grub roots out of the ground and lets out
Speaker 1: a squeal or a cry every once in a while,
Speaker 1: just to I guess know that they're alive. And there's
Speaker 1: really two competing versions of what those of us in
Speaker 1: the Western world would think was the yetti. But the
Speaker 1: one we're really talking about is the first one, what
Speaker 1: we also think of as the Abominable Snowman.
Speaker 3: How tall was Hippie Rob?
Speaker 1: He was average, like five something, I guess, like high fives.
Speaker 1: Probably he was a little shorter than me.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah he was.
Speaker 1: He was not the He was not the the Yeti
Speaker 1: of legend as far as I know. He could be
Speaker 1: now though.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. It just sounded an awful lot
Speaker 3: like him.
Speaker 1: It kind of doesn't.
Speaker 3: Yelping in the mountains, grubbing for roots.
Speaker 1: Yep, covered in dirt and with wild, crazy hair.
Speaker 3: So I think we should just tell, like, if you
Speaker 3: don't know what we're talking about, this is the legendary
Speaker 3: beast that lives in Asia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, around the Himalayas typically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's known as Asia's Bigfoot, or maybe Bigfoot
Speaker 3: is known as North America's Yeti. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: guess YETI came first, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Yeti's been around with the Shirpa of
Speaker 1: Tibet for a very long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's sort of the deal of this. The
Speaker 3: origin story of this thing is the Yeti has been
Speaker 3: told for many, many years, and traditional stories in that
Speaker 3: area there was someone named Shiva do Hall that collected
Speaker 3: a bunch of these stories in a book called folk
Speaker 3: Tales of Sherpa and Yeti, and all of them kind
Speaker 3: of figured the same way, which was, whether it's a
Speaker 3: story called the Annihilation of the Yeti in which this
Speaker 3: is pretty good. It's about Sherpas seeking revenge on a
Speaker 3: tormenting group of Yettis this sounds like something that should
Speaker 3: be on like the Sci Fi channel.
Speaker 1: I would be very surprised if it wasn't.
Speaker 3: But all of these stories basically have the same moral
Speaker 3: message at the end, which is it's sort of like
Speaker 3: a Grim's fairy tale, like be careful out on the woods.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah, exactly. I think it serves the exact same
Speaker 1: purpose too in the Grim's fairy tales. And I thought
Speaker 1: the same thing. You know, there's witches that live in
Speaker 1: candy houses, so don't go wandering off in the woods, kids,
Speaker 1: because you'll end up getting eaten. For little kids in Tibet,
Speaker 1: it was don't wander off into the Tibetan plateau, or
Speaker 1: the Yetti will get you, and you will all sorts
Speaker 1: of terrible things will happen to you.
Speaker 3: Which is funny because there are all sorts of real
Speaker 3: things that could kill you in the Tibetan plateau.
Speaker 1: Well that's what I think. What they were saying was,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't just be like, look out for
Speaker 1: the bears.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 1: Kid'll be like, I don't know. I can see a
Speaker 1: brash kid being like, no, a bear. Everybody knows what
Speaker 1: a bear is. I'll wrestle a bear any day of
Speaker 1: the week maybe. And then you know, along the way
Speaker 1: it gets into a drinking contest with Marion from Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, exactly. That was one of the best
Speaker 1: scenes in the history of film. Yeah, yeah, I think so,
Speaker 1: and Tibetan kids tend to agree with me too. But
Speaker 1: before we move on, I want to say one thing
Speaker 1: that Annihilation of the Yetie, keep that in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind. The story was that, like, there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of yetti that were hanging around and the
Speaker 1: Shripa were sick of them hanging around. So the Shirpa
Speaker 1: basically threw a yetti party and got drunk and fought
Speaker 1: with each other to kind of provide an example to
Speaker 1: the YETI, Hey, you should get drunk and fight with
Speaker 1: each other too, in the hopes of the Yeti would
Speaker 1: destroy each other. It didn't work, and the Yeti all
Speaker 1: managed to escape, except for one, who was supposedly killed
Speaker 1: by a Lama, one of the Buddhist monks in the area.
Speaker 3: That's part of the story. That's the end.
Speaker 1: That's the annihilation of the Yeti.
Speaker 3: Wow. Story, I didn't know Alama figured in.
Speaker 1: And really, annihilation is kind of a strong word if
Speaker 1: you think about it, because if you just killed one
Speaker 1: out of I think two hundred and forty Yeti, it's
Speaker 1: hardly annihilation.
Speaker 3: That's a good point.
Speaker 1: I think so too.
Speaker 3: So throughout history, these legends have been pervasive in the region,
Speaker 3: so much so that supposedly the Great Alexander or Alexander
Speaker 3: the Great, I'm not sure why I did that. When
Speaker 3: he came through town and conquered the Indus Valley, he said,
Speaker 3: I'd like to see one of your famous a yeties.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: If that's what Alexander the Great sounded like.
Speaker 3: No, no, what did ancient Roman sound like? If not?
Speaker 1: Was he Roman? I think he was Greek? Was he? Uh? Huh? Jeez?
Speaker 3: How about uh really screwed that up?
Speaker 1: I say, let's see, I knew that to a German accent. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just slot.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna leave.
Speaker 1: No, hang, hang tight, Chuck, you can rebound.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Why did I think he was Roman in that Greek?
Speaker 1: Well, because the Romans like to pretend they were Greek themselves.
Speaker 3: I'm not firing on all cylinders. But regardless of my
Speaker 3: bad accent, or maybe I should just edit back in
Speaker 3: and say that was my Greek accent.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 3: He said, I want to see a YETI and they
Speaker 3: the local locals that were like, you know, we totally
Speaker 3: would do that. However, you can't get him down this
Speaker 3: low and you'd have to hike really high up those mountains,
Speaker 3: and I know you're not down with that, so.
Speaker 1: Sorry, yeah, exactly. So I guess Alexander the Great was like,
Speaker 1: I'm bored. I can't believe we're still talking about this.
Speaker 1: Give me some wine. Yeah, gotten a drinking contest, and
Speaker 1: that was that. So the yetti continued on in Sherpa
Speaker 1: tradition in Tibetan, Nepal, and Bhutan, but in the West
Speaker 1: it kind of disappeared from view until the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And so remember these are tall tales that the Sherpa
Speaker 1: teached their kids. Although there is supposedly some I guess
Speaker 1: general belief as well, but I can't I can't quite
Speaker 1: penetrate it. But just imagine that it was just strictly
Speaker 1: tall tales the Sherpa people told their kids. Then Westerners
Speaker 1: came in and said, what is this you're talking about?
Speaker 1: Tell us about this and just bought the whole thing,
Speaker 1: hook line and sinker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and things really took for him. In nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 3: there's a journalist named Henry Newman. He did an interview
Speaker 3: with some British explorers, and this is a time of
Speaker 3: great exploration, especially from the British. These sort of these
Speaker 3: I guess Indiana Jones, like mountaineers who would go all
Speaker 3: over the world in search of these you know, jungles
Speaker 3: and mountains, in search of crazy beasts and treasures and
Speaker 3: things like that. Right, sure, So he interviewed some of
Speaker 3: these guys and they said, you know what, we found
Speaker 3: these huge footprints up in the mountains and the locals there,
Speaker 3: I guess Sherpa said, because what in shirpa the plural
Speaker 3: sherpa did me determine it?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That was a good episode, by the way, everyone.
Speaker 1: It was go back and listen to that one.
Speaker 3: What was the title of Warm, Friendly Living.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's I think what ten Zing Norgay said.
Speaker 3: It's so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they said that their guides are Sherpa guides called
Speaker 3: them mito kangmi, which the translation, the real translation is
Speaker 3: a little awkward man bear snowman. Right, but Newman confused
Speaker 3: all that. He got the snowman part right, but he
Speaker 3: translated that first part to mean mato m EtOH to
Speaker 3: mean filthy or dirty, and then he changed that on
Speaker 3: his own to the word abominable, right, and that's where
Speaker 3: we get the abominable snowman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was like, I don't like filthy snowman. I'm
Speaker 1: going to change the name that I've already gotten wrong, right,
Speaker 1: and turned it into abominable snowman.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He really great journalist.
Speaker 1: But it's fascinating that you can trace it back to
Speaker 1: this one dummy. Yeah, that's the whole the abominable Snowman.
Speaker 1: That's where it came from, was this one guy. And
Speaker 1: that obviously just completely captured the attention of the rest
Speaker 1: of the world when he wrote this, because like this
Speaker 1: was not just like, oh yeah, they heard about an
Speaker 1: abominable snowman. It was these these explorers found tracks and
Speaker 1: there sure, but guides told them the treks belonged to
Speaker 1: this abominable snowman. Therefore, there are abominable snowmen living in
Speaker 1: the Himalayas. And the explorer who led that particular expedition
Speaker 1: was Charles Howard Berry Howard hyphen Barry bu Ry, and
Speaker 1: apparently he and Newman were really big into promoting the
Speaker 1: idea of an abominable snowman or men living in the Himalayas,
Speaker 1: and that it just being like this giant, huge creature
Speaker 1: with shaggy hair, very much akin to Bigfoot. But if
Speaker 1: you look at the descriptions of the traditional descriptions of
Speaker 1: the Yeti, they're much smaller and not nearly as huge
Speaker 1: as the Westerners kind of immediately made it out to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was one description, one of the earlier written
Speaker 3: descriptions from nineteen forty two. There was a researcher named
Speaker 3: Mira Shackley, and I believe that she got this information
Speaker 3: from two hikers that reported seeing the Yetti, right, and
Speaker 3: this is what they said. The height was not much
Speaker 3: less than eight feet so tall for sure, but it's
Speaker 3: not like it was ten feet tall. Right the head
Speaker 3: were the heads, because there were two of them, were
Speaker 3: described as squarish, and the ears must lie close to
Speaker 3: the skull because there was no projection from the silhouette
Speaker 3: against the snow. The shoulders sloped slowly down to a
Speaker 3: powerful chest covered by reddish brown hair which formed a
Speaker 3: close body fur mixed with long, straight hairs hanging downward,
Speaker 3: about the size and build of a small man that
Speaker 3: had covered with long hair, but the face and chest
Speaker 3: not very hairy at all. This all sounds like they
Speaker 3: always describe him as it as bipedal, right, means you know,
Speaker 3: walking upright, right.
Speaker 1: But if you go back and look at that nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two description and how detailed it was, Yeah, hikers
Speaker 1: who gave the description said that they saw they saw
Speaker 1: all this from observing two black specks moving across the
Speaker 1: snow about a quarter mile below them. And yet they
Speaker 1: could see that it had a thick undercoat and like
Speaker 1: a very long, hairy overcoat and that was reddish and
Speaker 1: like that's just basically perfect abominable snowman sighting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, agreed, But it's one.
Speaker 1: Of like many after that Howard Berry expedition came back
Speaker 1: and Newman broadcasts to the world. People started going to
Speaker 1: the Himalayas and droves, and they weren't just necessarily looking
Speaker 1: for the abominable Snowman. Everest was there, and everybody knew
Speaker 1: Everest was there, and a lot of people wanted to
Speaker 1: be the first one to summ at Everest, the first Westerner,
Speaker 1: I should say, to some at Everest. So while a
Speaker 1: lot of them were in the area, they're like, well, well,
Speaker 1: look for the Abominable Snowman while we're here too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and some pretty legendary mountaineers. And granted these are
Speaker 3: not like zoologists or anything, but they're respected men in
Speaker 3: their field. People like Ryan Hold Messner and one Sir
Speaker 3: Edmund Hillary both searched for evidence of the Eddie while
Speaker 3: they were hiking, and Messner even wrote a book called
Speaker 3: My Quest for the Eddie, confronting the Himalaya's deepest mystery.
Speaker 3: But I mean, well, we'll save the big reveal to
Speaker 3: the end or the third act of this show.
Speaker 1: Okay, is here a third act? Yeah, there's gotta be Okay,
Speaker 1: we're in big trouble. If there's not, well, why.
Speaker 3: Don't we take a break and then we'll come back
Speaker 3: and talk a little bit about a couple of more
Speaker 3: of these reported sightings.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, all right, Well, now we're on the road,
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. I want to learn a thing
Speaker 1: or two from Josh Chuck. It's stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Should all right, okay, Chuck. So we've started to get
Speaker 1: some sightings from expeditions that are going to Everest and
Speaker 1: just hanging around the Himalayas. And then I think in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, something really big happened. One of those explorers,
Speaker 1: Eric Shipton, took a photograph of a track that to
Speaker 1: this day looks pretty remarkable. Actually yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean this is again it's not like hard evidence, but
Speaker 3: this is a very famous photo. I remember seeing this
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, and like, I guess it
Speaker 3: was probably the Guinness or Ripley's Believe it or Not
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: It was Time Life books for me, was it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I remember that it's a very famous
Speaker 3: picture of a like a pic like you know pickaxe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, use for scale, yeah, right next to it.
Speaker 3: And I remember that very distinctly. When I saw this picture,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And then when you look at it, you're like wait,
Speaker 1: that doesn't look quite right. That's a really weird tracks.
Speaker 1: It looks like an elongated human foot, but rather than
Speaker 1: a left toe. Got it's kind of bulbous and weird.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like the other toes, and it certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't look like what a human toe should look like.
Speaker 1: And it's also huge. I think it was measured about
Speaker 1: thirteen inches, which is a pretty typical size for a
Speaker 1: yetti track from what I understand over the ages. But
Speaker 1: the thing about it is it is a nice, crisp,
Speaker 1: fresh track. And the other thing about it, and this
Speaker 1: is what really captured the attention of the world. Eric
Speaker 1: Shipton was not known to be a particularly fraudulent person.
Speaker 1: He was a very respected explorer and mountaineer. He knew
Speaker 1: the area well and as a guy who has tracked
Speaker 1: yetdy his whole life. I believe his name is Daniel Taylor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Daniel Taylor put it, if Shipton's coming back with a
Speaker 1: picture of a track, you know it's a real track.
Speaker 1: It's not faked. It's not a hoax. So the question
Speaker 1: was what was it? And this is nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: and it hit the world, that picture, that track hit
Speaker 1: the world like the surgeon's photo of the Lochness Monster
Speaker 1: hit the world back in nineteen thirty three. It just
Speaker 1: became like proof to people who believe in the Yeti
Speaker 1: around the world that the Yeti definitely exists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like you said, it was really what
Speaker 3: made it different than other photos that it was so sharp.
Speaker 3: It was a really good picture. And that little toe
Speaker 3: thing basically looked like a thumb and it just you know,
Speaker 3: it looked odd. But this Daniel Taylor guy, he actually
Speaker 3: when I started reading that article, I thought, oh boy,
Speaker 3: this crackpot. But he actually turned out to be a
Speaker 3: pretty cool guy because he spent a lot of his
Speaker 3: life looking for the YETI, went over there, even met
Speaker 3: with the Kingdom Nepal, and the Kingdom Nepal said, well,
Speaker 3: if you want to go, like to the wildest place
Speaker 3: in the most remote place in our land, go to
Speaker 3: bhun b a r u n this Barun valley. And
Speaker 3: he went there and he looked around and he did
Speaker 3: not find a Yeti. But what he did do was
Speaker 3: ended up helping to work towards conservation of that area,
Speaker 3: which was kind of a nice silver lining to his
Speaker 3: story was he got there and he was like, this
Speaker 3: is one of the most beautiful places on Earth and
Speaker 3: one of the greatest wilderness wildernesses I've ever been to.
Speaker 3: He realized it wasn't protected and that like Chinese loggers
Speaker 3: were infringing on one side and farmers were infringing on
Speaker 3: the other. So he kind of spun it into like
Speaker 3: good work doing conservation work in that area, which was
Speaker 3: kind of cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he got it turned into a notional park in Nepal.
Speaker 1: It's a protected area now, which is significant. Have you
Speaker 1: seen pictures of the valley. It's astounding. It's one of
Speaker 1: the most beautiful places I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: And it was just being used because the people living
Speaker 1: there like, well, we need this land. Yeah, it's beautiful,
Speaker 1: but we can't afford to preserve it because a lot
Speaker 1: of people around here live on fifteen dollars a year,
Speaker 1: so they were just making use of it however they could.
Speaker 1: And he came in with the government and said, no, no,
Speaker 1: no more of that, get out of here. This is
Speaker 1: protected now. But it is gorgeous. And he had actually
Speaker 1: been raised there. Daniel Taylor's grandparents were missionaries in the Himalayas,
Speaker 1: and his parents kind of took over his grandparents' work,
Speaker 1: so he was raised in the Himalayas, so he'd been
Speaker 1: looking for the eddy his whole life. But when he
Speaker 1: went to the Bahun he feels like he found the
Speaker 1: answer to that track, that it was a kind of
Speaker 1: tree bear. But there's a big problem with that. The
Speaker 1: Barun Valley is a subtropical rain forest, so a tree
Speaker 1: bear living in there wouldn't survive very very well in
Speaker 1: the snow of the Tibetan plateau, you know, ten thousand
Speaker 1: or more feet higher up the mountain, So it doesn't
Speaker 1: really solve the mystery much.
Speaker 3: No, But his notion that it could have been a
Speaker 3: tree bear makes a little more sense with these tracks,
Speaker 3: because a tree bear does have a I don't know
Speaker 3: if you call it a thumb, but some sort of
Speaker 3: a posable digit to make climbing easier, and that would
Speaker 3: at least explain this weird thumb like thing in these prints.
Speaker 1: It would. So he's got like half of the thing explained.
Speaker 1: The other half is what the heck was that tree bears,
Speaker 1: the subtropical rainforest tree bear doing up in the mountains
Speaker 1: of the Himalayas. You know what I'm saying, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: in the snow above the snow line, I guess, is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say. But the other thing about
Speaker 1: that ship ten photo that became world famous for the
Speaker 1: yetti was that, like the track itself was very crisp.
Speaker 1: And there's a guy named Benjamin Radford who's a skeptic
Speaker 1: who has written a lot about the yetti and in
Speaker 1: particular how difficult obtaining YETI tracks could be, or actually,
Speaker 1: more to the point, how easy it would be to
Speaker 1: confuse the normal animal's tracks or something weird because of
Speaker 1: the fact that the snow is a terrible medium for tracks.
Speaker 1: Because like say, a bear walks through an area and
Speaker 1: leaves some tracks in the snow. The next morning, as
Speaker 1: the sun comes up and it hits the tracks and
Speaker 1: it shoots all that heat under that track, it starts
Speaker 1: to melt the sides, maybe elongate it, maybe make the
Speaker 1: toes look splayed, and it just doesn't resemble a bear
Speaker 1: track anymore at all. It looks like something weird and
Speaker 1: not previously known, like an entirely new species. That's the
Speaker 1: thing about the Shipton photograph that captured everyone's attention. It
Speaker 1: doesn't like that at all. It looks sharp new. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look melted at all. The edges are clean and crisp.
Speaker 1: That's what I think really kind of struck everybody. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like a melted, mangled track. It was like a
Speaker 1: new track by something that was not immediately identifiable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So there have been other photographs through
Speaker 3: the years, as you know, supposed evidence. In nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 3: a hiker named Anthony Wooldridge said there's a yetty over there.
Speaker 3: He's about five hundred feet away and he saw a
Speaker 3: bunch of tracks in the snow that looked like it
Speaker 3: was going that way, and he took some photographs that
Speaker 3: were proven genuine. But I think by genuine that just
Speaker 3: means they weren't faked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I That's how I understand.
Speaker 3: It, because wasn't this the photo that they said, actually
Speaker 3: those are just rocks standing up, Yeah, like rock outcropping
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This guy was also a respected mountaineer and explore
Speaker 1: and knew the area really well. And so when he
Speaker 1: came back with this photo and they said this photo
Speaker 1: wasn't faked, it's not been doctored, right, people people listened
Speaker 1: to him too, But it just turns out he was wrong.
Speaker 3: This photo of rocks has not been doctored exactly.
Speaker 1: That's that's ultimately what they were saying, because another expedition
Speaker 1: went back to the same spot the next year and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh uh, yeah, that's it's those rocks over there.
Speaker 1: And even even in his account, that guy what was
Speaker 1: his name, Woodridge, Yeah, Woodridge says like, yeah, they just
Speaker 1: stood there motionless. Larry Gavic like, rocks, Yeah they were
Speaker 1: they were still his boulders, upright boulders. But the other
Speaker 1: thing is he swore that there were tracks leading up
Speaker 1: to it, so he seemed to think that that they
Speaker 1: really were there. But from what I understand, he was
Speaker 1: earnest in his report. It wasn't like a fraud or
Speaker 1: a hoax or anything like that. And I think he
Speaker 1: was a little a little red faced afterward. Probably.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They even made a movie about it called This
Speaker 3: goes Hiking.
Speaker 1: Ernest Saves Christmas with the Abominable Snowman. I'll bet Ernest
Speaker 1: did save Christmas in one movie. I guarantee there's a
Speaker 1: movie called Ernest Saves Christmas.
Speaker 3: I think there was, right, No.
Speaker 1: The only one I'm one hundred percent sure of is
Speaker 1: Ernest goes to camp.
Speaker 3: I never saw any of those.
Speaker 1: My family saw that movie in the theater the top.
Speaker 3: Dollar, top dollar, which was three dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I hope so at the time, which
Speaker 1: is surprising because my mom used to sneak in bulk
Speaker 1: candy from like the store across the way from the
Speaker 1: movie theater in Southwick Mall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we know that move in our family.
Speaker 1: It works works really well.
Speaker 3: So over the years there have been not only things
Speaker 3: like oh look footprints or hey, look at that rock
Speaker 3: across the valley, there have been I don't want to
Speaker 3: call it evidence, but alleged evidence brought forward by legitimate
Speaker 3: scientist and people like Sir Edmund Hillary, like he brought
Speaker 3: back a scalp and said he didn't say I scalped
Speaker 3: the Yeti, but he said, hey, I think this is
Speaker 3: a YETI scalp. Yeah he got trying to fool anyone, though,
Speaker 3: was he?
Speaker 1: No? No, no, He was supposedly kind of a casual
Speaker 1: believer in it. He'd been sent on a Yeti expedition
Speaker 1: by New World Encyclopedia years before, and he came back
Speaker 1: with a Yeti skull cap that he'd gotten from a
Speaker 1: monastery in Nepal. They had a Yeti skull cap and
Speaker 1: a hand, a Yeti hand, a mummified Yetti hand. And
Speaker 1: what's crazy is that Yeddi's skull cap was supposedly the
Speaker 1: scalp of the one Yetti that had been killed during
Speaker 1: the annihilation of the Yeti story. I didn't know, so
Speaker 1: he brings it back. I think it wasn't that he
Speaker 1: was gullible, and I also am sure it wasn't that
Speaker 1: it was he was a hoaxter. He was the kind
Speaker 1: of scientific person who kept his mind open until the
Speaker 1: evidence was in Man, can.
Speaker 3: You imagine a time when an encyclopedia company would send
Speaker 3: Sir Edmund Hillary out on assignment? Like how great is that?
Speaker 1: I know that was the mid twentieth century. It was
Speaker 1: a great, great time to be alive in the way
Speaker 1: of wondering curiosity.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, he comes back with his scalp and it
Speaker 3: turns out they did a little research and it was
Speaker 3: a It's an animal called a sero. It's kind of
Speaker 3: like a goat.
Speaker 1: You have some poor Siro got scalped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that happened a lot, like there was this
Speaker 3: finger And this is a pretty good story that actor
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart, believe it or not, was involved in smuggling
Speaker 3: out supposed YETI finger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from again from a monastery. I believe it might
Speaker 1: have been the same monastery.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And wasn't he just on vacation there and just
Speaker 3: got sort of mixed up in this plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We got to mention Tom Slick, the oil man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he figures into this story. He was a
Speaker 3: rich guy who he was one of these dudes, this
Speaker 3: sort of adventuring rich guys that was like, I'm a
Speaker 3: YETI hunter for this year.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And when you say hunter, like he was a hunter.
Speaker 1: His entire point to finding the YETI was to shoot
Speaker 1: and kill it, Yeah, and to take it back and
Speaker 1: have it stuffed. And the government and Nepaul had a
Speaker 1: real problem with that and basically said, your expedition is banned.
Speaker 1: Nobody can come in here and kill the Yeti. And
Speaker 1: apparently the US State Department got in touch with Nepal
Speaker 1: and said, hey, by the way, we have the same feeling.
Speaker 1: We have a policy of not killing YETI either. So
Speaker 1: apparently with that, Tom Slick's expedition was allowed back in
Speaker 1: on the basis that they would never try to kill
Speaker 1: the YETI. Except in self defense, okay. And I guess
Speaker 1: later on when he became interested in bigfoot, he had
Speaker 1: a change of heart and he stopped decided he stopped
Speaker 1: hunting to kill and started hunting just to find and
Speaker 1: maybe capture on photograph and that was it, And that
Speaker 1: his change of heart changed the way that bigfoot is
Speaker 1: searched for to this day, and the yetty now really
Speaker 1: much more. Yeah, it's much more peaceful search. He was
Speaker 1: like the last of the big game hunters involved in
Speaker 1: like trying to find unidentified animals again to kill them
Speaker 1: so they could be stuffed and kept to the National
Speaker 1: Geographic Society or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and that was a big thing that
Speaker 3: Daniel's guy talks about, just these legends and history and
Speaker 3: how quote unquote science back then was in the Victorian
Speaker 3: age were where because you know, all these tales of
Speaker 3: Tarzan and these fantastic beasts, people would just these rich
Speaker 3: people would go into the jungle and search for animals
Speaker 3: that no one had ever seen before so they could
Speaker 3: shoot and kill them and bring them back and say,
Speaker 3: look at this weird thing.
Speaker 1: Right, And I mean a lot of people like don't
Speaker 1: really like you point to the guys who were out
Speaker 1: there like doing the hunting and killing and the exploitation
Speaker 1: and all of that, but they were very frequently working
Speaker 1: at the behest of museums. Sure who for a very
Speaker 1: long time got a pass, even though they were the
Speaker 1: source of those expeditions and the funders of those expeditions.
Speaker 1: And the reason people were out there in the first
Speaker 1: place was to go get specimens for the museum's collections
Speaker 1: and ostensibly to study or whatever, but it was to
Speaker 1: study them dead. And I think probably because there wasn't
Speaker 1: really any reliable way to ship a live specimen back
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, but also there was so
Speaker 1: I think Tom Slick kind of represented the end of
Speaker 1: that and then the beginning of this new era of
Speaker 1: much more peaceful exploration and expeditions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I don't want to leave everyone hanging on
Speaker 3: Jimmy Stewart, he was on the really he was on vacation,
Speaker 3: I think in Calcutta, got mixed up in this and
Speaker 3: this yetti finger helped smuggle it back. And they finally
Speaker 3: did DNA testing about seven or eight years ago and
Speaker 3: they said, oh, this is a human.
Speaker 1: Finger, right, But I mean, for a while there they
Speaker 1: weren't one hundred percent sure, and I guess Tom Slick
Speaker 1: was friends had a common friend with Jimmy Stewart, and
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart happened to be in India, and so Tom
Speaker 1: Slick's agents in Nepal managed to get this finger to
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart, who agreed to smuggle it out on the
Speaker 1: basis that Jimmy Stewart's luggage is not going to get searched.
Speaker 1: And Jimmy Stewart smuggled a yetti finger out of India
Speaker 1: and to the UK for it to be studied.
Speaker 3: I'll go go, go ahead and put the finger in
Speaker 3: my bag.
Speaker 1: I was so hoping you're going to do a Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 1: YETI impression in my head.
Speaker 3: I was like, Jimmy Stewart, can I plow that off?
Speaker 1: You did? Man, you nailed it right.
Speaker 3: Well, let's take another break and we'll come back and
Speaker 3: talk more about DNA and how that is figured in
Speaker 3: UH in the search in more recent years. Right after this, well,
Speaker 3: now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
Speaker 1: I want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck.
Speaker 3: It's stuff you should know, all right.
Speaker 1: So check you remember in the Lochness episode, the Lockness
Speaker 1: Monster episode, we talked about how there's like a new
Speaker 1: search going on where they're sampling the locke itself and
Speaker 1: examining it for DNA. Apparently applying modern genetics in genetic
Speaker 1: analysis to cryptozoology is like the next chapter. And rather
Speaker 1: than saying like, well, that's it for us, our big
Speaker 1: fraud is over with, cryptozoologists are like, awesome, good, we
Speaker 1: finally have the tools now to find out to get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of this stuff. And I actually discovered
Speaker 1: new new specimens or new species. So they seem to
Speaker 1: be quite happy about it and quite excited, although there
Speaker 1: are a lot of their beliefs hang in the balance
Speaker 1: and could just be have the legs cut out from
Speaker 1: under them by science.
Speaker 3: That's true, so science wins. In twenty thirteen, there's a
Speaker 3: geneticist at Oxford named Brian Sykes who said, all right,
Speaker 3: YETI holders of YETI pieces, send them to me. If
Speaker 3: you have any yetti hair YETI teeth, YETI tissue, send
Speaker 3: it to Oxford University. And he got it. He got
Speaker 3: fifty seven samples. They picked thirty six of those to
Speaker 3: do some DNA analysis on and most of these turned
Speaker 3: out to be animals that we all know, like bears
Speaker 3: and cow and horses at the time, though, he found
Speaker 3: a couple of samples from Bhutan and India that he
Speaker 3: said were one hundred percent match for the jawbones of
Speaker 3: a polar bear from the Pleistocene era. Yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is kind of excited people because this may have been,
Speaker 3: I mean, not the Yeti, but this may have been
Speaker 3: sort of a combination, a hybrid of a polar bear
Speaker 3: and a brown bear, because this is when they were
Speaker 3: diverging genetically, and that in itself would be a pretty
Speaker 3: cool find.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, it would be a new type of
Speaker 1: bear that was a direct descendant from bears that went
Speaker 1: extinct about forty thousand years ago, and it'd be a
Speaker 1: type of polar bear. There aren't polar bears in the Himalayas.
Speaker 1: There's black bears, there's brown bears, there's Himalaean bears, there's
Speaker 1: tree bears, but there's not polar bears. So and the
Speaker 1: fact that like he accidentally found this by putting out
Speaker 1: this call for samples of Yeti or Bigfoot or whoever
Speaker 1: or just made it all the all the sweeter that
Speaker 1: like he had just accidentally discovered a new type of
Speaker 1: polar bear living in the Himalayas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but sadly that was not even the case. Some
Speaker 3: more scientists came along later. They did re analysis, and
Speaker 3: I think what they landed on was, you know, unfortunately
Speaker 3: these I think you're getting a bad reading because of
Speaker 3: a damage sample. What these really are are just brown bears.
Speaker 1: They're brown bears. Yeah. Some other people followed up, because
Speaker 1: it's not like it was any kind of hoax or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Wyke, it's Wit, right. His last name
Speaker 1: is Wit Sikes. Sikes. Sykes is like a leading expert
Speaker 1: on analyzing mitochondrial DNA. Wrote the book The Seven Daughters
Speaker 1: of Eve, which kind of introduced the world to genetic
Speaker 1: analysis through MT DNA. But he just made a mistake
Speaker 1: or leaped to a conclusion. I think is the the
Speaker 1: the thing that everyone's being too polite to maybe say.
Speaker 1: But he shared all of his data on gen Bank,
Speaker 1: which is this huge database, and other people came and
Speaker 1: analyzed and said, no, it's just regular bears. And then
Speaker 1: other people analyzed and said, yeah, it's totally just regular
Speaker 1: brown bears that we already know about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that science at least was getting involved, and
Speaker 3: scientists kind of round me were like, you know what,
Speaker 3: this is great because we're using real science finally, and
Speaker 3: regardless of what result we get, like we're doing it
Speaker 3: the right way. And that's really kind of the thing
Speaker 3: that counts, Like, don't be disappointed that we're not finding
Speaker 3: the yetti because and if it's not clear to everyone listening,
Speaker 3: it seems like the yeti are almost always just bears.
Speaker 1: Yes, that not just the the tissue samples or the
Speaker 1: fecal samples or the hair samples, but also the tracks,
Speaker 1: the sightings, all of it are probably just Himalayan bears,
Speaker 1: brown bears, and black bears. And that's actually the opinion
Speaker 1: of Ryan hold Messner, who actually is such a mountaineer
Speaker 1: around the area. He has a museum in the mountains,
Speaker 1: and one of his YETI samples were one of the
Speaker 1: ones that Sykes analyzed. His turned out to be the
Speaker 1: tooth of a dog, But he says that doesn't surprise me,
Speaker 1: because I think they're all bears. I think all of
Speaker 1: his bears, including his own sighting. He became infatuated with
Speaker 1: searching for the yetti because he spotted something in the
Speaker 1: Himalayas that he couldn't explain, and then through his own
Speaker 1: methodical research, he wrote a book about it. He talked
Speaker 1: to other people about it, he did his own studies,
Speaker 1: and he kept his mind open and his mind became
Speaker 1: converted to it's all bears.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much. The Russians got involved. You would think, oh,
Speaker 3: and what like the nineteen sixties. Now they got involved
Speaker 3: about eight years ago and went searching for the Yeti
Speaker 3: in Siberia, And what they came back with were things like, oh,
Speaker 3: look at this. These twisted tree branches were made into
Speaker 3: beds or sleeping pods by the Yeti, and they twisted
Speaker 3: these branches and look at this, it's evidence. But it
Speaker 3: turns out that they were clearly man made. There were
Speaker 3: tool made cuts, and they were located not in a
Speaker 3: remote area at all.
Speaker 1: And just like right off a trail, I think, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And what people think is, oh, they just cook
Speaker 3: this stuff up to try and bring tourism to a
Speaker 3: not very tourist friendly area.
Speaker 1: Right Siberia like they And apparently there's a long standing
Speaker 1: tradition among Russians and former Soviets of basically drumming up
Speaker 1: tourism by playing on people's beliefs in the Yeti and
Speaker 1: the Abominable Snowman. And I think there was a period
Speaker 1: of time. One of the people interviewed in this great
Speaker 1: BBC article about the Yeti, this Russian scientist, says, there's
Speaker 1: a period of time where it was like very fashionable
Speaker 1: for the intelligentsia of Russia and the Soviet Union to
Speaker 1: basically go on trips in the summer looking for the
Speaker 1: abominable Snowman. And they would show up in these towns,
Speaker 1: and every town had a designated Yetti witness, and the
Speaker 1: Yeti witness's job was to basically regale them with tall
Speaker 1: tales that were supposedly true, take them on these tours
Speaker 1: into the forest, and then make a bunch of money
Speaker 1: off of them, and say thanks a lot, chump, Sorry
Speaker 1: we didn't see anything this time. But they apparently in
Speaker 1: twenty eleven the Russian government orchestrated another one of those
Speaker 1: through this conference, and from the conference they announced to
Speaker 1: the world they had found indisputable proof that Yeti exists
Speaker 1: from this bed and these broken branches, and supposedly a
Speaker 1: few hairs attached to a clump of moss. But some
Speaker 1: other people who were attending anthropologists and biologists were like, no,
Speaker 1: it's totally made up. This is all just a big
Speaker 1: tourist pr stunt. Yeah, which is hilarious way to go Russia,
Speaker 1: and Putin supposedly tried to do it again. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: he announced that he saw three yeti from a helicopter
Speaker 1: tour of Siberia.
Speaker 3: Oh that's funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 3: So, I mean I don't have much else YETI your
Speaker 3: bears right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We couldn't talk about cryptozoology though without mentioning that
Speaker 1: celacanth argument. And the thing about the yeti is that
Speaker 1: there was actually a species of ape called Gigantapithecus that
Speaker 1: was like a nine foot tall ape, the biggest ape
Speaker 1: that ever lived, that lived in that very area, and
Speaker 1: went extinct about one hundred thousand years ago. So the
Speaker 1: people who really believe in this are like, you know,
Speaker 1: we thought the Ceila cantwine extinct like sixty million years before.
Speaker 1: We just think this guy went extinct one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: years before. Who's to say. So that seems to be
Speaker 1: the thing that's carrying on this belief. That and the
Speaker 1: fact that, as somebody put in one of these articles,
Speaker 1: all it would take is one Yetti to prove that
Speaker 1: YETI exists. But no matter how much, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as evidence, they can prove it doesn't exist. So
Speaker 1: people are always going to believe it.
Speaker 3: Just like NeSSI exactly and Bigfoot exactly.
Speaker 1: So there you go. If you want to know more
Speaker 1: about the YETI, go to the Himalayas and look for
Speaker 1: it yourself. And since I said that, it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener.
Speaker 3: Mail, or we should mention. If you're in Disney World,
Speaker 3: there's a roller coaster ride called Expedition Everest Colin because
Speaker 3: you know every good roller coaster has a colon in
Speaker 3: the name, right colon Legend of Forbidden Mountain. There is
Speaker 3: a track on display there that the reason it's not
Speaker 3: in a scientific museum and it's a Disney World is
Speaker 3: because it's the Yetti track.
Speaker 1: But you can go look at one from a TV show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this guy named Gates who is not a zoologist
Speaker 3: at all, but he's an actor and an animal track
Speaker 3: or I don't even think he's an animal tracker, is he?
Speaker 1: No? No, he's an an actor and a TV presenter
Speaker 1: and a producer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they presented one on his TV show and
Speaker 3: now that's a disney World Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, and if you're in Disneyland, there's a yetti on
Speaker 1: the Matterhorn ride.
Speaker 3: Oh really like a real yetti.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have one Shane by the neck inside the
Speaker 1: matter Horns. Really scrawny. They clearly aren't taking very good
Speaker 1: care of amazing. I already said his time for listener
Speaker 1: Maile Charles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got distracted. Sorry, So I'm gonna call this
Speaker 3: follow up on the Chili Finger that Jimmy Stewart play
Speaker 3: in it at Wendy's. Nice and quick shout out. This
Speaker 3: is a local listener from Georgia Tech. But I just
Speaker 3: wanted to say hello to a couple of people I
Speaker 3: met last weekend at the High Museum when I went
Speaker 3: to the Infinity Mirrors exhibits.
Speaker 1: Oh isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, y always Kusama.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was.
Speaker 3: Here's what I think. I think it was really cool,
Speaker 3: and it would have been a lot cooler if it's
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, you just walk through all these things
Speaker 3: and you don't wait thirty minutes to spend twenty seconds
Speaker 3: in the room. Yep, that took away from it a bit.
Speaker 1: You Me and I went at the end of the
Speaker 1: day and people thinned out and we could just keep
Speaker 1: going in and staying as long as we wanted in them.
Speaker 1: So I totally get what you were saying.
Speaker 3: It was cool though, and I also think, like I
Speaker 3: went with my brother and his family, and Scott was
Speaker 3: kind of like, I could build one of these in
Speaker 3: my backyard by next weekend.
Speaker 1: I want to see Scott's infinity mirror. I thought the
Speaker 1: same thing. It'd be awesome to build one of those
Speaker 1: and just like to hang out in it. For sure.
Speaker 3: I don't want to take anything away from her though.
Speaker 3: She's a great artist and it was really neat. I
Speaker 3: love the I think the one that was sort of
Speaker 3: like the Christmas lights was my favorite one.
Speaker 1: What about the one that's like a kind of like
Speaker 1: an octagonal box that you look in?
Speaker 3: That was awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just like you see your future in the
Speaker 1: eighties or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I got a couple of cool photos, but I
Speaker 3: largely kept the phone in my pocket and just tried
Speaker 3: to be in it.
Speaker 1: Man, yeah, man, I'm with you.
Speaker 3: So anyway, I met a couple of listeners that were
Speaker 3: just happened to be there, and they both came up
Speaker 3: and like, are you chuck, and so my brother got
Speaker 3: a kick out of that as well.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome, But.
Speaker 3: This was not one of those people.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: It just reminded me because it's a Georgia Tech student. Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: relatively new listener, have probably listened to about one hundred
Speaker 3: episodes so far. Tend to hop around, as you can tell.
Speaker 3: I'm a Georgia Tech student and really hope to run
Speaker 3: into you guys. At some point in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: Did I mention I go to Georgia Tech.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I finally sort of had something to write in
Speaker 3: about it. Was listening to the Windy's Chili podcast, suddenly
Speaker 3: heard the name of a place. It sounded very familiar.
Speaker 3: Cole's Custard. Remember we mentioned that at the end as
Speaker 3: a place where there was a finger. Oh yeah, he
Speaker 3: said it was one of the places where a finger
Speaker 3: had been found. And it shocked me as it is
Speaker 3: just a tiny little custard shop that is not a
Speaker 3: chain on quite expensive beach property in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: I've been as a Georgia Tech student. I was shocked.
Speaker 3: I've been to the place probably five or ten times
Speaker 3: as a frequent Missouri of Rightsville Beach and had never
Speaker 3: heard of anyone mentioned this incident. I just think it's
Speaker 3: very impressive that a small little store managed stay afloat
Speaker 3: after such an incident occurred. Hearing about the finger incident
Speaker 3: will not deter me from going again, though, And that
Speaker 3: is from Ethan Lyons and Ethan. Maybe that is exactly
Speaker 3: why it endured. It's because people just want that custard
Speaker 3: so bad.
Speaker 1: It must be a pretty good custard though, if you
Speaker 1: think about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it didn't make like big national news proba
Speaker 3: because it's not a chain.
Speaker 1: I see, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure that's part of it.
Speaker 1: Plus they also did a better job spinning the pr
Speaker 1: than Wendy's did. Sure, I'm betting well. Thanks a lot,
Speaker 1: Ethan for letting us know, just kind of bringing that home.
Speaker 1: Hadn't really envisioned the place where that finger was found
Speaker 1: in the custard until now, so thanks for that. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us and kind
Speaker 1: of paint a more illustrative picture than we did about
Speaker 1: something we talked about, we love that. You can join
Speaker 1: us on stuff youshould know dot com check out all
Speaker 1: of our links there, or you can send us an
Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
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